 I am very, very excited to invite you and my two dear friends, Paola Coletto and Cass Fleming, to discuss our topic this evening, which is entitled Masterless Women Teaching Physical Theater. And we have Cass to thank for this marvelous title. I was going to suggest Femi Mimes. I'm very glad we didn't go with Femi Mimes. So instead we have a reflection on three terms, which are very important to us in certain obvious ways. Woman, physical theater and master. But before I begin, I just want to sort of contextualize a little bit that we are not suggesting that the term woman is a kind of stable subject. We understand that this word is socially constructed. And it provides a kind of experiential frame. I'm going to suggest that maybe we consider woman as even a verb. We could talk about being womaned or womaning. But the intention is really to open up an inclusive space for dialogue. So this is not a space where only people who identify as women are supposed to speak. That is not the case. It's a discussion. We're going to be inviting you to participate in our discussion. So I'm going to put some framing questions in the chat for you to consider. And but we're going to begin with my two wonderful guests talking about their connection to this topic. That'll take about half an hour. And then we will open the room up to a general discussion. And we really invite you to participate. You can put questions, thoughts, comments into the chat, but when the time comes, you can also simply raise your hand either physically or with that little emoji. And Falguni Rao, who's our wonderful assist here, she'll be creating the reportage for this event. She will be scanning the room to help me identify you if you want to just simply raise your hand and unmute yourself and speak. That's when we get to the discussion bit. Okay, so first let me introduce my two dear friends and colleagues, Paula Coletto, who is the director at the School for Theater Creators in Padua, Italy. And Paula and I trained together in the pedagogic year at the Lococke School in Paris with Jacques Lococke and have been fast friends ever since. And Kass Fleming, who is lecturer in the Department of Theater and Performance at Goldsmiths University of London in the UK. And Kass was my first supervisor and she was very inspiring. And she launched me on my ongoing doctoral journey. And that was a great, great help to me and assist. So I think we have decided that Paula, I'm gonna ask you first to introduce yourself around some key, sort of just frame your introduction to yourself around some questions, which are what have been the most important inspirations for your work, what's the most important thing for you about your work right now and what is your approach to this topic? The intersection of the words woman, physical theater and master. Okay, thank you. First of all, hi everybody, thank you for being here. And I just do a little introduction of what my journey was. And I guess this we'll get in or we'll talk about it at the end. But, so I'm originally from Padua, Italy, born and raised there. And I start my journey in life or my career is better in sport. I was a professional athlete in my young years, the one that I had gone. And I had my own gym and I was coaching athlete for competition. And at that time I have an entrepreneurial flame. So I found that either other business organization are actually still open today. So I moved later on in, I mean, I was 26 when I left sport and went to theater by chance, really. I met someone watching a movie and it was a clown in Padua. And for some reason I felt compelled to talk to him and I did and I told him my stories and he said, you know, there's this great school. He told me it was a clown school in Paris and I moved to Paris. I mean, this is exactly how I went. I met him in June and in September I was in Paris. So that's where everything started for me. And there I did with Amy, I did the third pedagogical year because in somehow when I did the school, I realized it wasn't performing that I was looking for. I actually really don't like performing and all the work around performing. I like directing and I love teaching. So this is where it all started to develop. And I have the fortune that I travel back and forth everywhere and I work with so many culture and so many different people. And I think that for me is one of my focus point. In my work at least, I love, I have a school now in that I run that is closed because of COVID. But the most important things for me is the different cultures that be represented by the students because I think that the importance of the work that I wanna do is the possibility of creating not just theater and not just cold culture, but poetry, something that struck the human being and that's above culture. We have to find the language that speaks to the soul. And so difference of languages and difference of cultures when you get them together and they have to work together to create something that unite them, I find that the most effective way to get to what I'm talking about and thinking. So back to my journey, I started my first school in Italy in 1999 with Giovanni Fosetti, maybe someone knows about him, I co-founded the school with him and I ran it with him for five years. And then I relocated to Chicago, United States because my ex-husband was American and somehow I wanted to travel, I wanted to see different things, how things were made different. So I didn't feel like it was the time for me to settle with the school and grow that. And the other problem, which I think is relevant to do today is that when we opened the school, our first school, we really opened it on the line of Jacques LeCocque. It was like the Jacques LeCocque school, baby. I mean, we did everything the same, which was great because we didn't know really how to start a school and so that gave us a fantastic frame. Our first year, imagine that our first year was made of people that has been refused to go on a second year on LeCocque. So we started with a second year. So this is how much LeCocque was. And I think personally I grew out of it during the five years that I was running in the school that I was teaching around in the school and it started to become a problem for me to replicate. I wanted to expand, I wanted to, I have other training in holistic, in coaching and I wanted the material to be more flexible that just follow the footsteps of LeCocque school. So that's one of the reasons why I left too. And so I ended up in Chicago and I stayed there for 15 years, which I love Chicago, I love America, I love Americans, I went lion dancing last night. Okay, close parenthesis. And it was an amazing experience, very humbling because I was going there with the sixth year of school that we had and we have been very successful. We win awards, we won on the newspaper, in town we were like everybody knew us. So I went to the United States thinking that that was known by the universe, of course, and it wasn't that way. So I had to start from scratch everything and build up again. My first workshop, nobody even called for information, no one person. So it was like smashing in a wall. But eventually I went through that and that was my biggest fortune I think because of that I have to accept a work at the university which I'm now an academic and I thought I will never get mixed with academics