 It's safe you're welcome for an even warmer one. Anyway, if we haven't met, I'm Ann Bogartner, one of the three artistic directors of City Company. And this is the final event of the symposium we've held for the last three days. I'm speaking now of people who don't know what the hell you're doing here, but haven't just showed up. It's been called transformation through training. And I think the more we've gone through these days together, it's been clearly exactly those words, transformation through training. I think all of us have felt the impact of what this training has meant, what sort of these influence is. And it's been very moving. I mean, at one point, I think, Barney, where's Barney? At the last symposium, you looked up at Melanie and said, thank you for this. That's a company member speaking after 25 years. So that's really exciting. So welcome to those who don't know what you're doing here. This is a conversation with Susan B. Tadachi. And after which, we'll be doing a little bit of a closing ceremony for this symposium. But I just want to first of all thank you for being here this morning. And is there anything housekeeping wise I need to say? Where's Peking Pantley? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah. Over there. This is the most important part of what I have to say, which is welcome to HowlRound. They're here being live-streamed right now. And so there are people who are not in the room who are in the room in a very different way. We're trying to learn what that means to be in the room and not in the room at the same time. So this is part of that attempt to understand that. So welcome to HowlRound. Welcome to those who are watching. And without further ado, I'd like to introduce you. And I'm going to tell you first, Cameron Steele, who has been with Susan B. for a long time. He's going to be translating. And Mr. Suzuki and Cameron, please come on stage. Thank you very much. I'm sure Mr. Suzuki, you felt a little bit of the impact in this country for your work. Yes. Don't talk yet. I've heard Mr. Suzuki that I'm going to talk a little bit first. So I'd like to start to describe to you personally what Suzuki's work has meant to me, certainly to the company. But also, I'd like to start by speaking personally. And in this little anecdote that I'd like to share with you, there are a series of questions, which you will understand. In 19, was it 1992 or 1993? I can't remember. The first year that City Company went to Togomoroya, as most of you know, in the far reaches of the mountains north of Toyo, land in Japan. And we brought with us, it was the inaugural season of City Company. It was Suzuki's idea originally to start City Company. He proposed it to me in a hotel lobby in a Mayflower Hotel. Do you remember? Do you remember? It's now a front hotel. I'm very sorry to say. And we brought with us, as the first production, was a production of Arresties by Chuck Mead. And we were very happily in Togo, rehearsing away. Everything was going fine, you know? Reversing, rehearsing has its problems and its joys. And one day, we were about to have our first run-through. And we were at lunch. And Suzuki asked me if he could come and watch the run-through. I said, sure, I know. OK. So someone had done a translation for him of the play. He came in after lunch for the run-through. Very sweet. Came in, walked over, sat down in the back of the space. And we proceeded to have the worst run-through I've ever been in a room with. Ellen was there, Manga was there, and Tom Hewitt, who the other day, was there. Kelly, do you hear Kelly? Yes. Do you remember that day? I do. It was horrible, terrible. And I personally could never sit during rehearsal because I direct from here. So I was standing through the rehearsal, and I started sweating. And I kept seeing everything I'd done at all. Like, what have I been doing in these rehearsals? That's wrong, and that's wrong, and that's wrong. And the actors were terrible, and they were too sweaty. They were terrible. We've all been there, right, to a bad rehearsal. He was just sitting there sweetly, hardly looking at the stage, reading his translation. At the end of the rehearsal, he gets up and leaves. I think he probably said thank you for whatever. And he's like, we were all the terrible moves. I cannot remember if I gave notes or what, but finally the rehearsal was over. And I went for a walk out in the open. I had to get some air with Leon, Ingle's room. Where are you, Leon? And Leon at that time was a member of Suzuki's company, and he also was doing what Kevin's doing now. Did it for seven years. And so we were just beginning a friendship that he was not interested. So he had been there during it. And we went for a walk, and I said, god damn it, Leon. What just happened? Why is it that this guy comes into the rehearsal and everything goes wrong? And Leon said to me, Leon said to me one of the first lessons I learned, and it was one of many. He said, now get this right, Cameron. Leon said to me, well, I know what happened. He said these actors have worked in one way or another with Suzuki-san. And when he's in rehearsal, he will say to an actor, a professional would see this in your work. I stopped. We were walking. I stopped and I went, oh. And I had this huge realization that as an American, I never, as a director, was looking from a point of view of a professional. I always look at will Joe Schmoe from Bioria get it? Do you know what I'm saying? I'm a populist. I'm a Democrat. In more ways than one. You getting that? At the stage from a different place. I looked at it from a populist place. And these actors know, not so much because they talk about it, but they know that when Suzuki-san looks at the stage, he's looking at them from a point of view of a professional. And I thought, I could never say to an actor, a professional sees this. I need to say, well, it's gotten me understood and standable by everyone. That is one of the first moments where I understood why I have spent my life wanting to go elsewhere outside