 Hi, so welcome back from lunch. So we're just gonna take about three minutes of your time If we could have your attention to bring I don't know how many of you know that a cultural center what in Gaza was bombed on August 9th and We're just gonna show you like 30 seconds of a little video about this campaign that we're working on To rebuild the cultural center. So if you could just play like And I'll I'll say I'll say when to stop. Okay. Thanks. You can just fade it out. This is on YouTube. You can see it This was the all Michelle cultural center in Gaza. Can you grab one of these because they're tied up? and and we So We just wanted to let you know if you didn't know that this happened on August 9th of this of 2018 also I wrote a small article about it on howl round So our wonderful howl round That's called from Gaza City to the Golden Gate Because I'm living California now. So that was a clever title In my company the heat collective and I've got cards here. There's a link to the whole campaign for the cultural center there which is connected to As theater in London and ashtar theater in Palestine. Yes This is the third cultural place in one week that was bombarded. They also Bombarded the National Library in Gaza and a visual art center and that was the theater that hosted about 670 children who studied dance and theater in that space So and there were no excuse for that. So what we're trying to do as Jessica mentioned we're trying to rebuild the place With a British with the help of a British company called a to z of course online There are much more information for you if you are interested to know but and you can sign up and join and join us It's right now. Just we are gathering theater makers from all over the world to join the The plan to somehow help to rebuild this and we have many ideas But we won't go into them now, but we'd love you to join us and the heat collective website www theheatcollective.org has a whole thing on the goals Gaza Cultural Center a whole drop-down thing which gives you Links to how to get involved Thank you. Thank you on Thank you. I'm on and Jessica and I think it's been said but just that oranges and stones comes up tonight at 915 and please make sure to see Ash Tar Theatre's beautiful work that we've brought here Thanks to Iman and Edward shifting shifting to Really an extraordinary group of people that we have here and I just want to think one of the things going on at this gathering is a Kind of connecting of a lot of dots and a spinning of a lot of different aspects of webs and I think all webs and dots in the global theater World over the last several decades in some way or another lead one to Philip or no Philip I this gathering wouldn't be happening I think it's fair to say because I wouldn't be here or know how to be doing any of this if it weren't for Philip by somewhat innocently close to a decade ago through Phillips generosity and his work with Center for international theater development, which he founded 27 28 years ago and with the support of trust for mutual understanding, which he's worked with deeply. I got to Go with him and the extraordinary Martha Kwanye To Bulgaria on a sort of what was a first adventure. I had been interested in global theater I had been doing some of this work, but the lab didn't exist and it was It was the beginning of something really really hugely transformative for me as I came to understand more deeply the influence of What Philip and Martha had done distinctively from each other and with each other and Philip so it's really meaningful that Philip has brought and this is really you know these these amazing next group of artists to us they this was this was Not easy. They were in the middle of work in New York There this was an undertaking and Philip being the visionary He was seeing that we were all gathered found a way to say let's make this happen together So we can share it if you don't know Phillips work. I just do want to it's too much to say but I think it's meaningful that You know, I've been privileged to become part of the world of the International Theater Institute many folks are here Connected to that world Taiwo just arrived and he's now the director of the Network for Emerging Arts Emerging Arts professionals. It's just got renamed. Are you in the room Taiwo? Connect with Taiwo, but the but the But I ti is a World that Philip and Martha were leaders in for so long I mean he had a 30 has had a 30-year relationship with it and he is I think it's meaningful to note was the 13th person awarded the ITI UNESCO World Theater Ambassador Award One of the others was well ashenka who we were privileged to have yesterday So it's kind of extraordinary in this space in Washington right now to have this kind of convergence So anyway, I won't say too much more Philip will introduce you to the other artists But it's just a real honor to be here in the presence of Philip who is a progenitor of so so many of the kinds of relationships that we're trying to continue here So welcome Philip to the stage We're gonna start right away. We're gonna do this in two parts Each of them about 45 minutes The first is to give you an update the dumpster fire that is Hungarian politics That has changed Immensely I did a lecture tour and we had to change the topic because some new bad horrible news was coming from Hungary and then When I went to Europe, I went to Hungary for three weeks with my buddy Howard Chalwitz and An associate and Margaret Lawrence and When we got back in a very short period of time There were 13 Feature articles in the New York Times on what was going on in Hungary. There were two Editorials and there were three letters to the editor. There were major pieces in things major pieces in the Atlantic the New Yorker and Howard's piece on that trip and howl around Since that time There's been nothing. It's been really quiet We've got our own dumpster fire here with nice shiny objects falling out of it every day to keep us not thinking about anything that's Not happening right around our waist, I guess But things don't seem to be getting any better So what I asked was a good an old friend of mine Matigas bar to sort of bring us up to date To have some folks who've been in Hungary recently Yuri Ornoff Russian director works at woolly Wilma project Blair Rubel Sovietologist For many years ran the Wilson Center a board member of the trust for mutual understanding Wish I had the map to show you the 30 countries they work in but they they're one of the real Anchors for those of us that are trying to make something happen between this country and that part of the world