 Welcome everybody back to the Segal talks here at the Graduate Center CUNY, the City University of New York in Manhattan. It's a start of another week of uncertainty and big discussions of opening and closing of rising unemployment numbers. We haven't seen since the Great Depression over 30 or 33 million countries in Europe. They are carefully opening schools and businesses and we see cases coming back. So we look out of our windows for weeks now whereas the reality outside and inside we have the uncertainty of our own existence and all these weeks, if you have been listening before, we have been talking to theater artists from all around the globe, now over 30 artists from India, Pakistan, Egypt, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, everywhere. And today we are back to one of the significant countries in Africa, South Africa, that has been so much of the mind of everybody who was on the side of social justice of progressive justice and the site of life. And we feel that theater artists always have been on that right side. And especially if you look at South Africa, we had the Great Basil Jones with us from the handspring. They were on the right side and if people would have listened to them earlier, the country would have saved a lot of trouble. And in South Africa is a theater that's also as significant and well known as the Bouff d'Inaud or the Chaubeuner Berlin. They got an ensemble of the public theater, Lincoln Center, Namib Piccolo, Milano and so many others. There is the Great Market Theater. And with us is Ismail Mohammed, who is running it, who is a director of it, who has done many, many festivals. He is a part of the landscape of theater in Africa, especially of course in South Africa. And it's a time where we feel very strongly that we should listen to what theater artists have to say, what they are thinking about and to take it really serious. As theater artists, if you're listening in as student or practitioners or your right or your teacher, this is of significance, but also for us, all of us will go to theater who interested in the arts who look to theater to create meaning for life where we come from, where we are, where we are going to. And of course this is a moment of a global crisis, of a real, real crisis, unprecedented. Mankind has been shut down and pushed on a big break in a car that seems to flip over and steering of the road. We don't know what will happen and how long this will be going on, will be on top of the mountain or just starting or we are going down already, nobody knows. So Ismail, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much Frank and thank you to everyone who's watching and thank you mostly for the world that stood with South Africa when we needed the world to stand with us during our fight for social justice and fight against apartheid and fight for a new democracy. So thank you very much. A lot of it was done through the arts, through the artistic community. Thank you. Where are you right now and what time is it? It's now just past six in the evening. I'm in my home in Johannesburg. We're all under lockdown conditions. South Africa has five levels in terms of the lockdown. So we've just come out of level five, which has been the most stringent lockdown. And we're now at level four, which means that there are certain rigid conditions still attached to the lockdown. All our theaters still remain closed. But we also in the next hour we're going to go into a curfew time, where there may be no movement out of doors between eight o'clock to five in the six o'clock the next morning. So everything comes to a complete standstill, despite the fact that we may have some movement and limited number of companies operating during the daytime businesses, but theaters all remain closed. For how long have you been in lockdown in Johannesburg? We've, the country has been in lockdowns from the end of March. So around the 26th of March we went into lockdown. We've been at that level for at least initially it was supposed to be for three weeks and then extended for two further weeks. And as from the beginning of May, we've been at level four, which means that some corporate companies can open under very rigid conditions. There's limited number of people at work. Everyone has to wear a face mask. Once they leave their home, they have to be gazetted by government as essential workers in order to be able to work. So yeah, we think we probably would be in the state for quite some time. The numbers in South Africa only began to be much later than it did in Europe and other parts of the world. And I think the initial response from our government to close down and shut down immediately so that hospitals could prepare the medical facilities and so forth so that we would be able to flatten the curve much faster than most other countries across the globe. You know the initial responses over the first few weeks was met with, I think a great deal of support throughout the country. The last two weeks has been a little strenuous with some people resisting it, but also there are other social problems attached to it in that we, we still a country with so many divides social divides that we've inherited from apartheid So the fact that over the last 10 years in particular we've had were political leadership and you know high levels of corruption in government which meant that we still live with communities that are socially disnerved communities that have communities that don't. So while it's easy in suburbs that such the one that I live in to be able to lock down and to stay in your home. It's incredibly difficult in in the informal settlements and in townships where people live 12 people to a one room shack. How do you socially distance in that place. If people have such poor conditions and high levels of unemployment. You know they dependent on food parcels and if those food parcels from state and not delivered efficiently or adequately you're bound to have people protesting you're bound to have people wanting to go out break the rules to go and look for food for their families and those are issues that the last two weeks of the lockdown has brought to the fall. And I think the very first two days of the lockdown has reawakened a consciousness in our country of just how much we still need to do in order to bring about quality and social justice in our country. How does it materialize how do you how does the country know we have to do a lot so we are not there yet. Is it discussions between people on television or in family how I think at the present moment it's social media that has raised the consciousness of people to a large extent. So we got down to lockdown, people began to depend on WhatsApp groups on Facebook to a large extent on Twitter for information. You know print media has suffered to a large extent and we've also just seen in the last week where at least one major publishing house as shut down a number of its publications. To a large extent people are