 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I have with me today the award-winning playwright, Vy, who's played the vagina monologues, won the OB Award and she's also a recipient of a Tony Award, wrote two very moving memoirs. The most recent one is a actually very interestingly written book which I hope someday we can spend some time to talk about and it's called The Apology. But there was a previous memoir about six, seven years ago also very moving and this cataloging of one's life I think is very important to you. Welcome to NewsClick, nice to have you with us. Thank you, thrilled to be here. Yes, so I thought the way to begin is that in The Guardian you written a very moving piece called Touch Saved Me From Loneliness, What Will We Become Without It? After I read it I said I have to get in touch with you to talk about this because it's so significant. I want to start by asking you about a paragraph in there where you say at the end of the paragraph, how do we live with this unbearable skin hunger? That phrase really stayed with me, skin hunger. Could you talk a little bit about skin hunger in this global pandemic? Well, I think for me it's a kind of irony of my life in a weird way. It was over touch in terms of sexual abuse that made me leave my body and go crazy and yet it was finding people who touched me well and touched me constantly and sex that allowed me to come back into my body. And I think for me I've always felt the way I've known the world is through touch, through kissing, through hugging, through holding, through sex, through contact and absent of it. I have my dear, dear friend that I live with here and I have another friend who's part of our little cohort and tribe and both of them are gay and I adore them and they're my family and occasionally my friend James will jump on top of me and just press himself down on me and just so we both have some kind of physical contact. But for me so much about touch is location, right? It's knowing you're here. It's kind of an existential grounding, like you exist somehow and I hunger for my friends, I hunger for my granddaughters, I hunger for people, their skin, their energy, their vibration and it feels like a really, it's a serious loss to walk the world without that. And I worry, I think there are many fascists, there are AI planners, there are technocrats who would love to see us live here in the screens without touch and without contact and without the collective in a physical sense and I think all revolutions come from the body, right? They come from the kind of the streets and they come from, you know, I'm a child of the 60s, right? Sex, drugs and rock and roll was what birthed me and I get afraid of just everything being in the screen and who will become in that disembodied way. Well, you also say in another very evocative phrase, you say what kind of mutiny is possible in a quarantine? You know, it's true that rebellion is on the streets and you are quite correct to say this touchless future is the fantasy of, you know, the fascists in a way. And yet in the United States, where you are based, it's the far right that's on the streets saying end the lockdown. Give us a sense of the context of Trump, this disease, the lockdown, the fact that there are people on the street saying please let us go out and infect each other. It's just so hard to even try to articulate what is going on in the madness of America right now because it's mad. But again, if you even look, they even the crazy right wingers know that the way to have power is to be in the present with your body on the steps of the Michigan State House, right? With your AK-47s, by the way, amassed. I mean, just imagine if any person of color or a black person showed up with that, what would happen? I mean, it's astounding what world of racism and inequality we are living in right now. I mean, Michael Flynn got free today. Just his case got dropped today. I mean, it's every moment we see these extreme, extreme inequalities of power and justice. But I think what's happening in this country is on one hand, it just utterly terrifying. I think the kind of manifestation of white supremacy, which has of course been here forever, but now has a special agent at the top boiling it and cooking it and catalyzing it and inviting it and celebrating it as far as I can tell. He's unleashed all these forces that have been here. I think what's really disturbing me is to see the way we are killing off black people, brown people and poor people and our essential workers. And they are often one in the same, right? And I've been doing a lot of work with women workers and nurses and restaurant workers and farmers and just we're doing this regular show really trying to look at what is happening to women workers in this country. And I think what I'm very, very disturbed by is to see this kind of invisible genocide that is operating right now, what we call preexisting conditions, right? Which are kind of synonymous with systematic oppressions. So that you look at what are preexisting conditions that are killing people well environmental degradation where people live in the neighborhoods where they are more susceptible to asthma. And so this disease is hurting them diabetes where people don't have the right kind of foods to eat. What's a preexisting condition? Like as all this is going on the right wing is busily eroding women's rights and desecrating abortion rights all over the place. What's another preexisting condition is like their desire to destroy and extract the earth to death. So we're seeing the complete deregulation of lands and press and parks and places that should be preserved. And I think what I am hoping is happening is that people are waking up to understand that we are living in a country where capitalism and the kind of racist patriarchal capitalism has reached a peak. I hope it's a peak because if it goes beyond this we'll all be dead where we have to now make a decision that whatever door this is opening, whatever world this is opening cannot be a world governed by profits over people, commodity over care, where we have to start saying who is actually saving our lives right now? Who are the people who are keeping us able, those of us who are privileged enough to shelter in place? You know it's the workers, it's the farmers, it's the grocery people, it's the janitors, it's the nurses, it's the aides, it's the doctors, it's the people who if you eat meat who are you know working in the poultry plants and the meat plants and those are the people who in my opinion have always been holding this country together and have been the least appreciated, the most underpaid, the most undervalued, the most under cherished and the most unseen. And what I hope is