of the United States in order to understand my own culture. And in that moment, it changed the way I walked into a person and the way I look at stage. I start looking at the stage from a point of view of a professional. And that was the first thing. But the thing, and this is where the questions will come in, camera. What encountered with Suzuki-san is that when he thinks about what a play is, he doesn't have the same idea that I do. When he thinks what a rehearsal is, he has a completely different idea of what that is. When he thinks of what an audience is, he has a completely different idea. When he thinks about what an actor is and what an actor is to do, he has a completely different idea. So this morning, what I want to start talking about is exactly that question, is how do you, what is an actor? What is a play? What is an audience? It's a really small question. What is a rehearsal? I don't know if it's somewhere you'd like to start with this. But the fundamental difference is, which is I think when we saw the production last night for those of us who were in the room, we felt that the air was changed by something. And I would propose to you that it's cultural in a way that's not a cliche, it's cultural in a way that the questions are different, the assumptions are different. So I'll finish by just saying that coming into contact with Suzuki-san and his company has had me question all of the assumptions that I inherited and then either say, well, I like mine or I'm changing them. You know what I'm saying? It's not like I'm gonna somebody say, I'm gonna talk to the Japanese, but it's saying these assumptions are now in question. I actually do want to change the way I look at the stage, but there's other things that I don't want to change but I don't. So if you follow me, it's a different way to think of it. So I'm not sure, Suzuki-san, where you'd like to start. Etox, yes, Etox, yes, Etox, yes, yes. The first thing you should know is that he actually doesn't like the theater very much. He actually kind of hates it, but... So in Japan and in high school and in college, there are things called theater clubs. So there'd be many women in these clubs together, and his general feeling of looking at these cultures like theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater, he's looking at these cultures like, oh, they're just kind of sitting around not really doing anything. So they sit around, they read some European texts, they talk about it a little bit, and that's kind of all they do, but it's just impressive. They thought maybe they're just goofing off and not really doing anything. So he grew up, actually, in a house where they practiced kidae, which is the musical or vocal accompaniment to Bunraku, a puppet theater of traditional art form in Japan. And he actually hated this even more than the contemporary. So what happens, for example, is the musician sits in the middle of a room and says, he's on the floor, strumming his shakusen. He went to sleep. They went to sleep. They're alone making all these faces. He was just an elementary school student. He was forced to sort of sit in the room and watch this. And they said, watch this. And he had to sit there for an hour. And he was terrified. If this is the real Japan, I really hate Japanese. So then he went on to high school and went on to college. And then he tried to do, you know, as far away from this kind of thing as he could. He sort of became a European intellectual. He's into classical music. He's writing his thoughts. Really thought the theater was a waste of time. He really hated it. So his real focus early on was in the classics, right? And the plays and literature that came out of ancient Greece and the Romans and the Europeans following the Russian literature. He really followed that historically instead. So the source of the western lexicon drama is retrenching. Well in France of course you have a scene. No, Russia gets you. And you know, check all. So there's a basic lexicon of books that you need to and plays that you need to read to understand western, the basic western. So he thought in the course of his studies the best way to sort of deal with this Japan that he had grown to hate so much was to approach it through the lens of the western canon. Through the theater he could understand Japan and he could understand the countries outside of Japan. And his strategy for going about that had a three element. And the first element he talked about this in New York a little bit was the use of language. So in language you have history. Within language you have the mentality and the history of different peoples. Then there's the physical aspect of the theater. You can't make theater without involving the body. So looking at the body you can see very clearly what makes people from different civilizations different. They were raised and traditions they have kind of educational impact. It all shows up in the body. For example if someone gets infected by a certain stream of bacteria depending on their body it will show up it will manifest itself in a different way. And if there's any kind of if you have an accident the way your body responds to that is different depending on your specific physical makeup. Physical action. So language, the body and the group. So when you have the impulse to be creative it's something you do on your own you imagine. So perhaps the easiest group to sort of imagine is a couple. Two lovers they're very easily able to come up with a shared vision of something. But basically when you have groups that involve three people or more it starts to become more complicated. How do you decide on rules that everyone's going to agree on? And that's sort of the way that your nation begins starting with three. So a family in a way is the beginning. So if you think of a family, if you think of nation for it to function you need a rule. And so in just thinking about this you thought well how these rules get arrived at who decided and who will decide them that seems to be in the crux of how