personally, I'm too good for academia. So this is where we're coming from, isn't it great? So I accepted a job at the university and it was the most amazing experience. I stayed there for eight years working in three different universities because that gave me exactly what I was looking for, the possibility of using all the tools that I have, all the materials up, all the set journeys that I have to at the service of the students that didn't have my journey, couldn't do my journey. And so I have to put what I have at the service of their journey. And so I've learned to take apart the material and put it back together and then again take another piece and put it in another way and to use all my other training too that was very important. And that's when I realized that, you know, the LeCoc School, which is my most important experience. So I have to acknowledge that and I have to acknowledge that going there and my experience with LeCoc was absolutely a life changing but it's not the only place where I created what my work is today, who I am today. Sometimes I created who I am today in reaction to LeCoc because I was like, oh, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. This is very clear. I don't want to do that. So I can say I never was in conflict or in contrast with them, although we have our fight. I don't know if you remember Amy once, huge one on the third year, on the stairs. Oh my God, anyway. But I was more in there, really hungry to take what I needed and to realize what I didn't want that was his own practice in a way. So I eventually created my own school there too, which is the School for Theater Creators that now is coming back to Italy because I came back to Italy because I have to be with my parents that are older. So now the School for Theater Creator is becoming part of Arts Academy and I hope we're starting next October if COVID will allow us because we lost two seasons in all this. And I personally refused to go online. I don't think I couldn't do my work online. So hopefully we'll start again. But I was getting to the master word and then I'm finished, which is really important to me and I love the idea of master less. Imagine that I wanted to call my school the unschooled. So master less is perfect. They didn't allow me though, they were like, no, we don't wanna do that. But because often have been pointed out as a master or even worse as a guru and I'm horrified by that. And it really, the reality is I don't want that responsibility because I always felt that someone that gave you that title makes you responsible for their journey because you are so powerful and so potent and you can do anything that you should, you could, you must make something happen for them. And then it doesn't happen, it's your fault. And so that's the first reason that I subtract myself to that. And the second one, equally important is that I hate to create dependency. In the school, the school is made to give tools to people to be independent on what they wanna do. Unfortunately, sometimes I don't like it, it's fine. But they have the tools to do it and they know how to build. That for me is the most important things. It's often I use this analogy like an architect, right? That he needs to know how to build. Like a house needs to stand, a bridge needs to be a bridge. So there are rules for that. Then on the aesthetic of that, it's your art, it's your creativity. I don't wanna have anything to say on that. I refuse to create mini paola. I'm already mini, so can you imagine the mini-mini? But it's the creative dependency, the creative thinking, the freedom. That's what I work for in the school. So this doesn't go well for me with masters or gurus, stuff like that. That often in my experience, they wanted to create a method and system to follow. So you have followers. I don't wanna have followers, I wanna have people. I can exchange and eventually collaborate when they get out of school. They become equal and maybe they become better than me, good for them. And I'm getting older, someone must pick up, right? So I think for me, the vision behind the school is this. Now, being a woman, I was talking to Amy about that. I don't know if it's the culture or I don't know if it is that I'm helpless. Sometimes I don't see things, but for me, my experience, I mean, I never felt I was I, and I'm talking about me. That doesn't mean I didn't see the two different things, but I never thought about, oh, I'm treated differently because I'm a woman or I never put that in my experience, I didn't care. And I think a lot of that I have to say is from the family I come from where everything was possible for everybody and I was the man of the house, I have a brother. But my dad has a construction, I did have a construction company and I love building. So I was always with him, building and learning. I can do anything in the house. So maybe that gave me a little bit of, of an, I'm a little bit manly. Can you say that in a way? So I didn't even pose the question until lately in the United States, this became a focus point. And I did start to realize looking outside how this can be, I mean, not can be, it was treated in a very different way. So I can go behind that and fight for any differences of any kind. Should I stop? That's great, Paula, thank you. That's wonderful. Just to say also, Paula and I have this in common. We talked a lot of autobiography in our pre-chat, our rehearsal of an unrehearsed future. And Paula and I have this in common that we are looking after our aged parents and Paula and Cass have in common that they're mothers of daughters. So this is, we were interested in the fact that as identified women, we talked a lot about autobiography, it seemed to come up a lot. Cass, can we come to you now? Thank you, Paula, that was marvelous. Yeah, that was great, thank you, Paula. Yeah, for sure. And I think the autobiography is actually really quite interesting. We had this meeting and then we realized we talked so much about autobiography. And I was like, wow, we never really do this in this professional sphere as professional pedagogues and theater directors. It's almost as if it's sort of squashed in the cupboard. Do you know what I mean? So I felt quite liberated that we talked about pregnancy, childbirth, kids, the menopause, caring for elderly family members. It was quite interesting that that formed part of our discussion. And I think some of the things I've been inspired by in philosophy is relate those bits of identity politics as well to myself and also to the inspirations that I have. I had a similar but different journey to Paula. I started performing and dancing when I was tiny, when I was about two and sort of continued always in a space, I suppose, of expressive movement. I trained in the 1980s in what I thought was a Lakoc paste lineage. And I was taught by brilliant students of Lakoc and students of the crew. But I was taught in quite an incredible college in London called Weekends Arts College. It's in Northwest London and I love it dearly. And it was quite a radical place. And it was very, very ethnically diverse and it trains young people in performing arts from different kinds of backgrounds. It was quite a unique place, but I didn't really quite understand that at the time, I think. It was later on that I realized firstly that the Lakoc world was actually really predominantly