 to Segal Talks at the Segal Center at the Martin, the Segal Theater Center at the Credit Center CUNY in Midtown in Manhattan in New York City. It's a gray and rainy day where no city in the world looks nice. And in the big leaden code of Corona is still on the skies. It's very visible here. We all do feel it, restaurants open to 20%, but at least in Midtown, every second store is closed, it's out of business. And it's a deal, a devastating situation here. As you all know, the Metropolitan Opera even for an entire year said they will not do any productions and musicians, actors are out of work, especially some musicians who had normally could work and play in the restaurants you can. You cannot eat. You cannot play without someone sitting down and eating and it's not possible really. So it's very dark and gloomy here and in the White House we all feel it's like the end of an empire. So maybe in 50 or 100 years when people will look back about the American century, they say, when did it kind of come to an end? And perhaps Trump infected with Corona, his staff not there, ranting on Twitter. Maybe we'll say this was a moment where something changed, but maybe also it will change for the better. Artists and especially theater artists have always been on the right side of history on the complex struggle for freedom, for a better society, imagining new worlds, worlds that actually had less suffering and they are more just and they have always been close to the moment and anticipated the future. And today with us, we have a great, great theater, the theater from again, the great director Milo Rao and we have drama talks and editors, Carmen Hon-Boslin, Katja De Geist and they came out with a book that asks these questions. Why theater, why now? And also for TAC, as we say here, the time after Corona, what do we do? We really have to think about what we are doing now. It is the moment when Junior Barbara said, before you shoot the arrow, when you concentrate, when you think about something in it and we have to take it very serious. It's a most serious situation for the United States, for the city of New York, for theater in America, in the world and I think they have something to say that might save us and might help us to create meaning and I apologize for speaking so long. Very few sentences about everyone. Katja is a study art history in Belgium and in Sweden and she has been part of a great children's theater. I think it's a very important work. Theater for children and young adults is of significance, it's been overlooked I think and she has worked as Cardinavia in Germany and she's the assistant artistic director in Ghent at a very young age here in America. Unsinkable, you know, most of the time they have to wait 20 years to get anything done and she's the co-editor, of course, of the Golden Book we talk about today. Carmen Holmbostel is a German, she's born in Hamburg and she's the dramaturg, which is a very significant contribution to theater. And something that should be taken more seriously especially in America, the concept of dramaturgy but also new dramaturgy in its enlarged thinking. So she has been in dramaturgy for Milo and the Institute of Political Murder. This is the great organization Milo created for over 50, 60 theatrical productions, film, publication, political actions came out of this institute and she was the dramaturg for significant production like La Reprise, the Box of Truth family which opened the beginning of this year as a suicide play, a family that could besides to create suicide. And of course, every woman that was inspired from every man in Salzburg, they did in Salzburg but they took a story of a person who actually is experiencing death, cancer and they had an opening in Berlin last night to the Chauvinne Berlin Open, the great theater was that play that Milo just went for a day to Cologne, came back and Milo, of course, people who do know about him you have his bio, he's one of the great forces of contemporary theater, a thinker, a journalist in a way, an activist, a theater maker, a filmmaker and also, and I would like to point that out someone who publishes books, it seems it's a important part of his work, the Golden Book series, you can go online, check it out. So all of you, welcome. So I apologize for talking so much, the idea of these talks is listening in a way actually radical listening. So I'm really, really here, what you have to say and it's not an interview in that sense, so Carmen, why did you do the book Why Theater? I think it's, oh, there are different reasons. So when we came back, we were actually in the Amazon in Brazil, so Milo and myself, working there on a project Antigone in the Amazon, when the lockdown started and we had to go back to Europe and we were sitting here not knowing will we produce anymore? What's gonna happen with the theaters? Will they be closed for a longer time, for a shorter time? So we didn't know anything. So we actually had the time to go back to the roots and ask ourselves, why are we actually doing theater? What do we want to do? And in our little world, sitting at home being locked, locked down, we said, we have to pose this question to more people. And so we started contacting artists and asking them, who would you like to pose this question? The super basic question, actually. But yes, I think Corona was the time to get back to the roots, to the basic question of why do we produce art and why is it so significant in our society? And you worked, which is also, I think, a way of kind of doing news theater. You worked as an ensemble in a way to create it. Katja, how is that connected to your work? For me, I had just started working for Antigone, when this question came. So Milo and Carmen were supposed to be working hard on this Antigone production in Brazil. And then upon coming back, as Carmen said, there was this opportunity to reflect and also this need to reflect. And I was kind of thrown into this as a new addition to the team. But actually, I felt it was very generous. The way we first started thinking, how do we want to ask this? And who do we want to reach out to? And I feel that we, as a team, already started to compile a list of ideal names. They didn't have to just be the big names we already knew. I even was able to smuggle in some smaller names, also from the children's and young audience theater that Milo maybe didn't know or were not maybe on the radar. But I felt that it was quite generous and that it was collective. And then we were thinking first, maybe 50 people will say yes. Maybe we can convince a bit more. And now we ended up with 106, very diverse. And we also ordered them in the book alphabetically. So I feel this kind of represents also the way we came to the