 Hi folks, of your band is those are for tonight, not now, so you're sitting in the right seat if you found a seat. I'm Mark Russell. Andre John Grenet is in the back there. He actually runs it. And maybe I should use the mic. Okay, I, first of all, I want to recognize that we are a Lenepe land. And though we're not ready to do a proper full recognition ceremony, I think it's important to remember and pay respects. I also want you to know that you forgot to tell your folks, but we are being taped by HowlRound. And it's being sent out across the world right now. So if you're with someone you shouldn't be, just... This is the 16th edition of the Public Theatres Under the Radar Festival, and I want to thank you for coming. We have a busy day for you. 16 years, oh my God. We have a busy day lined up for you today, and you're going to have to listen to me a lot. And I'm sorry about that. We will be in Joe's pub all morning. There'll be a break in an hour or so. And then we will have, well, actually we're going to have four. We're going to have some thank yous. Then from where I stand keynotes. A short break and then coming attractions. And then we'll go to lunch at noon. So that's the general play of the morning. And then we'll go and see shows. Andara's was first at one o'clock. At 2.30 is gray rock. And then there's another breather. And then at 4.30 the shadow whose prey the hunter becomes. Then finally there's going to be cocktails hosted by the Arts Council of England and the Manchester International Festival. Thank them. And that rolls into a family dinner in the library. And that's where your tables are. You're not assigned seats, but you're assigned tables. And you can mix that up if you want to. And finally we'll see the show that we opened last night. Ahamé, Jay, Pallet, Oluo's, Susan. And then if you're still standing, I invite you to the first night of our late night program. And it's put together by Reckhael Palmas. And it's going to be fun. We're trying to do the late night scene again. I wish to thank Oscar Eustace and Patrick Willingham. My bosses. Also Shanta Take. The Public Theater, it's board of directors, especially Ariel Tepper, Joe's Pub, and Alex Nolten. This is his home. Mr. T. Merz, who's not with us, but is certainly supporting the place for quite a while. Jane Friedman and Howell Arts. Yeah. Wendy Baden-Huvel, Lori Anderson, Virginia Milheiser, and Select Equity. These are people that put special money aside just for Under the Radar. Many things have changed this year for Under the Radar. One of the best things is that John Grenet came on as associate director. John has been working with the festival for many years, is on the production side of things, and then I took him over to the dark side. And it's great to have a partner. Now I'd like to introduce you to a man you know well, Marcio Garcia Durham. Mario Garcia Durham. The president and CEO of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals since 2011. This is our sixth festival together, and APAP was the first partner of Under the Radar when we started at St. Anne's Warehouse back in 205. I've known Mario since he worked at the NEA, Yerba Buena Center. He's a great leader in our field, a great partner, and a great friend. Please welcome Mario. Thank you very much, Mark, and thank all of you. The way I look at this event is a cheerleading session for me to get jazzed about going to APAP. So it grounds me very well. But I just wanted to express my thanks to Mark and Shanta and everyone here. It's been a wonderful joy, it's been a joy of mine to work with such great colleagues, and I know that our worlds interact as well. I am leaving my position at APAP in April. I announced to my board in October, so it's a planned transition. I'm very, very happily stepping back as leader and hopefully allowing a new space for a new leader to come in and take the organization in new directions. But I just wanted to express my immense gratitude to all of you and also to this organization because this has been one of the pinnacle joys of my time. So I just wanted to thank you and have a great festival. Thank you. Thank you, Mario. And now I'd like to have Shanta fake come up and welcome us to the house. Oscar Eustis is fighting a really bad cold and a broken arm. And so we're using his moments at the Odeo Deal and Shanta has decided to come in and she is my boss, which is a good thing. So I'll just leave it over to you. Shanta came here what in 2009? 2002. She was 16 at the time. And then she ran Joe's Pub. She worked with Bill Bragan. She ran Joe's Pub. And now she's running all of the artistic programs at the public and it's so great to have her. Thank you. I'm not going to speak for very long because like Mark said, Oscar was supposed to be up here. But I'm thrilled as always to be in front of you. Welcoming you into this space, into this building, into this city, New York City, Manahata, Ammanapé lands. We could not be more happy to start our year with you. And I think I don't know if I would be able to get through a year if we didn't have this gathering time of all of us recommitting ourselves to this work. And Mark had this great prompt, which I think scared some of us at the top of the meet and greet under the radio this year with the artist saying, why are we doing this? What is it we're doing here? Why are we creating theater? Why are we doing this live art thing? And I think it's important to ask ourselves that question because a lot is at stake. And what are we doing? Why are we doing this? Are we wasting our time? How do we make sure that we are doing the thing that matters in this moment? So I'm just so thrilled. I learned so much from all of you. I know that when we come together, we bring our stories into this space. And we're here to listen with huge open hearts, open ears, open eyes to the stories of other people. And I think what a gift, what a privilege to be able to bring these stories into our communities, into the people that we serve in our towns and say to them, all of these voices matter and therefore your voice matters. And I hope that that inspires the people in this country to vote, to look at your brochures and say, yes, this means that I matter. So thank you for all of the work that you're doing. Thank you for coming here. Thank you for your stories. Thank you especially to the incredible artists that are part of this festival and all of APAP, all of the artists that really feed us all of the time. And please have an amazing time. I can hear your livers already crying out for water. So please take care of yourselves and we'll see you on the other side. Welcome. Thank you, Shanta. She took all my lines. Anyway, that was really great. Now we're going to do a section, our keynote section basically, which is called From Where I Stand. And From Where I Stand is a prompt that we've been using as a sort of multi perspective keynote for UTR the last five years at least. Each year we invite three to four leaders in our field, artists, administrators, directors, to speak about their view of the field and where they see it going. Our first person is Simon Meller, who is the Deputy Chief Executive Arts and Culture at Arts Council England. And Simon leads the delivery of the Arts Council's first strategic goal, ensuring excellence is thriving and celebrated in the arts, museums and libraries. He also leads this team of national arts and culture directors. He is responsible for overseeing the development of the Arts Council's new 10 year strategy, 20 through 30, and provides executive board leadership for the Arts Council's international strategy. We at Under the Radar excited about a new partnership that Simon devised with UTR and the Manchester International Festival and you will hear much more about that this evening at Cocktails hosted by Simon and the ACE. Please welcome Simon Meller. Thank you for inviting me and inviting me to give a UK perspective to this event. Believe it or not, Mark has given me the horrible and unenviable task of talking about Brexit. I can hear people already leaving. And I asked if I could try to make sense of what that might mean for the future of the arts in England. So for my sins, I spend a lot of time talking to the UK government about