white. So I was in a state of shock because I had fallen in love with that what I thought was his tradition because of the idea as Paula said about empowerment and being actor centered and actors being able to be creators and actors being able to be authors of their own stories, if you like. And I had done this in a really diverse context. So I saw this as something kind of empowering and diversifying and brilliant. So I was a little bit shocked because I think with that transfer out, number one. And then number two, I started to think, right, well, I'm kind of interested in this lineage. What's this all about? I've moved from being a performer. I was beginning to move into directing. I was kind of interested in teaching. So I did lots of research and I traced Lakoc back to Jacques Capot and I got quite interested in the history of it. And as I was foraging around in this kind of exploration of understanding the stuff that had influenced me, I came across the name of Suzanne Bing in about 1998. And I thought, who is this woman and why does she seem to be linked to all the stuff I really love in this technique? So to be honest, I got slightly obsessive and ever since 1998, I've been on a journey. I don't know, a parallel journey or a love affair, I think with Suzanne Bing. So I discovered the work of Suzanne Bing in that way and became more and more interested in the work that she did. And then I became interested in why on earth, I had no idea that probably 80% of Lakoc's practice was developed by Suzanne Bing. So as I sort of dug into it, I got interested both in her work and her practices and it's a huge inspiration to me. And what I do as a practitioner as a director and as a teacher, but also I got interested in why it was all hidden. So lots of digging into this kind of revealed a whole story of these male master teachers in France. So I was like, okay, we've got Jacques Capot, got it, right. And then he hands over and there's this amazing man called Michel Sandini, right, got it, check, do you know what I mean? And then along we go, we've got Jacques Lakoc, great, got it, take. So I had this thing and when I started to look into Bing and thought, yeah, but she did this and she's not mentioned, but she was doing that and this is amazing. And as I dug in, then I discovered all the other women that Bing had worked with. And then this was just revelation to me. So I thought, oh, it's not really sort of master lineages. This is all a kind of network of interesting, gorgeous people working together. So through Suzanne Bing, I looked much more at the work of Margaret Nounberg who Bing went to work with in New York was an incredible woman who ran a school in New York. And then subsequently went on to become the founder of arts psychotherapy in America. And then I looked at Capose Daughter, Marie-Ellen Bastet and I realized just how important she was to everything. Lakoc did not invent autocurs, Marie-Ellen invented autocurs by saying to Suzanne Bing, look, this is great, what we're doing in the studio, I love it. But can we go off now please and do a bit of our own work on this? And we love this thing, we love this improvisation. Can we go off now and make a piece of theater with it and bring it back? So there was Marie-Ellen and then who started to making the masks? It was Marie-Ellen, aged 15 in America making these masks. And then I discovered the writings about Jesmyn Howarth who was a Del Crows teacher who'd worked with Capose who was terrible and awful and it was a disaster. And he wrote shockingly sexist things about her. It's a woman, she's feeling neurotic, women who teach Del Crows, there's something wrong with them. In the bin it's a disaster. But when I had a look at that and I really dug into that, I started to understand how much Bing had borrowed from Jesmyn Howarth. And also how Jesmyn's Howarth's mistake had helped Bing and then Capo work out how they could take aspects of these things and really make it work. So I ended up with this whole, at first I think I would see it as a genealogy, Foucault talks about genealogies rather than these great big straight lines, masters owning things and all these men. And then a bit later I came across the delures and guitaries term of rizzo which maybe I like even more in some ways, like a root, like of a plant, everything being connected together. So that really started to inspire me. And since that time really, I've been thinking, okay, there's these connections and there's these ways of sharing things and maybe it's not owned just by a kind of lineage of men. Good job because I identify as a queer woman. So I'm quite glad it's not owned by just the group of men. But also I started to think, well, the way that we share and the way that we engage with this and the way that we share and transmit ideas is much richer and much more exciting. And I think essentially it goes against lots of ideas about patriarchy, but I think again it goes against a lot of ideas of colonialism, a lot ideas of kind of white supremacy that people own things that they control things that things can only be seen as being valued in one way. Who wrote the book? Who had the biggest school? Who trademarked the technique? You know, usually Strasbourg, the method, you know? And so I started to think lots more about that as well. So as well as being inspired, I think very much by the techniques that being developed and then Le Coq developed and Monica developed or Nushkin developed this whole strand. I also became a bit inspired about different ways of looking at and understanding our lineages of performance and what that might even mean. And the fact that they're not, you know, that these things are never really pure. I think I was seeking something when I did this first research to see what it was that had inspired me and I wanted to find out this true one route. And that's not what I found. I found something much more complex and mixed together. And I guess as that journey's gone on, I realized more and more I'm interested in also bringing myself into the room, you know? I do this work because I like to transform into a tree or, you know, into a muddy pond or into, you know, a leopard. But at the same time, I also want a space to bring myself into these rooms and into these rehearsal spaces, these teaching spaces. And I guess I have to also think that, you know, I'm not pure as a person in a way. I'm quite hybrid. I'm looking for the kind of diversity I suppose I had in the Weekends Arts College all those years ago and seeking ways to find that. And also I draw on other inspirations. A number of years later, I came to the work of Michael Chekhov. That was actually, it was about the same time, but it was a slightly slower journey. And now, you know, I blend between, you know, aspects of Michael Chekhov's work, the work of Suzanne Bing and the French lineage there, but also lots of other kinds of influences and other kinds of performance practices, both from your book from around the world as well. And I suppose in a way we're all blends, aren't we? Whether we like to see it or not, and maybe there's something liberating also like Paula was saying, there's something liberating about acknowledging that it's us in dialogue. We talked a bit about that, I think in our pre-meets in dialogue with these techniques. And then as Paula said, it's us fundamentally in dialogue