depending on online information and there is a risk to that as well because you also get lots of fake news does take some level of discerning as to how you draw the information you want. But I think what is really exciting is that at this particular point. The country is really engaged, not just with the scare about the pandemic, but the reality of the country that we live in the failures of our government in some extent successes that we have achieved as a country, and how we all need to do to work together that looking after wearing a mask is not just looking after yourself. It's also looking after the other person that you interact and engage with. You live in Johannesburg when you have you been out last time tell us when you go out of your house, what do you see. Well, I've been out of my house about a week ago but that was largely to go out for shopping for essentials that I needed it was about an hour out of the house. And it really was quite strange because the, the area which I live in, in, which is Rose Bank in my rose in Johannesburg is quite a busy area. I've got to traverse or cross over a very busy street. The, the, the fast rail track is about five minutes walk from my house that's all deserted, the streets are deserted. We're out in the mornings between six and 69 o'clock for recreational walks of a jogging but anything after that, everything becomes very very quiet. The shopping malls are quiet, the streets are deserted. You can you can hear an eerie silence wherever you go. That's such a, such a big, big, big change of what we perceive as a reality and what we thought is our way of life isn't and it's changed so fast. How do you feel? How do you feel as an, as a, as a person, as Ismael, how, what, how, what are you thinking about? Well, I think, you know, working in a social in a theater space means that you're constantly in the presence of people. We work in a space where we touch people where we connect with people, both physically and emotionally and intellectually, and not being able to be in the space with anyone else. You can find in your room and though you're able to engage with people electronically, telephonically by WhatsApp, by Zoom meetings through other forms of technology, what we really do is the human touch, the human context. And I think, you know, in South Africa, particularly where the philosophy of Ubuntu, the caring for the other. Ubuntu, say again? Ubuntu. Ubuntu. Ubuntu, which is about the basic humanity that we all have of being able to share, not just our ideas, but also our space with other people is somewhat compromised by this lockdown. So, you know, it does take a serious impact on the way of our, we live, but, but definitely on our mindsets, it does impact on you emotionally. It does drain you in, you know, just knowing that you don't have the real physical context that defines you as a human being. Yeah. So how do you spend your day? Well, I am working from home. The management team of the Market Theatres, all working from home, you know, by emails, by telephone calls and so forth. So a significant part of my day, at least the morning part is about doing work for the Market Theatre Foundation. We have time in the afternoons in dialogue with artists and, you know, cultural workers from other parts of the globe, engaging in a similar dialogue as the one that you and I are having today. And I think for me that is particularly important because as a country that came out of international isolation in 1992, just before we got into a new democracy. We were actually working against South Africa, so we had really, while we had allies that fought against apartheid, culturally we were isolated. And in post-94, we established a large number of international contexts, collaborations, partnerships, exchanges. And I'm particularly interested in the power of the arts to unite us as a world community. So for me, at this particular time where physical exchanges between artists and arts administrators is not possible to take place. I think it's crucially important that as an artistic community across the globe that we still engage with each other because we don't know for how long we are going to be separated physically. The engagement that we have with each other in this way means that we can still share ideas, we can still continue to address the issues of the globe through the arts in different dynamic ways. And that we support each other through this pandemic, and that when we are out of this pandemic, we're not starting the process of discovery, we are at least holding hands, if not physically, metaphorically we are. You say you're in contact with artists and cultural workers in South Africa, how is the mood? What's on people's mind? Well I think, you know, the first part of the lockdown left people despondent in the arts sector, it was a loss of jobs, it was a loss of the sacred space in which you work in, in which you assemble the theaters. And that it's not just about losing contact with each other as artists, it's losing contact with audiences and the inability to be able to dialogue with our audiences in the way that we do through storytelling, through the creation of our work, through absorbing the atmosphere and the emotions of our audiences in our theaters. But I think, you know, as we moved into the second week, and particularly in South Africa where economics plays a very important part in the lives of artists, because whilst theaters may be supported by the state, that support is largely for infrastructure and for operations. It does not support artistic content and it does not support artists. So you mean you have to raise money for artists through ticket sales or? Yes, through ticket sales, through sponsorship, through foundations, through public philanthropy, we raise money for programs. So, you know, given the fact that artists don't have secure jobs, means that that the levels of despondency intensified, but there's also a desperation with some artists to want to do some things online. So, hoping that in some way or the other they will be able to monetize what they're doing, knowing full well that what they're doing is not theater. It's online work, it's partly film, it may be a hybrid genre of work that we're beginning to invent at this particular time as a mode for survival, so that we're able to at least earn some kind of money as artists. So through the theater foundation, we did commission artists in the initial phases to be able to do some kind of work, you know, whether that was putting on pieces of monologues on television, on online platforms. But that was in the first 10 days of the lockdown where, you know, everyone needed to reconfigure what we were doing, but we full well knew that that will never ever take the place of live theater. And what we've encouraged over the last four to five weeks is funding artists to take part in these kind of discussions with fellow artists from across the country, and also the globe. So wonderful collaboration with