what Brexit might mean for the arts in our country. And I've also, as Mark said, spent the last two years writing a new 10 year strategy for the Arts Council, which will finally be published, at the end of this month. In writing that strategy, I spent a lot of time, probably too much time thinking about what the purpose of public funding for the arts is. And in my mind, the issue of Brexit and that question about why the public should fund the arts have become very deeply connected and I want to talk a little bit about that this morning. Now I should start by saying that I recognise people working in the arts in this country where, for us in Europe, the situation with government funding of the arts over here is sort of unbelievable really. We can't quite understand how you guys keep doing it. So I'm hoping that these... that what I'm about to say today doesn't feel too academic, too pointless. I hope it will come across, it's not too UK centric and that my musings will have some resonance for you working in the arts here in the States. So, Brexit. As you may have picked up, the UK is a country that is profoundly divided. Basically, right down the middle about Brexit. It's basically 50-50 and if we're honest, those numbers haven't really shifted over the last three years despite the sound and fury. However, that division is not true of people who work in the arts in England. An overwhelming majority of us are opposed to Brexit, often vehemently. This is partly for very practical reasons. Being a member of the European Union has brought significant benefits for our arts and cultural organisations. Funding programmes, freedom of movement etc etc etc. But actually, opposition to Brexit within the arts community in England is also, I think, arising from something much more profound. A sense that our values are under attack. That rights we have fought for are threatened and that long, cherished internationalism is being replaced with what feels like reactionary nativism. Many of us who work in the arts feel both British and European and fear that that part of our identity is being forcibly removed. In other words, a lot of us have had a growing feeling over the last few years that we are living in a country that we no longer recognise. Feelings that I suspect familiar to many people in this room. So we are now in the profoundly uncomfortable position of being part of an industry in my country that sees the significant part of its funding from communities that appear to have profoundly different values to us. So what happens next? Well, I think we have to start by accepting the fact that we have lost the argument about Brexit. We are leaving the European Union and we need to stop grieving and start looking forward. But I would suggest that we can only really hope to move on if we understand where Brexit came from. The reality is that significant parts of our country have been in long-term economic decline. Those communities feel they have been left behind and they are disenchanted and they are angry and for good reason. For decades they have been ignored by central government and its related agencies including the Arts Council. If you look at those communities, often but not always older white working class people living in towns in the midlands and the north of England, you will discover that they are generally places where the Arts Council has been chronically under investing for years and years. And these same communities have seen little or no engagement from the traditional arts and cultural organizations that we have invested in for years. I fear that many in those communities, for many in those communities the Arts Council and the artists and organizations that we support are seen as part of the same disinterested elite that are stood by and watch these communities decline and degenerate. And of course since those communities and most people working in the arts have widely divergent views on Brexit that sense of disconnect is even more profound. So when I said earlier that many of us working in the arts in England don't recognize the country that we are now living in and working in, I mean that both emotionally and literally. Most of us working in the arts in England don't recognize and don't understand those communities. And this is where it connects back of course to the purpose of public funding in the arts. One of the alarming statistics I discovered writing our new strategy is that in less than half the population of England engages with publicly funded arts and culture, i.e. our arts, museums and public libraries on a regular basis though which I mean more than twice a year I think that has to change and I would suspect that if it doesn't it will be it will be very hard to make the case for continued public funding of the arts in 10 years time. So how do I think that people working in the arts in England have to respond to Brexit in two ways. First, we have to recognize that in a divided nation public funding of the arts can only be justified if all of our communities are beneficiaries. And this isn't just about artists and organizations from our metropolitan centres taking their work into the communities that they have largely ignored hitherto. It has to be about those communities being given the power resources and voice to shape their local cultural culture. It also has to be about the professional arts community including those working at the arts council becoming more representative of the diversity of contemporary England. Second, our response to Brexit can't be about building walls to protect our national culture. It has to be about redoubling our commitment to internationalism. We must construct even stronger international partnerships that give our artists cultural workers in England opportunities to exchange ideas and skills with their international counterparts and give audiences in England more opportunities to experience the very best of world culture. That's why festivals like Under the Radar and Symposia like this are so important in bringing artists and cultural workers from around the world together. They say that the darkest hour is just before dawn. These feel like tough disorientating times but as we enter a new decade I do remain profoundly optimistic and more optimistic arguably than ever of the power of the arts to bring communities together and to build bridges between countries. Thank you. Now it's my pleasure to introduce you to Alicia Harris. Alicia's Is God Is was at Soho Rep won the 2016 Relentless Award an OB Award for Playwriting the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. What to Send Up When It Goes Down which is playing next door in the festival had its critically acclaimed New York City premiere directed by Whitney Wright and produced by the movement in fall of 2018 it was featured in American Theatre Magazine's April 19 issue Harris was awarded the Next Step Award from Samuel French and his commissions with Playwrights Horizons the Center Theatre Group the Almedia Theatre and upcoming of course it's here what to Send Up is under the radar it's going to continue this summer or the spring the Playwrights Horizons and Is God Is is coming to the Royal Court in London in 2020 So please welcome Alicia Harris Thank you. So years ago I am in St. Petersburg, Florida and I am seeing a play a nostalgia piece about the good old days in the protagonist's good old days there was by his description an older woman black woman, large with missing teeth who loved Coca-Cola and took good care of him something in this young white man's tone there in that theater in St. Petersburg, Florida something about the twinkle in his eyes as he speaks of this woman a black, large lover of Coca-Cola something about this troubles me really gets under my skin so far under my skin that I separate myself from it quietly I slip out of my skin and leave my body and it is as much an escape as it is an attempt to expand the picture take in not just the world the actor is painting on stage but a more complete landscape the audience the building the city, its history and the bones underground all in an effort to understand what the trouble is oh yes I am troubled because I know the woman being invoked I have seen her before as a ceramic