 One, we are live. Welcome everybody to Segal Talks here at the Monteney Segal Theater Center at the Graduate Center CUNY, at the City University of New York and in the City of New York. And as we all know, with a city that has been hit so hard, the state that has been hit so hard, more cases and dead than in countries in the world and streets are empty. We hear the fire engines and ambulances going up and down. Everything is closed. Everything that made New York City, New York City, the bars, starting on with the great oyster bars in the 19th, 20th century, where people got together to talk, regardless of class and status. You know, where this was so great about New York, the city, life, the theater, places, concert halls. Everything is closed. Stores are closed and life, as we knew it has almost vanished and has changed and we are confined to our small spaces. So the world for ourselves has gotten smaller, but also in a sense, the global world has gotten smaller. We are connected for the first time and where we really feel it, everyone is connected on this planet, but it also got closer in the global world, even so borders in our clothes, cities even encouraged not to travel, states in America say if you come from New York to Massachusetts, quarantine for 14 days. So things are changing, but it is a time where we need to hear from the world, from the global world. We have to think and act locally, but we have to think and have a global conscience and a good sense and the Segal Center has done that over the years. And with our talks, we have people from Egypt, from Lebanon, Taiwan, Germany, France, now with us, Italy and Burkina Faso and many, many, many, many other countries where we need to hear voices from artists. We hear so much from politicians as we every say virologists and economic advisors, spin masters, but what do artists have to say? We strongly believe that artists have a voice. They have been on the right side of history, the right side of progressive justice and they will be also be on the right side this time. So we need to listen to them. We need to take it serious and everybody in the arts has these questions. We want to hear what some people's mind but also from outside said for people, please do listen to what artists have to say and what they tell us. It is significant, it is important. Normally they do it thinking on stage. They do thinking by doing, by showing. We don't have that, but still we have their minds and so we will get a little insight. Today we have guests for the first time from France, one of the great countries of theater in the history of the world. A great, great, great tradition. And so we're speaking with two practitioners today who will tell us a little bit of what's going on in France. There's Karen Anne, a singer, songwriter, producer, culturally engaged in community in France and Arts & Musiciel who runs a great theater in Rennes and Centre Traumatique and I'm right, a national theater. And where he has done exceptional work, both of them agreed right away to talk to us. And so thank you for taking the time. What six o'clock I think in France and where are you both? Maybe Karen, you start, where are you? I'm in Paris in Montmartre, which is why you hear the bells because I'm close to the Sacri-Cœur and we can hear even though the windows are closed, I'm very close to the actual white Sacri-Cœur, you know, the sacred white up on the hill. So I'm here with my daughter confined since mid-March. The first month was very bizarre because it was silenced all over. This is a very crowded, not necessarily my street but the neighborhood. But it became, it was suddenly a wall of silence with streets that are used to have a lot of tourists and a lot of families and a lot of kids running around that became completely empty. The thing is that where I live is I would compare it to certain neighborhoods of Brooklyn. There is a very strong community of parents, of kids that help each other. So very, very quickly we managed to create different charitable ways to help people who have less comfort of getting their groceries and getting what they need around the neighborhood. So there is a beautiful collectivity of help within the neighborhood and the community. But it was very challenging. We'll talk about how it could affect different fields in the arts or in the everyday living for artists around here. But the neighborhood has changed a lot. I feel now after almost two months that, I mean, no, after sorry, six weeks or five weeks, I feel that a, yeah, five weeks. We don't know, time is sort of amazed here. I feel that there is more noise coming from the outside. There is more, there are people who got the habit of going outside for an hour for grocery shopping, for a walk to get some air, but the first month was quite a desert. It's true, it has changed a lot these days. It's interesting and then you say that because I have the feeling since two or three days that something has changed and that people go much more out right now. So you have to know that in France, the lockdown was really quite severe as we needed to fill out some forms in order to go out. And it was only for an hour a day and it was only like three months from your, you couldn't go further than three months. So it was very strict in a way. We had to adapt ourselves to these kind of rules that are quite unusual for French people. And for my part, I had a very different experience. The day we had to close the theater, I felt not that I should stay in rent but get back to Paris in order to get closer to my family and join my family. But I live in the center. It's in a very different district from Kerenal. And the center, there are not so many people living here. It's mostly people working and it means that lots of people have left and the whole district was quite deserted. There was no one for a while except hundreds of homeless people. I live in a street when there is a social association called the Emmaus that tries to help support rescue homeless people. So they were all gathering here. So my first weeks were like in an apocalyptic movie because it could be 100 to 100 homeless people wandering around and all the neighborhood, all the area was really like, there was no one. Most of people have left. Paris went to the countryside, went somewhere else. So in my neighborhood, like, there was almost no one in the street. We're only two people in this building. Like everybody's left. And you could see this main street that was empty. And only some people like ghosts actually haunting this neighborhood and talking alone. And there was something very desperate and desolated when the whole thing started. And in order to get organized, you know, it took some time. So all this social association who have these people needed some time to get organized and take care of them. So now the situation is a bit different and they have people, they have meals and every morning in the street, they provide meals and stuff for all these guys. But the first week was really something devastating because although we are in quite protected the confinement, it was very, it was really, yeah, it was very sad to see that this confinement would be that different for people that some of them would have two months in the countryside whereas others are gonna experience something like hell. And that's my fear after the confinement because probably everybody feels that the others have the same experience although all these experiences will be so different. And you would have people who would have lost someone. You