these groups are made and maintained. And so as he started to think about the theater he focused more and more on these three aspects. How do I deal with language? How do I deal with the body? How do I sustain a group? So you can use or He started to use this Troika Bella to combine the access to modern reality as a political institution. So more and more so you started to think in a larger way or he started to use this troika of elements and lenses to not just examine his own culture but to look at America, at France, to see by having the same lens how different cultures showed up. So if you read Dostoevsky or you read Kafka, you get a good idea of those individual points of view. It's true with contemporary authors too. By looking at this individual's perspective, you can get a sense of their ideas but it's more complicated to get the bigger picture of what is the whole context in which this person wrote, what is the national context, what is the culture of the context that this came out of. It's harder to get a sense of that just from reading. And in the theater, however, you're with a group of people, a theater company. So right away what happens when you start to make a group is you start to have rules and you see right away who is attracted to those rules, who starts to work against those rules, who commits to them, who drops out. It comes clear pretty quickly. So you look at politics, this is pretty clear, right? You can see the kinds of folks who agree with Trump's rules. They're really decisive. And in China you have the Communist Party and people that really follow the party line. So it becomes about who controls those rules. In the managing and directing of a theater company it also becomes quite clear. It's also true for ballet troupe or a symphony orchestra. You can look at the rules that either these forms or these groups have and think, what is the history of these rules? Who's decided these rules over time? And that was attractive to me. And the reason for that is it's not enough just to think about yourself, right? You have to think about the other. What is the other perspective? How can I see things from a different perspective? So just to respond to Anne's question about what's my first impulse in choosing a text for you. So as he said before, I hated Japan. He wasn't just, he hated Japanese theater, he hated people. He also hated the politicians. He hated the social system. That was his base feeling just about towards everyone. Well, not everyone. It was that there were certain things really lucky. So now when he thinks back to his uncle playing the Shami Sen, making all the Gidaian performance in front of him, he's like, wow, my uncle was really great. He put this little elementary school kid in front of him, put all of his heart into showing me this thing that he knew I would never understand. It would put him in a room and make him listen to Mozart and talk about the effect it was having on him. And he thought, wow, these are really great things that they made me do. It helped me become an adult. So the thing that really hooked him was this idea of, I have my role here. I have the things I believe. But what happens when I talk to you? And you have a different perspective, but how can we come together and form a shared perspective? And he was really interested in the process through which I could act. It wasn't just a spiritual concern. It was also about action. That's why he ended up going to the mountains. And in Japan, for the years, especially when he was growing up, there was this exodus from the country into the city. On the west coast of Japan, along the Japan Sea, most of the people living in this part of the country migrated towards the east, towards the urban centuries. And he thought we need to do something about it. We can't just all live in the city. How do we bring life back into these abandoned parts of the country? He thought this exodus into the urban centers was going to over the long run and damage the rich history, legacy of Japanese culture. He thought we've got to do something to stem that trend. I've got to work against that to somehow create something new and hold on to our history. So in the case of Trojan women, which you saw this, it wasn't only the protagonist isn't only an old Japanese woman after World War II. It's not limited to that interpretation. Japan invaded China, for example, destroyed Japan made a colony of Korea during the war. So until, really, Japan has never been a colony, right? Even though we had the Occupied Forces Therapy World War II, it's one of the only countries in Asia, east Asia, that has not been colonized. But it was extremely down and out in those years we did the following. And there was a kind of attempt to forget the past, to forget the memory. And he was saying, no, we have to very deliberately interrogate and continue to examine what's happened. So it wasn't just a comment on the misery of Japan after World War II. Because we have to work hard so that this doesn't happen again. We need to continue to interrogate the issues that caused this to happen in Japan. And so at that time the religious sort of environment in Japan was also not, didn't have the power, didn't have the power to keep the tradition. It's a little bit, you know, the way the Vatican operated right after World War II as well. There's a, maybe you may know the story of the Vatican, not necessarily being against what the Nazis were doing, and being the ones who allowed many of them to escape to South America. So you couldn't really depend on the religious organizations, religious structures, to hold the cultures together, to hold the ideals together either. And then you have extremism that happens as well. And then you can see that now in ISIS. So as a way to keep interrogating this issue of why this extreme, this religious extremism continues to have this damaging effect, any kind of extremism has a damaging effect. Those issues are treated very clearly and directly in this play. When he did a tale of Lear in the 80s, Reagan, and