list. Yeah. Quite an amazing list. Some names of Tanya Pugera, Nora Chepremiere, it's Shito Delart, Extinction Rebellion, Susanna Kennedy, Eduard Louis, Ravi Moret, Toshiki Okada, Alain Plattel, René Paule, Thiago Rodriguez, Kirill Serevrenyov-Nikov, who often tried to contact. We couldn't get to him. You guys did, Miet Varlo and so many, many others. Our Seagal Talks, we actually have this week also. You are in the week of number 100. You know, there seems to be some parallel. Already had a book out. Milo, tell us a bit about why do you think this is important? I mean, first of all, I'm always in love with titles. And when this title came in my mind, I was just like intrigued and it's a question. And then you have to ask this question to people. And it was like Carmen said, it was in a moment when after some weeks of lockdown when you felt, OK, this is perhaps the chance because I had the impression that on the one hand, everybody had time. On the other hand, everybody had time for this fundamental questioning of himself because normally we give the answer through projects. So we wouldn't like sit down and write this text because we don't have time. And perhaps we are even not interested in doing this as makers, you know. And this was the moment. And then we tried to find out what is the network of people we are interested in. And on the one hand, of course, these are the names you named because they are the known names like the international elite of touring artists like Kirill or like Geron Bell and so on and so on. And we tried to connect them to people that are very important in their respective regions but not known or in their respective, I don't know, formats they are working with but not in our, let's say, international touring world. And this was a real research. So we asked the curators to give us names and people to tell us. And then we made it broader and broader. We also tried to take some older people from the older generations. So Boto Strauss is in it, for example, Ariane Muschgen is in it and so on. But also the big names from China that are 80 or from Japan that we wouldn't know. So this was for us really important to be as diverse as possible. Also taking artists who would not be sure, for example, the landless movement, Extinction Rebellion and so on that are activists. They are doing art but in a theater in a way that you wouldn't like, I don't know, invite them to the Berlin Theater Treffen because they are kind of doing it in another way, in a more direct and activist way. So this was the way. And then of course, when you start to do it that's what Katja said that you can't stop. So we publish now the book but since then in Amsterdam we made a little series of new artists and we made two series in Gent again. So it became a format in itself like inviting people to give clear and short statements of 6,000 signs that's six minutes. And then you have one question and that's it. Because this is also the beauty of this book, it's preciseness. It's because, you know, when you, for example, now I will talk until you say, stop Milo. But we gave very precise limits. What about, they can talk what? And then, and this was mainly Carmen and Katja like being over weeks and months in a kind of a dialogue to model sometimes the texts because of course we knew about the whole dramaturgy of the book. And if everybody would have started with now in times of Corona, blah, blah, blah that we are all in the lock that you know. So we tried really to kind of have a story in the book itself. And that's what came out. So I can show it's really one text after the other. Yeah, sometimes there's written and then we have statements that we took out. So you could have pictures. And we have all the quotes like this one. You can't read it, I guess, because it's turned around. Doesn't see it to become itself about also through disappearance. And then you can step to this text. So it's also a playful book somehow. Yeah, yeah. So what did you detect all of you were in it? Why is art and theater unique? Why is it necessary? Why is it indispensable? What voices did you hear from those over 100 contributions? I think they're super and that's what makes it interesting in this book. They're super diverse in the format. They give their answers. If it's an artistic answer in a poem, for example, or a drawing or if it's an answer in a political text, a manifesto. So there we can see already a lot of diversity and of course as well in the content. So we have the political speeches, I would call them really saying theater can affect our reality. And that is what we need theater for to have the experimental room for the revolution actually. Then you have very personal answers. Authors telling about memories they had sometimes with their family or in a theater itself. But you have as well, I think often not even an answer but even more questions to our theater and how should it be in the future? We have texts for example from Jerome Bell and Katie Mitchell talking about how we have to change theater to make it climate or to have productions that are in the way we have to see our future to change our climate problems. So what can theater do here? So we have a lot of texts that actually pose more questions and ideas how to change and what we have to keep because theater is a room that can, it's a social space for experimenting and discussing that we are losing more and more in our society and there is no other space anymore. So I would say there are a lot of different questions that getting posed. Yeah, and for me some of the most interesting ones were actually also the ones that were making us or maybe the general public also feel a bit uncomfortable and even not only posing even more questions but also questioning the question and questioning our posing the question. So like saying that the question of why theater isn't as innocent as it might seem or isn't as naive as it might seem. So that this was something we also have to watch out for and not just go into the trap of defending or like in thinking in these ways of profit or use of all things in society. So that was also nice to be confronted with those kind of ideas and not to be like in an echo chamber just repeating the same values over and over again. And what came out for me too is that a lot of makers not only authors but also directors or scenographers are good writers and they have a very specific way on looking on things for me some of the most beautiful texts are the texts when just somebody retells a memory of a show he saw perhaps as a child or you know and just like describing by describing a show you completely understand what theater is how the atmosphere of a show is how you remember it what does it means co-presence all this stuff