would have people who have been like in holidays. Some other people are working crazy with working online and making school for their children and getting together in small places. So all the thing is very disturbing because we are living in such different experiences and we're in bubbles. Everybody's in own bubble and we don't really know what's going on for the others on the other side of the street or the other side of the neighborhood or the other side of the border. And the first weeks especially were really not only frightening but really disturbing because you could see a country after another that everybody had to deal in such a crazy way when you saw these people in India for instance and then Africa and then it's not somewhere else. And it was, I don't know, it's a very strange experience to be in your own world and knowing like I have lots of foreign friends and at the beginning I had some friends in Spain explaining that in Madrid they would take over ice skating places in order to put all the coffins because they didn't have morgues anymore. These kind of images were so powerful that they were like taking all your imaginary and it was really hard to focus on something else. It was daunting. Yeah, this is an incredible experience. I heard in the news this morning and Karen and maybe for you to answer there have been some burning cars in some of the banlieues, the suburbs of Paris. The mood is changing. I know Italy, we had Marco and Irmana from Ravenna who said we are normally anarchists but strange enough in Italy people really stayed at home. They listened to the government, didn't go out in France. It was a bit different. People weren't listening. Now I guess I'll say you have to go to your computer, print out a form, sign it and take it with you when you go out. From the beginning, yeah. From the beginning this was, yeah. They really tried to contain it because the first time actually we were addressed by the government in order to create this confinement, this global quarantine. I don't think people actually realized how severe the situation was. What we should understand is that France is a country where some countries are very prepared for viral and pneumonia diseases. I realize now that France in the hospitals wasn't one of them, which is why we lacked so many places in certain hospitals. And also there wasn't a balance between certain regions in France where there was a lot of space in the hospital like in Akiten and then other spaces in the East where people were just going into the hospital and the hospital couldn't take them in. So it was an emergency, the confinement. So we had to sort of either stagnate or bring down the pandemic situation. So since after the first address, the first time the government addressed the people, there was an understanding of the confinement but not an understanding of the emergency. They had to make it more severe. And in order to make it more severe, they decided to create this document where if you do go outside, whether it's for groceries or to the doctor or to work because you can still proceed with your work, very, very few situations of work were possible because you can't gather with anyone for more than two meters or one meter. So the document, the printed document was actually what made people understand how severe the situation was and what an emergency was to create an actual stagnation within the pandemic. Are there gonna be unrest in Paris on the streets? For both of you, if we hear a voice there, we're like images of burning cars and... This is actually, it's also, it's something that in any chaos situation, I'm sure. And even in normal life, there's always, there are always suburbs or places. Unfortunately, we're people in suffering or in situations that we can't really, we're not gonna get into it express. And of course that around the world, we will hear about events that are extraordinary and not necessarily ordinary events. And burning cars is an extraordinary event. This is something that happens out of quarantine and will happen during quarantine. I don't even think it's a subject. I think, yes, it's hard and it's tough and people are going crazy. But I think the same people who will burn car regardless when they have to demonstrate. So I think... It's not connected with the... And it's not connected with the COVID. It's not connected with the confinement. It's an activity that happened between the police and some people, but it's not connected. So you shouldn't think that because of the pandemic, some things start in the suburbs. There's nothing to do with it. It's just, as Kerenan said, it's just an accident. It's a good thing. Actually, in these places where you could hear lots of things, I mean, people behave well, really. And they really pay attention. Absolutely. They have time to understand, but they did. And they're very responsible in these suburbs. It could have been, it could raise lots of issues and it didn't. And I think people and communities and associations and just people did the great, great effort and they really manage well. So it shouldn't be shadowed by these accidents that could have happened anytime anywhere. Yeah, no, I think yesterday had Basil Jones from South Africa, who said South Africa is actually doing remarkably well. Very, it's first prepared a very good president to take steps. They closed all the tobacco and alcohol shops because they felt a respiratory problem shouldn't be reinforced. And the people for domestic violence reasons shouldn't have access to it. And he says it was unimaginable, but somehow things seem to be working, even though they are here in their signs of an unrest. But Arthur, when it came to France, Nicole Berman and Laurent Clavel at the French Cultural Services in New York also talked to Arthur. And so tell us a little bit about your theater and what you do and how is the situation there? You also lead a school and how did you react to all of this? What happened? Okay, we have 70 people working in the theater. It's quite a big institution. It's one of the biggest actually that is devoted for theater. But for some reason, through history, I would say, we could manage to also invite, produce dance pieces and music. And that's why Kerenan is also associated to this theater. And there's a national school. There's also a movie theater and an international festival. So it's a huge setup that of course will suffer a lot from what is going on because when it comes to international production, right now everything's stuck because we don't know if people can, you know, who's gonna leave its country? How can we travel and we need to manage the school? We need to... I would say that the first thing was actually to understand and figure out how to get and to stay in touch with the people working for the theater. It's 70 people who were waiting and didn't know what to do and how things are gonna evolve. So you decided to close down the theater or how did it work? It had to. It was not a choice. First... Is that a phone call and email or how did that work? It was progressive. They started to send out protocols to theaters and cultural places and concert places to little by little, try to have the people working from their homes and then until we can actually do a close down which was over the weekend of the 12th, 13th, Friday the 13th of March. Yes, as you say, first we were not allowed to have more than 1,000 people in the theater, then it was 100. But as I was traveling, because I was in Italy on tour and I was in Bologna performing the day they locked down