with artists in Sweden, facilitated through ourselves and the embassy of Sweden and a community based organization called here my voice in South Africa, where we've had a weekly series of dialogues between artists with some performances and artists in there. And that that's created a great sense of unity amongst the community, but also one of support for them to be able to feed each of each other, both in terms of inspiration, but just emotionally. And now in South Africa where we also grappling with the fact that although the government has announced relief efforts for sectors that are affected by the lockdown economic sectors. The arts community has been waiting for almost six to seven weeks for some sort of relief from government. And that's taken a long, long while it's still in process it's not forthcoming as fast as artists thought it would be forthcoming. We have to create levels of dissolution and with the state, and particularly with, to some extent, the, the ministry of arts and culture. You know, I think if, if one talks of the concept of relief, then one has to work with a sense of emergency. If it takes six to seven weeks to begin to respond to relief calls, then I think one doesn't understand the, the concept of emergency, but now that this one understand the concept of it. I think also in New York and up to eight, nine, 10 months, everything has been canceled, artists are out of work. And musicians also, but so many people who are used to work on, on, on freelance on so many productions also enjoyed that kind of life that kind of is all the complications, but it's something very vibrant about it. And this has come to a full stop and of course there's no health insurance. I don't know is there health insurance for artists in South Africa. No, unfortunately not. You know, the arts is not very, very regulated in South Africa so there's very little legislation to support artistic communities. There are hardly strong unions in the greater sector. So these are all problems that add to the challenges. You know, we also deal with the fact that we, when we came out of apartheid, we didn't have a very structured and effective ministry of arts and culture that service the entire country and all its populations one needed to be structured. We also had fundamental flaws with the way that government has deployed ministers to that particular department. We know for a fact that in the six administration that we have had so far that very often ministers that have been deployed to the Department of Arts and Culture. We had no passion, no understanding real understanding of the creative sector. And hence we've had lots and lots of problems with being able to devise policies that aid and support the creative economy and the artists in particular. There was a devastating effect that apartheid had during apartheid but also of course in the long term what we still suffer from most probably also for four decades. Laurent Clavel from the French Cultural Service in New York also said you have to talk to Ismael Muhammad and then of course you are on our list. Also, but he said, you know, about your work tell us why is the market theater special in Johannesburg. What, what makes it different and is something changing at the moment is thinking what you do something is the needle moving. Yeah, before the market theater foundation was was started as an independent theater in 1976, just two days after the historic suitor uprising that took place in June 16 1976 when the government the national government open gunfire on students in the townships that were protesting against the African's medium language, African's language being the medium of education in the country but since it was a greater resistance against apartheid driven by young people. And two days after that historic event, the market theater opened as a non racial theater in what was formerly an Indian fruit and vegetable market. The heart of Johannesburg. Now, at multiple levels that is very significant for me, particularly because my grandfather was a fruit and vegetable trader. My father was a regular traveler from forces which is miles and miles and miles away from Johannesburg to come to Johannesburg to to to transport fruit and vegetable take it back into the old town of forces which is miles and miles away. When I come back, you know, so many decades later in that very same building, not as the fruit and vegetable trader that my grandfather my father, but as the CEO of this particular institution where we no longer trade in fruit and vegetables but we trade in creativity we trade in ideas, we trade in language, we trade in debate, we trade in expression. But, but given that the market here when it opened at the time in 1976, the, there were four state institutions in South Africa one in the city of Cape Town, one in not just in Pretoria, which the diplomatic city, one in Durban and one in the free state which is largely Africans, and those theaters were only open to white people. So black people had no access to formal theaters that was supported by the state in any particular way, despite that there was a culture of theater that prevailed in in in black communities. In person, I was in a much more complex situation, even though I'm a fifth generation, South African, you know, my forefathers were from India, I'm fifth generation. And in the segregated communities that we lived in in South Africa, as an Indian person, I had no arts education in school which was what happened with the majority of black people in South Africa. I just suffered a further disadvantage in the sense that I grew up in what was a traditional Indian and a traditional Muslim community, where theater music dance was not encouraged culturally. And so I became exposed to the arts quite later in my life and I think it was in my final year of schooling of high schooling when Sueto had literally gone up in flames and that was in 1976, during the Sueto uprising, and we lived on the opposite of the railway track to Sueto, and we could see the flames going up, we could see the police going up there, that that in some way awakened a consciousness. But in the 80s, when when the country went through an enormous amount of repression and censorship. It was through the arts, through our theater, through our music, through our dance, that we informed our communities about what was happening in our country. Tell us a bit about it, what did you see, what did you do, what did you see first was inspired you and what did you feel, and what work that helped to change it. Looking to America where we also feel things have to change they cannot stay the way they are and they will not, but they should be because of what world can our play in theater, what did what worked. Well, I think for us as a community that was on the outside of the apartheid things. We found community through expression that what our artists were presenting on stage was our fears was our hopes. They were telling our stories. They were