you're talking about it all the time. So this was for me very impressive and the other side was that I saw that we still have in a completely globalized world we have different regions with different topics and different politics of theater. So you would in the south of or in Latin America you would have a lot of memory politics. In Africa you would have a lot of ideas to recreate the national tradition of theater that doesn't exist because there are no institutions in Europe you have the decolonization of the institutions, the question of diversity when you go to Kirill Serebrenikov and the Russians in Eastern Europe you have the freedom of expression question that is completely absent in Belgium for example and so on and so on. So this was for me really important to have this global view and to be taken out of like the 20s time talking about I don't know how can we change the canon of a German city theater discussion. So this is like I'm tired of it. And then you see that this is just one possibility of 50 different possibilities to have this institution as a cultural memory. And this is really, I think this is really the unique point of this book that we really tried to be of course we are Eurocentric and half of the texts are from Europe because we are from Europe or from England and North America but the other fifties are from somewhere else. So it's really, we really tried to be global in the approach. No it is truly remarkable and I don't know of any other publishing project at the moment that really took the temperature reached out to so many artists put it into a form and really captured a moment that's what also we're trying to really archive the capturing of the moment of a profession also itself in a time of corona and what is going through. So for everybody who is really interested about not only what are theater artists you guys feel have something to contribute which in itself is important but also really it is a fast comment on the time we do live is on the time of corona is thought about it in March now it is barely after September it's already been published. And so breathtaking a speed you guys did that and that is normally doesn't happen it takes three, four years often for books and that's why journals and magazines are faster. I like the idea I think if I'm not mistaken it's also the theme of your season question everything what I think Katya also talked about and I think it is a moment to question everything and I think you said how can art be an alternative practice to create a solidarity? So the question everything out of this book is there something the way you say yeah that made me think differently I think we might react to something that came out of it and was there also for you guys a learning process? Yeah well okay a learning process and for me it was nice to gather all these different points of view as Milo just said because it kind of brought me back to my own ideas of why do I make theater kind of why do you make theater? What's your idea? That's I just said last week in our openings weekend or two weeks ago why do I make theater because I'm actually a psychologist and I was overwhelmed actually by the all the individual dramas that I listened to and the feeling that I couldn't help that I couldn't really change the world and that it's all one big cosmic drama that combines the individual dramas and I had it overwhelmed me so I was looking for a space that gives it a size that I can handle the cosmic drama and that is theater for me it's giving the cosmic drama a size that is in proportion to my size as a human being where I can really start acting instead of being overwhelmed and passive so that is my reason why I do theater and why I need this institution and in the book it was very nice to come back to all the different ideas what theater and what theater actually is. For example, Lastesi's a feministic collective for them theater doesn't mean the space that I'm talking about a stage and an institution for them it's the street to go in the street and put the rage on the street and talk there that's their theater. So it's something totally different than in the European approach usually where we see theater only accessible usually for the elite, for the people who can pay for the tickets who go to the old beautiful buildings no in other parts theater is just this street is the only possibility to actually talk and be allowed and they put their you mentioned Tania Bruehra people are really risking their lives their freedom for this art to have this possibility to talk out where people usually can't do it so this really helped me or the book to remind of this huge power that theater can have as well outside of the traditional room that we always put it into. Mido, did it something change for you or did something inspire you that came out of the book? Yeah, yeah, I was by some quotes and some of the quotes already became a bit in for example, in German media like quotes that you would know for example, from Rene Poles she said, why do I make theater because I need somebody to think? You can't think alone that's why you are working collectively you are working in the co-presence of the public for example, he doesn't even mean the other artists but the public that you have something there and attention and then you would start to talk or a neat company that was like just like one quote I can't forget it was saying Shakespeare was competing with dogfights and he was seeing like his best friend was tortured to death and still he loved the people and he worked for this public and he knew these are all sadists somehow you know and I like beautiful or another one, I think Chokri Benchikai wrote we shouldn't only describe Hamlet or Don Quixote we should become them we should understand the texts we are staging as a kind of being staged in real life, you know so I had a lot of this seems a bit poetic for example and what Carmen says is absolutely true too that there is a direct action call in many texts which is beautiful but on the other hand you find out why this kind of very complex and now impossible to act out format of telling reality and creating reality we have and how effective it is how extremely effective it is what we can find out in a show or working like some weeks together why we have this kind of theater science why it exists and this is the outcome of the book and the last thing for me is really these quotes I, it's a bit childish but we printed them out and we brought it on the outside of the theater to have really these quotes that tell you immediately the strength and the power of theater and why you would do it so it's really it's also a very poetic book with beautiful sentences, you know it's not only an intellectual or political