it was the family values, it was catchphrase. And at the time there was a, you know, there was a family structure that was falling apart in Japan. So if, you know, previously you'd have three generations living in a single house, then that system was breaking down so that you'd start to have, you know, nuclear families, you'd have two generations or just one generation. So this idea of fighting over inheritance, like, you know, the family conflicts, it's what drove him to choose King Lear and also to choose a lecture. And to examine the family conflicts, he thought using the classics was a good, using traditions. The reason to use the classics and to use traditional forms is a way to reinforce this idea that human beings don't really change. If you look at the Trojan women, you know, the Trojans completely lost that war they were destroyed. All of the Trojan warriors, the males, were killed. And the whole of the castle completely leveled to the ground. It wasn't an occupation, it was complete annihilation. Destruction of the entire race of people. This idea of genocide, wiping out an entire race of people you can see now, also in the rhetoric of ISIS. So religious extremism has this rhetoric built into it, complete annihilation of the other. The other is called evil, and so it gives you permission to annihilate. But the real, again, hope for him was beyond the narrative, was the fact that Eurimides, who was from the winning side, chose to run. It wasn't a Trojan offer. It was the winner who said, the winning side of the people was the one who was against it. He thought Eurimides chose the queen of the losing side as the protagonist and the lens through which to talk about this historical event. That's amazing, I want to do that. So he realized that what it means to be a fever person, going all the way back to Eurimides, is to have this spirit of interrogating the status quo, of never always intellectually looking at it, of not being aware of it, of not being aware of it, of the status quo, of never always intellectually looking at what's happening in question, and that's what pulled him into it. You look at Bragg, you look at other Miller, you look at Ibsen. They all had this wait and interrogate what's going on. And eventually what happens when you do this, is you start to have conflict with those in power. Eurimides was in many ways punished for his points of view. You bring up the huge word which is the other, you're saying making the other evil, and Eurimides is engaged with the other decide that was defeated. And I'm so thrilled in a way to hear you talk about your own dissatisfaction as a young director, a young person in Japan, or as Martin Graham called it, divine dissatisfaction. And the fact that you looked to the literature and to Europe and other places as a way of looking back at your own civilization, your own culture. And I believe in that as well. In order to look at, say, an American culture, I have to look at it through the lens of the other. And that seems to be the fundamental job of the artist. Also, subject matter right now because of the current change in not only the administration here with Trump, but also with Tertey and Nervegan and Henri Bourbon. The issue of the other and the demonization of the other is a big deal. And so, I want to look at the moment, I want to look at the moment, Suzy Simon, you as a young director and your company went to France for the first time and your work was discovered by friends. And really celebrated, and Jean-Louis Barreau said this is the work to pay attention to, something happened to you in that moment as a director, as an artist in the world. And I think you came back to Japan in a different way. And I wonder if you could describe that trip, if you could describe going to France, performing Trojan women 40 years ago. And something happened. What was that? So we have another three main points to talk about. So, of course, Jean-Louis Barreau was the famous Mime producer. He was a leader in the French theater at that time. And he had seen his training quite a bit, the Suzuki's training. And he was, he invited Suzuki various teams. And it was, the festival was called Theater Nations, which was that. It was groups from over 50 countries invited to France to do a big international festival, which happened pretty early in the 60s and 70s. The thing that most surprised him was the theater that he performed in. It was a space about a space. It was a square. And it was actually previously an apartment. And then they had made a circular stage in this square. He was 32. And the audience seats were just basically plastic sheets. And they put some cushions on top. His image of having the parts of a French theater festival as he'd be in the opera of Paris, with the seats and this amazing velvet curtain. And so the Japanese government gave him a lot of money and he sort of had these expectations going into it. It looked like a sort of low-grade pro-wrestling. And all the space and they were and they're like, so this is the state of the theater in France. So first of all, it was shocked. And so, you know, he went to find the artistic director, Jean-Louis Barreau's office. And it was like in this beat-up, what was the kitchen in this? And so he said, I'm waiting for you in my office, please come. So he went. So maybe it was a kitchen and there was a little cot in the corner. And he was over there taking a nap when he came in. He thought, so this is leader of French theater? He thought, oh, this is just the assistant of the assistant who's going to meet me here and then take me to meet him. And then he hopped about, and I said, oh, nice to meet you guys. And then he hopped about, and I said, oh, nice to meet you guys. And the other big shock for him was the complexity and it should be the diversity of the audience. Many different races, many different cultures represented. Not just European diversity, from Africa, people from Arabia. Wherever you go in Japan, the audience will only be Japanese. If you ride the subway, it's