Bologna. And then I had to... What did you perform? What was your show? I was just acting in a police written and staged by a French playwright and director called Pascal Ranbert who came quite often in New York. And I was acting in his play and it was called Architecture and it was about... It was actually the last line was why did you say we needed to get ready for times we could not even think about? Which was like a profession or something that we're... And actually it was the last show in Bologna because they had to stop the festival and lock down the city. And then the next day I was supposed to be in France for Camille that I had stage about a woman dying of pneumonia. And we went in Luxembourg and the day we opened in Luxembourg, there was only half of the house was full although it was sold out because the day before they started to speak of the COVID in Luxembourg. It was from a day to another. First they didn't speak about it and all of a sudden they started to speak about it and say that people needed to stay at home and these kind of things. So we had our opening in Luxembourg and at the end of the show the director came and said, I'm sorry but we need to close the theater so tomorrow you won't perform. And then we were supposed to go back to France and perform and all the theater were sending emails saying don't worry Arthur we'll get the show, no problem. But in the meantime, that's why when you asked how did I found out? I don't even remember because it was a mix of phone calls, emails, friends talking and as we were touring in Europe we could see from one country to another that all this place were shutting, so closing down. So we were getting ready and waiting with lots of anxiety the day when we would be told by the ministry of culture now you have to close the theater. And for two weeks it was mostly administration, organization how are we gonna make it work? Will people get paid? How does that work? You have to know that we are in a country when luckily there are lots of subsidies subsidies for art and culture. So our institution is a public theater it means that we don't only depend on the box office. Most of the money comes from subsidies from the government, from the region, from the city in order to, and it was a very ideological and political project at the end of the Second World War it was the idea of creating that network all over France asking artists to run some companies and institutions in order to create demanding work and demanding culture but to make it accessible for the largest audience. And subsidies help us first to create and develop new works and to take risks and to make art or more experimental forms but on a larger scale. And the other part of the subsidies are actually for the audience because people gonna come and see a show in our theater will pay maybe 15 euro. So the money has to come from somewhere. So this public network supports artists but also supports the audience and allow nodians, allow people who could not afford going to a theater to go. So we also work with lots of association and people in order to bring these people in our theater. So anyway, the government said at the beginning that they will support either firms or corporates but also the public services in order to make them work. So our situation is bad but it may be not as bad as in other countries. When I speak with my American friends and American actors, it's just, there's nothing, really nothing. So we've been encouraged by the government for instance to pay what we had to pay when we had to cancel a production. We were supposed to have a few shows till June and we had to cancel maybe seven or eight performances shows, I would say seven or eight shows but we paid everything. So artists get paid, technicians were paid and we try not to cancel all these shows but to postpone them to, we paid also for all the people who were on tour with our productions although the tour stopped. So we needed to find some ways to make sure that during that time people could get their money or would be sure that their shows would be presented in the next season. So of course we had to juggle and jeopardize the season in order to make it work now but that's lots of people are gonna be canceled anyway. It's just a new puzzle. But still it shows that a theater that is supported by the state for artists but also for audiences can deal better with it than a purely commercial theater like a Broadway system. But we have Karen and how did you experience that how is it for you with your career as a musician and singer, do you have any gigs coming up? Do people pay you or did they, what's? So I was on tour. I was actually on tour. The night they announced the beginning of the confinement on March 12th, I was playing. I was on tour with my musicians. I had about 30 shows to come like around the summer between 25 and 30 not only shows but also events and we knew it was coming. We didn't know exactly when and then at some point about two weeks before I think they moved, it was from no more than 5,000 people and then no more than 1,000 people. So we canceled all the shows that were supposed to be for over 1,000 people. And then we kept the ones that are under 1,000 and on March 12th, they said that it was over that you can't gather at all like under a hundred but it was just for another few days that we knew. So we had to cancel everything. The thing is that some of the shows were in theaters and in concert halls that are supported by the government but most of them were also, there were many shows that were in rock clubs and festivals. When it came to, there is a whole issue here that we can address or not but there was something in terms of anything that has to do with rock shows that had to do with insurance contracts that has been done in December. All the contracts that have been signed before December 20th recognized COVID within force majeure and all the contracts that have been signed after December 20th were not recognized. You needed a special, you needed to address the COVID as a special case. It was not under force majeure. So this was a very complex thing. And then we realized very quickly that many independent promoters which I work with like Karomba and Rain Dog Production which are wonderful passionate producers who love projects and invest time and money in projects and then I realized how what a hard thing it's gonna be for them. So I also saw the difference of how it is between musicians and technicians. Musicians who accompany for example in a project an artist. I mean, I know that I work under my own name but I hire a crew a lot with me on the road. It's a collaboration when it comes to stage but it's still in a way that there are musicians there are technicians. Some of them do have a lot of help from the government. Some of the concert halls that are supported by the government are gonna be able to honor a lot of their salaries when it comes to both and some of them can't because they're independent. And I work with different independent promoters that are gonna have a very, very hard time. Of course they won't be able to honor the payments they're even in loss and as much as they're filling in. And I think we're learning, I think every day we have a little bit more information from the minister of culture on how to support these independent promoters. When it comes to musicians and artists it really depends on each case. I don't think, I do think that they're gonna get helps but it's not the priority right now which is something I do understand and I'm not looking