book it's really also a book of quotes and sentences and little experiences Yeah, I think it is a little eyesore of what I could see it's not yet here on the market I hope it will be available soon and he also will be an e-book, right it can be downloaded The new book is on Sunday I think, no? How did your theater or how does one find it? How do you get the e-book? I wrote down the website of the publisher is the best way to go for now it's verbrecherverlag.de Maybe we can write it on the comments which is the great name of the crooks the crooks publishing house and the criminals Yeah, so the verbrecherverlag and maybe we'll put it up at the end of this this is truly it's important it's your work, why I also might is kind of a big research machine in that is sharing in an assembly form in a form of people coming together it's film, it's talks you do the great school of resistance talks you have the golden books you do theater projects you also have the annual meeting I think you had it in February All the dramaturgs meeting, yeah All dramaturgs, over a hundred artists dramaturgs and thinkers come together and it's instigated, you know put together as a you as the spieliter as someone who puts games together you know, we talked about it yesterday about the idea of the game, that's theater so that you put things together and put it and you put it out there so this is I think remarkable and that mosaic that you create of a hundred views on reality actually of capturing something that is also so important do you feel in the formal approach you know, the how you do it the way you do it is you know that this is more important than the what you know, how is that something that you feel something is changing formally do people say these forms we should look forward to we have many so many young students, listeners who say what form do I choose what is right, you know, what might work or might not do you, are you detecting tendencies from these contributed people say actually I think I will go back to this or I will do that, is there inventions or new thoughts that come out for me, one of the things that are that sometimes popped up is that the question of why becomes the question of how how are we going to do this in the in the near future and also mainly facing climate change and looking at our own position in how we like do we need to tour internationally with the same cast from this little country to that country or could be potentially find new ways of producing that I think is a big question like on the content while and I think it's interesting that they they immediately transformed the why theater question to the how are we going to proceed don't know apart from that maybe Carmen and Milo know some so new ways of producing will come out I think out of necessity as well so and this is also something that make that's what I meant by the things the text that made me feel uncomfortable is is the ones that are saying we can't go on like how we are doing it now or who is not in the theater yet who is how are we not reaching those those kind of questions that came back but I guess we are far from the answers in these fields just to go back also for our audience to understand the the the ideas of what the work of your theater and you Ross is about I think you opened if I'm missing this fall season with a statue from an artist from Congo Irene Kanga and it visualized I haven't seen the rape of a Congolese woman by a Belgium States official in the 30s one of the colonial big colonial crimes we have then forced love it's called but you also had is the minister of the prime minister from the Flemish a part of Belgium there Jean-Jean Bonne about it right so tell us a bit about this because this is symbolically in a way in an imaginary way but also in a real way it is a statement of something different and new yeah I mean there are even more interesting methods let's say in this in this in this statue so the one point is that I think this is the kind of artworks we should exhibit we should bring the colonial history in these institutions that were built and financed through colonial money because you know that Belgium was in the Congo and created all these beautiful institutions out of the money they took out of the colony so this is one thing like bringing back the crime where it started and on the other hand and this is the beautiful way back this that drew the money that is made by selling it to us to the end again so to the Belgium state to a Belgium state theater drew the money because these artists are living on a former Unilever plantation they buy the land back so by buying the representation of the crime that took the land away they sell it back so it's a kind of a like multi-layered activism this and it's a very beautiful and quite in the face artwork so and what we do now we lend it to schools and universities that they bring it in their context and then would kind of surround it with courses about colonial history which are not when you go to high school in Belgium you wouldn't learn, perhaps Katja knows better you wouldn't really learn about this time of the European history so that's another step and for me it's all linked to the big question but why are we doing art? What means realism? Means realism that something looks kind of realistic and I'm kind of touched or does it mean that reality is transformed and that it's a real act and what we try and with this statue I think we found a very beautiful way of tackling this subject is to do real acts to use art, institution and all the things we can you call it a machine to produce this kind of moments of resistance, of engagement but also somehow of cruel beauty because of course there is now a discussion and there we always peer discussion what does it mean when you step into a state theater and you see the rape of a Congolese woman what does it mean? Can you just reproduce it? How can you kind of contextualize it? And this is another layer of interesting identity politics discussion you can also open about it so it's, yeah, myself I don't know the answers and I don't know if Carmen or Katja if they even agree with this action 100% or not or I mean we have our discussions about it but you are asking questions and you do really question everything so tell us a bit about that school of resistance that part is all part of your work and I think it is a really important Florian Maltzach who yesterday also talked a lot about it but when he talked about the Giselschach spiele his idea of what theater should be or mind be that it is a forum, agonism and the plurality in it and Mufler who he quotes and you are now also very, very close to Chantal and Nora, what about tell us a little bit I think it is so important to know for theater