telling the dreams of what a free South Africa could be. And I think with that, that resonated so very, very strongly amongst us. And it's in that time that some of the most wonderful plays, such as Wasa Albert, some of Ethel Fugard's work, which, which speaks to that particular period of pain of dehumanization really connected South Africa with the world, and our stories beyond the world, but in some ways also allowing people to come into our theaters to be able to find information to find healing and post 1994. You know, whilst our theater itself the market theater attained a reputation as the home of protest theater South African protest theater because of the work that we did from 1976 right up to 1994. So suddenly Nelson Mandela arrived and gave us this whole new country. The, the, the word reconciliation was on every single person's lips in South Africa. It was about reaching out it was about forgiveness. How do you suddenly come out of your space where of protest to suddenly move into a theater space, and talk reconciliation, talk healing talk unity talk into in some way, but we managed to be able to do this as theater as theater workers. We found purpose in being able to tell new stories. We discovered we created those stories. Suddenly the world opened to us. The international cultural boy could fell the way we were able to engage with artists from across the globe that were connecting with South Africa and South Africa connecting with them. But, but you know we didn't get stuck in that romanticization of reconciliation we dealt with some of the difficult questions of, you know, just what do you need as a society to reconcile with what is it that you're going to reconcile with the truth and Reconciliation Commission that was a political platform really was theater in itself as well. And a lot of what was presented in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission also found its way into our theaters with with artists telling those same stories. I think we found a great deal of healing through that. Then we got into the, the period of HIV and AIDS. And we, we found that we feel it to a large extent played a vital role in addressing the issues of HIV AIDS and in terms of creating awareness in terms of creating support and healing, but also in terms of creating protest, because we do know that our president that time table and Becky wasn't very much an AIDS denialist in United. Yes, United. Yes. So, you know, theater with, I think in that particular period theater once again found its political voice of protest. And that was a wonderful shift to come suddenly from Mandela's posted, you know, a period of, of reconciliation healing loving reaching out unity to suddenly find we protesting. And this time we were not protesting against each other we're not protesting about a race we were protesting around a state around a president that was not sensitive to the HIV AIDS issues. We've since then dealt with issues of climate. We've dealt with issues of class, we've dealt with issues of identity in different ways. And I think particularly over the last double fears. We've seen young people in particular dealing with issues of decolonization of ideas decolonization of identity and so forth. So, we've, we've, we've, we've also come to this particular period of the particularly over the last 10 years during President zoom as rain where we knew, given his own reputation as a lander, the gender violence and gender insensitivity. And so, became so high and rife in our country that once again artists needed to make their voices heard, whether that was the song through music, the poetry to dance to speak out against gender violence to speak about, you know, equality amongst gender to address the body politics and surface sexuality gender, all the related political issues associated with that. And I think we've suddenly when when the, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit us, you know, what do we do, we don't go into silence as artists. We're seeing artists writing poetry. If a novel of short story, I mean, an anthology of short stories was compiled within the first two weeks and published in the third week. We're seeing artists constantly configuring this reconfiguring the space and asking, how are we going to talk about the issues related with this particular pandemic, not just, you know, what it means for our economy and so forth. But what does it mean for us personally. And I think that in the time that when we have to get back into our theaters, we are going to have lots and lots of stories to tell stories about isolation. We've told stories of isolation in the past, we told stories of Ruth first, we've told stories of Jeremy Cronin of Nelson Mandela of all the people that were in detention under apartheid. This time round, it's not just the leaders that are in detention or in isolation, but it's every single one of us. How do we use this opportunity for that kind of reflection for that kind of deeper delving into our inner humanity. How do we cope with isolation. And I think in the time that we're going to come back into theaters. For me it's not going to be just about the pandemic is open as as ended. It's not just the instruction to reopen and bring back your audiences. I think the first, at least the month, immediately after the lockdown period is going to be a time for us as theater workers to deal with ourselves to engage with each other. How do we deal with a colleague who may have lost a family member. How do you deal with an actor who's lost a lover in this pandemic. We can have to support each other we can have to deal with our emotions, because in the in the telling of our stories to our audiences, we need to be comfortable carriers of our own emotions. How do you deal with isolation. How do you do that. You said you haven't been out for a week and maybe goes once a week so how do you do it yourself. Well, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I live in a very networked community that even though I'm not seeing people physically, I'm engaging with people telephonically through Facebook through other forms of communication. And we is a way of remaining connected with people, but I also have made sure that in this particular period of the lockdown that I do find myself a therapist. Somebody that I at least once a week can talk to, because it's an I don't just carry my own emotions. I carry the emotions and the fears and the, and the concerns of anti institution, the people in it. But also, their families because they are realities of families wondering if this is to be extended are people going to lose their jobs. You know, we're talking about coming back into our theaters, where government last week issued a gazette to legislate state funded theaters to open their stages for artists who want to come and do recordings for online work. There are still questions to be asked about that. You know, if you're going to bring artists in that space to do online work. One