And then of course Martin An actual Hungarian artist who's sitting here and Martin Will be making the second part of this Situated this little first half What we'd like to do is To at least have half the time of the 45 minutes are now probably 41 minutes Open for dialogue and questions I Think that's probably good enough. Let me just say I'm just gonna add the one person Phil didn't introduce Because she'll dominate the program later is Daniela Topol for those who don't know from the rattlesnake theater in New York Who's gonna talk to you about the yes about the project with Martin? She'll be the star of the second half There you are Just I went to Eastern Europe in 1974 to do a project with Grotowski and never look back I went to Hungary 10 years later For a project and this is 84 so it was still Soviet times I then went back and did a second big six or seven year project with the independent Companies there and then moved on with a deep project with Yuri and some other folks in Russia finished that up in 2010 and was in Budapest the day of the election that put Orban and his Folks in charge and they've watched With horror and sadness What's been happening there for 10 years? It's also a time when I kept trying to figure out how I could explain what we do or I do And I came up with this very simple thing and it's held strong for me for the last 12 years Is we show up? We witness We help tell the story and we help take artists take next steps first steps And that will get amplified when we talk about this project in the second half But my take can I give it to you and bring us up today? Thank you, Philip and thanks for this great opportunity to be here with you and thanks for your interest in this topic Which is compared to other stories and events that? Have been presented so far is absolutely not That grammatical because nothing has been bombarded. No one was taken out into the forest So I feel a bit embarrassed, you know how to come up with this story which is Rather the other way round if you come to Budapest and if you would like to spend some Sunday weekend I can guarantee that you will have a great time and you will feel like in one of the most interesting and flourishing place in Europe or for sure in Central Europe Because it's it's very much we are living in in a theater and it's a very deeply politicized theaters of politics wanted to show off and I think what happened the last 10 12 years shows that in many ways They succeeded and Well taking an American reference it's all about dreams So I would say that those guys had their dreams and they made their dreams come true And this is something that From a certain aspect you can really sense when you come to Budapest and just to illustrate This how strong these dreams are and how importantly they Influenced what's going on just a few miles from here next Monday Prime Minister Orban will be received by President Trump and This is an event that he and his administration have been preparing for years and This is a very dramatic moment in the history in the newest history of our country because it will be presented and it will be performed in in a local media and local public as the biggest acknowledgment of Of the policies and of the politics that this administration administration has been carrying out and I think that next week starting next week It will become even more harder harder for Those of us who are absolutely Well not signing up for this kind of Politics to deny it because he will come back From here with the biggest acknowledgement and the biggest endorsement one can have today in the free world and Orban and This politics really help others who have big dreams And who are loyal enough to deploy them to to see their dream come true Many of those articles Philip just referred to were about an incredible Tour of the National Opera to New York to the Metropolitan It took place last November and it was really unprecedented even because I want to talk about culture and cultural policies to you and Two weeks tour of 375 Artists and contributors to tour for 15 concerts and shows opera ballet concerts at the at the Metropolitan Opera and the Lincoln Center and the Carnegie Hall All paid by By the Hungarian government and then I first I told Philip this story And when we met in Budapest at Howard was also with them They didn't want to believe when I quoted the amount it it costed and the budget the Hungarian state invested in this endeavor in order to prove that everything is Possible and if you want to buy yourself in the Metropolitan, you can do that It's just a question of intention and money Costed something like seven million dollars to to make it happen which is The equal of the budget of the National Theater Reviews were a yawn here and They were somehow rewritten When they were translated back in Budapest yeah, so it's a It's it's the reviews here were completely different when I when I read the reports in Budapest I felt like reading in the archives of the fifties because it was a pure propaganda Report about how everything was and it's not just about you know, whether people applauded or not But it's it's the language. It's this fierce willingness to prove that we burst more than than than anyone else and we finally showed it in the most prestigious scenes of United States and we presented our national treasures to the American audience who would finally discover Why is it so important for not only for us but for for the rest of the world as well for this? incredible effort to prove that that we are we are worthy and we will we will show you that our national identity expressed by by the culture and by the the arts Will somehow be become much more present than it had been ever before and if it is possible and Maybe it's also I have to add to make the picture complete and Because I think Hungary is one of the rare countries where we don't have to complain about funding and money so This example also shows there's money. There's a lot Extremely a lot of money For for almost anything because this amount the 7 million were not taken away from other Initiatives it was just added as a sort of extra funding for this nice adventure We're not only the 375 artists could come but also the half of the administration starting by the president of the country and all kind of state secretaries and so on and But this is not an accident Just in a recent survey I Which came out this March it was shown that the last three years so between 15 and 17 the increase of the state investment in the cultural affairs in the whole European European Union Was the highest in Hungary so Hungary