companies also here in the US that in a way it's kind of a free international university what you are doing like Joseph Boyce idea you also create discussions and it's not normal and I think it should be like this is something you, something significant and this book is part of it so the school of resistance, what is it all about? Yeah, I mean Katja can perhaps talk about meeting moderating Nora and the Chantal so it's not always very, very convenient too you called it and I would like kind of just feature your term you said you called it radical listening, no? Yeah, yeah and that's what we try to do bring perspectives together they would never meet and never talk and perhaps not even listen to the other not in a pedagogical way that you should listen to your husband and the wife should also and not this kind of pedagogical listening but listening to learn and to find the kind of a dialectic intellectual activist global point of view because for example climate activism in England, in India and in Africa to bring this together or in another like a week ago we had the extinction rebellion so the founder of extinction rebellion together with kind of a feminist occupying position which is very, very different and it was a kind of a fight in between extinction rebellion and this more anarchistic conception of, yeah, of occupying space so that was interesting to see so it's, yeah, an antagonism too Is it you have like two people sitting in a theater on a stage there's a bench or table and people listen to it or is it online or how do you organize the discussions? It's an online, actually it's like a series not very different from this one also with the support of how around theater comments so they're doing great work also for the school of resistance series and it's moderated often by different people It's mixed in New York the school of resistance is mixed together in New York Yeah and then we invite different people on different topics and then the streams are we try to have one every second week so everyone can tune in also the people who are enjoying the Seagull talks are welcome to join next one is tomorrow at five p.m. Central European summertime Who's talking tomorrow? Tell us Tomorrow it's Milo Rao and Ashile Mbembe and it's part of the stylish at Help's Festival in Austria Yeah, a significant talk about this but we should come to it but Carmen, tell us about the Nora Chantal discussion he said it was challenging or Milo said That was Katja Katja did the moderation on this one so I pass on the question to her Oh, it was It was challenging I think it was an interesting discussion and Chantal Mbouf is also like she was talking about agonism and how this is important that there's room for disagreement I guess to move democracy forward I think this was nice it was two contributors in our golden book so we just invited them to talk about their contribution and I think it was I don't think it was a problematic talk but anyone can go and judge it was lively discussion Yeah, it questions what we think about and Chantal also for people who know she's not part of the theater world normally people are just the playwrights but she's a political scientist from Belgium who has some ideas and actually uses the metaphors of theater and the language actually in the terms in a U-way with Achille Mbélio-Amino tell us a bit about him and why do you say why do you talk to him, for example I'm not sure he is as well known as he is in Europe why do you feel you need to hear from him as part of the School of Resistance Yeah, you know, Achille Mbembe is in my opinion one of the most influential and important philosophers of today and what we are interested in the School of Resistance that's why we invite also Achille Mbembe we invite non-European let's say, perhaps more simply non-Western perspectives for example on global history you remember perhaps that the German philosopher said Hegel said Africa has no history so Achille Mbembe is the most known historian of the pre-colonial or theoreticist of the pre-colonial and post-colonial African history and how the cultural image of Africa was made and how racism or slavery in the 19th century is linked to neoliberalism of today and of course when we are talking about capitalism we would talk about the workers movement I don't know and the Socialist Party when he's talking about capitalism he's talking about slavery in the Congo so you know, in this perspective you wouldn't think about it because in Europe, for example, Jefferson was against slavery but he had slaves and this is a very European American way of being schizophrenic and that's Achille Mbembe who can kind of give you a mirror and reflect on that and it's super interesting and that's the reason why we invite him or we try to bring together norashipamire and shantanmuf so they are very different so in another moment and Vandana Shiva so one climate activist from Uganda and then the ecologist activist Vandana Shiva from India and very, very different people but super interesting to think together with them so for me the main thing of like with this book I understood when we were in Amazonia I understood I know nothing I have no ideas I'm completely locked in a cosmology I was learned in the 80s 90s in Switzerland so it's kind of it's so beautiful to finally move a bit forward to step some borders and when I read 10 pages of Achille Mbembe that's for me better than I don't know 500 pages of I don't know what I read in school of Hegel so now it is truly is significant that the decolonization has to be thought of in a global scale that we do not look at our just national borders and talking about Jefferson I think Tom Cotton the Republican was caught saying slavery was a necessary evil for America to become America it's a shocking statement and that needs to be thought but also educated and because Achille Mbembe also said the European democracy or the American democracy is built on slavery it's kind of the economy of slavery is the economy of democracy it's really interesting and it's still the same today by the way and he's explaining it that's interesting you know and I wouldn't have to thought because for me democracy and slavery that's the opposite and to think it together you need an Achille Mbembe yeah no and I think this is also a role the theater can do and can play you know to bring the disenfranchised in the center you know people who might normally not listen to a few points of views that we are not thinkable for us at the moment it's theater that doesn't insult it's theater that does not exclude people in the contrary it brings in like you did with the statue you know the world that exists as a reality but also in ours your work in Congo was your theater work significant that