hard to find someone who's not Japanese. And so suddenly being in front of so many different nationalities and races was a shock to him. And there on those veneer seats, he saw the French minister of culture, and there's Yuriko Towsky, and I remember Muschkin, Peter Brooke, they were all there on the pilot. They didn't even have seats, they were just on a little cushion, like you guys have on the floor. He was impressed. He was impressed. He was impressed. So if this was the theater, for example, imagine that the audience we had last night was stacked up until the very edge of the stage, it couldn't fit another soul in this place. He thought, could you please not see it anywhere, but actually on the stage. And then John Lee Barrow comes in, and he's like nailing down a little barrier. But what moved him was the degree of intimacy that this space and in that moment you realize it's not that they don't have the money, they want to create this kind of experience. It was an attitude of, you don't like this kind of theater? Well, there's the door. So, you know, he, John Lee Barrow came out, he has a nail can, he has a hammer. He not only made this, he made a few Hanami-chi, right, the little aisles that the actress could enter through. He was there just standing alongside, just as you think. And normally you'd have a director yelling at all of the staff and actors to do all this work, but he was doing it. And he was amazed at the potential of the human being. He thought, human beings can go this far. He thought, wow, in this life, you could meet amazing people if you draw. And he saw this kind of person in John Lee Barrow and he was completely inspired by this spirit. And also with you. You also are one of these. I actually love him. When you first met him. He thought you were a little bit like a TCG show. It was by TCG. But when he had those first meetings with TCG, that was the first time. I did go to Woodstar. That was, you know, he's not surprised. I think that's what you do. There's some weirdos in there. In this space, you've transformed completely. And those of us in this room, I see Larry Opitz over there who's been in here a lot. Have you seen this space like this before? No, we haven't used it yet. For those of you who've not been in this room before, this space is completely transformed. It was very theater unfriendly in some ways, until Suzuki-san and his company came in and transformed it into this, where suddenly the relationship between the actors and the audience is very intimate. You were talking about learning about intimacy. And you developed a relationship with Isozaki, the great Japanese architect and have made many, many buildings in Japan that are essentially audience actor-friendly. And the only other person I know who thinks that way is the French designer who works with Peter Brooke, what's his name? Junkie Naka who also thinks about the stage's relationship with the human being and the relationship with the audience. And so I have two questions. One, how did you come upon this plan of transforming this space here because it's completely different? And two, can you describe your relationship with Mr. Isozaki and your thoughts about space and theater and actors? So when he first came in, there were the blacks all across the space and the wings and behind the back wall. And he realized that the quality of the curtains and of the wall here all were different. And the lighting instruments and the way he uses them are very focused on the high intensity, the high level of the tonic. And because of the way he uses the body and is close to the ground, oftentimes the angle of the face gets down. If you only use lights above, your face becomes a shadow if you have to use shin bustings. And one of the things he has to consider since he needs to use side lights in shin bustings is how do you make the instruments less present in the audience? So because you're using shin bustings, shadow becomes an important element. And the way you see shadow, the way it reflects off the wall is quite different if you're using a curtain versus just a plain wall. So that's when we sort of hidden the lights by time. But he thought right away, the best thing is hide as strict as much as possible so that the shadow becomes a shadow. And that way it actually makes it easier. There's more fluidity to the space. It's easier to begin and enter. And he's thinking about being in theater building is you have to use the architectural qualities that are already there to use what's like. So he's got five theaters in Togo, but he almost never builds a set. But there are great few architects who will think like this. They want to show off their ideas, their design. But the Sozaki, Arata and Suzuki were good friends and their collaboration was Suzuki would make some sketches. Hand them over to you, Sozaki. Sozaki would come back with architectural drawing. And he also lets him mess up his building if he needs to. The paint he can paint on anything. Do whatever. Probably if he suddenly was given this theater he'd start changing the painting on the plan. Sort of the white walls there. What would he paint? He'd paint something that would be kind. He'd do something so that the white border there wasn't white. He'd try to make it look more metallic. Darker than dark. Dark metal gray. So that the quality between this space and that is just subtly different. When you stand on the stage from the actress point of view you can sort of feel more clearly the presence of this spring space on your body. So the feeling you get looking at the cat vlog versus the feeling you get looking at this white border is different. The audience doesn't notice this but the actor. So somehow to create a more specific relationship between that part of the space. So I start to become really obsessed with these kinds of things. It's one of the side effects of being a director. You get invited to somebody's house right away. Why didn't they put that light in there? He actually never takes an invitation to his house. All the