Proportionately the GDP invested three times more money in culture than the EU average And the discord and stand stood out as the first country investing in culture in general so Good news. There is a lot of money What what is the the the bad news that this money of course is distributed Extremely iniquity and this money is highly extremely centralized the same survey Demonstrated that if you compare the spending on the state level and on the local levels Investments in culture how in Hungary the central investment is the highest and the local investment is the Which means that every almost every founder the majority of the funds are concentrated from directly from the state administration which makes our Makes makes our system extremely rigid and very difficult to access it to access and On that point I would like to to refer of all those of us for whom to realize their dreams. It's pretty more difficult Because when Orban came into power the second time in 2010 The aftermath of the Elections he started to use the term of national the system of national collaboration So he announced that this will be a new era in the Hungarian history, which will be called System of national collaboration and I started by taking off when you enter the country on on the road on the highway You will see just Hungary and you you won't never again see Republic of Hungary because the word Republic was taken away And it is just signed Hungary and he very Cautiously doesn't prefer any more to the republican idea of our state although it's still written in the constitution Which is not constitution anymore, but fundamental law it is called but instead of the Well-known state form he introduced this new form the system of national collaboration and I have to tell you that Nine years after this system has been firmly established So we are in this kind this new kind of realities this new kind of political setup with all its consequences So it took us for years to believe that this kind of Reinterpretation of historical setup can happen, but it did and now we try to Understand what we are living in and we try to find out how to accommodate and So for those For whom this system is not large enough who cannot or who don't feel like Getting integrated into that It is it is really a Big obstacle to see their aspirations realized And it and it is also true for the performing arts scene and more familiar with Just to give you a few numbers for a country of 10 million inhabitants if you want to have some kind of access to public funding or to to possibility to Go on Publicly funded stages you have to go through a registration process and in this in this system We have something like 500 organizations registered which are Considered as professional organizations and half of them are theaters, so these 500 organizations are living now in this happy Reality of the system of national collaboration and waiting somehow How how the the state will sort out their sort and how so because all those are of course very much depending on these state subsidies I was referring for and it also resulted In In the loss, so it caused a lot of losses I can talk about a lost generation Which is actually mine and I lost a lot of friends because if you don't feel like coping with the system Of course, there is one very obvious possibility is that you leave and As you might know some five more than 500,000 Hungarians love the country the last few years It's something like 5% of the population and among them of course many many artists and many Guys so all all the friends I started with Professional career. We are either Put on the margins or working Elsewhere in Europe and some of them even migrated and loved the country and plan never come back But there are of course as always newcomers new generations Martin is one of the newcomers, but they are all even youngest generation coming up and And for them, it's really a tough question. What to what to choose in this at this moment and I really don't and read them because Unlike in our case some 20 years ago They can just choose about different survival strategies. So how to how to Survive in that that kind of very rigid System and it's really quite impossible to make up some longer-term life plans or career plans But but for some miraculous reason there are always new forces and new talents coming up So when when you come and ask whom to meet what to see there is still a large offer So what what can what can be done in that situation? What what are the lessons learned? Even though we are in University setting I Don't feel like teaching or telling you any kind of lessons I just can't talk about myself and about my personal journey. So as a I started as a as a theater manager and I used to run the independent company of I'm pursuing which was called critical and Some almost 25 years ago and we were very much interested in at that time So it was in the late 90s early 2000 how to make theater more political and what does it mean to be? political in in within the frame of the Of the theatrical setting that that that we knew so well coming from the university that I'm teaching now at and and so and I Heard very much a professor Schneider when yesterday she reminded us that the mission of this Gathering and the mission of this Institution was also to seek how to humanize politics through the capacities of performing arts So exactly this was this was our research focusing on as well And what what and our answer two decades ago were What we can do we can we can? We do political theater in order to give an insight Illustrate what's going on so that people get a sense of politics. This was very much Fresh and you at that time in in Hungary We can also strive to demasque or ridiculize politicians so that So that they are brought on a human level and the public can sense that there is not such a big gap between them and the leaders and we can also warn and urge so that people take action before it's too late and This action somehow has to happen beyond the the performative stage And on that note if I might can I three minutes? Just to show you a little Part of a video from a show and you can please launch the video Over there. I will talk while it's it's in hungaria. So anyway It's a show that we produced in 2002 and it was the title was The title was My home homeland my sweet homeland and this performance of Crete occur was presented on the in the municipal Circus of Budapest before an audience of 1200 people and it was the The first political satiria about our history after the change of the system And the figure that you can see here in in the white Jacket he was