 among theater practitioners, theater makers, theater community. We come together every Thursday to discuss the unrehearsed future. And so, and as you can see, everyone's friendly faces. They're all waving to each other in Zoom and happy to see each other. That's so great. Today, I am joined by Shankar Venkateshwaran. He is the artistic director and founder of Theater Roots and Wings. Falguni will post his bio in there to read it. And I will give you a more anecdotal notion of nature of his bio and things that actually stood out to me in terms of the context of this conversation that we're about to have. When I first came back to India in 2008, I didn't know what to do. And we started, and I first thought about professionalizing sort of theater training by just adding these one week long workshops and making sure somebody trained could come in and teach. And I would find the best people I could find from across the country and bring them to Bombay and offer this to the community. And it was a notion, people said it would never work. And when I reached out to Shankar through a random introduction, I think it was Anmol Belani of the IFA, India Foundation for the Arts at the time. Shankar just said, yes, sure, absolutely. And it was this sort of common joint sort of desire for a rigor and practice and a commitment to theatrical practice that sort of joined us. But he supported the work coming in, conducting workshops. And that's when I found out about his training at what was then called TTRP in Singapore, which is a center for intercultural theater practice. Now it's called the Intercultural Training Theater Institute. It was rebranded. But basically they were looking at, which I found really fascinating, all the different East Asian and Asian pedagogues, systems of theater and systems of performance. But they would also bring in Philip Zareli and others from across the world. But they were trying to look at it and formalize some kind of pedagogy, which is at a bachelor's level or a master's level of training at this tertiary education level. And Shankar was a student from there. And later on, I found out that he, I mean, I knew this the whole time, but I realized that he was also an alumni of the Tertiary School of Drama. And the Tertiary School of Drama, for some reason, had a golden age because I know so many practitioners from there who have gone on to do some amazing things, including running the International Theater Festival in Kerala, of which Shankar was an artistic director. But the story that I wanna tell is basically that we used to keep coming back and doing these prototype drama school courses, which we used to call the Intensive Drama Program. And Shankar would come in with other faculty from across the country. We had Tomba from Kanayalhal's Theater Center in the Northeast. We had Ben Samuels, who's here, Daniel Goldman, who's here. All of these guys would come and teach. Tushar was one of the first students of the IDP. He now teaches at the Drama School Mumbai 10 years later. And everyone would ask me, so what is the pedagogy of the school? What are you trying to do? And I didn't really know. I was just trying to bring best practices from across the world and have them converse and see what they could do to the students. And we have this expression, a bhel puri or a pot puri. And there's no, it's just a jumble and a mix up. What is its articulation? And I struggled with this for a long time. I was just winging it to be honest at the beginning. Sorry Tushar. But there was this yaha moment that happened when Ben Samuels came in for the fourth intensive drama program. And he said, let's get them to do something akin to the Lakak Otakor. And I was sitting there with Shankar, who trained at TTRP and at Tushar School of Drama and had his own experiences. I was sitting there with Tomba, who came from a completely indigenous and self-created theater form and practice. I was sitting there with Preeti Atreya, who was a dancer who studied under Padmini Chetur. And I was sitting there with Ben Samuels, who came from the Lakak Lispah pedagogy. And when we were looking at the students and watching their tasks, I found that we were all speaking different languages in our feedback. But we were all looking for the same things. We were looking for these universal, like the connection, the believability, the moment of truth in performance, the connection with the breath, the body, the voice, the transcendent of that moment. And that's what sort of really gave me the confidence to say, you know what, we can start a drama school and we will just look at it and we will build that pedagogy based on these universal truths of performance. But that's just one layer. And I'm just gonna bracket this because Shankar and I just decided we wouldn't separate pedagogy with practice or with creation because performance and training for performance is one layer but we're trying to create theater makers to create things and then what they create and who they create for, et cetera. That also has to come in there. And what is the message? What is the story being told? And are there universal truths in that or not? And this is kind of where the departure point and the stimuli of why I asked Shankar to come in here and part of my quest is because I'm actually looking to see if we were to have some kind of a planetary drama school or not just for teaching you how to be a theater maker or how to be a performer but how to create and be a storyteller then what happens when you're working across cultures and across the planet and in across spaces because we know how local things can be and we know the problems of globalization, for example and they're using that as an example. And who better than to take us on this because Shankar has created amazing pieces of work. He has worked with Japanese performers. He's worked in Europe. He's, you can see his CV there. He has looked at the intercultural process in multiple ways as a creator. And so if we can look at theater practice as the continuum of the whole thing and then have a conversation would be great. And the way this works is Shankar is gonna have some opening remarks but as you hear him and as you think about these things that I'm questing on and just feel free to throw in your questions right off the get go because I'm going to open this out as soon as possible to become a conversation versus some very sort of formal moderated thing because Shankar and I are both interested in the vibrant group of people in this room and the fact that we can all really have a mind expanding conversation together. So Shankar without further ado, thank you. Thanks, Jihun. Thanks for many things. So I have completely lost my plan of how I wanted to proceed because I see Kavita Srinivasan. It's the same Kavita Srinivasan whom I met in Jihun's workshops and whom I collaborated in several productions and who eventually was the architect of my theater. So Kavita, I met Kavita with Jihun and she is an MIT trained architect who had an acting bug and a love for