that this is the time where that's all going to change where we are now going to understand that the people who are most essential have to be the most valued and the most paid and the most cherished and the most protected because what we're doing to nurses, I don't know if you saw the demonstration today at the White House where the nurses went and put their all the shoes of the 88 nurses who have already died in this country who didn't need to die. All those women were sent into slaughter or mainly women were sent into slaughter without PPEs, without any protective gear, without masks. There was no reason for that to happen in a country as rich as the United States. Absolutely no reason except for lack of forethought, lack of care, lack of consideration and lack of love and respect for the people who are keeping us alive. I mean I think that's very beautifully said and I know that on social media I've been watching you lifting up the stories of people who are you know the workers who hold things together particularly people in the health field but you know there is a way in which every time there's a tragedy or an emergency we call people in these fields essential workers and then a kind of amnesia sets in when things go back to normal there's a real forgetting. I know that you're trying to make the forgetting impossible but how is this going to be fought in the realm of culture to make people not forget? It's such a good question you know we've been working for years on this thing in One Billion Rising called Women Workers Rising where we've been doing lots of work trying to build coalitions with women workers across various sectors and I think like you said there's moments where people will rise up and they'll care and then of course it but I think now actually there I what I hope and I you know I'm endlessly optimistic I'm one of those beckett people I can't go on I will go on I must go on but I feel like I do believe something has kind of shattered people's denial in this moment even even these beautiful things that are happening every night in New York where people are banging their pots and pans and appreciating workers every day something's going into the consciousness that has to be altering the way people see things and you know I was reading the story the other day of this beautiful woman who works on the MTA she's a conductor on the trains and I don't know her story just really devastated me how she was going to work every day and of course they had no protective gear and they gave them these shoddy masks that didn't work and there were no bathrooms that had water to wash her hands and of course she got sick and she got sick for two weeks and when she came back beautiful workers who she had loved were missing and she she said you know like we do our jobs we like our jobs we don't hate our jobs we actually like the work we do but we want to be respected for the work we do we want to be honored for the work we do and we want to be cared for like everybody else and she wasn't saying like I hate my job I don't want to be doing this I think part of what we have to do is start asking ourselves do we want to live in a culture in a society where we respect each other equally where we honor the work that people do and we pay for that work and we value that work or do we want to keep in this awfully hierarchical capitalist structure where people are they're basically are seen as kind of slaves to the ruling class who will just do their bidding be sacrificed at the altar you know they're not essential workers they're sacrificial workers and they'll just be thrown out there and and and for the very very very small you know one percent or even 0.1 percent who is willing to sacrifice everybody for their pleasures and for their advancement and I don't know I don't think I've ever felt more strongly in this moment that we have to turn our reality away from this very very very small section of people owning the world at the expense of the majority of people who are making the world happen and and giving their lives for the world to happen without care and without sustenance and without love really you know there's a an American economist Nancy Faulberg who said that Adam Smith you know his phrase the invisible hand that's all very well but the economy actually works through an invisible heart and she said this is often women in society totally and if you look at it 80 percent of our essential workers are women and women of color and so it is really women you know who are holding up our culture who are moving the work forward and even even what's happening you know with with schools and with this kind of um this notion that we somehow now can do everything online with teaching right this I find also very very nervous making because I will tell you something if we start eliminating teachers if we start thinking that teachers don't have value which I I think teachers are up there with nurses like up they're critical critical critical um then what's going to happen to women mothers are now going to be responsible for teaching their children and schooling their children at home online so what's that going to do to women and work what's that going to do to putting women back into the house what's that going to do to what's that going to do to teachers and and and the value of teaching and the value of an educator who has gone and trained how to be an educator and I think again women's work is totally devalued and yet we're completely dependent on it completely dependent and totally expendable right and this is the story of women in general we we we know that we can't live without them that if women were to stop and I keep saying let's just all stop and see what happens the world would fall to its knees and yet there is no recompense there is no valuing of mothering of teaching of nursing of domestic of of domestic work of nannies of caretakers of people in nursing homes people who actually women who actually make our lives possible and that goes down to farm workers that we can just go down the list and to me um this is where the world has to flip they have I really think that um we have to start moving into I've been dreaming of this idea of what does it mean to live um what would it mean to be an essentialist to live a life of what's essential to have only what you need in terms of things that are essential to have food that is essential to honor the people who are most essential and doing the most essential work to live in with only essential words you know poetry is essential language right what would it mean if we started to dream of um you know do you really have to take that flight is it essential right do you really have to buy that thing is it essential um and and what about