with the performers that we're training, the performers that we're directing, or, you know, or the directors that we're mentoring. It's a process of that kind of dialoguing. And I do think that this French tradition has, Paula put it very beautifully, but at the heart of it, there is something about empowerment and centering the participant or the actor. And you said something else really nice that Paula as well, but about kind of essentially is that holistic, relational exchange with people. And I think you're right, to some extent, that is the antithesis, isn't it? Of having like the master. Because I feel in this lineage of practice, or for me now I'm much older and I've been doing this for, you know, a long, long time, the more I understand that I learned from my students as Paula was saying, the better part. So in some senses, that's for sure, isn't it? Giving away some sense of ultimate power and control to become actually more effective and better as a pedagogue and as a director, as a teacher. So it's, you know, as Paula said, there's almost a contradiction. At the same time, like Paula was saying, I have to acknowledge the amazing teachers that I've had of my lifetime, you know, and I always do want to name them and place them. But I think I've shifted a lot in the last 20 years now about how I position those things. And even how I position those techniques, you know, both being and Chekhov's work is grounded in, you know, embodied play and psychophysical imaginative play, but that doesn't belong to a Western canon. I mean, you know, play is inseparable from aspects of performance from all around the world. You know, they don't own it. They didn't invent it, but, you know, they realized that they could harness it and do something exciting with it. So I suppose I'm interested now in seeing what my passions are, but also being able to sort of diversify, I think, and slightly kind of challenge some of these structures. Although I don't know quite how we approach it. As we said, you know, Master Less sounds quite curious and sounds sort of almost like positive and radical, but negative all at the same time. So I don't know how the heck we reconfigure those words or the way that we define that, but I definitely know that we need something new. And, you know, the rise of the Me Too movement, the BLM protests, the, you know, the huge health, racial equalities that we see from the pandemic that we're living in right now. You know, it's a lot of it's got to change. So I suppose, you know, right now, I'm like, yeah, so how do we do that? How do we make those change? How do we hold onto things that we love, but feel brave enough to critique them and challenge them and ourselves? And, you know, and how do we reconfigure it so that we don't end up just not of these lineages? And those people in the 20th century in this act to train and perform a training lineages who are bumped out is anybody of color, you know, and historically in the past women, but I think still now women, you know, look at how poorly paid female pedagogues are in the conservatois in, say, for example, in England and movement directors and they're mostly, you know, mostly women. And then look at how many women are bumped out of the positions of directing when they have children. So we're still in a system that unquestionably is doing exactly the same. And then you look at it in terms of race and the picture is, you know, 150 times worse. So I know it's 2021 and Suzanne Bing was struggling with all these things many years ago and being kind of overlooked, but maybe some of those things are relevant now. Thank you, Cass. So it's interesting. We're now going to open it up to you all, but I'm picking up on a couple of things which is this giving credit, giving credit to, you know, I hear you both really acknowledging who you studied with and who your influences are. So there's a giving credit. There's a giving power to collaborate. There's a giving of autonomy to students, giving of subjectivity to students. So this is a sort of giving motion, which I don't want to identify with a female body or someone who identifies with a female body, but we might call it feminine, we might call it something else, but there's a kind of giving over which I noticed you both doing and also giving over to your families and giving over to important people in your lives. So there's a kind of a, perhaps a sort of reciprocity or something going on. We have so many wonderful, amazing experienced people in the room. So it's gonna be very exciting to hear you all speaking. I'm gonna ask one person in particular, Frank, would you, Frank Chamberlain, would you be willing to put into the chat Daycruz quote about Suzanne Bing? Would you be willing to do that? Great, thank you so much. I just want to hold one thought before we open up the conversation. And that is for those who have studied the pedagogy of Jacques Lacroix, if you would just imagine the neutral mask waking up for the first time, imagine that exercise being taught by a woman in the early 20th century to a group of innovative students. That is the origin of that exercise. Just want us to hold that thought. It's a bit of a transformation for me. She goes home, she talks to her lover, Jacques Coupeau. She says, you know, sweetie, what did you do with the students today? She says, oh, I put on the noble mask and I had them wake up as if for the first time, okay? One of the students in the room is his lawful daughter, Marielle Endasté, and she picks up this exercise, okay? And Jacques Lacroix learns it from her and her husband. Okay, so I just want us to just, that's a little click. It just has to be a little click that this wonderful person that many of us credit our pedagogic influence to was a brilliant synthesizer, a powerful, creative and wonderful person and did not invent the exercises. We just have to really sit with this. It is true. We really have to shake ourselves out of this kind of slightly hypnotic effect that the naming of a lineage has had on us. So that I'm saying to my friends in the LeCouc universe. There's so much vibrant commentary and questioning going on in the chat. I can't do it justice. Is anybody willing to unmute themselves, speak out? Falguni is scanning the room for your raised emoji hand or your raised physical hand. Is anybody willing to just go for it and speak out what they're reflecting upon? Amy, in the meantime, I can say something quickly because have been a LeCouc and you have been too. I mean, as you said, it was a great synthesizer and very, very often the teachers that were there created new material or keep searching. We know this, we know this. Yeah, they were constantly inventing. Especially one of them was Norman which, you know, he really, he was a big part of developing the movement. And I'm talking about Norman Taylor if someone knows him. He's in the room. He's in the room. Oh my God. Hopefully Norman will speak too at some point. I have some hands raised. John, you were first. John, do you wanna speak, unmute yourself? Yes, thanks Amy. Thanks so much both the speakers today. Really, so fascinating. I just wanted to respond to what Paola you were saying about you realized you didn't want to reproduce what the LeCouc model, the master's model and all that. And you mentioned a couple of things that you did. Oh, I don't want to do that. Can you be specific about some of the things you actually ended up rejecting and why is that possible? Well, observing like LeCouc working, you mean, oh. In your own teaching, is there something you've come to say actually that part of that method or that teaching? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't do that because, sorry. I think a lot was referring to, sorry, I am struck that Norman is in the room now. He was my teacher and so I feel, I see. Anyway, I think he has a way of relating to people that wasn't sometime in due of developing, but he was in due of pushing down. And he may was his own choice. I'm not saying that he may have chose to try to do that to see if you come out, if you survive. So I shoot and I will survive is the good ones. So it may be a precise system, but I knew I didn't want to do that. I knew I wanted to accompany people. I'm not nice when I teach, I'm well known for that. I mean, but the people can laugh about it and they can tell me about it because if I am strict behind that, behind my pushing, there is a sort of love for you to move from point A or point B. That's my, that's the motivation behind my action. And I didn't always felt that. I felt that sometime it was more on egoic motivation behind certain things. And yes, he really didn't like women. I can't say that I was privileged again because I was from Padua, which is the city where everything started for him. And so when I got to the school, he was so happy that I was there. And I think he maybe kept me on the second year for about two. I told Cass and Amy the other day that I was sure I was leaving the first year because I wasn't good as a student. I mean, I was coming from my gym, throw at the theater. So, I was surviving literally there like this. And when I went up to interview with him, when he told me I was going to stay, he said, I don't know what there is about you, but I want to keep you. And maybe part of that was that I was from Padua. But with women, it wasn't always nice. And one thing that I noticed in the third year that I didn't notice on the first year, on the two years before, was that he really had people that he liked. And those people could do freaking anything. And the other people had to work a little bit more. That's something else that I was like, huh, this is really not good for the group, for the community, for the school. And again, it may be my interpretation, but that's why I observed. Kyla, would you like to unmute yourself and speak? Great to see you. Hi. Thank you. And thank you for this great conversation. I just wanted to highlight that it feels like a very continuation of our discussion a couple of weeks ago on decoloniality. And I guess my point is that, so we've just started a school in Johannesburg called the Johannesburg School of Mask and Movement Theatre. And the director, Roberto Pombo, also trained with Giovanni Fussetti. And all of us are, in some ways, responding. I like this idea of responding to Lacocque. And I think that's what came out of our conversation. And what's further being entrenched here is this idea that we don't need to be, we can take this as a structure and as a starting point. And we can respond to our circumstances and to who the particular group of people are that are starting the school. And certainly as the only person who identifies as a woman in our collective of four teachers, this is a very important conversation for me. Because I do, and I even said in our conversation a couple of weeks ago that I do find it very male heavy, male energy heavy as well, the pedagogy and the lineage. So I love this conversation around rhizomes and a more organic structure that has shoots and roots and places to grow and places to go. And that is responsive rather than, yeah, that is responsive. And in our case, we've been very focused on race and decoloniality. But for me, I think I just wanted to say that these two are highly interlinked for me. The questions of queerness, the questions of decoloniality, the questions of race, gender, they need to go together in our context. It's not that we can't only focus on the one if we're not focusing on what we're talking about here, which is just incredibly rich. So thank you and educational. Thank you. So really, really refreshing as a woman starting a school to hear these things. Thank you. Wonderful, wonderful. Thanks, Kyla. I think Melissa was next. I'm not sure it was in Melissa or Andrea, but I think Melissa, you there. Maybe she's lost her connection. Andrea? Let's try the, I'm in India for the... Oh, you're in, okay. The connection is, yeah. Am I on? Yep. Wow, really wonderful and amazing to hear about the influences of LeCocque and it's so great. I want to research all of these different people and how they influenced him because of course he's not the only, he was a vessel and I think it's important that we're also thinking of ourselves as this sort of, I kind of think of myself as a vessel of all these different influences. But I want to ask specifically about the way the room traditionally was set up in the LeCocque training and the way the auto core and the kind of via negativa approach to the pedagogy worked on me as a student because over the course of the two years, I found myself endowing the teachers with more and more authority. And in our year group also, that sort of happened. Every Monday coming to show the work and listening, what do they think? And will they notice what I tried to do? And what I feel I've done with LeCocque practice in African context and Asian context where obviously my whiteness and my race and the sociopolitics around all of that with the people I work with plays a huge role. I have found I've had to completely do away with the person on a chair in the center in a sort of very authoritative position in the room and with the authority also of, there's a sort of power in withholding the answers, which I also understand as a pedagogical approach. But I position myself in that way as sort of maybe more all-seeing and all-knowing than I really am. So yeah, I have a question about that. If we're talking about demastering, unlearning, unteaching and kind of renewing the methodology of this way of operating in a room which is more about sharing and more about being together with fellow students as opposed to sort of the classical authoritative teacher position and learner. Because LeCocque obviously, the LeCocque pedagogy does lend itself to that. It's an ensemble practice. It's lending itself to this sharing and kind of democratization of those power dynamics. But this way of his teaching was very set and I think very patriarchal and also, anyway, yeah, what do you think about that? Because I've had to do away with it and sort of have the power be in the room and we all feed back to the presentation of creations, for example. Melissa, this is such a wonderful question. Yeah, can I just refract your question into the room? Because it's such a great question. I mean, I don't, it doesn't need an answer, does it? Because it's sort of the question is so powerful. So it's something about as pedagogues because I'm imagining that there's a huge amount of experience with pedagogy in the Zoom room. The value of not giving a reply. Okay, so this via negativa, which Norman who's in the room and I have talked about this, he never, LeCocque never stated it as such. He never