 11 as the festival and it's been incredible to really feel the energy of all the artists here and it's been great to just have all the audiences sort of be here with us. And so I would like to introduce to you this project that we've been doing with culture bot five, six years ago. I really came out of a need or a desire to have more context for the work that we're doing just to start a few conversations. So it's not just the one way between the art to the audience just to have a little bit of context and have artists of the festival and of New York just to start having a conversation with the work with the audience with the moment now. And so without further ado, I'm going to introduce to you my good friend Andy Horwitz who's been the founder of culture bot and just landed a new exciting gig which I'm so excited and proud of him for. He's the new director of programs at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. LA is very, very lucky. The West Coast is very lucky to have an enemy. I'm going to the West Coast too. And just want to say that culture bot is one of the rare unicorns of theatrical and critical writing in the field. So we're very happy to be partners with them this year. Hi, hi everyone. So do you ever get a program on this group? No. Yeah, I kind of was looking around so I didn't see a lot of them. So... So he's going to firstly hand it out to me. I'm going to get this going on this side. Just because that'll help explain, this is Marianne, Shannon, Lars, Andrew. I'm going to get to that a young lady again. Just super quickly. So I started culture bot in 2003. We launched it in December 2003. At PS1.2 it was possible because we applied for an NPN grant that Mark Russell encouraged us to apply for. Yeah, and he made it possible that he was willing to take a risk. You know, I'd only been there for a year and out of all this, you know, the pursuing past world. Since I moved into the West Coast in August of 2014, I realized it was something to bring in new people for culture bot to continue for a new generation in a different way. So first, I want to introduce over here, we have... We have William O'Dessie and Dan O'Neill who are the dance and theater editors. And Ben and Sarah. So this is the new sort of leadership of the culture bot team. I encourage you to come over and meet them and introduce yourselves and get involved. And then Eva Pleskin is also part of that team and she has been absolutely amazing in organizing this conversation that we're about to have. So I'm going to turn it over to her. I'm going to be here to enjoy and have fun. But I'm going to take her away. So today we're convening around the ideas of dramaturgy and media. And I do this in the minutes maybe, but just so everyone knows, Lars and Andrew have a show and want to talk. So we're going to start with some questions that I'm going to directly look into the practice and then we'll move on and directly relate more to the bot. So something that came up just a minute ago was this idea of using technology to do the impossible or having an impossible problem to solve. And especially in the way we do that in the computer. And I wonder if Lars and Andrew, you guys started, or you started with a show, but who's going to have to add to the radar with this idea of solving an impossible problem in terms of relating one person to the other? Sorry, can I just say you're all used to using microphones, but you're not? Yes, thank you. So can you talk about solving an impossible problem? It was a starting point for music media in your field of practice. Yes, I've prepared an answer. By the way, there's a book that we're talking about. And you saw it for the first time. It's the founder of the Builders Association, and Shannon is the co-author of the book with them. And Lars is holding it. And Lars is holding it. And Andrew is supporting Lars usually. So, and just to be clear, so everybody understands. I can hold it if you want, or we can put it on. It makes me feel a little sad. It makes me feel a little sad. Maybe there's something inside that I could say. Yeah, impossible problems. Well, it's really hard. I guess the hardest thing about the theater is that you go to different places and there's different people and you can't do what you do in cinema, which is cut. Or not exactly, like you actually just stay in the room together. And so you have to find ways to cut and to transform and change. And technology is one, human bodies do that too. And so the actors actually in the institute remember to do that quite a bit very quickly. That's one kind of technology. So other than that, I find, other than the fact that it's just important in this particular piece to try to like vivify all the different technologies that are related to... It's a story that's called the Institute of Memory. It's an excavation of my father's past. It's a one o'clock real invited. But part of my interest in working in the project is that I didn't know very much about him. He was quite opaque as a person. And once I started doing research into him I realized there was all these analog technologies that sort of bounced off him and that he invaded in various ways. And he just barely transitioned into the sort of digital realm. And I was just thinking about analog technologies versus digital technologies and how that's changing how privacy works and remembering works. And bringing those two things into the... And so I needed to bring sort of that theme or that transference into the project somehow. Expressively. So that's what the world was doing with making that transition. How to actually bring the tactility. My dad used to hand write letters to me. He used to type letters to me. They were all fucked up. You know, white out and like double X's over words that needs to be deleted. So they were like these really strange like self-reacted pieces. They looked like intelligence transmissions. Because he was rephrasing things and crossing things out. And he always, pretty much always started a letter that was typed and then