is we asked the constant questions of, you know, how are we faking theater, and knowing that that is really not what we really are now theater spaces, but we're making it happen how we coming to terms with what is our deeper understanding of the arts and what we're doing as just to survive. But there are real issues of constant fear people walking in, who's been tested who's not been tested. What happens if somebody arrives at a rehearsal, and they suddenly don't have the temperature, the right temperatures to be allowed into the space. You know, to disrupt your space. You know, I think for me it's it's it's grappling with all of those logistical questions as the CEO of our institution. Bottom line is that the welfare of every single member of our team or just about 60 staff members risk on my shoulders, and I can simply open the doors tomorrow because government says, we need to open. You know, if you say stop government, you're not using your senses in this particular case. We need to provide support for artists in other ways at this particular time. You know, I can only imagine how that must be feeling to go personally through but also as artists but also responsible for the theater like the market because whatever you do as a symbolic value is a significant one. So it's so important it represents a model for something and we have to be honest we have to look for the truth and presented all its varieties the imagination, or truce of imagination and Oscar Eustis who we also had on who runs the public theater in New York he was for four or five days in the hospital he said one night he spent in the hallways in a Brooklyn hospital looking at the ceiling and saying what's going to happen to him what's going to happen to his theater to his family. 170 people. Yep. And institutions such as ours which is so deeply connected to the issues of social justice. You know, we cannot just not take a position on the current crisis. We cannot just respond as business people in theater. I think, as anyone who is the CEO of the market theater would fail. If they did not balance the business interests with the deeper social interests of our society. And for me, that is crucial to celebrating the legacy of our institution, but it also keeps us anchored to our present time. I think we constantly have to re envision what we can do in our theaters how are we going to survive. You know this could continue for at least the next seven or eight months indications in South Africa that we will only reopen our theater spaces when the country gets to level one, and that could be at least another seven or eight months. But you deal with a creative economy where artists depend extensively on freelance work and all that work is canceled, and artists have absolutely no income. We're dealing with a massive crisis of artists who are going to be struck by poverty whose lives is never ever going to be the same. One, it's going to affect them financially. There may be losses of homes and losses of cars. You know, they may have to take their kids out of private schools and put them into interstate schools. There's, you know, so many other things that you deal with and what do we do to support artists at this particular time. I think there is a need for arts managers, not just in South Africa. There's a need for arts managers in particular to speak about the crisis of poverty that we're going to have in the arts sector, and that how that crisis of poverty is going to affect the artistic community emotionally, and how that will need to be addressed post the pandemic, but how we need to create a space for the dealing of that trauma in our theater spaces. But what we need to do as managers is proactively think about how we're going to re engineer our theaters so that they become financially sustainable for the artists post this particular period. But in this particular period, we need to be active as the voices need to be heard that the state has to do more than what it's doing at the present moment to support a sector that is so vulnerable and fragile. But it's different to any other sector in that we are a sector that is closely rooted to the identity of our nation to the pulse of our nation. It's our poetry, it's our music, it's our voice that shapes the currency of our nation. Yeah, we agree at the Segal Center we often say that access to healthcare access to education and access to the arts are basic human rights. This is why we pay taxes this is why we live in communities together and it has to be organized in a way that's sustainable, but that also supports everybody the healthcare workers, the educators, but also the artists and this is what makes as we now see what life-life is exactly that what we don't have at the moment and so we need to find ways to do it sustainably. Oh, exactly. Exactly. I agree with you on that. Did you find when you moved from apartheid to reconciliation, from reconciliation to the AIDS crisis and then, you know, going on, did you invent new forms of theater? Our motto is a little bit, you know, taken from Brighton said new times need new forms of theater. Did you make inventions? Did something change in those periods? And do you think there will be again something really change? Oh, I think I think the landscape of theater in South Africa has changed significantly from where we were in 1976 to where we are now in 2020. Our theater still remains incredibly vibrant. It does also mean that more people have access to theater, both as artists and as audiences. There are more festivals in our country, you know, where artists can take their work and present their work and so forth. And has changed significantly from what it was, but also the global interaction that we've had with, you know, after the lifting of the book, the international cultural boycott has impacted on our theater. I think there was there was a real curve that we saw in what I would call the kind of business of theater that, you know, in the 80s where theater was incredibly dynamic and powerful. The best South African theater works were created in that particular period of the 80s during the state of emergency, the repressive years of censorship where artists were defined and stood up and we, whether that was in music poetry or whatever, which was original South African work that had a great deal of power. But much of that power speaks to our time now as well. And just the, the, the, the, the first democratic election in 1994, theaters did suffer with box office income, particularly the smaller theaters, because suddenly the cultural boycott ended, and where people had not seen the big big name in Broadway musicals but heard about it through people that had traveled and we've read about the newspapers and so forth. Suddenly, we had an influx of major musical theater in South Africa, all the big name Broadway productions and the big name, and where people previously spend less than, you know, seven to eight dollars or on a theater production, you know