supposed to perform Orban and it was in 2002 just after The the end of this first term when he was so shocked not being re-elected for the second time and The song is about do you want? Do you want to to sacrifice yourself for your country and for your people and He responds. Yes, unfortunately. I'm the one Designated by the heaven to feel fulfill this hard job to save my people and to save my country And as you can see it was just after the first of his term After four years of experience. What does it mean to have him and his folks in the administration? So when I when I find this This video yesterday on YouTube, I was telling to myself. Oh shit. This is really something That that we all would have been taken even more seriously because Because what happens at the end of this little scene that with the help of the church and all these traditionalists the nationalist Forces that we were laughing at at that moment So what happens that he really rises up into the heaven and and he situates himself as really the The one who saves not only Hungary, but now we know that that he wants to save Europe as well and We should be all very much worried about this act of saving us against our own will and So it made me very much think about the The power of the political theater because all those folks walking out of the municipal circus of Budapest and tens of thousands People came to see that and also we toured a lot all around Europe with the show Whether they were born enough What would happen if we don't act more fiercely and And the response of course absolutely not we made a total failure because since 2010 he was reelected now for the third time with two-third Which allowed him to reshape the whole country and which allowed him to take his role seriously and seeking for the saving and Raising up on the European level But I don't want to finish talking about this guy I would rather tell you what what my other Thoughts for my or advices for myself were so when I when I understood that after 10 years or so as a Theater producer I went to other directions and I was very much pleased to hear that many of you made Similar journeys in your in your career. So I became a sort of I became a teacher at the university But I'm really working on how to expand the boundaries of the traditional Ways of expression of theater and how theater can embrace more than than just Being outspoken even encourages on the stage. So I think that this is a this is an important Pathway for for all of us who want to reach out more and the other Option I opted for is becoming an NGO activities the NGO leader and and I also lead a foundation which works for the For the rights of the Roma population, which is the biggest ethnic minority in Hungary and We should represent a huge I Mean the situation of the Roma is extremely dangerous but not only for them and for us but for the society as a whole and Action is needed and all the lessons that we can learn from all the movements that that your country Have known over the past decades are more than Insightful for us to learn from before it's getting again too late and That that's what we what leads all of us. I think here in this room towards more activism But how to do it wisely What does it mean in the theater marketing their time or about? Thank you? give some quickly some real quick responses down the row here and then a couple of anybody want to start I Was just gonna if I can take like a couple minutes. I don't know how we're doing on time I thought it might be interesting just to tag on To what Mati said from an American perspective sort of I've had four trips to Hungary And sort of seeing and they've all been over the course of this period of time where the political situation has deteriorated I don't I don't know if we have time for this, but I can do really fast I I went through my notes from all the conversations We had to hear what are the strategies that the government actually uses to dismantle the system Besides the fact that they got elected theoretically and Because all of them right now Hungary sort of leads the world I think in this direction They've been at it the longest and we know that Putin and Trump and others and Poland are falling into the same Strategy, but just really really quickly and stop me if this is This is really geared towards the American audiences the Americans in the audience as something to keep our antenna out for But this is sort of the strategies we learned about they basically dismantled all of the funding structures For the arts to create confusion and unpredictability and they've done that in all different facets of Hungarian life But basically all the structures that were in place are now dismantled and base what Mati said I shouldn't quote you but he said basically this makes a good situation for the spider in the middle of the web it sewing confusion and and just You know unpredictability We know that that that is a basic Trump strategy He appoints people to head agencies who don't know what they're doing don't know anything about the field You know and and who do bizarre things number two they eliminate channels for dialogue between the artistic fields in the government And we heard about that all the time that the space for active for for dialogue and for Even activism just gets shrunk to basically nothing. I'll go really fast. They've created parallel structures to the official structures So I've thought about this with Trump all the time like for example There's a whole parallel justice system for important public cases Which has a different set of rules than the than the normal everyday justice system There's for example creating a whole new national authority university that's sort of training the whole next generation of artists to fall in line behind behind the goals of the Fidesz Movement so that there's a few strategies they they've more recently started to denounce objectionable works to in in the in the party newspapers in order to dissuade audiences from attending and thereby induce a kind of self-censorship on the part of the Artists a very famous recent example was a production of Billy Elliot where the party newspaper said this could basically Cause young people to turn gay or something like that, and you shouldn't go go to see it They they are creating they're trying to create a new cultural elite of Artists affiliated with the party and it's a point of view. So this is parallel to what they've done in the media We're now 70 to 80 or 90 percent. I think of the media outlets are basically owned by Orbonne Orbonne affiliates But in the in the theater world basically