theater. So, and like, that collaboration it ended up in building this theater space a theater dwelling in Atta Paddy. So that's, you see, my plan is completely gone. You have to show up Kavita. You have to show your face and comment back. Hi, hi, my internet is not very good here. So I missed some of that but I heard Atta Paddy an architect so I think you're referring to me. Yes, exactly, yeah. Hi, good to see you, Kavita, it's good to see you. I see a lot of old faces and old friends of Shankar's have shown up which is beautiful. So Shankar, let's start. Daniel and Ben, let's start. Let's start. So I throw a question at you and I know for me also this is exciting Shankar because we haven't worked together for years, I mean six or seven years at least. And as we look back, you've been on such a journey which has taken you to new realizations. And I think that that's where my question of like in all of the intercultural practice and I'm kind of thinking about the last sentence in your bio, which is that your ITFOP work was also there and I think Moenya and Jenny will find this interesting was also there to challenge your eccentric notions and to look at more of a South-South paradigm in terms of how we curate and make work and produce. So go ahead, Shankar. So let me start with this one performer whom I came across in Japan. His name is Takuso Kubikukuri. I'll start with his story and then I'll go into a small opening sort of statement which again came from Japan, which provoked me. So Takuso Kubikukuri is a person, is an artist, is a performance artist and almost all his life what he's been doing is hanging himself. So that is his action, that's what he called. So he lives in this dilapidated hut in a very posh residential area in Tokyo. And he has a backyard which he calls a small three meters by four meters backyard which he calls the Niva Gekijo Garden Theater. And there is a tree there and every day whether it is raining, whether it is snowing he would hang himself. He would hang himself maybe three times, four times a day whether there are people to watch him or not. He just continued doing his disaction for over 40 years. And every month for a week or so he would open his theater to the public. Like 10 people could squeeze and watch him come out of the house, approach the noose. He steps on an anvil. The anvil is very significant for him. And then he holds the noose, he puts it around his neck supported by the jaw. So it's not like really strangling him but he's holding all his weight on his jaw. And he would hang, he would just hang himself and oscillate like a pendulum for say five minutes. And then the body comes to a standstill. And it's very peaceful and quiet to watch it. Like it sounds like horrible but it's very peaceful, quiet. The gaze that he has is extraordinary. He looks at a thing only once. So his focus, the way he shifts his focus beautiful from a grain of a sand to a stems of plants to leaves of trees, to clouds, to far away. Like he would even stare at the afternoon sun. And such incredible passion in doing what he's doing. And he does this, only this every day. And the body comes to a standstill and slowly he starts to dance. Like he raises his feet as if he's about to take a step as if he's going to walk the air. He unbuttons his shirt, one or two buttons. Gyrates subtly with his hip, holds himself with the hands on the nose and he sort of takes off his neck from this and releases the grip in his hand. So he jumps, he bounces a couple of time in the small pit that he has dug. And this for him, he thinks that this is that's how the astronauts would have felt like when they come back and face gravity. So that is always a big moment for him. Like, you know, how the moment he meets the earth and he would normally walk out of the pit and make eye contact with the people watching him, invited them home. He would have cooked food for them. He would have had drinks for them and they would eat and talk and this is what he kept doing. So why I'm talking about him is he's very close to me and he passed away in 2018 and he sleeps in this theater now. And we have made a replica of the garden theater adjacent to his Niva, his theater, adjacent to our theater and him and his partner who is also a choreographer. They are both here. So there are some values in his performance that I find very interesting, which was recently articulated, though not in relation to his performance, but by a Japanese economist. His name is Mizuno Kazuo. So recently there was this one seminar webinar where he was talking in relation to performing arts and I found his articulation striking, very striking. So this is how he puts it. Theater performing arts, dance, et cetera, which are routinely considered as non-productive and not so useful, may actually prove itself to be, prove themselves to be extremely useful during this post-pandemic times, during these times. So he makes this comparison between the pre-pandemic world, the production, the post-pandemic sort of the crisis. And he critiques this idea of faster, farther and more productive, the rational way of production. So, and he thinks this is actually, this has come to a standstill or this is what the pandemic has sort of completely challenged. And instead of this kind of faster, farther and a more rational way of working, he proposes the diametrically opposite way of thinking, which is slower, closer and a more tolerant approach. So this I think is very important, the slower, closer and the more tolerant way to look at things. And he thinks theater and performing arts can adapt to this slower, closer, more tolerant way, much easier than other formats or mediums. So I think that these three remain as keywords, like he gave this talk sometime early during the pandemic, but even for me, even now these three words hold. They are very resonant and I really am struck by the way he uses comparative degree in language. So it is not close or it is not closest, it's closer and slower. And this, I think in many ways I think for me, I think for a way to work in this new circumstances to embrace these ideals. And hangman, he had sort of embraced these ideals in the way he produced and created his work or his life. Very synonymous for him, art and life are very synonymous. He did not make any distinction between his life and art. He would do it whether people are watching, whether people are not watching, whether it makes money or it doesn't make money, that action continues and I think that kind of makes me, helps me to find a way forward in these times. So that's it guys. This is sort of my opening statement, Jihang. Let's discuss. Great. Yeah, so really I'm just, that's the opening statement. And if you're already provoked, you can start by just getting off mic and saying I have a question or I have a thought and a response to that and go ahead and don't hesitate. Otherwise I can always dig deeper a little bit with Shankar. But just whilst you guys put your thoughts together on this, maybe because it's hard to always go first. Tishaar, I