we're paying so much more five or six times more to go to the theater to see a big musical production which meant that you could go to the theater for a month because you needed to save all your money to go and see those big musical theater productions. And I think that lasted for a few years, and then people realize that you know those musicals are fun. They're great, they allow escapism, but they really don't connect with us deeply in terms of offering us the kind of inspiration and the challenge that we want. I think something is very significant about South African audiences to the large extent is that they don't want to go to the theater, just to watch a show to be quiet, and to applause at the end, and then to walk out and have dinner. Our audiences want to engage in dialogue. And there's something very unique about audiences in South African theater and particularly where there are significant black audiences, but the audiences are not passive. You can sit through a performance and you could hear a murmur. You could see somebody in the audience respond, whether they would go taking their fingers whether they agree like that, or whether they would say aha, or no, you know, you would hear that in our audiences in theater, which is, which is very, very, very different to the Western experience of theater where everyone sits silent pin drop silence, and you know, you only respond when you prompted by an actor on the stage to respond. It's very different in our theaters. And I think, you know, all of that has in some way shaped the way we make theater. We take our audiences very seriously. We know our audiences want to be challenged we know audiences want to go out of the theater, and they want to engage in a dialogue. And very often that dialogue has happened in the four years of theaters that happened at dinner conversations, but now it also happens on social media. And I think the, the, the experimentation that we're doing in this particular time with of COVID-19, where there's so much online work and particularly even in a dialogue like this here means that when we go back into our theater spaces. It doesn't have to be a case of this or that. We can have a theater production, and we can continue to have the dialogue online for as long as that dialogue can continue and be sustained by, by the needs of community that wants to talk. Next to Richard Shackner who was on our program next to this things that he said every event should be online every theater, even if people pay for it. But he also said at every event, perhaps there should be discussions afterwards every evening, you know, people should sit someone should talk so it's all about community. So, so at the moment you're so you say it's interesting as a reaction you say we bring our artists in dialogue with international artists as in conversations is that that's what you are doing it and you pay the artists for this or Yes, we pay someone in South Africa to pay some to talk to someone in Sweden and artists. Yes, we've paid every artist that is participated in our online programs today. It's not a large fee in South African terms it's 1000 rounds to 2000 rounds that we've paid them, you know, our currency rate exchange rate at the present moment. I don't think about 15 rounds to a dollar or something to that extent. But, but you know, for for artists at this particular time, we find we try to find creative ways of engaging and supporting them. But but more than that, of keeping our audiences connected with us. I'm a firm believer that, you know, if we don't remain connected with our audiences for the next seven months. In the same way as artists who are going to be changed and affected by this crisis, our audiences are also going to be changing affected. You know, if they're finding new hobbies now, they're finding new ways for recreation, they're finding new ways to find information and be stimulated. They may retain those ways, seven months down the line. They may be part of their lives now in the seven month period, we might lose them forever, or we may struggle to bring them back. So for us, it's about, it's about yes, we're paying our artists because we want to support our artists, we're having the dialogue because we believe the dialogue is necessary. But we also believe that it's a powerful way to remain connected with our audiences, who really are the people for whom we make theater. When it talks, we have this artist, whether it's a Miller Rao or the Ostermayer or many other things, it's also perhaps the time to go outside the space for the theater, you know, the breakbox. So to really do the performances, not just on the streets, but also go to whatever factories, halls to have people's homes. Have you done that before? Are you planning this also to say perhaps, as we now talk to each other, we don't need a space, you know, if your government says record the performance, it doesn't even have to be this theater. So theater is about the community. But are you, are you having thoughts of, in case you reopen of say we're going to do this or that, will it be just plays or not, will it be its place? Or will there be forms on, you know, on site specific or off site work as Bertie Fertman says? Yeah, well, one of the most dynamic units within the Market Theater Foundation is the Market Theater Laboratory, which started off 30 years ago as a school, particularly for young black people who could not have access to formal theater education. A vision of the, you know, by the vision of a founding director, Barney Simon and lead actor John Carney, who is now presenting the ambassadors, you know, especially in the Market Theater, who founded the school. But with, you know, over the last 30 years, the school has also evolved, particularly in the last four years with a new director that we've pointed to the school where we've played more the word laboratory. Yes, we, education is core to our business, but laboratory is also core, the process of experimentation, the process of taking risks, the process of going out of the box and doing. So what do you do? How do those productions look? What are the experiments? Well, some of the experiments, at least one, one critically important experiment was for us that took place last year, long before COVID-19 became part of our lexicon. We did a production that was in that took place simultaneously in Sao Paulo, New York, London, and Janisberg with performances interspersed with, you know, online work, digital work, live streamed work. It was a unique production in some ways because, you know, South Africans created, worked with people from Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo worked with people from London and New York and four writers were able to work together to come up with script together, four directors in each city, and then one director mixing and merging live performance with online performance simultaneously and so forth. And so we did a production outside spaces around our theory in