would continue. And so it's like you get this legacy of thought rather than just like shooting off an email and get like a week of thought onto the same piece of paper and thinking about that as an artifact. How is performance the same thing? Because I started writing and you start working on something and there's some early ideas that come up in a rehearsal room. And some of those ideas which are really early make it all the way to the audience. And most of them die. And some of the ideas, you know, come up, we're still adjusting our show actually. We like made some changes yesterday are much newer. And so how do these like really new ideas like this very new legacy of an idea come in relationship to these old ideas and the audience doesn't know which, what was born when. And so we're trying to mediate, I don't know if that entirely answers the question but it just brings up an analog digital structure. It brings up another question you're dealing with like, you know, an element of technology you're keeping, you want to adjust it. Like how do you manage that in terms of like the technicalities that you're working with. Like if you're trying to implement technology but you're looking at ideas of it in a different way. The ideas of it. What do you mean by the ideas? Like if you're making a conceptual or like content shift in the work but you have the technology that's moving in a different way. I want to sort of maybe expand or amplify on that question. You mentioned archive and sort of and the process of writing the book was going through the archives and there's this question about and of course you've been making this work since 92. So did I hear almost an applause there? So the evolution of technology has actually been in the context in your body of work and also this negotiation of archive and process as performance. So I'm wondering, listening, you know, tell us a little bit about your perspective of your work. Well, I was just thinking about a very pragmatic example of that which is that when I started going through material through the book I was horrified to find in the back of our storage unit like laser discs and three-quarter inch tape and cassettes. Does anybody remember the cassettes? The video cassettes and what are those things called? Tape, sounds or stuff like that. So that was just like so incredible because I do remember making a show and it just being like an endless process of saying like, okay, can you cut that or make this image and it would take, they'd be like come back tomorrow. And now obviously you can render anything and cut anything in a matter of seconds and so that kind of malability can happen in rehearsal but it's, you know, it's been a long road, a long, sad road. And the triumphant one too. On the impossible problem thing it just, it does seem like one of the impossible problems is about how to make, how to really feel and think in a complicated way about the analog-digital relationship. Online, offline work, an interesting couple and it does seem that theater has this historically analog format offering itself as a laboratory for making strange digital and it's remaking itself in a different way or exposing its component parts or its operations in a different way that it seems to me both the show I saw last night and so many of the shows that I've been archiving or analyzing to make that book it seems to be that that is one thing that kind of runs as a through line, through line through a lot of this work. I wonder, Andrea, have you ever thought about that making strange or sort of revealing the operations because a lot of your work is this kind of, it's this real integration of like, from your, like, you know, American type of HTML kind of language or using digital languages in an instant process? I wonder how do you approach revealing scenes and revealing when you are letting the audience in on how the process is working or making that more invisible for a fact? Yeah, I mean, I think it's useful to talk about technology as a category but for me, thinking about making work it's become a hindrance in thinking about technology as a thing that I'm, like, using because, like, you know, we house fire and we have words and, you know, we have lights and the tap so I try not to approach it as anything else and it even goes into, like, well, I'm going to make a dance or I'm going to make a theater or I'm going to make a poetry it's like, it's not helpful anymore to have those to talk about it in those ways. For me personally, I, like, obviously wouldn't be there if we didn't have those structures to talk about it. And I guess it's just a constant negotiation like, well, this stuff is around I think most of, like, new technology that is on stage is only new to the theater because the theater doesn't have a lot of money and it can't get before from a technological innovation. So, like, for me, just, like, making stuff in my apartment before, like, hacking the typewriter or something is just, like, and back to the thing of doing the impossible. It's like, well, I don't have the money to do it, so how do we get it done? And that first step of, like, I have an idea of something I don't know how to do it. It's usually, like, there's a byproduct to it or, like, there's an interesting bit that you didn't think was going to happen and then it's just that kind of snowball from there. That maybe didn't answer a question, but... I don't know how to do it. I'm sorry. Well, no, because I see about both everyone's kind of talking about the analog digital thing and this sort of weirdness of now using word technology to sort of fetishize the specific new idea of the step. And, you know, there's this book by Bert O. Spink that's called Great Reckonings in Small Rooms on the Phenomenology of Theater and it's really, I don't know, really cool. And, you know, when he talks about the introduction of the chair, as this radical technological innovation, because the idea that one would have a chair, a real object and real life on stage was radically disrupted. So, so