did say I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit. But I mean, like you're hearing Shankar, you've also trained under him. You've also been on your own interesting journey where you, after the IDP, the first year of the DSM, which were all prototype formulations of something here, then you went to Belat school in California. So just tell us how it's making, how is what Shankar is saying resonating with you and yeah, to start with. Because for me, the question that I'm coming back to is aren't we all so hybrid internally in ourselves in terms of all the experiences we have? In Shankar, you studied at TTRP. Everything you do is a sum total of all the experiences you've had in the past, which have been a very rich portfolio of experiences from across cultures. Similarly to Tishaar's on a similar journey. I think we all have that in us, not just as artists, but as people in life with privilege, I guess. So Tishaar, thoughts? It's really great listening to Shankar talk as always. And I remember visiting him in September 19 and him talking about Takuza. And again, being really drawn by this idea of slowness of gaze, of art and life kind of merging. Shankar did the IDP with, I was a part of that IDP in 2011. Daniel was there as well and a few others. And I remember at that time, Shankar and Prabhat, who also really been a great teacher for me, were kind of extremely strict in their perspective on performing arts. There was a real kind of, I mean, if I lack of a better word, rigidity to it, which I kind of took with me and was like really kind of that action what I'm doing right now. And then years later, when Shankar came back for the Drama School Mumbai and Archana, one of my ensemble members here as well, I was kind of preparing all my classmates, being like, you know, Shankar's really strict and he's gonna come in and lay down the law and he's gonna really work us. And we ended up encountering a totally different person. And everyone's looking at me like, wait, what were you talking about? And then just like this idea of a perspective or a way of being that's constantly evolving. And so then I kind of went out to California and then like supposed to again, different ways of being in different ways of teaching that again talks a lot to what Shankar just mentioned, slower, closer, more tolerant, which kind of went a little contrary to my first exposures to physical theater especially. And then coming back and meeting Shankar again in 19 at his theater and again, seeing someone who had been, is now in a different place than where I saw him 2014. And that kind of just like reinforcing my sense that we're constantly kind of shifting in our perspective and our beings and our ways of engaging with this work. And that gives me a weird sense of hope in some way. Like almost like I don't have to get there right now that what is happening in this moment is very likely going to change or evolve in a few days time. So yeah, just again, as I hear Takuza's story and I've heard this a few times now and always being kind of struck by just the significance especially nowadays when we are kind of been forced in some ways to be slow. And to kind of look a little bit more, yeah. There's a feeling, Shankar, between the first and second wave of the pandemic that when we saw the world trying to get kickstarted back to normal, there was a moment where I felt like there's a tragic loss of opportunity here. Here's this great chance to hit this global reset switch. That was the idealistic optimistic thinking. But you're currently in Atta Paddy. You've turned to beekeeping right now. And you should share a little bit more context of the space you're currently in and what you're doing. But how do you, what do you think the, do you think there is a reset switch or a metaphorical reset switch from which maybe we can start implementing or taking Mizuno Kazoo's advice and sort of bringing it out to the world because this idea. So what I really liked about both the hangman story and everything you said beyond that is that moment of meeting the ground again, almost rediscovering that you are part of this planet. You've taken yourself to that near point of death and then you go to that stillness and then you jump down and it's almost a rejoicement and a celebration again. So that rediscovery of the new moment of re-appreciation. That's one. And the idea that this was not, it was his action and his action was an art or life, it was him. It was just his action, art and life are the same. How do we get, I don't know. So is there an opportunity here that we can learn from this or think from this about how to take everyone on this journey with us? Is this an understanding that only you and me and theater makers and other people who are fortunate enough to have this in their lives, get to think about and do, or can we actually back up Mr. Kazoo, the Japanese economist and actually give him the means with which to get us as a society or as societies over there. What have you been thinking about? What's next for you, for theater, for the world, do you care? I think again, Kavita Srinivasan again in the screen makes me think architecture is the answer. There is something in architecture to look for. Like, we have to change the architecture of our lives. We have to change the architectures of our theaters. There are so many things that has to, I think we have to rethink. Let's see. I was listening to Rustam Baruchas, this nine part speech act series which was published. And he talks about like a Spanish flu plague and the history of pandemic and theater. And never has theaters agreed or succumbed to these kind of regulations to close down during pandemics. Like the players would play underground, audience would come watch underground, theaters kept going. So like what we saw this year was phenomenal the last year. Like when the state says shut down your theaters. Like we did close down, we closed out theaters. So I think why? We must ask the question why? Why there was no resistance from anywhere in the world for theaters to run? We tried like, because again, coming back to Kavita's architecture of our theater, she follows principles of open theater architecture, which means we can ventilate our theater fully. And she has an amphitheater design where you can socially distanced and you can be watching theater. So what stops us from doing that? Why are we so sort of scared? And why do we, why are we so obedient with the state? And look at the way they are sort of taking us. It's a dead end. It's like, he is the pipe piper sitting there and taking us all into this dead ends. I think somewhere you must find ways to break these frames, come out and find ways to manifest this kind of resistance. So that's, I think, that is the recent buttons. These are the, I don't know. I can't give an answer because it's too big. I'll push you on that a little bit. And then guys do, Daniel, are you putting your hand up? Oh, okay, get off my... I mean, hey, Shankar. So nice to see you. Hi, Daniel. It's so good to see