figurine in an antique store as a source of comfort and gone with the wind as a smiling face on the front of a bottle of syrup I know the function of a large black woman who takes care of people who don't look like her in an nostalgic piece written from a white consciousness I am troubled that this woman has been so rudely invoked her body called forth that another might speak for it arranged and articulated as someone else saw fit my reluctance to stay comfortably inside of my own body where in that theater had everything to do with knowing that this invocation of another woman black like me was an invocation of me as well I was up there on that stage I was his to do with as he saw fit and it was a hurting thing I wonder if it is sometimes best to leave the body lest it be invoked spirited into a narrative or conversation or season as a kind of comfort object a look what we did stand in for real disruption real reflection and change I wonder I wonder so more recently I am here in New York City I am watching American Utopia David Byrne's truly wonderful concert theater piece Byrne and company do a cover of Janelle Monae's Hell You Tom Bow a song honoring black people who lost their lives due to anti-blackness and I yell the names of those killed along with the performers Emmett Till, Sandra Bland Eric Garner, I yell and I feel acknowledged cared for here in my body and it is joyous I also yell to compensate for the other audience members who aren't yelling, who aren't saying anything the song ends and an angry white male voice finally does yell and he says what about all the cops that have been killed and I blurted shut up and the show moved on and it's you know I have to say this is off script that your reaction to that makes me feel so emotional because I understand how terrible it was and the show moved on but I wasn't in my seat anymore y'all that body in the Hudson Theatre in that mostly white space in the loneliness of it and the awkwardness of that man's anger in response to what felt like being cared for that uncomfortable outnumbered body I needed to leave it to be clear David Byrne hadn't invoked the dead callously this felt like an invitation rather than an invocation a call to bring the whole body on its terms it is unfortunate that his invitation caused a reaction that felt dangerous to me this was ground zero for a deeply discomforting powder keg of a confrontation white people need to have with themselves and proximity to that for me wasn't we'll never be safe psychologically, spiritually or physically I am constantly negotiating bodily presence considering its implications whether I'm chatting with an artistic director answering questions at a q&a or standing before a group of mostly strangers at the under the radar symposium how to manage a fear anger rage based desire to fly the bodily coop in a profession that I've come to in order to fully occupy myself and remind others to do the same how to be bravely and joyfully in this skin in this field in this country at this time I know that I cannot leave this body I know that I don't actually want to my mama and my ancestors gave me a damn good body a body which in and of itself is not a problem so my strategy of late is to use my writing to bring the body along and all of its complexities its fears its love and joy and rage to nurture it so I'd like the last words I leave you with to be a piece entitled red eye about working through the challenges of staying in this body writing through it and about it honoring it and allowing it to breathe to the edges of itself for those of you in possession of a body black be it the suit over your bones or the baby in or out of your belly or in arms or tugging at pant leg or complaining from the back seat beware be wary baby is a weapon you are a weapon drawn and some don't like the way black body drinks the sun so they dilute it put a hole in it or two or three or enough bullets to call it riddle black and polka dotted and down but up in arms what's black and polka dotted and down but up in arms I'll wait I won't and don't tell me about a riot when I've been looted since they aimed at me in the sip belly ablaze when I see them their guns on their hips or slowing down in cruisers to watch me be weapony they tell me we have the gift if we want to no one mentioned that it would so often be a red eye, vigil the passengers all screaming at the cost of the body bag the bullet hole mouths weeping but lacking the teeth to speak the names of the dead there was not enough bellow or strain for what I want to do there was not enough cocktail for drinking or flinging back I will put this unnameable grief anger thing I will set a lock of poetry on it and I will hope for the best for those of you with skin found not just detestable but killable for those of you with blood especially spillable for those of you explaining to the privilege some of whom play in the ashes of your pain but would swear they have never seen a fire I say do not look to the sky for an end to the storm I say put your children to bed for the last nursery rhyme I say anyone with grey hair and black skin and any love left in their hearts has earned a rocking place a rest I say the ones gone might be the lucky ones I say what did I just say I am tired of beating dead horses I like horses I say if we are weapons we must all be on safety there was not enough boom there was not enough metal casing for what we've been pushed to there was not enough fist or hug or cry or slogan lullaby what to do what to do what to do what but reach into back pocket for a slingshot or sword and find only words only words the congress between sound and breath words one in particular gone g o n e the letters holding hands like red rover the letters don't want to let go on the g flexing its muscles got to be a thing impenetrable grit the teeth grin and bear giggle often not too often give them their own grief what to do what should we go back go be unborn go be so small as to be unbin oh can we say oh like God in the corner trying to catch her breath oh they left him oh in the sun like oh like a nothing oh and I'm God so I ain't never made a nothing go and tell him I said that and never mind when they don't listen and save your toil for your people and I did not put you here to convince them that you get to be here nah and nope and we do not beg the rope we cut it down we gone g o n e but not for easy for the easy chair they thought you was for the way you bit them when they sat for black is not a color but a hue but a thing you wake up in the morning and do but a shade for reminding the sun when it forgets and the frat boy sons when they forget and the old news when it forgets that you can hang a body from an unsuspecting tree you can polka dot its torso you can name its babies missiles but you cannot undo it not now not never you cannot really make it gone so we don't get along maybe not always like happy maybe not always like peace more like there's gravel in my knees but I'm a dance it out carry the casket read the plaque plant the roses me and my black body me in this fine suit in this fine suit and the words and the words and the words and the words and the words that come with it we in your programs it may say that Selena Thompson is going to speak she is unwell and she may be able to join us at the cocktail reception we don't know I hope you get to see her work salt it is truly powerful and a great example of work we want to bring over the pond now it's my pleasure to introduce Maria Monuela Gonzalez the newly selected artistic director of the Wally Mammoth Theatre Company Wally Mammoth helped put together the tour of what to send up when it goes down Maria worked at the public theatre from 2004 eventually becoming our lead producer she managed some of the public's most celebrated productions including Hamilton by Lin Manuel Miranda Josephine and I by Cush Jumbo Straight White Men by Young Jean Lee Barbecue by Robert O'Hara and Here Lies Love by David Byrne and Fat Boy Slim among others as well as the public works production of the Tempest, The Winter's Tale, The Odyssey and Twelfth Night she's been busy I know work in Maria's office carefully preserved as if she just left but she has Maria's been a champion of Under the