for priority. I'm happy that the people I work with and the people that depended on this tour and on this year to come because it's a year of touring. We don't know, the tour was for a year so I'm just giving my example but it's there are other artists that had way more shows than me and we're talking about in my case between around 30 people who had a year of plans of tours. Some of the options that we had for the fall had to be moved away because what we canceled here is going to the fall and so on. Then maybe the fall is not even gonna take place so we're talking about spring 2021. So I think for all of us the priority was to find ways to have cultural content because for our sanity. We thought we knew that at some point we'll find ways to monetize it and there will be a collectivity of health and what's necessary right now is how to translate what we do into something that is cultural. So I know that many friends of mine and many artists friends of mine their first instinct was to give content of music and art and poetry and theater and readings online that were accessible with no fee. I know I do that every night at 10 p.m. on my Instagram page but I mean you can access through different and I have other friends to do it. And I think artists also decided to do it a lot around the world but in France, from what I understand they're very, very fast. There was a lot of content from all different fields of arts. Also personally and I can only talk for myself. I work when I write and compose and write songs or other things. I work from a relation that is distant to the emotion. For example, if I had to work on a project now I would be addressing things that I have already lived and experienced. I need the distance. And I found myself in a place where I'm unable to create at all because the only thing I could work on is music for somebody else's vision, for play or for dance but it's not coming from me like songwriting or writing in general comes from a place of re-experiencing an emotion that you've already lived. And since what we're going through right now is so big and so intense and I absolutely put myself on standby when it comes to writing new material. I find that maybe in the future I'll be able to readdress it and come back to it but right now I can't address any sort of emotional expression that what we call a creative way in my world. And I had to let go. So for me working on content that is already existing working on projects, thinking about future projects some of them I have with Arthur some of them with other collaborators some of them are mine trying to work on things that I have in progress that already have a shape but I'm unable, bizarrely enough, I'm unable to read. I read a lot in everyday life and for a month I wasn't able to open a book. There is a whole standby and the reason I'm saying this is not just to talk about myself is because when I share and when I talk to other fellow artists I feel that they're in the same situation of standby. And yeah, and this, I think there is an intense complex. I read an article, very interesting article from the Harvard Business Review about David Keller's work in research for anticipated grief. And I feel that even if now we're starting to understand and contain more information the more we know in terms of research about this pandemic the more also it becomes something that we can contain because not knowing is a very, very strange situation. And in France, I felt that there was a collectivity of anticipated grief. People were grieving something they don't know. People were losing their elders. People weren't able to go to hospices in order to say goodbye to their loved ones because there was this protocol of staying distant. And there was like a collective grief, constant grief. And I think the more we're gonna be able to put names on things and a physical form and words on what's actually happening the more artists are gonna be able to actually take their ideas and create new stuff. But as of now, I feel that people are okay with just letting it in and working on things that already exist, maybe reviewing them sort of going back to them, trying to work on classics. I feel that many of my friends agree that diving into classics within theater or poetry or music have comfort because you feel that the experience is coming from other eras where they have already lived extraordinary events and they have already experienced them and we need their witness. I mean, it's like a witness. We need their inputs in order to understand it. Thank you, thank you. That's quite stunning to hear that someone like you said, I can't read, I can't write, I can't sing really or create them. Arthur, how is it for you as an artist? Exactly the same thing. I mean, I really relate to what Karen has just said and the beginning with the theater, dealing with the theater at first was quite complicated because on an intimate way, I was experiencing something like that, like this grief, this despair and it was really hard to find the words in order to find the right words to explain to our team what is going on, how are we gonna work now and what are we gonna do in the future when you don't even have the time to process it for yourself. It's really hard to find the right line in order to lead this project with all these people working with us. But do you feel as an artist? So how is it for you? Exactly the same thing. And actually it was really difficult to focus on something. I was feeling that my concentration was the concentration of a goldfish because my mind was always caught by what was going on. And I think there is that grief, absolutely. And our imaginary was taken by something that was in the air but I think also something really wild, really animal, really something from, I don't know which era was taking over on our, yeah, I think I was like an animal. It was not rational, it wasn't in my brain. It was something in my body that was always on the lookout. You don't know what exactly and what you were afraid of but there was this attention all day long for everything, even for the silence. Everything was unusual. And it was unusual to go in the street when you maybe not supposed to be in the street. It was unusual to give a form to a police guy because you're out in your neighborhood. It's unusual to stay away from people when you're in the grocery store. It's unusual to arrive by the Louvre and there's no one. It's unusual to see all these people sleeping in the street. So it was really hard just to go back to yourself, say, hey, I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna create, I'm gonna be super creative. I'm gonna write poetry. I'm gonna write my memory. I'm gonna write my journal, the journal of my confinement which lots of people are actually exposing right now which I think it's a bit weird. And I completely relate to what Kehanan just said. So the thing is that it was interesting as a, first, as me as an artist, I was on the way to start rehearsing a new play and now would be in rehearsal right now. Rehearsal. What's the play? It's called Brothers, My Brothers. It's written by this playwright Pascal Humber who wrote me for me as a stage director and he wanted me to stage that script that he wrote for five people. It's quite astonishing because that play that I read a year and a half ago, I really loved it because it was out of the context, out of any context. You have to know that these last years what has really grew in France is this kind of a kind of documentary theater something about how to speak of the