you, Daniel. So we're in a funny, theaters are just opening here. Where they've opened on 17th of May. They're opening with social distancing. All through the pandemic, there was this sense, this hope that theater would come back different, reset, something would change. That's not what we're seeing at the moment. We're seeing a scrabble for as much, we're seeing much smaller shows. We're talking about the UK, a very specific example. We're seeing lots of smaller shows, but the scrabble, everyone's trying to get back into that super fast rhythm. And all through the pandemic, everyone was going, ah, it's so good to have time to think and to slow down and to some of the words that you were saying. But there's this sense that the one word in the UK, and I think that it's a dangerous word, but the word that we've been using a lot is a kinder theater. And this sense of kindness is a very strange, obviously we want it to be kinder. We want our theaters to be more accessible. We want the way that we treat each other to be better. But there's something about this word, kinder, that I don't know, there's something that doesn't work about it. There's something that it allows, though, that it allows the privilege in some way to sort of be exacerbated. There's a sort of hierarchy to the word kinder, who gets to be kind to whom. But there's just something about this, we've not talked about, well, everyone talked about slower and closer. That seems to be ready of God, like we've missed our opportunity, you're ready for it, and it's gone. The focus is on kindness, and there's obviously lots of examples. You know, there's an amazing organization that's just opened up 20,000 square meters of free rehearsal space in the center of London, free for everyone to use. That's an incredible resource. That's fine, I'm all for it. Great, but there's just this sense of reset, this slowness, it feels like now that the opportunity is here, we're all scrabbling at 100 miles an hour to get back, and there's a lot of fear. That's the thing that nobody, there's a lot of fear and people aren't ready to go back, and the lessons learned through the pandemic are still, you know, we talk in Lococ terms about memory in the body. The body's been quiet for 15 months, and yet our heads are going in 100 miles an hour to get back. All thoughts based on what you were saying, I don't know if anybody feels the same or has, yeah, just wanted to share those thoughts. Thank you, Daniel. So, Shankar, thank you, Daniel. I think that that I was that kinder and that feeling of whether it rings absolutely true or not in the context that he described is absolutely, it's there. It's how do we be genuine about this stuff? So, I think I approach the question with you wrong, Shankar, is like, you know me, I like to think in terms of grand scale, and like, how do we maximize this? How do we make sure everybody on the planet does this? And I think like that crazy, you know, I think I have it in my genes, really. But let me reverse it, let me flip it, actually go back to this. You're talking about where are we, why did we not resist the state? Why did we not, why did we take it so lying down, et cetera? But then maybe there's a question about, let's not look at where it lives in the politic or the body of the body politic, but where it lives in our individual bodies because Daniel alluded it to it as well. What do you think from everything that you've done or where do you think, do you think that there's something to be explored about first answering that question within yourself and within the performers you work with and working with the performers you work with to answer that question? The same question, like why did we let the theaters shut down? Why did we shut down ourselves? Why did we acquiesce to all of this? I'm just trying to link it all the way back so that even our practice becomes slower and closer. Sorry, I realized why I was talking about kindness. The theaters in this country shut down because it was kinder not to put people at risk. It was all about everyone else, we have to shut ourselves down and theaters will continue doing social distancing for the next year because of the sense of theater and the left as the guardians of kindness and kindness meaning taking even more care. Oh, anyway, I remembered that was my point, one of my points. Actually, Amy, I think you were trying to ask the question I'm trying to ask, but you've got it better. Do you want to go off mic and take your comment? Because I think it actually takes us in the same direction. Well, it just, yeah, and Lumgeny is chimed in with something I think really is also in the same line of things. It's sort of unique opportunity. You know, I looked quickly at the video link to the hangman, it's fascinating. And it just seems so to be so much about, you know, his unique expression. And then there's the Erdem Gondous who started the silent protests in Istanbul. It was the chance that they had uniquely to sort of manifest, it meant something to stand still, it meant something. It wouldn't maybe mean the same thing if I stood still in downtown Hobart. It's a sort of, there's a unique positionality depending on our identity and our location. And it has a lot to do with our intersection with this sort of late capitalist. I mean, if I stood, I just, I've imagined moving terribly slowly at Canary Wharf and I'm quite sure that I'd be arrested. You know, it just, it would stand out if I were to move very, very slowly in a commercial area. So there's something about uniqueness, the uniqueness of the position and uniqueness of the location, but the awareness could be more universal. If we were all aware that we have these unique possibilities to manifest this, as you're saying, slow, tolerant and, you know, I don't know about the word kind. It's sort of a trap that word. You got any? I mean, I'm, hello, sorry. I'm thinking along some of the lines to Amy there. I cannot for the life of me remember whether his name's Tim Robbins who talks about slow activism. But again, this idea that the world has become so structured by this continual acceleration towards, you know, particular destinations towards specific goals. Everything is kind of quantified in terms of productive time and productive time that's framed in a kind of Freudian and kind of large decrypt. If you're not spending time to produce something that is quantifiable and perhaps is even sellable, right? Something that produces value that is transferable to other people. It's fungible that we, there is something in enforcing a practice or an ethics of deceleration because it reclaims, it allows us to reclaim ownership of how we expend time and to kind of formulate ways of spending time in ways that perhaps lift us out of that kind of accelerated kind of capitalist logic to perhaps produce different modes of relation to the world. And the way that it does that is by forcing us to attend closely to the moment. It's similar to I think what Mark who joined us last week talks about as Brené is, and I think it also