the streets at the taxi ranks to be able to do some work. At the taxi ranks? What's that? Oh, yes. Where the taxis are waiting? No. Yes, yes, yes. To be able to create some work for them. We've, we've taken well work into shopping malls and we've presented work in the shopping malls. We've taken work to schools to libraries. And then before COVID-19 and the lockdown, we're in the process of doing a production that was going to tour into various communities and play, take place, not only informal settings and in school halls and theaters, but in quite informal settings as well. And I think there is the need in our institution, although we were founded in what is a historic building at a very historic time and one that we're incredibly proud of. We firmly believe that we don't have to be locked on the three or four stages that make up our theater. The world is our stage. Wherever there's an audience, we have a story to tell, wherever they space, we can perform. But we also work very closely across different mediums. We also run a photography school. So there's been a great deal of storytelling collaboration between our photos workshop students and students in the theater laboratory. They create. And we, you know, we have a center that's right in the heart of Janisberg in what is considered to be one of the most dangerous parts of Janisberg Hillbrough. And yet we have a vibrant art center there that attracts people to engage in dialogue around issues of African identity and Africanism to do drumming to have African cuisine together with performance, you know, to just play around. So for us, theater is not a box. Theater is not a format that's prescribed. Theater is not about prescribed people. It's an open platform with no rules. And it's a place of real experimentation. It's a place where we allow everything about us as human beings to explode beyond the convention. You know, as a young man, when you said you came, you know, from the families of merchants in a way and what did you see and what made you become a work on the field of the arts and theater. What was that exactly what inspired you. Although I began to see some theory in my late teens just close to when I was reaching about 20 as exposed to theater. For the very first time, you know, I began that was political theory because the, the, the black theater workers first of all that to place in Indonesia, which is the Indian suburb in terms of the group areas act where we will relocate to but it was really in my late in four years later when I was a teacher at a school I was a mathematics teacher. And during my, my, my, my tenure as a teacher, I ended up taking students, almost every fortnight to the market theater in Johannesburg. And I loved engaging with my students. One of our leading directors with one state was also the artistic director of the market theater, Malcolm perky produced a place of fire town, which dealt with the destruction of a non racial suburb, the onset of the group areas act in the, the, the part in South Africa, and that human story connected with so many of us, it took place in the fire town, which is the place where I was born. You know, so of course there was a definite connection with that with the story, but that resonated with so many of the young people that I took to the theater because their parents were able to then tell them that story. And that's exactly where I began to get so much more drawn into theater that in my fifth year of teaching at as a mathematics teacher. I took students to the National Arts Festival in grandstand South Africa, which is our leading major festival in South Africa at the time. And on the 10th day of that festival, which last day, one of the students said to me, you know, I may forget everything I've learned in mathematics, science, and geography. But I will not forget what I've seen on stages, what I've learned from audiences, what I've learned at this arts festival. And that for me was deeply profound. And that's the one factor that made me walk back to the school at the beginning of the new term tender my resignation as a mathematics teacher and go full time into theater, because I understood just what the power of theater was for young people and how much young people in our country needed theater to be able to transform our country to be able to transform our lives and to be able to transform everything around us. And I think there are some great threats about that particular decision I've made from leaving mathematics as a school teacher, which I love I enjoy being in a classroom space and I'm grateful that I still have the opportunity from time to time to go into a classroom space to engage with students, but the power of theater is far greater than the power of a formal school classroom. The power of theater and performance demands of us now of artists or so you but in general what, what is different now what, what do you think is now of real importance. Well, I think as artists, you know, our audiences are exposed to so much more they're exposed to so much more technology they're exposed to so much more opportunities. So as artists, we need to be constantly evolving as well. We learned, we need to be learning new technical skills. We need to be finding new ways of telling stories and creating those stories. We need to be reservoirs of information, but we also need to find ways of how we process that particular information so that we're able to communicate that information. As artists, we, we're more than just bearers of information. We are canaries in the mind. We predict what change is going to be we predict what the danger is ahead of us. And we imagine that we allow others to imagine that as well, so that they in the present time, they're able to shape their future. Yeah, so what so do you also teach artists we have the young directors playwrights writer at the market theater you have a theater school. Yes we have a theater school the market theater laboratory it's a three year old school. We run to a two year full time program for people and a lot of the students that come to us, I still drawn from historically marginalized communities so it whether they can afford the fees or not we do take them and we do take them on a very strict very strict Richard audition, because we do know how complex and how difficult this industry is and how competitive it is so that we want to make sure that the 20 students we graduate per year are students that can be absorbed into the the the the economy and they are. But with that we also run a residency company for young actors, where we engage seven six to seven actors on a year long contract, and they could come out from any of the last five years of our school. So we do reserve at least two slots on that company for any graduates or young person that may come from any other institution or any other country, so that we know that the company is not just regurgitating the methodology and the techniques and the process that but that they constantly