it's, so part of the, so part of what's fascinating is that this is a long, long, long conversation. And maybe this is a chance to talk about the term that you are using meteorology in a sense to sort of try and forge some new languages or at least be more flexible in the words we use for this. So, unpack that a little, of course. Well, I mean, I think that it is a, there's a long, kind of, wandering epilogue in the book that's called Meteorogy. And just a problem about Anne Spink, I think that really it comes from if you start with an idea, you have to decide what the idea calls for. And basically, everything springs from that. So, formally, if you're talking about, you know, this, a layer of reality and escape that is, you know, the Wizard of Oz, then you end up making like a layer of augmented reality that people can use in their phones in relation to the liveness on stage. But it's not as if we started out saying, like, what tech can we use to express this? It really is about just taking the tools that are at hand. And I think that's really what it is. And the one side of that is when you're using technology in theater, it has to be grounded in dramaturgy. There has to be reason for it to be there. Otherwise, it does just feel like technology. Yeah. One of the, one of the, you know, Lars, yours is a personal story, but it's a, it's a seeking to find the answer to this. This phrase that has been coming up a lot for me is inquiry-based. You're not necessarily setting up to tell us stories specifically, that may be part of it, but this thing starts with a question. Is that a, and somehow that feels related to this, this very small-seat, Catholic use of new tools. Can you, can, do you feel that that's a, how does that resonate? How about an association? Okay. Is that cool? Yeah, yeah. I also, Bruno States, said that he should never have children on stage. Really? He didn't quite say that. He didn't quite say that. At the time. At the time. I'm just going to, um, uh, an animal steer. Yes. I was going to bring up Jacob Room, which is this novel by Virginia Woolf in which the main character doesn't, you never hear that the main character's internal voice, and you just get a, um, a network of people who bounce off that person, and so the contours of that character is determined by all of these external perspectives, and I feel like that's what's happening in this show, and that's what happens with me with technology a lot, is actually the technology is defying the contour of the voice. And it's like, what, so it's like, ultimately the Institute of Memory is a ghost story, and it is an inquiry into telling some, you know, um, bringing, it's like Hamlet's ghost, like what if Hamlet's ghost, um, the fundamental thought for me is like, what if at the beginning Hamlet, Hamlet's father didn't speak? He just showed up and was haunting Hamlet, but he walked away. And what would Hamlet be like and what would Hamlet do? With his, like, suspicions and his inquiry. So what kind of research would he do? If the father didn't say, like, get this guy. Um, and, so I think about that person as a kind of void, uh, and in a way, just trying to use all these different technical implements, like paper mache to create a puppet, you know, it's like pricing against that person, handwritten the letter, laser scans in my dad's apartment, medical scans in his body, literally inside of him. Um, so, and yet, and yet none of them were actually put here into, like, a portrait. They're all, they all feel like they just define a void. That makes any sense. And just to, you know, just thinking about that next to the point of, you know, using different media to do that, I think it's, um, it was so interesting how the use of all of the different artifacts and media formats that, uh, coexisted with the writing practice as well. So the, um, the sections where you said, I'll play the, I'll play the father, you play the mother. I'll play the father. Okay, you know, that, that there was a kind of announcement of what your, what character everyone was playing. That, that was a play writer technique, you could say, a writerly technique that seemed to coexist so wonderfully is for me with, with the apparatus. That, that was one apparatus next to others that were helping you follow this association or follow this question. That was the dramaturgy of hearsay. Hearsay. Because it was, because I don't, I didn't experience any of that, so it's just like, my mom said this, my dad said this, and sometimes it was the same, sometimes it was different. So it was, like, fundamental to defend the, the fact that I just know it's the most skeletal Mellon possible. It's, it's similar, right, having a history of technology or a history of how you might experience technology that definitely relates a lot to what you know in the book in terms of, you know, I find it so fascinating that Mary and you guys were using some kind of proto-sins or Minecraft computer programming like 1994. And so you're sort of like, can you speak to about how you're sort of staging your own experience of technology as, as a, and as part of that really group process? Does that make any sense? Does that make any sense? Well, like, if you go sort of chapter by chapter, it seems like there's a different, you know, then new technology being worked out that is now looking old. Exactly. I mean, I think that it's so hard to, like, just I think go back and just keep using the word technology, because I think it's so much about storytelling and really, ultimately, that was the underpinning. But, yeah, each thing, like, lived through a different, different kind of apparatus. Like, in Continuous City, we did this thing where our father was traveling around the world and talking to his young daughter on his phone, and everyone said, well, that's years away. Nobody said we're going to be able to use video on their phone. And so, Minecraft came out, you know, six months later. So I think that kind of, like, again, it's just looking for what you need and then finding