connects to the example of the ruin in the landscape that he was talking about is that you can either move past or you sit with it, right? But it's all connects to this idea of sitting in rather than kind of glancing through or speeding through to another destination. Yeah, there's something I find very exciting about the practice of slowness and also on another thought I'm thinking about because Japan specifically of Boutou and that kind of aesthetic that came out of a similar kind of cultural limit of crisis and re-engagement in the 20s, right? And also responding to a radically shifting kind of cultural landscape that have to reckon with these major shifts in how people were kind of living in an occupying space. Yeah, very poorly formed, but there are these kind of little hooks that are taking me elsewhere in really interesting ways. Hi. Hi, Shankel, Brie. Hi, Jehan. Hi, Shankel. I had a question for you or like a thought or a comment. I'll see what it turns out to be. And this was about this nature of showing or displaying or performing and the value of that. And so when you were telling us the Hangman story, there was a certain kind of value that came across in the way you said it about him doing this action whether or not people were watching. And that was somehow like elevated a little bit from how you said it. And on the other side, when you speak about resistance and political action, there needs to be a visibility to that or a kind of a public nature to that. And I was just wondering what your thoughts were on invisible resistance. Is it not valuable or what does that even look like? What is it like? What makes art or performance when it is not being witnessed? And what are the kind of parallels that you see or draw between visibility and impact and legitimacy to an act whether it's resistance or performance and the invisibility of that or like when it's not visible, then does it count? So it is a question, I suppose. Thank you. I think I might just thoughts. I'm thinking like your question as well as the comments earlier, sort of ties up to one thing like this countering the logic of capitalism. I think how like we are asking that, I think we are like trying to find ways to counter this logic of capitalism. So again, going back to Hangman, what is so profound in him is he embraces poverty. So whereby he is able to counter it invisibly, as you just said, like it's not a protest as he goes out in the street and it's not something that needs to be made visible for him but for him, he lives in this very small shack dilapidated rundown hut and to meet his ends, I think he works in the construction site. He goes to work in a construction site just enough to make money. And for his theater, it's a donation. Like if you want, you can put a thousand yen or you can put less, you can still go and watch him. So and with that, the very fundamental idea that they come together after that, closely around the table, sit, talk, these are all, I think, manifestations of those resistance. Like if you look at the life in Japan, like now this is how resistance manifests. Like, you live in poverty, in the middle of skyscrapers, you have a shack and your neighbors are like trying to get you out somehow because it's weird. Like when I wake up and I look out of my window, I see a man hanging. So that is what they say. He keeps going on and on and on and people don't know what he's doing. And it's, but I think like for him, that position that he takes is, and it's difficult because that is again, why that metaphor of that anvil is very strong there because you have to sort of temper yourself like an anvil to be able to face this world because an anvil is something which gets the most hammered in the blacksmith's shed. Like it's red hot iron is placed on it, hammered back and forth and then the tools keep changing but the anvil remains the same. So there are some kind of cryptic metaphoric sort of ideas that one can draw from again, going back to Takuzo and his poor life and he was happy. He was never complained about, like he didn't want to be wealthy. He didn't want to be part of the system. He wanted to be by himself. He was a dropout and like if I have some notes on his career and I can share it with you later when I can type it out. Like he started as a boxer and it didn't work out. Of course, like it's a frail young man and then he would bury himself down. This performance artist again, like the time in Japan was very sort of confused, like socially, politically, historically this kind of, it must have been like people capital going one side, like development and growth and like where people are also getting eliminated. So he stood there. He stood his ground all his life and I think he made a statement in that sense. Thank you for that. I'm actually just, we were talking about this in the pre-talk earlier Shankar, but how this pandemic moment is sort of taking us to the ultimate experience of isolated practice or isolated existence, right? We're all locked up in our rooms and our homes and this seems to be almost a manifestation of, I mean, I don't know. Politics of isolation. The politics of isolation. Performing in our bodies. Yeah, and so that's there and I'm like, is there something, I'm looking for this seed or this moment of genesis, where do we get to see the phoenix arise for the ashes is such a thing? A response to the logic of capitalism that can now take over in this moment of reset. Is this the moment where hanging all still and waiting to jump off the nose? I'm using it as a metaphor because it's available to me right now, but you know, I think you know what I mean. And I'm just again at the individual level, how do we process this moment? And as theater makers, as theater practitioners, as people teaching other people to now enter into theater practice so that they can go on to make art live life, be art plus life as one. What are we doing? What should we be doing? And that's my question. So we'll come back to that because I have and come back to that. That's a question for everybody in this room, by the way, not just Shankar. I'm not putting him on the spot anymore because we're past half past the hour. Let's go. Is that, I hope I pronounced that right. Please do come on and share all your questions. Thanks, Johan. It's Leseho. What I'm about to say is very poorly formed but play with me for five seconds. I'm very, very challenged and compelled by this idea going against the capitalist logic, the capitalist sensibility, I suppose, because I think it is a sensibility in many ways. And I think it's a sensibility that tends towards producing. It tends towards action and acting, right? And I think that this idea about the pandemic moment slowing everything down. I struggle to see that as a reality because I think it just accelerated reaction. I think we've all, particularly as performance makers and as industry people, we have all reacted and we have reacted very quickly. So the slowing down, I don't see happening. I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about