time producing in other people's theaters. But here he was lucky and he was able to find an exhibition. Thank you for letting us. I think you've made this theater yours from now on. It's going to be called the Suzuki Tadashi Theater. Now I'm going to ask just one or two more questions and then I'd like to open it up so get ready to ask questions ladies and gents. The members of the symposium two nights ago came to a rehearsal of approaching women and you said to the assemble who was here for the rehearsal you said don't get upset if I yell. I'm not yelling at you. I'm not yelling at the actors. Your relationship with actors is very particular and the first time I saw you actually rehearsed was in Mito. You were actually in rehearsal and you would clap and everyone on the stage stopped and had to hold their position while you worked with one actor in a loud voice for a very long time. Afterwards I asked one of the actors what they thought of having to hold their position for so long really like 20 minutes and how it was I also asked this person why it is because Ellen and Kelly were on stage in that time it was for Dionysus and I asked why Suzuki doesn't yell at American actors he seemed to yell at the Japanese actors and the answer that I got back was twofold. First about holding position for a long time the actress said it's actually great because for 20 minutes I'm living with a mistake I probably made I'll never make that mistake Number two and I found this fascinating and I wonder if you think this is true that what Suzuki was looking for with the Japanese actors the American actors could do already it was that he was asking them to differentiate themselves from one from another again it's an cultural issue that Americans don't have a problem being different from each other on the stage do you follow me but that he was trying to get the Japanese actors to actually differentiate one from the other so my questions are about the relationship to actors he's not really yelling he's passionately making Suzuki yelling so the reason why he wasn't giving any nose to Kelly and Ellen was he doesn't speak English if he was fluent if he was going from so whenever there was a time for Ellen or Kelly it was like ok let's take a break and then he would just focus on that it would take more time so if you look at Kareya the famous conductor maybe there's some similarity he's one of these conductors that when he's working on opera he'll get on the orchestra wherever he's working he'll start dancing start moving on stage and also as Mr Suzuki oftentimes will go out and show an actor with his own body but he would have to do it with Kelly and Ellen because he couldn't tell it and then later he's in a separate place with the translators very sort of carefully explained to them what was going on wrong and then he could just say well if the acting is no good then it must have been a problem of translation and then if it goes well then he took it correctly so he had many experiences like that anyway it becomes the translator's fault Ellen yesterday she said no you know actually the way he speaks with each actor is very very different it might sound to me like Ellen but it's actually extremely different so how you say you're in rehearsal you're working with an actor you approach them how do you adjust so because he himself trained his body as an actor he has become quite adept at being seen in other bodies too where there's a problem so this actor could be moved very quickly across the space and keep this other actor he can see the abilities the special abilities differently in each person so his process of rehearsal is he lets them work on their own for a time right learning the choreography and so when he sees something that isn't quite right and the quality that he's searching for he'll get up and show his talent and because he's in Togo he's not limited in any way by time and space he can be there as long as he needs to be until an actor really starts to get there it's all they're all government facilities owned by the creators and so all of the government workers and people that administer the Togo arts part they all go home in five they go home in five but he has all the keys he's got a keychain like this so often what he'll do is he'll give you an outline he'll let them work on it and then when they're ready or when he thinks they should be ready he'll show up and see how it's going for it to make an illusion an illusion is a little bit like cooking rice so when you're cooking sushi rice the rice sticks together not all rice grains are the same some are big, some are small stick together so depending on how their shape sometimes they get stickier or less stickier but anyway they all make a big claw at the end so you stick together so you end up getting stuck together but the shape doesn't look so nice so in order for it to become a nice roll you need a sheet of Nori seaweed that you can put around it to give it, to contain is the grammar of the Suzukime that's what creates the form and then everybody sticks together I was wondering where you were going so you're a little different different different different different so the creation of a method is needed to contain the actives but if it's not there you see that it's ripped you see that it's loose or wet it doesn't keep the shape so for example when you want to go to a swimming pool this is because it's so wet it doesn't look so nice so for example they'll often have to move across the space keeping their center at the same height but if there are no rings not in good shape they'll float up and down and it'll look kind of messy so that's what so he has certain rules that are created by the grammar but then he also tries to let there be freedom within that structure so what he really wants to do is make sure you all understand the image that sometimes is out there in the world about Mr. Suzuki, that he's a tyrant that he's abusive all of these things he really wants to set the record straight so when an actress in Jungly Borough's