that tool. And then, of course, other people in the culture are looking for that tool as well. But I want to pick up on storytelling, because I think it's, you know, writing, writing techniques, traditional playwriting, storytelling, a lot of the work that people in this game can make in many ways, like, difficult challenges that. Or it uses those things in ways that question them. And it questions traditional notions of fixed identity, like that a character has to be the same person all the time. And I don't know, did anybody see Andrew Schneider's, You Are Now Here, You Are Now Here, I've never heard of that. But that is super slippery about what the hell is going on, what the story was. So, I mean, I guess the question is, is there, is, you know, how concerned are you really with, like, straight on narrative stories, or is there an expanded notion of what storytelling is to you? I'm just going to talk about me, exactly. Yeah, I'm a really bad storyteller, and I don't really have stories I want to tell, but I have experiences that I want to share with people, and I'm really fascinated in moments, and cutting up whatever was before and whatever was after. Just like, how did you get here right now? I use, the way that I make work is just, like, this experience, and then I go, and then I just, there's a central thing, and then it expands with these tendrils out in every, uh, question. So, sitting here is it you? It's a new technology. And I don't, I don't think. I like, I use lights and sound. And I don't think, I don't, you know, it's a networking interactivity. Yeah, but that's just like, I can't afford to hire, like, any of these. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. No, no, it's not true. It's, it's because it's very, it's because it needs to be hyper-precise. Exactly. And a precision that, that can't be achieved through people actually hitting that. Exactly. So yes, it is, it is a problem solving technique, using, but that's all behind the same poverty and precision. It's actually really interesting thing is, like, because a lot of our, you know, innovation, um, capitalism, but um, but um, a lot of artistic stuff happens because you don't have tools and you've got to have it. You know, whether it's hip-hop in the Bronx in the 80s, you know, you know, sampling things in DJs because it's cheaper than getting a bunch of instruments or like, it's the technology, the tools that are available to you. So in a way, you know, it's, I think it's something about your story aspect, about your storytelling question. Yes, please. We ended up using, throughout the book, there's, it's divided, it goes across a lot of different performances and every chapter focuses on different elements of a different show. But we use this word storyboard to talk about, to somehow talk about what I think you're talking about. Um, and I, and I think that there is something about um, moving from the, say, dramaturgy framework to a mediaturgy framework that, uh, places narrative in a different space, sort of as material to be mined and redistributed, um, in ways that make certain kinds of playwrights uncomfortable. And one of the really interesting, uh, fun, uh, sort of themes throughout the builder's work was, you know, trying to, the attempt to find writers who were okay with this idea, okay with the idea that they would provide you know, um, which is a much different process than some writers want to be part of. Yeah. I wonder how that extends to, like other collaborative elements because uh, something that comes up a lot in the builder's work is, um, joining of vocabularies and practices with things you wouldn't necessarily consider a theatrical kind of artist, like architecture or even early on like computer programming or, um, using the, the, there's a point that you make that it's like intermedia is a revelation of the similarities they're in rather than the distances between them. And I know you, Lars, work a lot with very many different kinds of artists. Um, so I wonder about how you approach those collaborations and how you find common languages and if there's certain, you know, Yeah, it's fundamentally is just vocabulary sharing. Um, and early on, early on in the development of process, I did, I made a project called Holocene, which is a big aquarium and I had to, like, work with experimental plumbers and, like, and hydraulic engineers especially when you're a performer. Um, and, and I had to, it's very healthy in America. Um, no, but I had to, uh, yeah, it's like, a whole different country, right? Like they go across the border and try to figure out how to communicate your idea. Not only are they not different kinds of artists, actually most of them, many of them are not artists at all. They are just people who have a particular specialty who are creative. And so usually I start by talking to the community and say, I really want to make a lot of water up and down. Who can I talk to? And people will just start passing me off to other people and eventually the same name will come up several times. Like there's like this one crazy person and just like make water sheet really high in the air and then pour up. You don't even have to pour it up. And then, because they have a reputation, and then that's the first thing that gets excited because if you are like a really advanced computer programmer or you are a really advanced hydraulic engineer, we're not paying at that scale. So you've got to do it because you want to bend culture. You want to bend your thing. You want to, you know that what your specialty is could be turned on and flipped and become innovative in a different way because whatever the prescriptions, the landscape that you work in, like I worked with a guy who was like part, he was in charge of like Washington, DC's municipal water system for a lot, for like two years. And he was really bored by that. And so, you know, it's like you kind of find out, that's how you start the conversation. And then I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. So then