said via negativa. That's something that's been imputed to his pedagogy. So the value, is there value in withholding this? Yes, a withholding of answer. What is that? Is it a power play? Is there anything valuable to it? I really, you know, this isn't sort of just a big occasion to sort of bash the patriarchy. It's like, what is that thing? What's it good for? Does it do anything? What do you do with it? What do you all do with it? That withholding of answer or of reply or of critique? Is it, does it have any value? I'm very, very curious. I mean, obviously, Cass and Paolo, it'd be great to hear you, but also just in general, what do we think? I mean, what is that? I just like, sorry. I just like to briefly clarify that because this via negativa, it's really a pollution of the withholding the answer. On the website of my school, I stated, we do not give answers. And that's so important. It's not a power game. Is that you, when you find the solution, you have it and digested. Experiencing things is not having information. So the creating the space for the student to experience and find what works and what doesn't work, giving feedback, when we give feedback on what doesn't work, it is not to be negative. It's for the student to understand, oh, okay, we went a little bit too far right. We went a little bit too far left. And it's a conversation to guide the student to find their own answers. I think this is priceless. I will never give answer. And I really will suggest that you stay away from people that gives you answers and information because that's exactly what creates the mold. Because I may have an answer and I know how it goes. And you may find a different answers and it still work. And in that moment, we both have learned. I will always remember LeCoc during a neutral mask exercise. When he said, neutral mask, don't touch the neutral mask, don't go closer, blah, blah, blah, blah. There was a huge things about neutral mask, not getting in physical contact. And two people embraced and he turned around and he said, it works. So this is why it's important not to lead by saying, but by letting people do it and discover it. I found that in the States, this is a little bit is taking us being mean, I've been told that, that I'm too hard, I'm too mean, and I owe that, but I will never, if there's something I will hold on until I die is this. Because when you find out something that way is yours. No minds is yours. And you can take it and run with it. Great. So I'm gonna keep on with the people who raised hands and please if you are inspired by that particular question that Melissa's asked. So please speak to that. Andrea, I think you're next. Would you like to unmute yourself? Hey. Hi everyone. Hey. I feel really overwhelmed right now to answer or to speak just cause there's so many people here. Okay. So this is what I kind of got inspired to talk about even though there's like quite a few conversations gotten on. So I'm autistic and sorry. So I experienced the world in quite an intense way. So thank you for opening up the conversation to me. I think I feel quite emotional for many reasons, specifically that what you said Amy about the neutral mask and experiencing what it would have been like for a woman to first propose that, for that to come out and to say that. And I don't know why, but when you said that, I just, yeah, just became very emotional. So I thought I would share that. Also, I find this space of even me being here now and just crying. Like I feel quite constricted by how we have conversations online and these boxes and everything. Quite challenging. Anyway, I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience as a neurodiverse person in training just because I feel that might be something that many people might not know of. Well, my experience was that I was initially interested in joining and going to Le Coq in Paris. But so here we've spoken about the negative as kind of withholding, withholding of the teaching or withholding of the answers or withholding. Whereas like in some other instances, I've heard of the negative as being the kind of way that saying no to something before it's kind of started or like if someone's doing something being like, no, that's not the way. So I just wanted to clarify what it was because I've met with other students at the school who the way that they've found whatever it is that they're trying to figure out is by a teacher just saying, no, no, no. And so that's one thing. And I think it's another thing to have students like share something and then for the teacher to kind of be like holding an answer, even though there might not be an answer, but holding a space for the answers to come to the students. So I feel like those are two different things. And I have encountered both of them in people who have trained and who teach Clown and also who teach Lakot practices. And if we're talking about the one where students come in and the teacher just goes, no, or like, just pushes you to the side as a way of kind of saying, you've started all wrong, you need to try again or what you're doing is terrible, you're shit, you suck. I feel like that's something different. And I can say that any instances where I've found myself in that kind of environment, there is no way that I would have been able to continue because it would have been completely crushing. I do not understand what that means, or it doesn't work for me at all. So one thing that I found positive about my experience when I was at Lisba was that even though I have dyspraxia as well, which means that my body is like a little bit behind from everyone else. So obviously the first year when we're doing, all of the movement practices where the mime is very important and the physicality is very important, I very much struggled. But what I was able to find was that in that environment, in that year, that instance that I was there with the teachers that were there at that time, there was a kind of opening to figure out how the way that my body worked could then bring something new and be developed and be created into something new. And for me, that was probably the most important thing that I could take. And I hope to be able to hone that in to help support other people who are neurodivergent in these spaces. And yeah, and I just wanted to share. Thank you, Andrea, for taking such a big risk from your little Zoom box. That was greatly appreciated and very important what you said. And I think that's a great disambiguation between two types of via negativa. We have to be clear which is which. One is holding a space for the students' creativity. And the other one is something that, I think a lot of us are familiar with is non c'est pas ça. The immediate sending off of something which there's a very powerful statement actually that I remember from LeCocque that was said in French. On n'équite pas les premières traces which is you don't depart from the first movement of an improv. And that is my memory of the c'est pas ça moving people off was that something very specific quality was being looked for in the improv. And the first trace of the attempt by the student was not what was being looked for. So it was a very, very specific attempt to find what was being looked for. I think that's a very different thing. That's almost, I would say, diametrically different from what you're describing, Paola. Just