they replaced all the artistic leaders of all of the provincial theaters And of the national theater who now do work that falls in line with the Hungary first Policies and have essentially created what what somebody referred to us as an elite of shared grievances So this really resonates to me as an American It's like oh before Fidesz these progressive liberals were controlling all of the theaters and The the leadership of them and only allowing and now that we're in control With the we can put all these other artists in place Even though those artists aren't very good and their work is is not very good But it's like because they'll fall in line with the party ideology in terms of the kind of work They'll do they become a new elite which has a shared grievance against the old the old elite This list goes on They they're trying to create a new cannon of both old and new works Which are considered new models of excellence and those are in line with the the slogan of of Fidesz of their last election Which was Hungary first obviously that's something we recognize, but for example, they've commissioned a mega new work about King Matias, how do you pronounce King Matias famous Hungarian King from I believe the 15th century? and basically new Interpretations of any problematic periods in Hungarian history in particular the period between 1945 and 1989 where Hungary is now recast and this includes big monuments on major city squares Hungary is now recast as the blameless victim and and doesn't have to look in Look at whether they played any role any complicity with respect to the Holocaust Mati Reference the recent United States tour. There's a whole new Hungarian Academy of Arts that gives lifelong stipends to members mostly older white Christian men Who who are now, you know anointed as part of the new cannon? But they don't really need to do any new work And then the other thing that they're really really good at and will recognize this is a Trump as a strategy that Trump and Putin has also stolen of really taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves To kind of reinforce the desired ideology and program So an example of that is that they recently there was recently some corruption cases That from what I understand it's hard to get to the bottom of these things Related mostly to these large folk dance companies that were on tour And there were accusations of embezzlement and corruption But as a result of that they dismantled the entire funding system those folk dance companies are still the ones getting all the big money But that crisis creates an excuse to essentially eliminate funding from the independent and problematic companies That are doing the work that's pushing back against the against the government so It's the list is longer, but these are all things to have our antenna out because they start slowly And then they basically take the whole system over Blair very quick, but I want to Actually pick up on where Howard just just let us I think One of the questions around a panel like this is why should we care about this story? And I want to make a couple of points and Howard really pointed in the same direction. I'm going to go Obviously the situation in Hungary is somewhat idiosyncratic We're talking about a small country 10 million people. We're talking about a country and a theater community embedded in a Culture with a difficult language which in some ways can reinforce isolation There is an unusual dependency on the centralized state for funding There's a weak civil society weak legal institutions so Sitting here. We could dismiss all of this, but as Howard just said Orban has created a map for other populist nationalist quasi authoritarian regimes and I think We see that this map has has been used either consciously or unconsciously And it's not just It's in many countries very similar patterns are emerging in Poland for example around the Polish theatrical community It's important to note that this is not full-blown authoritarianism As you noted people aren't being taken out into the forest what he's actually been able to demonstrate is That a regime can in fact secure its social and ideological goals with that necessarily Resorting to coercive brute force you so Confusion you create false crises. You define a heroic past Which is a very important part of it and then the goal becomes to return to that past to overcome the number of different crises which you yourself have created and All the while blowing on the dog whistles of grievance and grievance is a really important part of the story here Converting your supporters into historical victims victims of some impersonal far away elite and and then you wrap it up with fake religiosity and I think This is a roadmap which is being followed in many places Orban has been a leader And and he's been successful at this and I think what this panel begins to highlight Are some of the ways in which theater can respond? But to respond it becomes important to push beyond traditional boundaries And I think that what we're going to hear in a moment also points in that direction so I It is a small story that's far away that may seem irrelevant, but I think actually What we're hearing about Is a roadmap that stands at the center for a number of events taking place in the world? And just to pick one example out of many we can think about what's happening in the state of Georgia Not too far from here right now today. So this is an important Yeah, I mean, I'm just I'm just listening and so many things sound similar between hunger in Russia, obviously Russia is a bit more on steroids kind of they actually take people to forests You know and there is a bit more money. So that's that's part of that But also I feel like the next stage comparing to what you're talking about is We started to lose logic. We started to like it's very hard to print You know, it's very hard to say what is what is the right thing to do the wrong thing to do by now It's it's it's there is no way, you know people who like we were in the year Russia's in the year of theater right now Which means a lot of interest of? Authorities to the theater more than anything else so people get you know people get arrested people get to prisons people You know theaters get searched, but it's very hard to it's very hard to grasp on any kind of specific logic And this behavior of the authorities and that's what scares me the most in the place where we are It's actually more complicated even than the Soviet repressive measures when you knew when but you pretty much knew where you're crossing the red line We're in the place where