he had to say like, and he didn't know what I, I didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't know what I was talking about. So we just talked about the most general terms in exchange vocabulary. And that's how every collaboration goes still. Even with other theater artists. I mean, we're talking about a typewriter. We make experimental theater, but I don't know what he's thinking about. And that's just a great question. Andy, please. I saw ice to memory and I just want to say that the performances were amazing. It was kind of amazing to guys, I'd say. And in a way that the story could hold it out of the technology. To me what's really exciting is when the technology becomes almost invisible. It's part of it. And then in a really profound way. But the story telling has to come first. And I just thought we could be able to talk about it later. That's all I agree with. That's a lot of us. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. No, you can see it from the outside. I mean, it's really nice working with like, early on it was just, I was just an typewriter. Like, I was kind of like, work for hire almost. Like a mercenary, like a mercenary. And then we found out that we kind of like, really worked well together in the room and had some ideas and, I don't know, yeah. So, put that in. I have a lot of great stories from Marianne about working with the process artists, too. I don't know how much you want to thank them. Their architects understood what was going on. There was theater and, you know. Yeah, I'd love to hear it. I mean, you know, one of the, as a lesson to young people, I just want to sort of offer that, like, finding other people who are passionate about things that you don't know anything about and building creative teams out of people who are passionate about whatever the thing they are is an amazing, the successful, generally, strategy for making cool work and having exciting experiences. And I think, you know, in the book, you talk a lot about, like, putting together, you know, from the very outset, very multiple stakeholders across different disciplines, specialties and languages. So, yeah, so I just, so I actually would love to hear about sort of, like, the evolution of that practice. I think, you know, expanding on what the fruit of law is just talking about and in the framework of the Builder's Association. What do you guys do? Thank you. Oh, yeah. Okay, and he's got to go, right? Is this a show that is very new? No. No, it's across the internet. Yeah, we're going to start telling me something. I don't know. I don't know. There's the martinsson across the building. Oh, it's not going to be until, it's not gonna be until... It's not going to be until one. You'll have time. Yeah, you'll have time. We're doing a hard stop here. They just gotta go get in to classroom and warm up. Do as vocal. I'm glad to see you. Thank you, thank you. I'm just going to just call it a day. So, yeah. So, asking these people to rotate up, I'm just going to ask some people in the audience who are in this company to come up because we've been great here with them and say, So ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, Bo, you go to Bo Angelo. I'm going to show you. I do think that, I mean, part of it was, the prologue in the book is called, Gazzlet is a Theater, and that's a question that we were asked a lot at the beginning, was, which, and it's kind of interesting that we're basically having almost the same conversation 25 minutes later or whatever, but that notion that you would get a lot of people in the room who have no interest in or access to the theater and then create something that we were interested in was really central to the early process. And in terms of just like accidental technology, there was one really interesting moment where we ended up at IBM, when they still had a place in Westchester, visiting some guy who was showing us some software and then I happened to look over the shoulder of the person sitting next to him and he was working on this thing that was incredible. It was this kind of like ghosting mechanism that turned out they were using security cameras. But the minute that I saw that, it was like, who are you? And you come down and of course he had no idea what experimental theater was or who, you know, why, but it was really, that's the moment when you, you see something that you can engage with and then that's how you get to the next level. Well, it's good actually that Shannon promoted you on it. Oh, just that expertise is sexy. You know, it's really easy to get a competence crush on somebody who really knows what they're doing, even though you don't understand what they're doing. That's, I mean, I mean, just even some concrete examples of what Maryanne was talking about before you, that to have Ben Rubin, a sound artist who makes listening posts be your whatever he is, you know, in terms of a sound designer, or to have an architect do your set, or to have Kiki Smith making what she calls Sculpture for Theater, you know, that these were sort of cross art moments where it's kind of like your phone form is, I guess, it's like getting defamiliarized by somebody else's and made into a different thing, you know, and that just happens over and over. I think more than I realized before I started to work on this material, how much that is, that's cross art collaboration. And I think sometimes thinking about it as a cross art collaboration brings up a different sensibility than a cross media. There's something about the word intermedia that is now kind of, I don't know, it's almost homogenizing now. But if we also remember like sculpture and architecture and cinema, and the contours of those forms, and then think about the mash-up, I don't know, it makes it clear to me. Since you're here, I want to pick up on some of the large set and, because you said, well, these other people that aren't artists. And I think it's really interesting, you know, Shannon, Shannon is a very important and well-recognized scholar. And she's a