company saw him working with the actors in the 60s when he was bringing the Trojan women to the theater of nations she asked him, Mr. Suzuki when did you become a feminist? so he's not a feminist he's not any of these things that have a label and he's not nor is he a male showbiz this is the time where we're going to open this up for questions if anybody has any yes, and if you wouldn't introduce yourself and um ah, right there's microphones thank you Mr. Suzuki, how are you? how are you doing? I'm good and good evening I'm Dominic Page from Montreal, Canada Mr. Suzuki Mr. Suzuki, I saw the show yesterday I'd like to first thank you and please ask you to on my behalf congratulate the whole team I have two questions you've always promoted international collaboration cross-pollination you yourself haven't gone to the west I would my two questions the first one being I'd like you to talk a bit about your relationship with Tavius Cantor from Poland how perhaps he has irrigated your activities in Japan and maybe if he has brought you to Eastern Europe second question concerning your current effort of producing shows in China now historically and currently obviously can you please talk about for example the the circumstances now in China we understand that there has been a certain animosity toward Japanese which is promoted maybe by the Chinese government or anyway you kept kept alive how are you dealing with that and what is your relationship and what is the reception of your work in China thank you so if you look at history the greatest theater artists are ones that found something sometimes a founder now here is suddenly in a culture so the great great artists aren't influenced by other artists they look very carefully at what another artist is doing if if if most of Picasso's work somehow are stolen the ideas all of the great architecture functions they make references to the classic for what makes them creative is the fact they are the dialogue that happens now in the time we so for a long time people like Robert Wilson Tora Peter Brooke they were all invited to the same festivals more or less at the same time per period there so Robert Wilson's my work so as you can tell you've seen my work is very different from there you can see points of commonality Robert Wilson there is Bob is also crazy about light he has a hand in space he spends hours trying to like just it takes a whole day of rehearsal just to like that and the way the site is slowly modulating that takes hours and days to plan the lighting because I have a box in Robert Wilson and the contour would get up on stage with the actors and then I was one of the tricks he used and he imitates that during rehearsal to get up there usually doesn't do that during Yuri Lubimov would sit in the audience with a really strong flashlight every time it's not going well it's shining right in the air and it's going in a circle means pick up pace and he'd be sitting next to him very shortly so he was saying you know Suzuki said could you cut out for the flashlight please a little bit he's like well if you ask me too maybe I will but anyway he really understands the feeling you get as a director of warm-up it's like it's like it's like the feeling you get as a director of wanting to shine a flashlight on the actor when they're messing it up so he started to think well what can I use instead of a flashlight that would be that's effective so during a live performance with an audience he didn't want to pull out a flashlight so they're getting different kind of costs it would be like a code language to the cost so you're overdoing it a little for example so if you would sort of maybe you could like put a little bit on the audience in front of you so so all of these people are competing there's a competition going on between them so he's taking issue with this idea of being influenced by another great artist it's more you're in competition with great artists and you're going to insert their strategies and you're going to take what's useful to you so you could be influenced by other it's you could be influenced by by humans you can see an individual's quality of concentration and be influenced by that Rostrovich Rostrovich he was working with Rostrovich the cellist and he was sitting there watching quality of concentration he had when he was playing for example and he tried breathing with Rostrovich as he was playing each cell and so in that way you can have a dialogue with other art forms and then use that in the creation of the theater and then there's the Japanese float made out of a bamboo called the Shapa Hatch they have different ways of breathing ways that they create resistance in the throat of the breath the sound and if you have out of a hose a stream of water rushing out if you grab the edge of the hose it's a very thin stream you can come up very quickly so in the same way the air going through the wind pipe when you're playing Shapa Hatch it changes if you squeeze the throat the sound changes having it open and then he uses that on the stage what happens if you make a small hole versus open so studying the way these musicians play and the way they breathe and then use that in the way you work with actors he doesn't know if that it's good to call that influence he's studying something repurposing maybe you're familiar with the author Yukio Mishi he writes many books and what he does is he writes three pages and then right away he throws them there's another author Kenzo Obey he writes about 700 pages stream of consciousness and then he cuts about a third and so he sees the way these writers for example their process so for example for example he was working on the lower depths so from he took that same strategy and used it when he directed the work he had the actors do the whole thing and then he meditated on that and decided what he didn't need and then he worked on it and then he worked on it and then he started to learn and he didn't do it he didn't know so looking at so looking at different people's qualities of concentration