you open up to these thoughts because you did the play there your work now Antigone in the Amazon will that be an engagement with Latin America speaking does it come out of your theater work also the book you made or do you feel this was always an interest and you worked also as a journalist your philosophical I don't know perhaps you can add a bit because is it different if we go to the Amazon or if we go to Salzburg or the family I mean where is the difference answer this because what is it I don't know for me as well there is no real difference the importance is that we do all these different kind of works that is what is important to me that you can think the small and the big scale always together the private and the political so you can do a play like family very in a very small cosmic world but at the same time you can start working in the Amazon on a big political play and listening to voices you haven't heard and at the same time making a play about the western Europe situation we are in that seems like there is no exit out of it so this is the beauty to me to always have this balance not getting lost on the one track or the other but always having as Nilo said the whole picture incredible let's split in gymnastics you could make from the Salzburg Feschspieler to land activists in the Amazon which you work and who actually ask you if I should write to rewrite Antigone they said she should not die right and you did activists marxists don't suicide that's the big difference from marxists to to Greek heroes and also perhaps bourgeois culture where the suicide has a high value so we have made for example a family about bourgeois let's say idea of being in the end of times and to suicide and on the other hand you have the activism and I think the balance come there is this very beautiful Gramsci quote everybody knows and quotes all the time but I will also do it now that what was it now the pessimism of the reason needs to be balanced by the optimism of the will and I think only to make propaganda and scandals and traveling around and making activism it would for me not be not be the right thing so we I mean and it's perhaps in the core of every project on the other hand you also need to confront yourself to melancholy that you love just playing Bach on stage so for example it's the play we did now yesterday in Chaubühne it's if you want very kitschy because there you have you see a woman dying at the same time another actress is playing piano so that's just something I like you know and it's very bourgeois negative somehow and melancholic so I would at this point of view I would look at it and say so but what for what for why do we look so closely on somebody dying what does this mean and I would I don't know my answer you know so but that's like this there is a lot of different stuff as they say as well in the death of one human you see the death of a whole world so this is the why for me to zoom into an individual and at the same point to show the big picture for example on the Amazon so yeah and if I understood right that I play that Max Reiner actually I think commissioner from Hoffman's talk about every man that then was performed to be outside in a way site Pacific for the public he was a great genius of theater you looked at and you said it's about death but let's work you worked with a woman who is having cancer who's going to die and you took that as as a as a question and how do we represent that play but we flipped it around and created something that then yeah and opened last night that significant European and theater a question Milo for you you did the gospel the or is this a muzzle as a film and you did now the antique of the Amazon which would come out and now you also do a book or you do the school of resistance discussion is this all the same value to you do you focus on theater do you say this is all has absolutely the same importance or do you say this is a research for me I need this as you quoted Renee to say you know I think through others and then something comes to you and inspires to use this theater works that theatrical presentation on on a space inside the space is that the the kind of crowning thing they give it or do you say no actually this is on the same level of engagement yeah I mean it's I think there are two two levels of of course there's the obsession of the moment always what you do in the very moment is the most important and nothing can be as important than the next premiere and the next premiere and that's why I like theater so much because I have problems to focus and theater you have to focus because there's the premiere and then you have to be finished so that's that's that's but it's true that I also believe in the in the collective non-conscious intelligence that you take a lot of time for projects and you are not really working on it for example now we are doing a play with it while we the French writer and we are just like talking sometimes sometimes meeting the project all the time from left to right and then goes in that direction and then we don't continue and continue again but I know that somehow with Katja and Carmen and the and the other people working at the end again during this project or with Eduard it will somehow materialize so I believe in this this collective intelligence on the one hand and on the other hand in the Stalinistic form of the premiere that at that moment the red curtain will open and then something has to be there you know so this is the this is the beautiful thing and I think that's also why we link you said normally you take three years for a book like this and perhaps even longer but we just knew we open the first of October and then this golden book as thick it is it has to be there and then a horrible time for Katja and Carmen started because there was not so much you know in the in the in all these discussions with the writers but it was clear it has to be finished and and then it was and and that's yeah something I like in this too often used word used project that you are the way is the aim and at the same time I don't know you can really finish it you know it's not too big so it's yeah it's every project has the same value I'm I would say I'm as much proud of this book we made as on the play we made yesterday and I don't know the film about family I'm not perhaps a bit less proud but it's it's yeah every project has the same value I don't know how is it for you Carmen Katja do you have like favorite projects and side dishes I mean this project was for me very very beautiful because Mila just said it was a horrible time up for us I mean Katja can afterwards add what she thinks for me it was a very beautiful time of course it's a lot of time pressure but I never had the chance before