robot, and it talks a lot about these, you know, the expanded art, like what expanded art practices are, and it feels like one of the things that I'm hearing across is that part of the changing nature of the artists in the theatrical thing, but in general, it's about the person, and what he just describes, like actually finding the interesting thing and the other interesting things, and putting them together to tell the most interesting thing, no matter what platform or discipline you're working in. As opposed to like, I have this important story to tell about this. And, you know, this talks, you know, so I'm just wondering if you want to talk a little bit about, I'm like, if you don't mind, or if you want, well, I was going to say like, but we've got large for a few minutes, so if you want to talk about that, Shannon, if you want to talk about that. Well, well, I don't really know what to say. I'm not sure. I feel like, I feel like there's no rule to that, actually. Sometimes it starts with like an empty piece of technology that makes me feel a certain way. Sometimes it's, you know, sometimes it's like my dad, or to go to conversations about my dad. Sometimes it's about like just like I'm driving and I have like a 30 second visual that I can't get out of my head for two months. And then I realize, okay, well, I have to like pay attention to this now, and it becomes a remarkable work. So, and the way that I actually pursue and grow those teams doesn't even have a pattern. The only pattern is that live performance is at the center of a constellation of, hard works that all will respond to whatever the idea might be. So, I'm always compelled to make something live with an audience, but I'm also compelled to make installations and video pieces and other kinds of media. And like, I think that set in the typewriter is your memory. I would like to make that evolve into a piece in an installation context that viewers can just use and also take away like, use a score, like typing a letter is actually a score. As a piece that relates to this, but it's sort of born from it and exists in a different medium. And the one thing I just want to say like, Kim, I should compliment you and the actors, I think they're really good too. And I, but there's this thing about story time that keeps coming up. And like, the only way that I can like make sense to me ultimately is thinking of technology as text rather than texture. And when I see technology complementing performance as texture, it makes me a little queasy. And when it functions as text, just like the language, just like that. When there's just no distinction as Andrew was saying. Whatever that ineffable blending is, which is totally insatiable and yes, blends forms in cinema, architecture, and sculpture in ways that I'm not even capable of articulating. I mean, the reason I wrote this piece is not because I want to be a writer. The reason I wrote this piece is that I just don't know how to communicate. What these impulses are to a writer. I'm more successful at communicating with lighting designers, video designers, but I don't know how to communicate in the works. The words part, I don't know how to actually, that's like the hardest for me. And that's theoretically what the story is, right? But actually the arc of the typewriter and the sculpture is one of the stories. The arc of like a music sample in that piece. There's five music samples that play. The arc of that is like one of the stories. And the actor and the human bodies and the voices are one of the stories. Those are all just moving in parallel. That's interesting to think about how you do, I wanted to ask you, you would be interested in using the same sort of assembly as our word today and putting it in a different type of space, like in a gallery space or installation space, or it's something that's open all day that people would come in and out of. Absolutely, yeah. So that would require a different apparatus for presenting it in different kind of curatorial collaboration, different staff. Absolutely. Yeah, I just, I'm sorry. Please. Okay, wrap them up, wrap them up. I'm not wrapping up, I'm just gonna say that. I did want to say just briefly about text because I think that that's a huge component of everything we've spoken about and sort of the resistance to playwrights and playwriting because certainly when, you know, I still think there's a conventional structure where everyone is there to serve the writer, that the writing, the text is what we begin with. But, you know, in a completely visual society, it's like, show it, don't say it. And I think that the text is like the last resort in terms of actually trying to get a structure together. But one of the chapters, and Rich, I think early on we were talking about one of the chapters being about all the writers that we worked with and fired. Yeah. Because it's really a long road. And there's a variety of contrasts. And, you know, they ended up being like, the writer understands that their work is gonna be completely torn apart and that they're willing to let us use any part of it, but not all of it, any whatever order. And I think that that was like sort of a, you know, a desperate leap towards what really is now, second nature now, which is that the text is one element of, you know, an equal element in the score. To two, I think we need to lose that again. Everybody, why don't you ask one more question? Like, on the one hand I hear that a lot, I hear you that a lot of traditional playwriting is resistant to that, but certainly, like, you know, going back to Jean-Claude Van Etali and probably before that, you're in your room with the making who are serving us as text-based artists in response in real time to the process of what's happening. Absolutely. And, you know, whether it's El Frida Yellenek or Charles Mead, or, you know, there are people who are rigorous text-based artists and I think the practice of writing with text and working with text actually lends itself through a very rigorous compositional model. So