Radar since we came to the public I look forward to more partnerships with her at Wally and to see where she will take the American theatre in the future please welcome Maria Coyales it's all good I got Gonzalez in my family I got Perez in my family I got Rodriguez in my family we got all of them so first some gratitude to Mark Russell our impresario for the invitation this week today thank you to you amazing thinkers and artists here at this festival with a special shout out to Alicia Harris who is a really hard act to follow we already knew that because Wally Mammoth just presented Alicia's brilliant piece what to send up when it goes down in Washington DC just a few months ago we learned a lot at Wally presenting that piece some of which I still think about every day that show provided an opportunity for Wally to put our values and principles into action I hope you all have your sick tickets because I hear it sold out first a little bit about me I'm Maria Manuela Goyanes Perez la flor de las mujeres that is a phrase my mother uses it means the flower of all women in Spanish for those of you who don't speak it my parents immigrated to the United States fleeing dictatorships my father from Franco in Spain and my mother from Trujillo in the Dominican Republic they met at a church dance in Jackson Heights Queens and then set out to build a life for themselves in our family just like so many young immigrants who come to this country and in part help create this country in 2018 after nearly 15 years of working in this very building as director of producing and artistic planning at the public theater I moved to Washington D.C. to succeed the visionary Howard Chowitz as artistic director of Wally Mammoth Theatre Company becoming only the second person to hold this position and certainly only the first certainly the only first generation Latina from Jamaica Queens to do so what's really interesting about the artistic director's search process for Wally was that the mission of Wally Mammoth was actually redrafted before I was hired that's a bold move for a theater company I mean most theater companies wait for the new person to draw up a new mission statement and core values for the theater they're going to run but not Wally Mammoth and frankly that might be the reason why the transition has actually felt so right I am deeply inspired by the conversations about how Wally's values show up on stage as well as how our values show up in the way the organization actually runs and one of those core values in particular specifies that we are a radically inclusive community across race ethnicity, nationality age, gender identity, sexual orientation physical ability socioeconomic background and political viewpoint in which all are encouraged to exchange ideas freely and reach for new understanding in me Wally Mammoth has found someone who deeply believes in the power of this re-articulation and who knows it will take fierce ambition and courage to make these words ring more and more true so when I think about what is happening in the United States right now well it's a lot we're going through a real reckoning right now and make no mistake this reckoning is not new systemic racial oppression has been experienced by people of color in this country for centuries from the moment that European colonizers occupied these shores hoping for religious freedom for themselves but certainly not for the Native Americans that they encountered the truth is mass shootings in schools and workplaces are now commonplace people of color in particular black and brown people are dying as a result of not being seen as fully human for a country that is known for its inclusivity our current immigration policies are the source of tremendous exclusivity, chaos and heartache and a certain Twitter account keeps acting like it's the only ruling body of our democracy I am certainly not advocating for creating plays that are ripped from the headlines I also understand that a play cannot single-handedly change the mess that we've gotten ourselves into but here's what I do know Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company exists to make space for art that highlights the stunning and challenging and tremendous complexity of our world and for each and every single one of us to be woven into that complexity it is by seeing feeling witnessing and making space for that complexity that we can all become conscious of the compassion within each of us to care about the lives of our fellow human beings not just our own I see this as our responsibility by 2044 the United States is projected to be majority people of color this is the first time in history that a modern democracy will weather such a demographic shift in population when I got to Woolly Mammoth a lot of people told me that I would be preaching to the choir that our audience was already left leaning and progressive but from where I stand, I'm sorry our choir is divided we are not speaking the same language we do not all have the same analysis of what is happening right now in our country in my view to run a theater company that is truly socially relevant it is essential that we share a rigorous analysis and understanding of the systems that have been built to marginalize and oppress people and that through our actions we actively work against those systems of racism, sexism, homophobia transphobia, classism, ageism and ableism let's recognize our power as culture creators to trouble the status quo and to jumpstart civic conversation or as my predecessor Howard Schellwitz would say Woolly Mammoth is here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable at Woolly we are learning what it means to be power and impact aware and to recognize when and where we hold institutional privilege and power particularly in relationship to our local DC community why is it common for so many institutions in this country to rely on community engagement to justify their work and relevance and then undervalue underfund and understaff this essential function can operating through a lens of anti-racism change how we make plays how we choose plays and how we relate to each other and our artists why can't we model the equitable participatory creative democracy that we aspire to live in and be a part of Alicia Harris is what to send up when it goes down as a play by foreign about black people it is meant to disrupt the pervasiveness of anti-blackness and acknowledge the resilience of black people throughout history I had seen the production in New York directed by the incomparable Whitney White and I was completely blown away by it and for a city by Washington like Washington DC whose very foundations were built by the hands of enslaved Africans a city that up until recently was majority black it felt imperative to make the show happen in my inaugural season of programming it was essential that the original producers the movement theater company be part of bringing this piece to woolly in order to highlight their incredible work as an artistic social movement developing and producing new works by artists of color ethnically specific theaters in the US are often denied funding by grant making institutions so woolly's ability to pool together financial resources with ART and Cambridge as well as the under the radar festival here at the public in service of this project speaks to the larger conversation we need to be having as a field about that inequitable distribution of resources we also decided to tour the production to local venues that operate at the intersection of black social and cultural life in DC in other words beyond the walls of our theater and our already gentrified neighborhood we needed to engage with members of our black community in DC in their own spaces and on their own terms I knew it would be a heavy lift for our small but mighty staff at woolly and it was what to send up was a spectacular success for us in DC and behind the scenes we experienced a lot of growing pains there was a moment where I didn't think the show was going to continue because we hadn't communicated as openly and transparently as we had intended not only to our partners but also to our artists I'm indebted to those actors Alicia Whitney and the movement theater