to talk to so many artists and intellectuals in such a short time to really have the time to enter into conversations because usually people then they have a premiere as Mila said and there's a date fixed and tier but no we really had the time to discuss things so it was super beautiful for me and I'm very proud of the book because I have the feeling it's a compilation of yeah things I would usually learn in four or five six years and suddenly I had the chance to do all this in half a year so the stress was worth it and yeah to really feel as well the solidarity because I love to work in a team as Mila said already or any polish said I need somebody to think and usually we're in smaller teams and now I had the feeling I'm in a big team all over the globe so it was just a beautiful feeling a solidarity and really being connected in the art world so for me it was a lot of fun and yes I am very proud of it there are of course little mistakes in it if you only have half a year not many of course not yeah it's like the carpets where you're not allowed to do something perfect in the face of Allah you have to make him pay because we are humans and so that's of course part of it I think yeah it was also Kleist wrote about it he said he had to he had to articulate and often talk to his sister who he said doesn't understand what he was thinking about unfortunately I think somewhere he might have even said he talked that into his door or something but still he said the way to articulate in front as you said of a group we had matters and other people said to be forced to put it into a form and it's remarkable also what is remarkable and I want to give you all my respect I know we do books how much work that is how many many many hours and careful attention goes into it but after all this also we are with the written word which is also interesting in the time of zoom in the time of Netflix of Instagram we put it into a book and we have it written and down and it's an archive you know the 50 or 100 years from now people will be able to see that's what they thought the time like I witnessed reports of the French Revolution and we still read it so really we have all of our respect since we are here in New York and in the U.S. do you follow what's going on here what are your thoughts about the state of things I think this is one of your titles also as Kant said did it influence in the book the situation of America what is happening here in the 100 artists and intellectuals you talked to and what do you all think what's happening here I think in I remember the text by Kelly Copper of Nature Theatre of Oklahoma that there was maybe a sense more of a sense of like not knowing what to do and that made me also think of the like many European artists that or German, Belgian Dutch people that do have some sort of support net from the government that we were in a more of a luxury situation also with healthcare how those things are dealt with and then reading the text she describes the situation in New York and it's a little bit like not very optimistic or not really wanting to answer the question why theatre so that was quite confronting for me to know the other American voices in the book so they did the Black Lives Matter for example the movement was most probably now people say it's the largest civil rights movement that the US has experienced in its history is it represented in the book do people talk about it is that a point of reference yeah I think no from the land less movement I think he was mentioning it in a broader sense because I mean you have the Black Lives Matter movement also in Brazil and linked it to the civil rights movement in the 60s until today and I think Alexander Karschner who read his text yesterday in the German radio a German maker very important from Ant Company you might know him I think he's also in the book by Florian and he wrote a lot about it because it was in the very same moment I remember of Black Lives Matter when we started the book or when we when we were talking about it and he was like taking this as a starting point too but what we perhaps now that I'm thinking about perhaps really missed a bit we don't have an activist from I mean a direct activist from the movement like we have it from the climate movement like we have it from the from many feminist movements and so on and and resistance movements in all part of the world but not of this one and I actually now that you're talking about I don't even know why government or I think this is not the only topic that is still missing in the book these are 106 first statements but there are a lot of more or many more artists and voices we should represent and have to and that is why we try to keep this project alive building up a website called whytheater.eu which is still in the building process to really have all these voices added up to a big archive to because this book would have more than 5000 pages if we would really say we have to put all the voices in there so it is a starting point it is a first step and this archive has to be built up step by step and this is what Katja and Mia are especially working on to really have more voices and this is a good point to really have somebody directly from the Black Lives Matters movement and to keep on asking whytheater to all these different parts impossible of course to represent everything and and this is a remarkable Olympian feat what you stemmed as a weight like your heavy weight lifters there and it is truly sensational I think that you got this all together and also what it shows and part of the seagull talk some excerpts were published by MIT Press was performing arts journal Letre International just in the current issue where I also have excerpts in it and the editors from Letre said what is interesting to them that normally that is such statements and the same in your book you have from politicians people who are concerned about life of society and what is actually now taking over avoid especially in America seems to be missing you know that all the concerns about the present the future about reconnecting about engaging communities is something that seems to be fallen on the lap of theater artists and they take up the challenge and I think that is courageous and important and so generous also to be honest we are on the margins in a way of society what is of importance especially theater is no longer in that sense especially in America film, television is so much more out there but I think the contribution you all made with that and also with the appeal to say put your body into life go out there do something participate create discussions take risks and really as you said question everything and if we don't do it now whenever in our lives and it's really