I'm just gonna push back a little, like I think that I'm curious to dig back into the book and look at that a little bit more, but I do wonder, like, what would it be like to enter into practice with someone who has a really rigorous, you know, like go work with El Frida Yellenek? Right. Yeah. What would that be like? It's terrifying. If you don't know, she's an Austrian feminist radical feminist playwright who writes these incredibly dense texts with like no character names, no stage directs, she just puts it out there and says, do something about it. And the results are wildly variable. There's always a writer involved and often people who are not in playwrights. I guess that's my point. Like, with El Ledeen, the person who ended up writing was the senior editor of Wired Nights. And the continuous city ended up being a filmmaker who wrote the script. But I think that that is central to the idea is that they wanna be in the room, that they wanna be one of the people in the room, so that the material is all, there's no hierarchy in terms of what's coming first. So. Well, there's a hierarchy because you're the decider. Yeah, I'm the decider. I'm the decider. I'm the decider. I'm the decider. I'm the decider. I'm the trooper. I'm the trooper. Interesting. I'm the decider. I'm the decider. I'm the decider. No, when the text, like, well, that's the technology wave. Yeah, I mean, it is a, one must be open. And, you know, let it go, right? Like, like, you know, they say in Frozen, like, you know. It's, it's gotta, you know, it's not, it can't be precious. And, and, you know, Carter, not, you know, playwrights and how playwrights organize themselves, ourselves, and I'm also a playwright, is that, you know, we make a product that is owned, right? That is the power of the playwright. So this system goes against that because it is, it's, you know, the rising proletariat, proletariat, collectivist model. We are all making it together. So. What's the air experience specifically in Zilders or just your philosophy of large in the air? Oh, I guess it is, I mean, I've had many, many, many collaborative experiences in my career. I'll use that word. So, yeah, I guess I do gravitate toward that. And I enjoy it tremendously. It's also, you know, but just like any collaborator in the room, you know, like our, as Mary Ann always says, just kill your darlings, you know, we must, there are so many darlings and so many of them, the bodies pile up. So, yeah, to distill down, it's complicated, but yeah. I think it seems, it seems really important in terms of your really primary question that this company has devolved a practice that's collaborative and that doesn't mean, it doesn't mean it's the only way to do it. It still isn't sort of saying everybody should be like you, you know? And so, I mean, I don't, she's not here, but a really, really informal student of mine who's also a playwright, Julia Draco, back here in New York now, is about to come out with a book that relates to this question of what is the role, what is the playwright in the era of post-traumatic theater? And really mining the fact that some types of playwrights are making post-traumatic, that's a reductive paraphrase, but some who are really, who are setting out to make this dispersed text, you know? But not waiting to be dispersed by others, you know? And, you know, that's a different way to go. Yeah, I think it's really insane, I think maybe we could talk about it more in the next year. No, because there are, there's a lot of, you know, I mean, I think you could look at, yeah, and so. First thing, I mean, having like trashed text, I do, I just wanna point out that our last three shows were Susan Sondack's journals, Steinbeck's Graves of Wrath, and The Wizard of Oz, all of which are, you know, pre-constructed, very text-based, heavy text materials, so I invoke everything I just said. Well, you know, I just wanna, because we all often have young theater practitioners and things, I wanna just sort of pick up on the idea of collaboration. And one of the things that, you know, is the sort of difference between collaboration and consensus. And sort of this idea of like traditional hierarchies, like, bring in the light inside, because they know how to be lights. And you may not, you may listen to their thought about where to put somebody or what to say, but. So I'm just curious, like, over the course of the company, how have you, how have you, what is the nature of your collaborative practice, and how does that sort of evolve over the years? I'm gonna ask a collaborator to come, Phil is empty chair, David Pence, can you come up here? So this is another round of applause for you, for which one member of the company. So, um, wow, I have been so excited, I really am not gonna answer that question. One of you collaborators, please get on. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So, consensus and collaboration. Oh, we don't have consensus, I mean, that, no, no. No, that don't, I mean, occasionally, but really it's a sketching practice, as Miriam says. So many iterations, right? Everyone is in the room from the beginning, please forgive me if I'm repeating anything that's already been said. Everyone's in the room from the beginning, that means everyone, that means all the designers as well. All the technicians, the actors, the writer, the decider. And, you know, okay, now we're gonna try, there's this seat, we say, okay, there's this scene where Dorothy arrives in Oz. So, get going, people, get going, and then there's yelling and screaming, and then, you know, something, we bring something to the stage, a sketch, and adjust from there. I mean, agreed, David? I would agree. Go ahead. I would say that it's E, I find, as a performance, it's easier to be fixed. I tend to have ideas of my own. Occasionally, I'll have ideas. But I was thinking of you talking, Moe, like I am, with one exception, I have only worked with the Builders Association as a performer and a member of the writer. The one sort of half exception is that, in