world right now and with real people on stage, and I respect that there are lots of shows like that. But I love that play by Pascal because it was actually like a fable. It was like a dark fairy tale about men and women, but men, men in their more violent way of dealing with nature and with their future. It's about people being isolated, confined in a very remote place in the north of Europe, in the forest, and they destroy everything around them. And it's like a fable about destruction, about this manhood destruction and how people cannot cope or how are species, human species cannot cope with nature and their environments and expressed by violence and everything, but it was like a dark fairy tale. It was an anticipation. It was something about the future. And I was happy with that because I say, okay, it would be nice to have something that is not connected with the news. And it's really strange because when we're gonna go out and if we have the possibility to stage it, then all of a sudden it's gonna resonate a lot with our experience and strangely enough, the costume that we're designed and we're made actually look like the costume that some people have right now in some supermarkets with the plexiglass hat and these kind of things. So now the show has become like a response to what we are actually experiencing. But the most interesting in terms of intimacy, I would say is that it felt that we would have had to project and go through a very strong imaginary process in order to tell the story. But right now, what is interesting is that the actors and the audience would have experienced was at stake in the play which is confinement, isolation and the end of this world. So instead of being a futuristic fable, it becomes an experience that everybody just had. So I don't know how, I don't mean I'm gonna, I don't feel like could change anything. It's just that people will listen to it in a very different way. And us as actors on stage, we will be much more connected with the words and much more grounded in the reality of this experience. And at some point I was thinking, okay, maybe it would be very hard to create shows in the future. And if I had to choose one thing that I would like to do, what would make sense? And at the beginning of the confinement, I was not so sure, but right now I'm sure that it's that play. And it's beautiful in a way because I have this necessity now of doing it because I know that there will be this encounter between what's going on on stage and the few people that might be in the house because we don't know how many people will be allowed to have in the house in the next month or in the next year. So, and this opened also a new way of thinking the life of that theater in the future because for a while I was supposed to deal with the theater right now. What are we supposed to do? What are we, what would make sense to, for such an artistic and cultural place in a city like Hain, what would make sense for the people? And what is a theater without shows and without an audience? What is the purpose of that? So, I had to answer that question right now and we found some I think interesting answers but we also have to ask these questions now for the future. So, there's two different aspects of it. It's now, what are we doing now in order to keep it alive and to maintain that connection between the artists, the audience and the people working in the theater. But what are we gonna do at the fall if we cannot have an audience and what would be the purpose of our houses? So, what I've decided now also is because there was a huge pressure at the very beginning, everybody felt that we had to do something online and that we had to use this digital technical stuff right near right now and provide content. And I was like, yeah, sure, but what content? I don't even understand what's going on. I don't understand what's going on with me. I don't understand what's going on in that neighborhood. So, how will I provide something that makes sense online right now? And it took me a while. It took me a while because I had to find what would make sense for me. And first, I would say that with my team, we thought that the first thing to do was to think not for an audience who's used to come for the theater but also for the audience that doesn't often come to the theater or comes with some association and network for disabled people, for far people, from people from a different background that are not used to come for the theater and not lose the connection, the trust and what we built with some association and some communities in this moment. So, first thing was can this theater through the website become like a platform for any solidarity ideas, any supports and help and any ideas that people may have in order to get together and in order to help some people who would need some help and assistance. So, we started that way and then there was another simple idea. We have a movie theater and this movie theater now is online and it's on demand. People can pay to watch a movie. So, we managed to get what people would pay would be transferred to some association in Reine who bring meals to homeless people, for instance. Things like that, very simple things. Very helpful. So, you show things in your movie theater, people pay a symbolic fee and it helps people to be fed. Yes. Do you do your discussions? The ones with Patrick Bocherrand, is that going online? This is something else and just to finish with the solidarity. Yeah, excuse me. Also, what we started, it took us so long but then very happy and proud of it. Now, we use the workshop, the costume workshop and to make masks because there's a lack of masks in France. So, we sue and we have a team sue in masks and preparing masks for the city. So, we bring them to the city hall and they'd be spread for all the people working for the city right now and in hospitals and things like that. So, our main physical activity at the theater right now is to make masks, actually, which is, I think... Which is an old tradition in theater but in a completely different sense. You say that it's not the Italian mask art but it's just, yeah. And the other thing about Bocherrand came from something very intimate. At the very beginning, I was obsessed with news. I was always online and reading and checking news and it was devastating actually and then what was very powerful also was to feel something that was really hard to express because it's so huge that sometimes it's not really thinkable. It's that thing that is happening is in the whole world and that we're almost now five billion people experiencing that thing and it's the very first time in our generation. I think that we experienced something like that and I felt that I needed to feel related with the rest of the world because what we were experiencing was not only our national way of dealing with the virus. It was not the national pandemic. It was a worldwide pandemic. So, it was something important in the story of humanity and I felt very connected and I needed to feel connected. I needed to feel that everything that was happening I was actually looking online for some news in the rest of the world and I couldn't just be satisfied with your news here. It was, I don't know, too... Anyway, so and also because I was hearing lots of people saying oh, now it's finally the end of globalization. It's the end of globalization. We're done with that. And we're thinking that's a strange way of thinking about it because globalization, it has always existed. The Roman Empire was globalization. We're