company were patient and graced with us they held us accountable and we are better for it I am better for it you see for all of my standing on this soap box and talking about anti-racism and systems of oppression the status quo is real relentless and enduring even for an alternative theater company like woolly mammoth to say that this work is humbling is a massive understatement so I'd like to end with a little invocation inspired in part by the work of Adrienne Marie Brown as well as woolly's director of connectivity Kristin Jackson this is a kind of prayer for all of us this year and beyond may we continue to create art that recognizes the layers upon layers of complexity within each of us and celebrates that complexity makes friends with that complexity and practices compassion for that complexity so that we can better care for the lives of all our fellow human beings may we know that there is no such thing as a blank canvas or an empty land and may we honor its deep history may we be intentional in our work and practice vulnerability with each other just as we ask our artists to do on our stages may we surprise ourselves in how creative and risk-taking and radical we can be may we recognize that there are many paths forward and hold the learnings from our spectacular failures in as high esteem as the learnings from our spectacular successes may we be brilliant together thank you okay it's time for coffee thank you very much for this morning and thank you Maria alright out come back and we're going to do coming attractions hi folks listen I just wanted to let you know that I am available for weddings and bar mitzvahs I will rename your children but anytime you know it's a very low rate okay now we're going to get into what are we getting into we're getting into coming attractions this is going to be fun this is going to be beautiful so I won't say much about these projects I'm just going to announce their names and try not to embellish and try to get them right but our first guest here is Javad Alimpur he's doing a piece called Rich Kids a history of shopping malls in Tehran and a little bit particular right now of the moment I saw this piece in Edinburgh and I think he'll have a lot to say talk to you soon Javad I'm Javad Alimpur and I'm here to talk to you about a show called Rich Kids a history of shopping malls in Tehran there with me yeah I'm a fan of plays with long titles as you can probably guess so Rich Kids came out of me thinking about a couple of things primarily about the obnoxious kids of the international elite and how they spend their money we focus on this idea of Rich Kids in Iran for a couple of reasons my work tends to come from interests that are very responsive to international political stories as they're breaking really and I'm partially of Iranian heritage so I grew up in a mixed family in Northern England in about 2016 there was a wave of unrest that tore through Iran part of which was kind of powered by the fact that at the same time as the sanctions from the western countries was absolutely crippling the country the kids of the elite of the government were carrying on partying like they had no cares in the world we use that story really as a metaphor to talk about a whole bunch of other things climate change technological collapse civilizational collapse and how we came to be in this moment historically that we are in together so fundamentally like kind of dramaturgically one of the ways the show works is you join us on an Instagram account originally this show was going to be called Rich Kids of Tehran which we weren't able to call it that in the end for like kind of legal reasons that I won't bore you with but that phrase speaks to a certain kind of Instagram life so we've got this Instagram account and if you guys are on Instagram it would be great if you could just get on there and have a look at this account not everyone needs to be on it so you know if you're sort of struggling just share your phone with someone so get on Instagram and search for an account called Shopping Malls in Tehran for me if you would do and just click through and follow if you're struggling to get signalling here there's free wifi that you can get on so you can get a signalling as well for like sort of normal sell signal so we've got a few people on yeah amazing so you'll see it's like kind of any other Instagram account so to speak at the top there is a series of circles like highlights of the account if you scroll to the end of that for me and click on the one that's called Chatunga and turn your sound up that'll give you a little bit of a glimpse into the world I'm talking about this is a video of Chatunga Magaabi Robert Magaabi's son that he made himself in a nightclub in South Africa and if you watch to the end you'll see him pouring a bottle of Bollinger over his $40,000 Rolex he posted this to his own Instagram feed whilst people in Zimbabwe couldn't afford chicken because of the western sanctions and he hashtagged it I swear to god daddy runs the whole country very much a phrase to conjure with so yeah if you scroll down through the rest of our feed you'll kind of see how the storytelling in the show works we start off with this picture of a Porsche which is a real sort of thing that happened in Iran where a young super elite couple called Hossein Rabani Shirazi and Karivash Akbarzade killed themselves in a kind of Bollinger and cocaine fueled crash in this very expensive yellow Porsche in a super bougie part of uptown Tehran we try and investigate that story and understand where they came from and as Instagram when you scroll down on an account you see what happens backwards you start in the present and you go further and further down so we tell that story backwards and as we go further back into the story the feed takes us into questions about how this world came to be so how neoliberalism arrives in a country in Iran which means we have to ask where mobile phones come from which means we need to look at where the pollution came from which obviously means we have to look at the history of the region how the Americans became the bad guys how colonialism arrived what colonialism was and we go further and further down and try and find out what that first layer of that story is this show Rich Kids is the second part of a trilogy of shows that started with a show called The Believers Are But Brothers which opened at the fringe a couple of years ago again we use a slightly immersive element to tell a story about contemporary politics Believers came out of me spending a little bit of time online hanging around young people who were at least claiming to be in Syria as members of the Islamic State and young white boys from the US who were involved in kind of unsavory fascist groups and yeah, I've got a little bit of a video about that to show here this story starts in itself the story of how the West's colonial nightmare Islam came to life a vision made vision and flesh so some of this show happens on WhatsApp which is why I've asked you to leave your phones on and join our WhatsApp group but look, this show isn't about instant messaging or my love of memes this shows about men politics and the internet this trilogy is very much about the intersection of these two things how emergent digital technology isn't really unleashing new ways of us living together into the world but rather things that seem quite archaic so in the case of that show a sort of revanchist masculinity that wants to sort of take and fuck whatever it wants and with rich kids this kind of almost Marie Antoinette style let them eat cake feeling that we're living kind of in the face of the global elite believers after we finished here under the radar we're about to go on to play a UMS in Michigan and do some second round of Canadian dates and in both the cases of these shows and the third part of the trilogy we're looking at I have an interest in a certain kind of immersion and I realise that that's not a hugely sexy word anymore but my sort of contention is really that what we're trying to do is and this feels like quite a nice part of town because of its history to be able to make this gag but I think the reason we don't like that word anymore is because that first generation of