all of the material, all of the kind of digital space stuff that's like, embrace the moment and let's make, let's not stop making, let's keep making, you know? And that feels like the height of capitalist sensibility is let's make, let's just produce, let's react, you know, this thing is happening, so let's go. So I don't know, I think rhetorically and maybe metaphorically, there is a romantic desire to slow down, but because life is this capitalist model, it is impossible. And so we haven't achieved it and we haven't even marinated on our inability to achieve it, I think. I don't know if there's a question in there or if I'm done, I think I'm going to go with Dan. Can I just jump in very quickly off the back of the seho? It's just to, you know, it's a really interesting, a reframing the seho that you just put on the table and I feel like one of the other things that has been accelerated is the awareness of disparity globally. I mean, the awareness of it, not the fact of it obviously, but that feels like has been accelerated, heightened, pushed to the forefront to some degree. Yeah, that's my half thought. Come back with the rest of it just now. Can I ask? Yeah, sure. I would also propose that certainly there seems to be a heightened awareness of those things, but also there's a heightened fantasy of participation in addressing those things too that I feel has increased more recently because we're forced to engage in online. So I think people are performing their proximity to those sorts of struggles in very different ways than we were a year ago even. That the fantasy of participating is interesting to me there as well, I can kind of present myself in a particular way, but I'm still kind of, you know, I'm not required to put my body on the line in the same sorts of ways. So I think I might tend towards a more spectacular performance of what my politics might be than we might have done in other times. So it's both an awareness, but also perhaps an increasing inability to react functionally to what those differences mean. I find myself thinking, first of all, I think, let's hope, sorry, I need a little help with that. Again, let's say hope. Is that correct? Yes, that's good, that's good. Okay, so I think what you said is right. I don't think it's, I think it oversimplifies or it actually takes us away from the problem to look at all of this as a response to capitalism. And I totally agree with that. And I'm just looking at Moenya's provocation to me in the chat, which is, you know, you're looking at the phoenix and the spectacular moment in terms of finding all your answers, but maybe the trick is to stay with the stillness, which is something my therapist has also been saying to me. This is pause, stay, you don't need to get out there and fix the world. But what is actually happening, and I was on, I just discovered Clubhouse yesterday for the first time. This horrible, evil horrible thing, very addictive. But more than that, going off Denny's point, I just wanna, this heightened fantasy of participation implied in that is our act of performance. And somewhere I almost feel like now that we're in this space, in this digital space where we're completely performing our lives in many ways to the public or to different forums. The idea of conflating performer and life art and performance and actual life into one thing suddenly becomes very real and suddenly everyone, everyone is doing it. So maybe we should be embracing the fact that there is already all of us in all these Zoom rooms all over the world or whatever, or in Clubhouse or whatever that we're all performing. We're all performing our lives. We're all sharing our lives. We're all manifesting expressions or being silent to just incorporate and take on Shabri's point as well. There's something internal going on over there as well. So I'm just wondering if that's where the opportunity is to, sorry, I'm pre-DNA adjusted to try and look for what is the next move. And I guess what I'm learning from this conversation I will shut up here and leave it to you guys but do I need to even be asking that question? Because I'm faced, what Mania has just written, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. Thank you Shankar. Yes. Mania, what you have said is exactly what's happening with me, within myself. So I am almost like reflecting exactly what my students are going through because I want to get on and fix but I think, yeah, Mania, you have to get on and then Shankar you have to respond to whatever comes next. And anyone else, please raise your hands or just go off mic if you have to, just literally pop in and say something. Mania, all yours. I mean, I'm just gonna say what I've written. And I'm just sitting here thinking about teaching and thinking about the students that I saw yesterday and that I'm gonna see later and that I'll see tomorrow and having such, I mean, that's why I'm so compelled by these conversations because I feel like as an individual educator in this wild, insane time, my desire and my intention is so for something that is slower. I just wanna stop the goddamn machine. The machinery of the institution is maddening. It always has been and I just wanna like put a brick through every window. I realize this is being recorded. So there's that. So I feel, you know, up against, I'm also teaching four-tier students who are graduating students and they have such anxiety about what is gonna happen with them and these crazy degrees that they have persuaded their parents to expend exorbitant amounts of money to pay for. So it feels really tiring to try and practice a level of kind of self-protection, you know, for all of the kind of onslaught of anxiety and fear and it's a very useful exercise for me, I have to say, but I feel so tuned into the fact that what I want for myself and for them with all of these incredible skills and techniques that they have that they will leave with is a headspace that allows them to just keep those wolves at bay, you know, keep the producing wolves at arm's length. And there's a big gap between this desire of mine for myself and for them and what I'm actually able to make happen. But I do, you know, my kind of hyper-awareness of it does make, I'm feeling like a much more responsive as in responding to what is happening in the room educator than I have been before. So it's tiring, but it's a really interesting kind of, you know, we're gonna go with what is in the room today for real, for real. And sometimes we have to do that in a very practical level because, you know, five students have had COVID scares and, you know, all of that requires such wild adaptive kind of behavior. But I guess we're primed for in some cases. Yeah, that's my riff. That's what's on my mind at the moment. Shankar, you know Amy. Amy, yes, but I'm just gonna say, let's listen to Amy, but Shankar, I do want you to, you have a lot of experience with slowness, stillness, still moving. And I don't know, I mean, you've had such an embodied experience of directing pieces like that and working in that