all the product of this globalization and in a way, you know, there were not only viruses that came from China to Milano. In the 14th century, it was the silkworm and that's how silk started in Italy from China. It was the same journey. So, I remember that book, that Patrick Boucheron was one of the more interesting and main historian now in France and he's actually associated with me at the theater as I arrived in the theater two years or three years ago as Patrick to be part of our project because we've had experienced very complicated things in France these last years especially with the bomb attacks and the terrorism and what happened in the Bataclan and everything. And we were in a time when we needed to process thing and think about the unthinkable and try to put words on it and reinvent something in our society. So, you know, that we're thinking of these discussions where had started unfortunately since all these events that have happened in France in these last years. So, Patrick was associated with the theater and in order to bring something about history echoing our season and echoing what the theater was providing in terms of content and he was, you know, we're re-interpreting it in the, through the lenses of the history. And he created that book that is a marvelous book called the World Wide National History of France. It's like how the national story, history and story of our country is a storytelling, is a fiction that of course each country is doing but how we cannot think about how our national history is separated from the rest of the world and how our national history is completely connected with the rest of the world. And he created that book with 30 other historians and it goes from prehistory to 2015 and the Bataclan. And you go through all these dates and it's so fascinating to see how we are made of and how our history has always been connected with all the other countries. And because our story is full of wars, colonizations, will of power, it's also connected with not only these negative things but it's also connected with the search for another, a search for encounters, with discovery, with experiences, with traveling, with fights. So there is this huge energy in the book. There are all these discoveries that we make from one date to another because it's built through maybe more than 100 dates from minus 50,000 to 2015. So our idea was to choose and select and Patrick did it. He selected 50 interesting dates and we asked actors and actresses and artists who were supposed to be in the season, who were in the season, who are connected with our theater to read them every day. So we recreate this huge community and it's quite moving because it's a huge community. And you do that now too? During the, is there something going on right now? Yes, it has started a week ago. Oh, you start that right now. We started it a week ago and it's quite beautiful because it's such different voices and such different personalities who read and they do the best they can with quite difficult texts because they haven't been written to be told. It's written by historian. It's a very serious book. It's research. It's not entertainment. So they really hard job in order to make it clear. And it's so fascinating because they're very engaged in these readings but because these stories are so fascinating and you find out that the Islam is present in France since the eighth century and there have always been lots of things that came out of that for the better and the worse but it's interesting to remember the better. It's interesting to remember that the heart of Judaism in Europe at some point was in France in 1000 in the center of France somewhere with the main leader and thinker of Judaism, Rashi. It's fascinating to think that Dunkirk which is such a desperate city in the North had been one of the most cosmopolitan. Sitting the world in the 17th century that they've been one day in Dunkirk where Dunkirk was Spanish in the morning, French in the afternoon and English in the evening. Things like that. And it's so fascinating because we are made of all this huge connection and discovery and exploration, colonization but it makes this metisage. Oh, I don't remember the name English, Karen, and the metisage. Blend? Or like, I don't know how. Yeah, we can use it. Melting, the melting. With such, France, it's not France. France is just a blend of so many countries and culture and mix of people. How interesting to think that instead of saying we put on a cabaret act or we do something or we show our shows we have done which also I think is a very important thing to do. You say, let's engage with the history of France and put it out and... And something you can listen to because there were lots of things to watch but sorry, there are people who work on the computer for hours then they have to make school for their children then they have to prepare three meals a day and two long dories and everybody has three computers in the house and just one. And how can sit and watch a show for three hours? Karen, how is that for you? How do you cope with this? What are you? I have one daughter but I have friends who have three. I have one daughter and she's magic. So it's been even with schooling and everything so I can't complain. But I know some people that are having a very complex time. It's three different classes, ages, programs they need to work from home. I'm sure as Arthur said people are gonna have different experiences and like in any experience that the world are going through I'm very concerned about how we're going to take care of it on a European level because I think some countries are more built to help people individually and others don't have the budgets and the possibilities. I wanna know that there is a collectivity within Europe because as Arthur said, we learned from history. History has showed us with that when we close our borders and each country becomes independent in times like this, it's a very dangerous thing. That's what happened after the First World War and it led to atrocities. So I'm hoping there will be a good engineering of collectivity within Europe and within the US. I'm just separating the two because right now it's two different entities and decision making. So I feel that on a European level there should be a gradual building, rebuilding. It's gonna be long, we know very little we don't know for how long we're gonna need to go back and forth within this confinement. We don't know for how long the arts are gonna be something accessible only online. And I think what's important in times like this is solidarity, which is especially within theaters and places that create and that deliver the arts because it's also time to relate this to education. Our kids may have access right now to art and culture online. We don't know for how long. And we're gonna have to learn how to transmit as many things as possible for their education like this for a little while. How do you... Sorry, Frank, we've decided regarding this question because right now we're using everything online, we put what exists and I think so many things have been produced these last years that it's quite beautiful to have this opportunity now to rediscover some shows sometimes if we have time to listen to lots of radio broadcasts and there are amazing stuff that have been done these last years. And thanks to some institution, we have the possibility now to reconnect and we discover so many things we didn't have the time to listen to. But I think at the fall, I don't know if it's a decision or a