to say thank you for that disambiguation. I think that's important. Great, Vicky, I think you had raised your hand next. Would you like to unmute? Yeah, so as we talk about being a woman, whatever that is, the thing that comes up is just the question about our archetypes and the archetypes through our lives. So what is it to teach and be in your 20s? What is it to teach and be in your 40s, your 50s, 60s? And the different stages and the different roles that we bring and that within our society, really there's talk of menopause, talk of female elder. It's kind of absent. When you get old, there's very much this kind of within art, the way in which we relate to elderly as we kind of disregard and we send, but actually the vital wisdom is present, especially what is the feminine wisdom that we can bring? And how does that come through? I'd be really interested to hear from Paula and Kass, like your experiences of being in different archetypes, maybe also the different archetypes relating to being a mother or how that does that connect into your teaching or actually is it completely separate? When you come in to teach, do you put on your teaching mask and come into a different neutral space? So it's really reflecting on that and then also how within teaching movement is there richness in integrating other practices that have come up through generations of female movement practices, such as the female circle dancing? There is this incredible community and when I had an experience doing it, there was incredible trauma released in that process and there was this vast holding field and it felt like suddenly tapping into a strength beyond within pregnancy and beyond, like the depth of the body that's not really touched on, kind of suddenly it was harnessed there and it was like, whoa, there is this utter power that we can get through so much, we can endure. And I just wonder like how we can, is there a place to integrate that? Or maybe it's already present in some aspects, but where does that sit within our movement practice? Cass, Paola, would you like to? Cass, I don't want to speak too much, I talk too much. Cass, would you like to say something? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question, Vicky. I think when I was younger, sort of beginning as a pedagogue, beginning as a director, moving from sort of being a performer, I think for different reasons, I didn't bring myself into the room as much and I think I was still a little bit in love with the idea almost of kind of master lineages and seeking this true pure essence and as I've got older, I've done it more and more and more and sometimes I wasn't sure and I've sort of gone with the flow and I've gone in terms of what students that I've taught over many years have said but going on what they've told me, often they've said it's very important so I'd always bring into the space at some point or another that I'm a queer mother. When my daughter was little, it was very helpful because I would often do exercises and games with her which she would excel at, of course, and I would struggle with because I'm a middle-aged adult so I would bring it in terms of anecdotes or in terms of my life or in terms of my identity and I found that the more I did that, the more I was able to encourage students to bring their own identities in the room. What's your kind of cultural practice of storytelling? What are the cultural architects from your community, from your background? Do you know what I mean? What's your feeling of being a woman, a man, non-binary or trans? What's your identity? What's your story? So I've definitely had a shift and as I've felt more able to do it myself, I've found that I'm then making a space that has enabled students to bring themselves into the studio which isn't to say we don't want them I think to be able to transform and find an energetic presence to be able to become a completely different character or a snake or a tree. But I don't want them, I don't want to push those aspects of myself outside of the room and therefore create an environment where they think that they have to as well. So I mean, that's my own personal journey but I think it's an interesting thing to sort of grapple with. Obviously you've got boundaries, obviously you don't want to overshare but I've been quite struck by how much even just small shareings can do in those kinds of contexts. I talk a lot about as well, talking about physical work, I talk a lot about my own body, my own injuries, my own pregnancy, my own child due to me, my own disabilities but also I will talk about, if you like, the fact that when we're talking about things like habits, for example, can we ever escape all of them? We can at least try. Locock is saying, isn't he, that neutrality is a temptation. It's maybe not something you can never really achieve but can we find these ways of transforming? But I'll also talk about my own kind of physical habits in terms of my own mixed ethnic background, my age, my sexuality and I think that there is something quite helpful about that. So yeah, my journey I suppose in brief is that there's definitely been a shift there and I think the other thing that you talked about was something about the depth of the body and I thought that was a lovely expression, the depth of the body. I don't know how much in teaching practices we've looked at the depth of the body's sort of plural really. I think that there's still a very rigid divide between who we are and the politics of the world sometimes and how we deliver training and I think we're grappling with that, aren't we? But it's an interesting one. I think there's still a politics about what's allowed to be kind of in the space and out of the space. And because of that, I'm thinking about the very important points that we just made earlier on about being neurodivergent but if we can't also bring ourselves into the studio in terms of our identity and issues like being neurodivergent then in a way, we can't really develop practices that are gonna better respond and better empower and better enable people. People can't bring in their cultural stories, their own ethnicity, their own identity, issues of disability. And the depth of the body, I don't know, I'm gonna think more about that. So that's a good question, isn't it? And when we do them, when we don't explore that. Wonderful reflections. Thank you, Vicky and Cass. Yeah, great. Meg, would you like to speak? Yes, thank you so much. I'm just really thrilled by the conversations that are going on. So thank you, Paula. Thank you, Cass and Andrea. Thank you everyone who's involved in this discussion. I just wanted to sort of speak from a perspective of an Eastern European practitioner trained in Poland and very much the Krotowski's and Michael Chekhov's traditions, Stanislavski's traditions are slightly different. I'm not that familiar with, I know what it's worth, but I'm not experienced in his practice, but there was this conversation, ongoing conversation here about Via Negativa. And I keep thinking about how it is, how Via Negativa is prevalent in Eastern European practice, theater practice still on culture. And I can only reflect on that from the position that I am at now, because I was part of that, let's say movement when I was back in Poland. Now I'm based in London, seventh year now. And so because I'm facing, perhaps going