way with your work with Ota Shogo Water Station, for example. Maybe there's some things you can share from that discovery that would help me, would help our students, would help learning to even ourselves be still, like just something thoughts on that. But Amy, did you, Amy, you wanna go before that or after that? Well, I don't wanna be contrarian. So why don't you have that discussion first? Okay, and then we'll go to you and let's say I see your hand up. So just don't put the hand up, just get off mic when you need to get off mic. Shankar, do you think there's anything we can learn, anything you'd like to share with us about that from that time? See, I have directed the water station four times and it's a very strict rigid play with actions precisely sort of scored, but it has always been different, always. And like, early on Tushar said, like when the first time he worked with me, like the second time we worked together, the third time it's different. Like also like I'm sure for Kavita Srinivasan also, like we have been in other productions and water station she has played it twice. It's just that, again, see, when we started Jihun, we started on this pretext on the idea of universal truths, the universality, et cetera, which was also like sort of the back of my mind and I was also seeking that. As I kept working, there is more interest in looking at the differences rather than looking at the universalities because then there is something very special that will come out of the individual. Like, again, going back to Xiami, the Japanese Natashastra, the poet, playwright, actor Xiami, he talks about the foundation of every actor's career is a quality called the Yu-Gen, which is like the child in the child. So he says like, when a child comes on stage, like, no matter what he does, he will immediately grab and strike and grab the attention of the audience. And that is the quality, like that is the quality of the child that is the foundation for every sort of actor in the future. So what I found myself wrong in teaching and training is that like, this kind of rigor and strictness and formal training actually can harm that child in the actor. That's why I took a step away from teaching theater because I still haven't figured out a way how to do it. Like, it's in letting the actor create. I think that is where the beauty is rather than telling the actor what to do, how to do. It's not interesting. It's not interesting. But like, when an actor, it's like fully creative state of mind when they do things. Like, it's like, I can watch the same thing 1000 times. I don't get bored. I think it's in that sort of approach that maybe there is something. I don't know the answers, Jaan, really honestly. Tushar the other day wrote to me about talking to bees. So can you repeat that, Tushar? Because literally I go and talk to my bees because what else do you do with these times? You go sit next to a bee, I even talk. Tell us. Tushar, you were sitting and talking to your bees is very, very, very hopeful right now. So in Kentucky, I don't know if it's a world thing, but my partner lives in Kentucky and she was moving a bunch of bee hives. And apparently there's a tradition over there to tell these bees all the major life events. You tell them when someone has died, when someone is born, when someone is broken up, when a marriage happens, you speak to the bees and tell them all the important events of the land. And when the beekeeper passes away, you kind of shift the bee hive a little bit to face the grave of the beekeeper. So in many ways the bees, the land, the beekeepers kind of become one. And I know that Shankar and Satoko are working with bees, so I thought it would be good information for them. Yeah. Yeah, talk to the bees. Like again, going back to Rustam Baruch's speech act of nine episodes, like he talks about he rancha. That's what farmers in Punjab did when they had the pandemic among the cows. They would sit with their cows and tell stories to them and be with them. And it's absurd, it's like, but maybe that's what makes sense. Like talk to the animals, talk to trees, talk to the bees and maybe they'll talk back. Sorry. I was gonna say maybe listening as well sometimes, listen to the bees and listen to the trees. He's just so much talking. Yeah. There are a lot of people in this room who have access to farms and the more pastoral nature, natural lives. Amy, you had a thought. Yes, well, it doesn't seem contrarian now, because I entirely concur with this idea, let the actor create. And also what you said, Mwena, about keeping it real. I mean, if the planet is gripped by a nightmare, what if our job is dreamworks? So I don't see it being necessarily contradictory to slow down, be with the space, be close to the space, and also maybe create from a slightly different place. I mean, to produce sounds like a very conscious activity. When you talk about keeping it real, we're talking about something that comes from, something perhaps more unconscious. Can we just unplug and pick that apart a bit more? There's a difference between the need to produce versus a more inherent sort of act of creation that naturally manifests itself. Is that what you're... I mean, yeah, production is the strategy of the ego. Whereas the real, when the real intervenes, which certainly this pandemic is nothing if not a slap from the real, then the unconscious is making its presence felt. And if we can hold that space, maybe what we're creating will come from a different place, a different register. That is incredible for you. Frank. Oh, no, just a quick thought, the difference between an intrinsic and extrinsic kind of creation or production. So whether we're producing out of an intrinsic need or drive to produce a create work, or whether it's imposed and within that kind of university system, it's very much imposed, isn't it? And constantly having to make stuff to meet targets or various kind of assessment processes. I mean, I feel I've just left lost my job, one of the people lost their job in the pandemic. And that's something I'm really relieved of now is the pressure for the last 30 years to produce to order. So the decisions I'm making are not coming from a drive to say something, but a drive to meet a target and keep my family fed and housed and closed. So just thinking about that for a second. And that's from a very privileged position of having time to not have a job and think. Just to come in here quickly and share one of the things that I think inspired by these conversations are a move that I have made unbeknownst to my so-called superiors is to stop giving fourth year's feedback. I coordinate a lovely group of staff and we're all responsible for supposedly teaching something called acting. And we've decided that we're gonna stop but it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to maintain a kind of sense in them that their understanding of what they're doing will be validated from the outside. So it's all in practice and check in like at the end of the year let you know if it's