a significant time you live in now and this has consequences so I will also read what the artist said and for as I said earlier we are trying to create a theater festival for the summer of 2022 where we would like to invite you guys maybe to create something or a theater project if you have any funding for anything or we find something you bring that energy that idea and also that thinking with you that model what you represent as in its whole total art in a way one could say this kind of imaginary cathedral that you guys are building and adding on is a way to react to the time you live in and it's brilliant and it's shining in the sense of a diamond that more light comes out than you put it I know you all put a lot of work in and it's hard to do it but still more comes out more energy from that symbolic representation of art on stage on film in a book and that is significant and for everybody who sees the light so really all my respect as income everybody here in New York in this theater scene follows what you guys are doing have been doing for so long what's coming closer to the end what's up what's baking in the oven in the institute for political murder what's going on I can announce a beautiful project thanks first for your generous words that was really touching to us I think to be called the imaginary cathedral I it's the it's beautiful but we can announce the next Congo Tribunal which is next weekend will happen in Zurich if Corona COVID-19 wants and accepts it that we can that we can stage it so we invited the jury perhaps the Congo Tribunal you you know it so we did it first in 2015 a little bit about it people might not know what it is yeah it's a I mean there is the eastern Congo you you might know it there is a huge civil war provoked by the raw materials that is there you have 70% of the cobalt of the coal chain reserves of the planet and you have for example one Swiss company Glencor the biggest raw material company which is from Switzerland like I think the five biggest companies in raw materials anyway are all from Switzerland and they have the two biggest coal chain mines and they have 70% of all the coal chain that is on this planet so actually that's incredible so this is in the hand of one enterprise actually it didn't come like in a very normal way in the hands of this company so we said okay we do our next Congo Tribunal which is a kind of a people's Tribunal but with real judges real advocates from Congo and from the international Tribunal of the Hague mixed together to represent a transnational economical Tribunal because we have a global capitalism but we haven't global law so we said we create this institution we did it in 2015 we made the three first cases and now it became somehow through crowdfunding and stuff it became somehow a bit independent from us it became not yet an institution but it's close to get an institution it has the support from the mining ministry for example from the eastern Congo and now we bring it back to Zurich to put Glencor the Swiss biggest enterprise in Rome and tears next weekend in trial at location the headquarter in Zurich the headquarter close to Zurich it's a little little small town close to Zurich and and what's going to happen to Antigone in the Amazon when is it we restart in November oh this year? the rehearsals start oh yeah but we don't go there they come to us some of the activists come to actually two only come to Ghent and we unite there and we develop the script together and we hope to go back in March 21 so yeah let's hope incredible and as you know everything is closed here you know they're not even rehearsals they are museums just open and they're very very low capacity and so it's just stunning to hear from us you know that things we are close to it too today at eight is the decision of the government of the Belgian government I just read that at least the bars and restaurants will be closed from Monday onwards in Belgium too so who will have to listen to the updates Paris yesterday was decided from nine o'clock in the evening is a curfew bars closed, restaurants closed you will have to go home it's like war, a civil war time and well in Berlin they just decided to open the bars again really? yes from today on the so called Speerstunde is gone again so it's changing everyday we had the premiere yesterday the opening of the show without drinks, it was finished at eleven, it was really horrible it's one of the later re-open it's an incredible time Marvin Karlsson who was on here said in the history of theatre it has never been like they say of course the plague also in Shakespeare's time but he said they would go outside London and perform, there's always some theatre was happening somewhere but it's kind of global lockdown in really for a while nobody showing it, it has never happened most are closed for the first time in a thousand five hundred years it is an incredible significant time when we are going through, we are too close to understand it but it really has a big chance to reinvent the questions and question everything is done right and then something will come out and that's different and we all have to be part of it and I think your work shows that we can do that something individuals, companies, ensembles can do something, we hope to do that a little bit in business festival which we have never done but there's no big festival in New York City in the sense of a European festival that in the entire city celebrates it and it's also in the summer so we look and we also need advice how to do it best and J. Wegman who will be on next week we will be there and collaborate we come we take the invitation we will only not in August because we do the All Greeks festival again okay so let's do it in July so that's good really that means a lot to us and it's a great great model if theater is of any interest it is because it's a model it's a model for something and for that moment it's real it happens on a stage, it could happen in life you don't care about films, they don't get censored, that's why theater gets censored Abhishek Moombar from India said that you know my place are censored by the government, other films no one cares and so us the government of theater is important, it is and so you are a model for something different something new, something also with a promise and as you said was there a triumph perhaps of the will over experience hope over experience so thank you all for joining I cannot believe in the between openings and the Shalbuna you're just one day in Cologne with your family and you're going back so it's a big compliment but also it shows your concern for the world to participate and to share so thank you all really thank you for having us I hope to see you bye bye Carmen