back to Poland, I keep trying to ask myself like, how do you tackle? And I speak about Via Negativa here, that comes from the Krotowski's traditions and believing in the perfect actor who strips of the layers of his body to sort of in a sense in the skills and to become that pure actor. And it does bring that sort of quality of, or propagates in my opinion, toxicity. And I've experienced this. So Andrea, thank you so much for sharing. I'm totally with you when I was a student. I've been going through that a lot, staying on the stage, not knowing what I'm doing and all I was hearing was your shit. You should better think about doing it differently, come back, but then you come back, your shit again. And so there is a lot of that going on. I don't think it needs to be done that way. There's very valuable comments here, but I keep thinking and maybe more experienced petitioners and people who like Paola, you're coming back to Italy now or elsewhere. How do we tackle this mindset? This mindset is very much prevalent. I speak to my colleagues, Polish colleagues. And I find it so hard to have a conversation when theater is seen as a collaborative, truly collaborative practice, where that ownership of a method is not as important as it is, how we use that, how do we facilitate it? How do we empower people and train people? So this is just my thought and question. Thank you. This is wonderful. Thank you, Mag. In the interest of time, I'm just going to say something first. And I see there's one more person who's got their hand up, Barinski. And I'd love to, you just speak too. We have, we're trying something new, which is that we're aware that we don't get to complete a conversation in the time we've allotted on rehearsed teachers. So we're going to ask you, if there's something in this conversation which has sparked your interest and you'd like to see a part two, could you put the theme of that part two in the chat and we'll record that so that we, we could possibly carry this forward because it really is a tremendously rich conversation. So I don't want to, so Mag has asked a really important question. Mag, is it okay if you stay, can you stay into the period after the chat? Because Paola and Cass are going to stick around and we can talk a bit more about the Viet Negativa. Is Mag there? Is that okay? Because I just want Rinsky to be able to speak before we close tonight. So please stick around. Great. Okay, Rinsky, would you like to speak? Sorry, you're, I think you're still on mute. Hi, everybody. This is my first time in this forum. I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking to you from the lands of the Warrantory people of the Kulin Nations. I'm here in Melbourne in Narm and I pay my respects to elders past, present and future. And I just want to acknowledge that this land was never ceded. So I'm in the antipodes as you will all recognise. And so this conversation I joined partly because the concept was masterless women teaching physical theatre and the whole, not the whole, but there's been an incredible thematic concentration on the legacy of Le Coq. And I just want to say that our traditions here, I've been teaching movement for nearly 40 years, I guess, in theatre schools. And I'd like to say hi to my colleague, Jenny Lovell. And really here it's all heritage. It's all legacy here in Australia. The only teachers I've had in the Le Coq tradition are Philippe and Monica. And for me, Monica's whole thing really directly to me and it's been a principle of my teaching is that we are all magpies whiskey. And so you take this and that, whatever works for you. And that has been my methodology really because there's no masters here in Australia. Everything is a conflagration of a whole series of legacies. And in some ways, the strongest part of my practice is Le Coq to some extent, but it's not my real, my love. It's Le Barn, but it's really through Liz Pisk and Mary Vigman and through Monica that has started the process of assembling. Assembling, I love that word rhizome or rhizomatic. For me, it's like mycelium. I think what we've all done is kind of like where no one owns the work anymore, whether it's a woman's legacy or influence or it's like it's the underground that pins all of us as physical practitioners who believe that the instrument of the body is the means by which we communicate, whether that is in a particularly codified form like a mask or a particular genre or melodrama or tragedy or whether that is embracing text, naturalistic, post-traumatic, whatever. This is the means by which we communicate. And I just wanted to say that we are the crucible through which all this work kind of creates, has its alchemical process and that I acknowledge a whole series of great and wonderful academics and practitioners in this forum. And I think like my colleagues that it's no longer looking back, but looking forward the cultural safety issues, the issues of gender and agency across, yeah, well, you get what I'm saying. So thank you very much for letting me speak, Amy. Thank you, Rinsky. All of you are my, what would you call it? I've watched your work for a long time, but thank you. Thank you. And thank you for that wonderful closing reflection which the depth of the body I think is another way of putting what you've said, the crucible of our experience, of our embodied experience. Thank you so much, all of you. And it's been a really great pleasure and a great honor to host this conversation tonight. We will continue next week. May I ask, Jehan, can you unmute yourself to announce our lineup? I'm unwell versed in the lineup. I think next week is Mwennia, right? Mwennia, do you want to speak to the lineup next week? Sure, I love this passing on. Thank you everyone for this incredible discussion, first of all. Next week we are taking a slightly different direction in the unrehearsed futures format. And those of you who have been before will know that there's usually a guest or two and it goes like this. But we are guest lists next week and the invitation is really to come back and to have a conversation as a community about the three broad themes, I guess, that we have for season two, which are plurality, possibility and planetarity. And the question on the table is about thinking together about this idea of planetarity in the context of the pandemic and whether we have missed a moment, right? There's a, in the discussion we've had so far about this question, we've been thinking about the fact that at some point early on last year, there was a real moment where so much felt like it had broken down and broken apart and there was a kind of spaciousness and how we think about what we do as educators and the idea to folk of different kinds. And a question now, I suppose, around wondering if there was a moment then that might have passed or not or if in fact we are well in that moment and all of the kinds of ways there are to come to this question and do a bit of reflecting, I suppose. So please come back. The invitation as always is open to everybody, invite your colleagues, but yeah, it's a slightly different format next week and I very much look forward to seeing you back if you can make it. Thanks, Amy. Thank you. Yes, please do come back. We really enjoyed having you and we will stick around now. It's not, we're closing the recording and we're closing this particular discussion.