we don't know anymore. I wonder, you know, does it resonate with hungry at all? Thank you, we're gonna jump very quickly and then do Questions at the end because we're slipping for time here the good news If any of you spent five nights going to theater in Budapest My bet would be you'd see better theater per night in that town still Then any other city that I know I'm Always stimulated excited and I've really been watching this young man Who when I first met him five years ago was just starting his company? He has really made Name for himself both inside of Hungary and he's also getting a European Profile. He's been here twice. He's very he likes America. He came to Baltimore to create a Version of his promenade piece where 45 people get on a bus with headphones a story being played and told and sung through the headphones while whispers of theater Semi kinds of theater events seem to happen outside the bus that opened in Baltimore and it Then a year later in Albuquerque to totally different versions the Albuquerque production has just reopened last week For another month. They brought that back after the winter and the great good fortune That Martin and I both had was when we were able to first time I met Danielle I said I'd really like to put you on an airplane and I finally was able to and she went to Budapest and called me up when she got back saying well, I wasn't shopping or looking for anything, but boy and The boy is this Incredible piece called a dressless It's about the homeless. It's game theater and They're gonna share with us They're inviting us into the kitchen They're in the middle of the first 13 day Can we do this? Where's this gonna go? And I'm always fascinated if I can peek in that early And it's with great generosity that they're both here Daniela Topol from the rattlesnake playwrights theater er and Martin boros the founder of stereo act. It's up to you guys Thank you so much, I'm glad being here I Just wanted to add to the previous presentation that if I were a spy of the Hungarian government and Matt They would be in a great trouble because his interpretation was pretty accurate But gladly I'm not a spy So I guess now from the macro image. We are zooming in a little bit and talk a little bit about the micro And so I'd like to introduce you our theater called stereo act really briefly and then Together with Daniela. We'd like to tell you about the concept of this upcoming collaboration called address less so again My name is Martin boros. I'm the artistic director of stereo act Stereo act is contemporary theater collective based in Budapest We founded it in 2013. So this was our sixth Season now we claim to be a progressive theater regarding our methods and Approaches and model and Our structure This is not an ensemble though Despite of the fact that you see a bunch of nice people. So they are the ones that we collaborated within 2018 and 19 We work project based With a bigger circle of artists always depending on the needs of the given concept. So Sometimes we work more with actors musicians or dancers or visual artists In the last couple of years we produced 14 theater shows once on stage and ones that are site-specific or happened in public space and also we produced Documentary movie and various artistic actions such as flash mobs and civil campaigns all the works we do are Based on an original concept. They are all post dramatic and interdisciplinary device performances and music text interaction movement image games are equally important components in our creation processes We often use participatory interactive forms in our productions And we constantly experiment with the unconventional positioning of the audience in our pieces We also regularly involve civilian participants experts or everyday people in either in the creation process or on stage or sometimes both Plus we often use documentary materials and and we work mostly on social and political issues or or community themes We work internationally This is a list of places we worked in the past few years On collaborations Germany Netherlands Denmark Spain Poland and obviously the US one of the main My stone of the US collaboration was the promenade that Philip mentioned And this is an image from the original Budapest version back from 2013 And this is an image from the Baltimore version and the newest one. We just premiered last November the promenade Albuquerque and The reason why we are here is address less Or we're going to draw a game or as we refer to it. It's an interactive theatrical table game on homelessness We premiered it in 2016 and Let's let's watch a short video and then I tell you more about it I where you go to read the sur-titles. Okay, so we opened this in 2016 and we played so far over 40 times. Also for adult paying audience as a repertory production and also like half of the times we take it to high schools to play together with students. It's played by four people, two professional actors, one social worker and the homeless activist. And yeah, as you could see probably there are the audience forms groups and together with their team based on consensus that they make after each scenes they have to guide or assist the life of their fictitious homeless character throughout all these challenges. The social worker is a game leader plus also someone, an expert on stage, an authentic person who can give us information about this unknown word and provide authenticity, just like the homeless character who basically plays himself. And yeah, I'd like to read out a really short quote from the piece that could give you an idea what the role of the social worker is in this game. In our society if we see a homeless person on the street we typically think why don't he go to the shelter instead of asking why has he no place to live. In the meantime the Hungarian system supposedly caring for the homeless reminds one of the disaster relief. As if there were a city that predictably gets flooded every year but instead of building a dam people are offered life vests. We chose two quotes. I chose this one because this is a good example for humanitarian and a very personal theme how it becomes macro immediately when we start to talk about the responsibility of the community. And I truly believe that this piece is something that is a status report on our society and challenges those stereotypes that state that if you are poor you should blame yourself and everybody birth as much as you earn. And at this point I'd like to invite Daniela to join us. And if you'd like to read the other quote. I'd love to. Okay. Okay, so this is another excerpt from the piece