our very first piece, there was an elaborate, improvised narrative that played out over the course of Master Builder that I was half of. So I was sort of making that text and also performing it. But usually, I'm just performing the text. But you have this interesting, you know, in the long rehearsal process, you are both performer and writer at the same time, which must be. It's complicated, but we have James Gibbs, who's the drum turd of the company, and not here right now, but a co-writer on many of the pieces. And so, he's out there, and you have to have consensus with yourself. Really though. Like, do you find yourself kind of warring in identity? Completely, completely, completely. And I mean, when I'm standing here, I defer to Marianne and the people out there to guide what is happening here, because I can't really tell inside the machine. I have no idea what's going on. Because I'm playing to a little camera like this, and I'm talking to someone that's not in front of me, and it's not like, we're in a room, and they're sitting on furniture, and we're talking to each other, so I can't, yeah, I can't do this. But I am, you know, edit, in my head, I'm like, okay, that's a terrible sentence, you know, like, while it's coming out of my mouth. And so, yes, yes, of course. So we have a, because of shows, we have a hard stop at once. I want to take these last seven or eight minutes because we have some questions, Q&A. Yeah. I was interested in, like, what are the stakes of drama, church, and maybe I should talk to you on about the playwright, and I was interested to hear more about what the idea of church is, and then sort of what, why is it important to have drama, church, like what is it that drama, church, sort of provide in this? It's operating systems, because in a sense, each show becomes a system, that's the category in the book that I hope, Shannon might talk about in a little bit. But in a sense, when you sketch the show, you create an operating system for that show. And often the dramaturge is there just to keep reminding people of what the system is. I mean, it's not, you know, it's nagging as much as anything else. But I also think that when you think about OS as an manuscript, it's like another thing about, another way this resembles an operating system is that you make the show and you put it out, and it's like, it has so many bugs in it. And the first time it goes out, people are like, what was that? And that doesn't work, and this is crashing it. But eventually, you know, as you roll it out, you work out the bugs, and ultimately it becomes a kind of a system that supports the show, and it's built into the show, and becomes part of the company, and what do you want? And at the same time, I think that this, that in terms of builders and other practices like it, this, there are others, this is still using the traditional skills of a dramaturg as well, in that all of these pieces, almost all of them required incredible amounts of historical research that, you know, that say James Gibbs might be a dramaturg, but lots of people are working on a lot of primary material, excavating different data systems, reading like, you know, 20 books on subjects on the subject at hand, arranging for interviews with call center operators. I mean, that there is a real research practice behind every show that I would still think of as a dramaturgical practice, in whatever sense, you know, someone might traditionally think about it as well. Questions, more questions, please. Well, I'm gonna pick up on that dramaturg if you can move it and ask it. And to the operators, so kind of coming up, because it's a very different actual model of what I'm thinking is that it's an iterative dramaturg, and I thought that, you know, and that I mean, you, when, some people may not remember when Microsoft first launched like Windows 95, and it had bugs, and people were furious, because in the mid-90s, the notion of launching an unfinished product was radical. The idea that something wouldn't be perfect and done when you bring it to market was radical, and people freaked out. Now we're very acculturated to being part of the development process of products, whether, you know, and getting upgrades and stuff like that. So, I don't know, I just feel like it's, like you're proposing a different model of dramaturg, where it's both the historical research, but it's also the sense of like an involving like, code checker. Right, exactly, that's right, yeah, yeah. I guess that was a question. In terms of production history, in terms of like doing a piece over and over again, and how it goes out to different places, and how it is informed, or is informed or is informed by the operating system again. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's still a moment whether or not the audience will have tolerance to see an iteration, so, this is just an iteration. Did you bother to take it? No, how much is your paper? Versus how much, you know, how much we need to be clear that this is the iteration you want to show at that particular moment. But it is also that building a show has required collaboration with a lot of different supportive companies at different points that usually require, thankfully, a presentation or workshop, some sort that allows you to try some iterations and then get to both of them. But, you know, it's whether, I think whether or not the profession really, and audiences really have the tolerance for this process is not entirely clear. Well, we'll have to, and everyone can talk to Kim about that afterwards, because they have the whole hard, here, artist residency program where they offer support over two years, and they do a lot of showing of process, and so, we are at, pretty much, oh, one of the people here. I'll just add, as the last thing is, that I just got the book from Amazon that comes on the street, and it is so stunning, the work of art. It's so grateful to have it. There's 116 images. It's incredible. So, by the book, thank you, Marianne, Shannon, Moe, David, and Sarah.