immersive theatre was what I think of as the prog rock of immersive theatre so like a lot of money loads of resources quite a lot of ego and I suppose what we're trying to do is make the punk rock of immersive theatre so it's cheaper it lambs harder and yeah that's kind of why we make this kind of work I think colleagues have spoken earlier today about the very important political moment in which we live and why we do the work we do for me as a political theatre maker who's politics almost come before my making of theatre for me the task is actually I think there are these big political questions that we're all wrestling with all the time but they feel quite intellectual and sometimes they feel like there's something that happened over there but using this kind of playful dramaturgy and a little bit of sort of quite simple technical wizardry I think allows us to land for an audience these big questions in a way that moves from the head to the heart their kind of bodies and their dreams and their mobile phones for a little bit after they've spent that time in the theatre with us so I'm around for the rest of the day my producer and sort of general co-conspirator Nick Sweeting is in the back of the room thank you so grab any of us at any stage and I'm open to the questions if you guys have them thank you I knew you were going to ask that yeah that's kind of it's going to be something about the rise of conspiracy theories what anthropologists call magical thinking of here and political violence basically so another light barrel laughs for you this piece comes to us from Tommy Creeksman and it's a piece by Scott Shepard Paul Lazar and Zara Newman and it's called this ignorant present please welcome Scott Shepard Paul Lazar and Zara Newman thank you I'm not Scott Shepard and this is not Paul Lazar we're here to introduce them thank you so much hi I'm Tommy Creeksman from Archetype and I'm very pleased to be sharing the stage with my esteemed colleague Sarah Neal from Maldhouse Theatre in Melbourne we're here together on this ignorant presence otherwise known as McBeth saying that word in the cursive inherent to it at least of that plays problems I would just like to say but this work I've had the great privilege of working at Maldhouse Theatre a few times with some really really complex and beautiful pieces Underground Railroad Game most recently in Iliad Dennis O'Hara and Lisa Peterson before that and before that aftermath Maldhouse Theatre and their aesthetic it's one of those theaters you walk into and you're just awe inspired holy shit I can't believe you had this space and you're doing these brave things you're remarkable and I will talk about that a bit more thanks Tommy, thank you so much for the lovely introduction so Maldhouse Theatre is based in Melbourne, Australia currently under a blanket of smoking ash at the moment which is terrible but it's a company that's been operating for 40 years and my colleague Matthew Lutter an artistic director who's here with us run the company we collaborate internationally to make new work we're very much about pushing the form and creating works that are both contemporary and political as well as being reinterpreting classics so in Scott's and I met to talk about this idea it was immediately apparent that this was an incredibly challenging concept that he had come up with an incredibly deep personal and complex history with the play and with his performatability and the things that make him such a remarkable remarkable performer and when I brought it to Sarah she was piqued by it and we immediately were able to move it forward so now we've got the vast histories that Paul Lizar brings in to it in terms of performance and performance history downtown we've got the collaboration internationally and the histories inherent to that and then Maldhouse brought in the unbelievable Barbara Newman who is a remarkable remarkable force on tour itself as well and so now we've got the histories of these two countries these two alignments we've got a design team in the U.S. we've got the design team in Australia we're going two workshop phases in 2020 in January and March and then we move down to Melbourne to finish the final weeks of rehearsal into the works world premiere it's got a set it's got about seven people on tour we're moving so fast we need a lot of money if you're interested in contributing to that we're going to make it and the piece will make its world premiere May 11th 2020 this is Zaryn Newman who is unfortunately home ill so and they're on their third day of rehearsal so we're not forcing them too much to make this presentation but without further ado I would like to introduce Scott Shevrin and Paul Lizar who will discuss that in process quickly so a little history in 1994 I did a solo performance of this play with no cuts and I did the things you do different voices and objects standing in for the other characters and visual aids it was kind of like half performance half presentation of the play and it was me working very hard for a little over two hours and after four performances that was done and I promised myself I would never do that again cut to 25 years later and I'm thinking about doing it again but the good news is I've identified the major problem with my one person show and that is that there's only one person in it I mean I liked what the one person requirement had forced which was a sort of presentational staging that kept you one foot in one foot out of the play but what I had to admit was sorely wanting was just that genuine tension that you only get with two people facing each other on stage so I started thinking about you know a one person show with more than one person in it or one person show intruded on or disrupted by another person and so Paul and I got together and sort of fleshed out this conceit that I'll try to just very briefly describe which is that we're in a basement there's a man in the basement and like some men he's got a hobby that he doesn't have basement but for this guy it's not woodworking or elaborate model train set he's built something elaborate but it's this crazy DIY contraption with bags of blood and homemade musical instruments and lighting setups and bits of costume that slide in and out and Gizmo whose purpose is to facilitate him working his way through Macbeth that's his that's his obsessive hobby and it looks like that's what we're going to watch him do sort of a whimsical mechanized solo presentation or enactment of the play until his wife comes into the basement just in time for the entrance of Lady Macbeth and she's bringing a different energy and already in these early tense conversations with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth we understand we begin to understand that something's being worked out in the relationship between the man and the woman in this strange enactment activity and a little later a child shows up and he gets involved too and so the narrative of Shakespeare's play runs in parallel with this other sort of implied narrative about the struggles and tensions in this family constellation man-woman child Excellent wonderfully rendered I'm just digging this Well let's see picking up on something the gizmo is in front of us so first I would say that fortunately for the world in my opinion the downtown theater has various ensembles but ultimately I would say aesthetically it's one ensemble there's so much massive cross-fertilization that we all end up artistically sleeping together and for those of you that know Radio Hall I'm speaking about the design first Radio Hall's aesthetic that's in New York Company Maggie Hoffman, Aaron Douglas and Eric Dyer and Joe Solowski Radio Hall's aesthetic is perfectly suited to this conceit and in the spirit of the way that the cross-fertilization occurs in the downtown theater you're able to absorb to have Eric Dyer create a set in the spirit of Radio Hall for this basement gizmo and for those of you who know Radio Hall what I would say is that they're incredibly sophisticated aesthetic yet it's always looks completely DIY and completely funky which suits this guy perfectly so that's my thought about the design I would say about the dramaturgy of the piece that Scott mentioned this entrance