our essential workers they would be our queens they would be the people we we we honored and and we celebrated and we cherished and we paid right I like that I mean you know I I for a while thought of you as a prophet because when nobody thought Donald Trump could win an election you said he's going to win we have to stop him and then uh you wrote such a brilliant essay called Trump a fable for the book strong men in which you um basically compare Trump to a virus I know isn't that crazy it's you are a prophet I hope you realize that at the end of the essay and I just want you to remark we can you know come to an end with this because at the end of the essay you I don't know if you even remember this but you talk about the antidote to the virus the virus being hate really Trump has the embodiment of hate and you say that the air the way to get rid of the virus is with people essentially touching they made each other laugh and rub and healed each other with special oils and rituals and prayers they lay with each other and shared their dreams they listened to each other's stories and made amends and reparations here's the antidote and then you write an essay called clutch save me from loneliness please help me understand what's coming next you know it's very strange about Trump I I have this very I just had a very weird understanding of him and what he would bring and what he would be because as I said in that very first meeting he is a hologram he is he he there's something about America that Americans don't even understand which is that we really don't exist at all except in the future we have no past because we have amnesia we have no history because we blotted everything we've ever done out that was bad or wrong we don't have a present because capitalism only exists as a future mechanism of what we only exist in this dream of what will come and so he was the perfect perfect deliverer of the imagined future right make America great again now that's a futuristic idea even though there was no antecedent to it right there was no there was a past to that but it was a futuristic notion based on some nostalgia for the future we've always been nostalgic for right and and and that got implanted into us through Hollywood through you know commercialism through consumption through we will be this America and people come to this country and despite every piece of evidence in front of them that there are no jobs that it's racist that there's this people are like no there's this dream and we're going to commit to this dream and we're going to ride this dream and it doesn't matter and and so to me I guess what I feel is happening right now is is the dream has collapsed there is a complete collapse of the dream and and as painful as it is for so many people I know that many many many people have never lived that dream have never been part of that dream have never believed that dream and most people most people in this country and so I think before we can begin to create the new world and and the new vision we have to get rid of this this thing that's really occupied people I remember once they were interviewing a man who had just lost his job in a big plant where he'd worked for 27 years right and he was sitting in his his trailer and they asked him you just got fired how do you feel and he said well I screwed up I failed I I didn't I wasn't able to get the American dream I screwed up it never occurred to him that his union that didn't exist or the factory that had hired him for 27 years and just laid him off with no benefits or had failed it was his failure because the dream was so all pervasive and so almighty in that consciousness and I think until that collapses that that illusion that whatever that thing is that possesses people we can't really be we can't be at square at square at the beginning point together and I think in a way that's what we're in the process of doing is stripping away stripping away so that we're at the beginning point and I think as as this is happening the viral leader just gets more viral and even to the point where his his head person today had the virus right his head you know what what is his valet right and and and it's getting closer and closer and closer you know the virus to the viral to the viral leader I guess we shall say because he is a virus he is a virus look at him he's just like a he's always scary scary viral well one of the nice things we is that your prophetic voice at the end says we're at the point of stripping everything away and maybe restarting let's very much hope that this is a new beginning and not it has to be because otherwise yeah me too well look it can go either way it really can go either way and it's really up to us all of us um particularly progressives to really ensure that this is a door opening and I don't think we can rely on parties or democrats or any of that we as progressives and there are so many of us people who really believe in a different way of living in this world you know we're racism we're sexism we're homophobia transphobia we're ableism we're all of the things we've been fighting fighting and fighting to stop right we all have to now say we're going to come together now we are going to demand that what this virus is teaching us those lessons get followed through when this is over there's no return to quote normal there was never normal normal was dysfunctional for the majority of people we have to now say we want to go forward into the new imaginative possible place which involves the majority of people having water right now 20 million americans have no water it's anticipated that 120 million americans will not have water because why the water companies the bills get turned off and they don't turn that back on water is not a private it the fact that it's been privatized is insanity right so we're not people aren't gonna have water they're not gonna have food they're not gonna have jobs we all have to start saying why are we accepting this we are the majority of people we we we have to demand that people have health care that people have food that people have water that people have education and that people have community those are the essentials and that everybody lives with those basic things and comfort so people don't have to live in fear and panic to me that's what's got to come out of this and we all have to be willing to really fight for that in the ways that we haven't thought we've got to get out of our comfort we've got to get out of like laying back and hoping it happens you know this is the time now to to move new ideas to move a new way into into the new ground because those those on the other side are taking it and they're gonna take it fast if we don't move that's great thank you so much you