desire maybe this desire will become a decision soon. If we cannot open the theater at the fall, then we need to open it for artists. If we cannot get an audience in the theater, we need to have artists inhabiting it. And maybe we won't have the possibility for lots of months to present shows but I think we need to create things. And maybe someday there will be people to see them because theater, it's only about music also but let's say theater, it's really about being in the same moment and in the same space with people on stage and in the house and something is happening which is living, which is alive which is this performing living art. So even if the theater is closed at the fall, then it should be open for people, artists, ideas. And I think we're gonna use the space, the empty space in order to dream and prepare the future. People come inside and sleep in the rooms or stage and what's that happening? Yes, why not? Why not? We use it for the in-hand. There are many different rooms for many different forms of creation. There's the possibility totally to do workshops and stay there. And I mean, even within artists and exchange and write together and bring in artists from different fields, blend as much as possible within the arts. That's the TNB is very well built for collaborations. Is it a time to completely rethink what we do? I mean, Avignon for example, is canceled, which of course is a big, significant, the most beautiful celebration of theater, but also the names that come in and so many out there. But it also has been done like in this way for a long time. It was created after World War II, also after a time. And there was a big hunger for culture, but do things have to be radically reimagined? Are you reimagining things that ran as something that you say we now have to react to that time or do you think, no, we should focus on what's good and what we know, what will work? Well, my first move was what I just said, is like it's to create anyway. Like if I cannot do my brothers at the fall with an audience, I will do it anyway without an audience. We'll perform in an empty space with all these ghosts. But I think that something might come out of it. I think it would be, it's very difficult to figure out what, because it's gonna be the result of so many things that we are going through, as Karen had just said before. We need to go through it. And then, well, and I think it's interesting to give us ourselves the possibility to take time, not to rush on new ideas because we're not obliged to have new ideas. And like when we have all these questions now, I have interviews like, how can you imagine, what do you imagine when you go out? How do you imagine it's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? I don't know. And in a way, I don't wanna know. And the best thing I did these last days was to drop it, to just give up on this and just let go. I don't know. The only thing we need to do right now is to be flexible. And as Bruce Lee said, be like water and go with what's going on. Because I think if we aim too much or if we decide too much, probably we're gonna lose something or probably we won't have the full experience. What we need to do is to go through it with the stream and we'll meet people and we'll talk with people and we'll try things. And things we don't even know, probably will come out of it. But it won't happen if we decide what we want, what we see or what we think people will expect. How should we know? And I think we should be much more humble than that and just experience and you know, there've been so many shows that were produced. I think it's sad if we close our theater for a season. It's super sad if we cancel the venue and I'm sad for the artist. I'm sad for all this. I'm sad for the audience, but on the other hand, maybe it's nice to have this moment on hold. Like, okay, we all say that, oh, it's nice to make the stop. It's nice that planes stop. It's nice that we stop, you know, and by close. It's not, it's nice that we stop, we stop. Okay, we can stop doing things for a little while. It's okay. It's okay not to have ideas. It's okay not to, so for the moment. To produce. Yeah. And if we have to remount some shows, if we have to the time to think about how we were doing things and what we didn't like in the way we were doing things and just the time to think how we would like to do them now, then it would be nice. But if we don't stop, we will never think and we will never take the time to, not only to think for yourself, but to share it with the others. I don't know if it's clear, but it's very clear. It's a very beautiful approach, I believe, what you just said. Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, Sahar Asaf in Lebanon said, it's the best, she said, she had a hard time, but she said, now let's all be okay, let's not be, I don't produce. You all are in a rush, we do so much. I say, just be there, be in the moment and experience this, Lucia Calamari, the Italian playwright said, she wrote a poem which got her into trouble in Italy and where she said, let's throw everybody out of the window who already writes the play about corona and writes the Netflix, I don't want to hear about it. She says, I can't do anything, I move objects around all day. One or two hours, I might be able to do something. Milo Rau, which is interesting in Ghent said, with like a little man, because he said, well, I think I'm planning the season will not happen in Ghent. And if it happens, let's imagine it as if it will not happen, we let's do everything outside in factories and schools and buildings, that it's not this theater, so we find a new way, we reconnect, be activists, there's reputations, who knows? You know, what will come out? We had a little bit over time. I'm so sorry to interrupt, I have another live show that I have to prepare for that I'm invited to, and it's in 10 minutes. Yes, of course, so thank you for having us here. Thank you so much for sharing this moment to talk about what's going on in our country. Yeah, thank you, and we are really interested and thank you for this was an important insight. Maybe the last question to Karen, very fast. What do you do then to keep you going to your batteries? What do you do in your day? Well, I try to do as many activities with my daughter. I try to look more into the educational aspect of this because maybe this is something that I will go more and more to workshops online and sharing things about the writing, the songwriting, the production. I do a live session every night on my Instagram page. It's my Instagram is Karen and music every night at 10. I read letters that people send to an email address called days of confinement 2020 at gmail.com. They write letters to loved ones that are guaranteed far away from them and around the world. And I just read their letters. We have artists coming in. Irene Jacob comes every Sunday to read some poetry. She comes in virtually, you know. But yeah, and we create communities that need certain contact at certain times of day and it helps go through this. And we feel that we have a schedule for something and it's important to keep busy. And I cherish the time I have with my daughter and I try to take it in as softly and as serenely as possible. Well, that's really quite a big good advice and a lot that you're doing. So thank you really for sharing and good luck. Thank you for having me. Love to all of you. We'll speak very soon. Thank you, Frank. It was really nice to join you guys. Thank you very much. Thank you. And maybe Arthur for you as a final