of this other person who disrupts see, it's just good fun in the basement you know this woman comes down into the basement where the man's running the world beautifully running the world perfectly and disrupts it and by the time this rendering of the play has been completed not only has Macbeth been overthrown and thwarted but the power structure of how this gizmo is run and who's controlling the story and telling the story that also gets disrupted which speaks I think very much to all that we've been hearing about and finally I would say again picking up on what Scott was talking about that yes the one person version which of course is what you see when you see this until Lady Macbeth enters Shakespeare did us the favor of giving us a decent piece of the play that Scott could render alone you get a sense of oh that's what's possible with one person to do as Scott said jump around if you're Scott if you're the one person capable of such a thing you can jump around and show the play can you do the play maybe not but you can show the play so now we have Zara in New York thanks to Malthouse and Tommy this amazing good fortune to be able to rehearse the play here for a while so we have Zara here in New York and as of two days ago in New York Bronkeel, Michigan that's I'm a doctor we were able to hear what it actually sounds like after theorizing for a long time to have Lady Macbeth and we're just sitting at a table so far and the minute Zara who renders this without any Shakespearean kind of overlay the lyrics and suddenly not only can we show the play but we can absolutely do the play so that's very exciting that all that is possible within the the conceit that's come up and then there's this one other thing I would say which is you know like when you're working on something and it gains momentum you feel like the word tells you it's the right thing to be doing and so I'm thinking there we are going to Melbourne with this play which has a line like fair is foul foul is fair hover through the fog and filthy air I'm sorry to say but that's incredibly appropriate anyway that's all I can think of to say you got anything else got any questions people we've got all the answers we've rehearsed for three days so we've kind of got it now yeah who's that am I in it if you insist Norm I don't think so but there is a child unless we can't find a child yes and then it'll be type casting basically any other questions the well it's Eric Dyer in Joe Salofsky you know Gizmo creating the Gizmo well anyway I won't go back over I won't repeat as much as I'd like to repeat myself I won't we have designers from in Melbourne as well Jethro is doing the sound Jethro Woodward yes and there are two other designers who we haven't met in Malt House that we're excited to collaborate in those two worlds together we'll have we'll cast locally most likely I think we'll have to don't you think yeah I think so the Shakespeare's in English so he said Tommy's dealt with the complexity of touring shows with children before and so he's working working that out is that what you said? how we work on this now is um alright so our final one for today is called The Gift and there's are you handing out the books what you shouldn't look at right away from what I understand and what am I supposed to do with these mics any idea I could talk to both of them yeah right okay Caleb should I get rid of one of these or you want to take one there you go thank you okay I'm gonna do this and then should I just walk off with it or do you need oh well anyway we're so prepared this is a piece by Manian and Dr. Natalie Gosnell it's called The Gift please welcome them thank you to the universe you were in the universe before and you will be here after but thank you for being in the universe here and now the universe offers glimpses at what has happened before and what is yet to be and so you must learn how to look in myriad ways from the smallest detail an acorn or a piece of dust to the full expanse you must learn how to look have you ever looked at our universe really looked at it is it even possible to look at the entire universe all at once what if instead we allow the totality of the universe to be glimpsed and archived through its details observing the universe requires us to regard emptiness the expanse as a field of ecstatic potential rich with stories cutting and crossing one another in observing we both wait for a story to happen and trust that it always will what stories can we glean from the barest shimmer we'd like to tell you a little bit about our new piece entitled The Gift it's an intimate social experience performed by the audience that combines the private pleasures of reading and listening with generous moments of interaction this low-lift performance installation animates my research as an astrophysicist and re-inscribes outer space as feminist space Hi, I'm Janani Balasubramanian I'm one of the co-creators of The Gift I'm a writer, new media artist and immersive theatre maker right now I'm a resident artist here at the public theatre and at the Hayden Planetarium previously I was part of the internationally touring performance duo Dark Matter and we were also in UTR 2015 and 2016 and the image you see here is from one of my earlier pieces that I installed recently at the Highline in 2017 it's a large-scale physics-based audio game and has since gone on to tour nationally and I'm Dr. Natalie Gosnell I'm an astrophysicist and an assistant professor of physics at Colorado College and in my research I like to think of myself as a star detective so I use funding from with the help of funding from NASA I use telescopes both on ground and in space to piece together the histories of stars so that we can better understand their futures so The Gift is really the culmination of efforts from our collaboration and from our team we are working with composer Tina Honeye-Miller whose music you've been hearing so far and is being performed by Tina and by instrumentalists Vivian and Lillian Ledford Tina has toured internationally with cruel youth and has also performed at the Highline Brooklyn Museum and U Street Music Hall and she has an eco-feminist sample pack coming from Spice and the visual artwork in our piece is by Amy Myers she has works in collection at the Guggenheim the Museum of Fine Arts and the Houston Museum of Contemporary Arts among others and our creative producer and dramaturgist Andrew Kircher who has a rich history of developing works with cross-disciplinary inspirations so The Gift really invites us as a piece to engage with our ideas of space both outer space and outer space as such we feel it's necessary to acknowledge the context of the space that we are in now and that we are on the traditional lands of the Lenaupin people and much of the development of this piece happened at my home institution Colorado College which is in Colorado Springs on the unceded migratory lands of the Ute people and as part of this I wanted to tell you a little bit about my research to provide context for the science in this piece but as I do so I would invite you all to please close your eyes imagine a brilliant night sky thousands of points of light against a midnight black all of those points in the sky those stars you can see half of them are actually two two stars that are so close to one another but so far from us they appear as just a single point of light and many of these stars these pairs what we call a binary system they're close enough to one another that they're going to influence and change each other's lives you may open your eyes so this piece the gift is about the story of how stars can change each other's lives and also asks us the way that we are changed by the lives of those around us so the gift is a timed entry experience as you arrive you are greeted by someone who is nearing the end of their journey you each wear headphones and you transverse the space together each of you is hearing a distinct set of instructions stories and music but as you move together you share a meaningful interaction then your companion your guide leads you to a chair at the center of the room with a illustrated book and then they leave you are left to read this book which contains the story of these stars at your