are being fed with new techniques and been challenged by people who come from the outside as well. That that particular company was launched two years ago as a residency company fully funded privately by our own efforts through fundraising from philanthropists and we're incredibly grateful to the French Institute of South Africa. For those of you who has supported the company over the last two years. You know, artistically the company is done incredibly well in terms of winning local South African awards. The company was scheduled to travel to Germany this year, and to Japan, and unfortunately both those international tours have been canceled, or rather been postponed to next year. You know, those cancellations or postponements have been quite traumatic for the young artists because these are artists who come from really deprived communities started to marginalize communities, find opportunity training and suddenly get invitations to see the world. And covered 19 has shut the barriers on that particular world. You know, we've been able to engage with those artists in that company keep the spirits high. And hopefully we that once we pass this phase and I'm quite sure that this phase will pass to that the company will be able to tour internationally and be working very hard and I think that this is one of the reasons why I believe it's important for me as a as a theater manager to remain engaged with our partners across the border, across the globe as well so that we, we don't lose contact with each other, because this change is dynamic. It's far more effective than the political diplomacy that ambassadors and politicians can do at around table. As arts people when we travel the globe, we don't only connect with artists on the other side, we connect with their audiences. We stimulate audiences to get into a dialogue around internationalization. And I think particularly at this time, we've seen just before COVID-19 with significant parts of the world was becoming so nationalistic and so insular and closed that we need the power of theater to break into those spaces and to talk around why internationalization and international exchange and national collaboration and international dialogue is so important for us because more than just nations, we are a global community. That is important and you are part of that and also help to form it. We are coming to the end of our hour. Is there something you could say to our listeners, you know, what, how to use that time now? The times when we are in our homes, the listeners, what is of significance? I think the most significant thing for me at the moment is that we must not be stuck in our despondency. COVID-19 will come, it will pass. We've seen, not we've lived through, but we know historically that there have been several pandemics around on this planet. We've seen communities close. We've seen theater survive even through those pandemics. Theater will survive. It will rise. It will reopen. But for now, our crucial thing is support those that work in it and support the artists the most because if they're hampered by poverty, it's going to hamper their lives. It's going to hamper their emotions. It's going to hamper them intellectually. It's going to hamper call to what makes good theater, inspiration. A man cannot live without food. Artists need love. They need inspiration, but most of all, they need food. And at this particular time, we need to make sure that the global community, that foundations around the globe, that us as management, find ways of supporting artists so that they're able to pay their bills and not fear of what the darkness that lies ahead. And that the artists who support us in our lives and give meaning and anticipate the future and that now it's time to support them. That's a very important message. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking a time with us as it was important to hear from Johannes Gorkin from the Market Theater, what's on your mind, how you see all of this. This was beautiful statements and significant ones and also looking from the perspective of a country that went through so many changes, had so many challenges. And in a way, as was Basel, Baseltron said, somehow the government is doing okay. We don't hear that often from our artists around. It's actually quite unlike, it's only South Korea or Taiwan where we heard similar stories as in South Africa, it's surprising, especially given the big, big catastrophe we are experiencing here in the United States. It's shocking that it has not been handled in a way that it has been handled perhaps better in others. So if you have time for tomorrow and the days after to tune in, we have Natalia Forosbit from the Ukraine, also a country that is going through an incredible, difficult, difficult time. We will hear from Palestine. These are Zouabi and Fida Zaidan, director, writer and actress. They will tell us about the situation in Palestine, Roberta Destela-Dalva and Dion Carlos will talk from Brazil to us and tell us about these situations. And that must be so very, very difficult from what we hear, what is happening with also a president that doesn't seem to listen, that doesn't seem to care, and doesn't seem to have the well-being of his people at his mind. And again, we will hear from Africa. Edouard Elvis, Vuma and Hermine Jolo from Cameroon will tell us what is happening there and how they experience this moment. It's different for everybody. And this also gives us a little view inside the different ways that reality is playing out. It helps us, it consoles us and hearing from you. It also feels as connected, we are not alone, and we do care for each other. And I think this is also the message that we hear from you, what you do for your community there. It is inspiring, it is significant and of real importance. So thank you and a reminder to everybody that yes, it's the theater and performance communities that are at the center of what a community like is and what a functioning society is. They go well, the society goes well, and now everything is closed down, perhaps even understand it better and along for it much more. Thomas Ostermaier said he misses so much the opening nights, the shadow, the energy, the people, the communities. But as Ismael said, it will come back, nothing lasts forever. So let's prepare and use the time to live perhaps even better lives and make right what has been wrong before. I hope for listening, I know how much you all have on your mind how many chats, how many family, how many calls, how many zooms and Skypes and but it means a lot that you all come and listen. We need great audiences, great listeners and and of course the work of our great artists. So stay safe and stay tuned and I hope to see you tomorrow or hear you tomorrow. And thanks to the great HowlRound for supporting us, Vijay and Sia and to the Segal team. So thank you and Ismael, I hope you will have a good dinner in Johannes Gork and really thank you for sharing. Thank you.