question. We do have, of course, a lot of young artists, young authors, you know, when you were a student or whatever the time, listening now some classes and artists in general, whether they might be in New York or in New Delhi or in Bangalore or anywhere in the world, what would you say as someone who's also a teacher? You run also the school, which you have to deal with also with all of it. What is your advice as a working artist? It's very difficult to, because the more you grow, the less you want to give advices, right? You understand that life is such a journey. I think it's really, I think what's really useful, it's to think that it's not about recognition. It's not about existing. It's how through your art, you also be it yourself. And never forget that you'll become through years, the man, the artist, the woman, the artist, you will be through all these choices that you're going to make and that all your encounters, all your choices will finally create the person you will become. So it's just to stick to what you really believe in and in a very straightforward and honest way. And in this corona time, what would you think would be a way to prepare for them or to be, to what? Oh, it's so difficult to say something general because I think I see that with our students, they're 20 and it's 20 different experiences. Some of them are very lonely in a very tiny studio, isolated for everybody. Some others are with their family, some other big houses in the countryside and it's just so different. And I think, and maybe it's not an answer to your question, but I think what people should not forget when we go out and after the confinement is to remember that we all had very different experiences and be very respectful and careful about the others. Because even if we had a great time, some other people still haven't buried their grandparents. So we should not forget about the fact that we'll have to be very dedicated because we all forget that we're stuck in our places and with our computers and our vision of life right now is through that screen or through our windows, but it's not real life. And we have no idea actually about what was really going on we just have a virtual idea or we just have our imagination and we have the news but we don't really know. And so I think, and it's beyond work or if you have a work to do it's to get ready to discover what we have to discover and also how to reconnect with people who will have such different experience. And I think before work what will take us together is how are we gonna be together? Like if we have to respect that social distance for instance, it's so strange right now if you meet some friends or if for some reason you need to see someone and had to take care of someone of my family and it's so strange because you cannot hug, you cannot get close to people. This is something that is really new. How are we gonna experience that? How are we gonna look at each other in the street and not be scared by people? How are we gonna deal with the distance? How are we gonna deal with all these different experiences? And I think we will need, and I don't know if it's gonna happen some kind of social or national ritual in order to meet again and to join again. It won't be easy. It won't be obvious. People think it's gonna be a huge party but I don't know because it won't be so easy to reconnect and we will need time to share these experiences, to find the words, to share it with the others. And yeah, I don't know if it's the... No, no, thank you so much and it's good to think about the time after and maybe a post-traumatic stress syndrome that will come out, what will people do, how the world will look like. Really, really, thank you for giving us a real insight, both of you, I think. We have a better feeling about France, even so, of course, as you say, everybody is so very, very different in the experiences that we've had a little glimpse into it tomorrow. We have Guillermo Calderon from Chile, the great playwright who also has seen his country going through traumatic changes and able to talk to us next week. We have the German company, the Remini Protocol, who through their work has questions, the very foundations of theater and I'm interested to know what they will think. They also say we are journalists or architects in the way what we do and also theater makers, what they will have. Guy Regis Jr. from Haiti will be with us. Janila Bakar from Tunisia. We will have Peter Sellas, wonderfully joined us and can't wait to hear what he has to say also next to the work. He's also working at universities and then Oskar Eustis runs the public theater, the great big theater, public theater in New York City and Tony Torn, an actor who runs a small theater out of his living room, out of his home with 20 seats. So I think we will get also an insight in these different, different, different worlds. But Arthur, really I know how much you still have to work, how much is on your mind and how much you carry on your shoulder for your theater, your company, your own work, family. So thank you for sharing, thanks for all the listeners. Your project is really beautiful. I think it's amazing it's really, I mean, for all the students and all the people and all the students from CUNY and who have the opportunity to hear all these voices from all over the world. Thank you for organizing that because it's very rare, very exceptional, very important. And you have just amazing people and it's really beautiful. And I take a little touch to say hi to all my American friends and... Thank you. Yeah, you directed in Boston at the ART and you have been one of those who traveled. So I hope we will see you again here and we are working on a very interesting things with, I did a work about Jean Genet called Splendid, a very unknown and beautiful play with a group of different American actors from New York, but from everywhere, people I worked with. And Splendid was about people having a no stage and confined in a hotel. And some of them said, it's so close to the work we've done, why don't you try it on Zoom? And so it was a way also to keep active and to connect with these actors that are very dear to my heart, but so far. And so we meet every week and we rehearse online and we try to figure out how that text and the memory we have of the show can now work in the setup of Zoom. Because one of the direction I was giving to the actors was like, say the line just like if you were trapped in your own cell or in your own self and try to communicate with all these guys in the other cells. And they were in the show when they could even see each other. It was very lonely, very inner voices. And it starts to make sense in this reality when you have them all in all these little cells. And everybody has the same space, the same democratization in a way. Exactly. Toshiki Okada from Japan said, it's odd, the actor now he works with has the same space on the screen as he does as the director and it's changing. So there are lots of things that are changing. The world already has changed radically. And so we will see how it all develops. Thank you. And maybe one day we chime in again and good luck with your work. And it's a fantastic series you're doing and I wish you all good luck and maybe it's inspiring for some of the New York theaters. So the idea is let's look at history but the alternative, not the official one, closer to the real one and good luck. And thank you so much. HowlRound for hosting at Vijay and Stia and Vincent and the Segal team. So talk to you soon and thank you all.