own pace and all around you are other readers who are at different points in their own journey someone is always entering and someone is always leaving the task of the astronomer is to take what little light the stars offer us from so far away from their own corner of the cosmos and from that little light tell a great story of all that happened here gravity is the unseen mover of the universe it is the reason you sit on the floor and not the ceiling it is the reason the moon orbits the earth it is the reason the earth orbits the sun gravity which binds together planets and stars and dust and friends please take a moment to open the booklet and read the selection included inside this booklet is only an excerpt of our story a mock-up of what is yet to come when you finished reading the book in the gift you would head to the entrance and greet a new participant to the universe it is designed this piece to be accessible for many different audiences it is adaptable for conventional and unconventional spaces both large and small and for institutions such as art centers museums, theaters and campuses it is designed around the principles of relaxed performance so specifically readers are welcome to go through the book at their own pace and we also welcome the audience to move through the space as it best suits them as the piece is experienced in reading the material can be adapted to multiple languages and we would also like to provide the book in braille and with open captions the piece can be installed by one member of our team in a matter of hours we travel with the headphones, the audio playback system and the books and you provide seating options and ambient audio system and two facilitators there is no need for theatrical lighting or video equipment for one person to install the piece we would be happy to talk to you about a variety of programmatic curricular and workshop experiences we have developed alongside the show so a lot of this piece was made possible through development support and intensive residencies here at the public theater and at Colorado College the American Museum of Natural History here in New York has committed to a soft open of the piece in July 2020 at Space Fest and we will also be bringing the gift back under the radar festival next year in 2021 so now we are looking for a final development partner specifically with access to a recording studio to help us with our final audio production we're also looking for an additional commissioning premier partner to join the American Museum of Natural History and we are looking for tour partners so the tour will start in fall 2020 but we're very interested in impact production partners we really want to reach audiences that do not typically have access to live art or science communication so we'd really love to work with partners who can help us reach those audiences including meeting their accessibility and language needs so we can really put forward our vision that there's abundant space for all of us so at the beginning of this piece you heard an excerpt of what would be in your headphones as you entered the experience and now we would like to leave you with another excerpt of what you would hear welcome someone new into the piece as you prepare to depart stars and trees and books we come and go but remnants of our stories stay sometimes we are fortunate to glimpse the stories that came before and those that may come after the universe is a place of many stories to you a library to me a galaxy when we look at the expanse when we really look at it when we let every parcel and morsel of light pass through our lenses and paradigms and mean something to us we are overwhelmed with a certain feeling about every corner of the cosmos a feeling that something terrific happened here we would love to answer any questions you have about the piece about 20 by 20 medium large classrooms totally these are all great questions we've timed it out it tends to be in the range of 15 minutes to half an hour depending on reading speed because the reading experience is at the participants own pacing and what would you ballpark the lexical level at I think a 10 to 12 year old would be able to engage with the piece meaningfully I know some 6 year olds who might be able to also it's also maybe a great just conversation starter for younger children who are willing to engage with the piece individually we can put it on in different places at different times how many people will be coming with us about 2 weeks and 4 to 5 members of our team including us early summer or late spring it can be site specific outside provided there's some privacy for the people who are engaging with it it actually looks really nice outside on Friday night so it's intended for about what do you say at the same time about 20 people but it can scale to a larger space so when we're thinking about smaller spaces that might be easier to access for smaller institutions we're designing it around those ideals but it could be easily scalable to a larger space a larger group as you see enough headphones for everyone and since it's cyclical we can accommodate in that kind of space a 20 by 20 space that we talked about 30 to 40 people per hour thank you yes in the book or I'm sorry what it looks like so what's exciting about this piece for me is that as participants are engaging with the book there are a lot of handmade and pop-up elements that they engage with and so without prompting them to make one gesture or another there are gestures that are created in the room so for example there's a fold out star which is what stars look like at the end of their lives and so just that gesture of unfolding this enormous star creates a choreography in the room and since everyone's at their own place in the book there's these exciting synchronicities that happen between your reading experience and a gesture somebody else might be making there's also another moment where you have to lift the book up to your face to see inside a pop-up forest so there are a lot of these moments that are created by the book themselves that create movement that you might witness in the periphery as you're reading and there are also of course those people who are as you enter the experience you share an audio experience with somebody else and you actually are both hearing different audio like Natalie mentioned but you are sharing an experience together and another thing that's exciting about that in terms of accessibility is that you both can experience that in different languages at the same time you can also experience a shared experience as a deaf audience member and a hearing audience member at the same time because of the nature of how that's set up and likewise you can experience the book in multiple languages simultaneously as deaf audience members the book is actually something that's transferred from participant to participant in the piece as you are departing the piece and welcoming a new participant you are handing the book that you just read over to someone new but we are interested in creating production sort of commercial copies of the book for those who would like to have a copy for themselves and if I can talk a little bit about that trace thematically the story is about the transfer of matter from one star to another which is part of what Natalie research is so we are mirroring that in the action of giving over this book to another participant yes and from that I would like to add that the title of the piece, The Gift is a very deliberate choice to remove the very masculine and violent nature of the way that astrophysics is described in the popular media in particular pairs of stars there's this gift of material from one to the other and thinking about that is in a generous connection rather than in sort of a violent stealing was something that we wanted to do in order to change the narrative about the way that we think about the universe and our place in it because outer space is feminist so we are just narrating it thank you we are ready I believe I hope there's lunch boxes out there or there will be soon and so now you have about an hour in 15 minutes to have lunch and we'll see you back at at Andares which will be in the Lou Esther Theater at one o'clock sharp okay