different human beings passions in the way of a politician passionate in this speech looking at those qualities and then figuring out how to create a theater of course he has a taste you know the skirt that he likes and he doesn't like but it's not that he's necessarily influenced and you're one of the again it's about processes he steals from other people's processes and he did it always three hours and even if he does it right he's just sitting there that kind of discipline artistic discipline or true work and so what he does if an actor is really not going in the right direction he'll sit for them three hours this is when it's not going well so what you could say is what he's really borrowing or is influenced by is his attitudes for the work he looks at these different professionals in the world and he's like I like that because it reinforces an idea I have about the way of working so now to talk about China of course China has a very long tradition but really when you talk about China we're talking about four years but before the current era you had a different dynasty you had a completely different setup in China when the dynasty changes the whole social makeup of the whole nation shifts in that way it's different but a few years ago in the same place in the same place it was the oldest place but if you look in ancient China in the times when for example the Great Wall was built there's points of commonality great ideas for the civilization that you might also look at the Greeks that legacy is in but then you had the cultural revolution and everything that was thought of as Chinese tradition was fundamentally destroyed and now we have a time when there is an incredible economic upward movement and there's also a military that's increasing and they have become a global player so when you become a global player national identity becomes a very important issue so being a rich country just being powerful in a military sense isn't enough to create an identity so for example we have in Europe a sense of maintaining a kind of continuity with culture a constant re-examining and keeping culture alive and vibrant and every day that's lasted a long time even if you're a pair of shoes very old and it's been around for centuries you keep polishing you keep using it so when you look at an old pair of shoes you can see where they walk what parts are worn out so if you look at a European shoe there's parts that are worn based on the history there's there's still a little bit of polish but right now in China there's no shoe they have to make a shoe but there's over there's 1.3 billion people and the current government is state capitalism and because it's state capitalism it can very radically shift from one day to the next so so every year in Tokyo we have every year in Beijing we have now from all over the country different people coming together to study has been particularly important and there's a Chinese version of Tom Hewitt that he's encountered and he's really focusing a lot on his attention on him now to be the next protagonist in his Chinese and it feels like with all the work he's doing in China to build something he's actually having an effect on this national efforts to create a shoe so there's obviously the communist party there's millions and millions of people in the party officially certain officials that and those party members you have to be firm grip there's nothing that's going on there's no election like in the United States and so we have a situation which is if you look at the history of the world you have a basically a one party system and that is focused on capitalism and they're trying very hard to focus on growth and identity within the American capitalism system the power of the people is very important the difference of opinions the dialogue is an important part of our way of defining ourselves whereas there it's the party line so to have a relationship with US capitalism a relationship with state capitalism and China it's interesting to see how these things are playing out believe it or not that is the Q&A section we're going before ending this I want to first of all thank Suzuki-san and his entire company for coming all the way to Saratown about 25 years ago we had a party and it continued so so the fact that 25 years ago he came and built this company and that it has lasted to date I think this is now an important part of your United States and it's really important that it's a place where people from all over the world forget so in this time in the world and there's so much upheaval the fact that all of you participants and people that support the city company have come to share this space with us he's very grateful for your time this unique once in a lifetime because you can only do it the first time once and I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that and with all my heart on behalf of all my company members thank you for making this pilgrimage making this possible this event was powered by you and made extraordinary by you and I think we have our marching orders here to go back to our communities as Barney said, drop that line and let those waves span out as far as they can go home with hope and encouragement the city company was always told when we got tired and needed to refresh that Togo was there for us and it's our charge now in turn to save you when you get tired and you need refreshment you need a spiritual boost you need to work hard with your body your mind and your spirit that the city company will do everything we can to provide you with a sanctuary and refuge for that close to us to one another and I officially there will be he said he will sign books there's a lot of you that probably want that to happen so if he signs so many and then gets very tired he does have a long day of rehearsal and performance, please understand but he will be out in the lobby I hope and as you can see a pretty extraordinary mind who has reverberated and as we had hoped to transform us all so thank you this is officially coming to close