and then we'll talk about sort of what our work here in New York is. I'm sure you all know the game of musical chairs. The players run around empty chairs and at a given sign they have to sit down on a chair. But there's always one chair fewer than there are players. So whoever ends up standing will lose. If we use that game as a simile for being homeless the players are people with low incomes and the chairs are the flats they can afford. In real life if you remain standing it doesn't necessarily mean that you're slower or less clever than the others or because you're sick or have family issues but it comes from the system from not having enough chairs or enough affordable flats to begin with. So I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Duna Park Festival care of our angel Philip Arnaud. I was not intending to do anything with all the amazing work that I had seen except once I walked into the room and I experienced address less and I thought about where I live in New York and actually I thought about all the cities I've lived in in the U.S. I was thinking just how incredibly relevant this project is. Rattlestick is a small theater based in the West Village. We look at the intersectionality of relevant and ambitious work with community gathering. And I would say justice. And what I really responded to was just how this piece does all of those things. And so fast forward we were fortunate enough to receive a couple of grants and we have Martin is paired up with a beautiful playwright named Jonathan Payne. He is also New York based. His day job is to work for community access that works in social services. He's also an incredible playwright by night. By weekend he's gonna have a world premiere at Williamstown this summer. He's at Juilliard right now but he sort of straddles both worlds and is uniquely suited to partner with Martin. Another key partner is Katie Pearl. And she is a director and a dramaturg and a thinker in many expansive ways and has been a key partner. And so they are in the middle of a 10 day residency in New York. And they are meeting with a lot of different organizations like Picture the Homeless, the Coalition for the Homeless, the Door, they are talking to individuals and community groups. They are going on food vans. They are investigating the ways that the piece needs to be adapted from its route in Budapest and the ways in which it doesn't need to be adapted at all because the challenges of homelessness are universal in many different ways. And so I think that's been a really interesting journey. We have a really big thought about this piece that is really intended to sort of travel in a shopping cart, which is that how can we create a version of this piece that can go to different cities? San Francisco and Philadelphia and there are a number of cities that are already very interested in this. And that we can then take a local component and pull in sort of the specific nature of what it means to be homeless in San Francisco, say, or Philadelphia, but also the universal piece as a whole. So I've never experienced anything quite like this and I'm really blown away by the artistic collaborators but also the deep urgent need to like get in a room together and talk about this subject and use theater as a vehicle to do that. Why don't we open it up to questions, about either half of this because we went a little long and I don't think you wanna sit there quietly. So yes, sir. Do we have mics? They'll get you a mic. I think this addressless piece, by the way, should be seen in every city in America. And we're, here we go. Thank you. You mentioned the fact that Hungary is a template for things that are going on elsewhere in Europe. We have European elections coming up. We have Russia as a threat to the Europe. What's the role of philanthropy? We're here partly through the support of the trust from mutual understanding. What's the role of philanthropy in supporting theater and the arts in Hungary, in other places where theater and the arts are subject to co-option, coercion, repressive measures? It's a difficult question because I think it's one that has been repeatedly asked over the last, since the change of the system. So since the Berlin Wall came down and it's 30 years now. And I saw pretty well the function of all these corporations and all these very evident signs of solidarity and cooperation in the first one, one and a half decade after the change of the system. So it was a huge help, not only financially, but of course it was also. But it helped Hungary somehow and I think all the other Eastern Central European countries to reintegrate into the Western civilization or this word we used to belong to. And I think it was really important for all of us who had the chance to cooperate on productions, on tours, on residences, on all kinds of mutual experiences, exchange programs to regain the self-confidence and also to feel ourselves at home in Europe and in the Western culture. But I think there was a turning point in 2004 when Hungary joined with other former communist countries, the EU and a lot of institutions thought and we also from within that now a new period would open and it's now our business to take care about ourselves. So what happened that many of these foundations and foreign institutes turned or did rightfully so because there are so many other difficult places in the world and so much to be done. And I think it was not a far too optimistic forecast to say that now we can take care about ourselves. And the fact that it absolutely did not happen and things turned back after 2010 and it got even worse in a of course in a very different way than it used to be before 89, puts the same institutions in a very delicate position because they cannot get back to the routines that they used to have in the 90s. And I think it's anyway it's impossible because they are also elsewhere with other priorities or with other possibilities. But the sheer intervention into these countries like Hungary is not possible anymore while any support or participation or contribution from French, British, American partners were most more than welcome and very supportive in those decades. Now they all became suspicious and even dangerous in sometimes. So just to mention the biggest example of that, a major player in the civil society slash independent cultural ground used to be the open society foundations of George Soros and the fact that they last year they decided to close down the Budapest office which used to be a sort of headquarters I also used to work at and they left in a sort of urgency. So they left behind