actually worked or not. But we're trying to rather just encourage lots of debriefs and reflections and an inbuilt ability for the students to be able to track their own progress and articulate what that is. And yeah, it's just an interesting journey so far. And I was thinking about it while somebody else was speaking and it seemed to make sense at the time but it might just be a tangent at this point, but yeah, that's it. Maybe it's part of the stillness, the stillness, slowness thing and part of the kind of the machinery of the institution among the requirements from the educator's point of view is to make marks, make marks happen and be able to prove that those marks have been arrived at in some kind of systematic way, particularly if they're challenged to know that shit. So I suppose it's a kind of small attempt to work against that particular piece of the machine. Can I just bring in a thought on following on from that and many of the ponderings about stillness, kindness, production, the urge or the need to produce industry, all of these thoughts and the pandemic. And one of the qualities that I've been emerging for me over the last year has been distractedness which isn't usually thought of as a quality when we think about theater audiences and certainly not actors. We often think about focus. But I've come to appreciate how here we are on Zoom across the world, in our Zoom meetings, our teaching on Zoom and so on. We're trying to see if we can perform and that the pressure to produce as others have mentioned or it's sort of suppose it's only other binary option to do nothing and to waste your time or to perform to seek stillness and inner reflection. Well, can't we have all of that at the same time and the reality of being online sometimes is that we've got our work, we've got our real lives. If we're educating kids at home or you've got leisure, entertainment, education, it's all in the same place here. It might be on multiple devices but it's all on here and we're sort of sharing it. But of course, I can just be on this at the same time and half listening and then I come back in and there's something, I find that comforting and I want that. I don't want to be forced like Danny, maybe it's the UK thing here in the UK being forced back into a theater to be a spectator where I must watch this performance or as an actor where I must focus and deliver as rehearsed. And there's something kinder about being able to wander off and come back and say, oh, I want to watch that or rewind and I want to see that bit again. And there's something of the old, that's called the carnivalesque perhaps where here we are over four days or whatever, the festival lasts and we could come in and out and just watch the funny bits or just go to sleep or, that's the kind of kindness. I don't know what that translates into in actual theater practices now we're coming out but it's certainly a way to bring together and not to be sort of battling between capitalist production and enforced retirement or sabbatical language. Yes, Shabri. As someone who's actually tried working with the stillness quite a lot and slowness, I think all of us at some point have romanticized this idea of slowness and stillness and who hasn't wanted to kind of slow their lights down? Like who hasn't thought that that's yeah, that's a good idea. I should do some meditation. I'll download an app on my phone or whatever. Like which one of us hasn't done it? And yet here we are again, talking about all of this wonderful stuff that comes out of stillness. But if you've actually done it, it's not always fun. It's not nice. It's not a pleasant feeling always. It's quite, sometimes it's a bit difficult. Yeah, sometimes it feels really kind of rigid and hard and you need to kind of like shake yourself out of stillness and slowness because it's like really kind of claustrophobic. So it's not always like, oh, I'm gonna be this amazing. I'm gonna have this halo around my head after I've been still and slow for a while. So I see these two things like, I often feel like it's the people who've not done it, but have this feeling like, oh, it's something I should be doing, like eating healthy or going to the gym or doing 40 push-ups a day or whatever. It's one of those things like I should do. And everyone says it's really nice. And if you look at the chat, you'll see like all these amazing references about all these people who work. But yeah, honestly, it's not so much fun all the time. I'm just gonna put in the chat box again, something that I did with a bunch of students. I think this gives a bit of a kind of a realistic sense of what it feels like, at least what it felt like for those guys. And for me, I mean, I fully resonate with what they've said. Thanks for that. So we are up to the official ending time. It's 3.40, so another five minutes. So what I will do here is I will let us sit quietly and see if we can stand it. No, I will say hi. Thank you to Shankar so much for coming. Thank you guys for being such active participants in the conversation. We keep the room open traditionally for another 20, 30 minutes, we put off the recording and we literally have the after-party and with the bit where you sit in the corridor and have your cup of coffee and Shankar and I will light up our cigarettes and chill out and all have a good, and then just have a chat. And so we can spend this time being slower and closer. I think we're doing okay with the tolerance front. So, and there's no moderation over here. So you just get off mic and hang out and whoever wants to stay, stay, whoever wants to go, go. Just know that all of these chats have been live streamed on HowlRound Theater Commons, which is a lovely website out of the US. All of these video recordings of the chats are available on the Drama School Mumbai website and we're talking about now through about 25, 30 different conversations. And Falguni who's here, Falguni you should get off mic and get off screen and say hi and wave and let everyone see your face. She's a recent alumni of the DSM. Before that she used to be a reporter and a journalist and she still is because she has been writing amazing reportage pieces. And I am going to let Amy say thank you, good night and goodbye to everyone on the formal bit because before we sign off, Amy is gonna tell you what talk we can expect to hear next week, next Thursday. Amy? Thank you, thank you Jehan. So I would be very gratified if you would attend next week and turn up to participate in a subversive chat, masterless women in teaching physical theater. So it should be a lots of fun and very controversial hopefully and very, very interesting. So please come, thank you, thank you, thank you. And bring anyone who you think will have their minds fucked by what we're doing and will add refreshing voices and energies to this room. It's been such a fun room all of these weeks and I leave every Thursday looking forward to the next Thursday. So Shankar, like the first time you did it and this time again, thank you so much for saying yes, let's.