everything without setting up new structures. It will open in Berlin maybe in a few years but it shows how impossible it's today to operate within normal conditions in our sector. And it's very alarming for all of us who stayed in the country. And I think it's a big task to find out for all those who are still willing to come and work with us or to be sort of there with us. No, I'm just. Sorry. I wonder, it's like sort of the pull the camera back to the occasion of a global gathering like this. It's a little like just a question about how or whether folks working in not necessarily identical situations but how the awareness perhaps of like entities that can sort of say we're noticing what's happening where you are, their connections across just for any of you to kind of comment, we have the sort of specifics of Hungary, the relationships across Europe and then kind of wider global relationships where we're seeing kind of not synonymous but analogous kinds of things happening and are there practical ways to be thinking about what it means to have artists coming together from different parts of the world. We have obviously some amazing artist rights organizations that are working in a range of ways but just to sort of like, it's kind of the what can we do together question if any of you want to comment on that. It was asking me because I'm not part of the theater community so what I'm gonna say may just seem totally off base but I think one of the important parts of the Orban story is as it was playing out just had more information about it been made available. It might have helped prepare others elsewhere for some of these political movements and moments. I think I know how round has been very played an important role in just communicating information. So I think that that's part of the story and a general understanding that what's happening in a place like Hungary may seem irrelevant to what's happening here but we need to be a little bit more sensitive to the fact that there are global trends out there and share information I think exchanges. I think the work that we see being done in New York in this particular case is a good example. I think university based programs can maybe reach out to other parts of the university where there are one of those expertise in specific areas and kind of mobilize it but I think there's just a need for a greater awareness and you talked about how when the EU expanded we thought game over we wrapped up Eastern Europe and we put a nice bow on it and we can all walk away now because it's an EU problem and it's not, we have to understand that we're talking about ongoing political trends and we need to be thoughtful about how to engage with them. I'm not sure how helpful that is because I'm outside of the community but. I just want to add, one of the things that I've picked up in several of my trips is that sometimes the status of the artist as an international figure, it gives them a little bit of an oculation within their own culture. I'm not sure if that's always true but what I'm saying that kind of, and I think that's true in Russia and I think that's working a little bit that way in Hungary, I'm not sure. I mean, I feel like maybe with Robbie Elfodi it works where an artist who has a high enough stature almost can be a model for pushing the envelope just a little bit but I think it points to the importance of the witnessing that we do. I don't think we travel enough. I don't think we see theater in other countries enough. I don't think we do enough to kind of give status to one another's work around the world and I think there's some value to just that kind of witnessing. It's only a small number of artists who become international superstars and especially artists coming from repressive regimes but I do think that our witnessing and reporting on what we see local governments watch that. They note that and they see that artists have a standing in the world and I think it makes a difference. You hear me? Yeah, the bad news for me is when I look at the countries where I spend most of my time, they're self-describing their artistic communities as being detached. No, no, we're not getting in there. The air smells bad, it's dangerous but earlier this week in New York, I sat down with the new director of CEC Arts Link and there are 10 young artists from Eastern Europe that are coming to America and they get placed in different places and they have self-descriptions, self-describers and out of 10 of them, I'm a photographer, a writer and an activist. I'm an actor, a playwright and an activist. Eight out of 10 self-defined as activists and that gives me some hope inside and then the other thing that just continues to make me want to get up and keep doing all of this is the level of work that you see in those conditions that continues to get created. It's astonishing and brave and that ecology can survive. When I saw the fifth year celebration, Martin produced all of his work except one in the last five years. I'd put it any place on any festival stage anywhere so it does at the end of the day get down to the work. So I thank you all, I thank you folks for taking the time out of the work and a great salute to Georgetown and global this gathering, I'm really happy to be here. Thank you all for sharing that amazing windows in with us. Just quick updates, you're at a break now. We have a really jam-packed like four to 530 period so you actually get a nice little coffee break here but I urge you to come back at four sharp. Everything will be in this space. We have Alex Aaron with Amir Nazar Zawabi via video link with the extraordinary project Gray Rock and then we have the work around prisons and justice initiative and the graduates and incarceration and other beautiful performances all in about a kind of an hour and a half period. Just a couple updates on tickets and things for tonight. Mix and match the On Guard Arts piece that's at six is technically full and you might be on a waiting list but we wanna, based on sort of patterns of, we could call it attrition or we could call it just people having moving in all those circles they're moving in as they connect with each other. I think it's likely that some of the people we have on the list may not, if you're eager to get in, we urge you to come to the door because we think we'll be able to let some more people into that which is down in 035 and then there are seats available for all of the other performances tonight and it's an amazing set of performances evening with an immigrant and oranges and stones and how to have fun in a civil war. So get your seats. That's it.