 Come everybody back here on seagull talks at the martini seagull theater center the graduate center CUNY in midtown Manhattan in the Great city of New York that looks so very very different at the moment that feels so very very different at the moment and And we all do not know how it will be and December or next summer or next fall We just had Jay Wegman on those things None of these theaters will open in the next season perhaps fall next fall around this time will be the time that we might get back slowly to what we think is normal how it should be and Of course, this is a situation that is devastating complicated for so many theater artists working professionals Small companies big companies the mat is closed. They haven't paid salaries for a long time as far as understand and actors And designers sound designers everybody is really struggling and will be struggling even more and but there is also a community out there that is deeply affected because it's also informative years and years of studying of learning when one gets closer to a field and that one shows as one's life's Engagement and and these are students students at New York universities and Life has so radically changed for them many of them did come to New York because of the great city because of the life because of this theater taking Small spaces incredibly high rents expensive tickets all into account, but something that the city offers is an intellectual engagement artistic engagement a social and critical engagement and Philosophical engagement with life. It's a unique town. It's one of the great towns in the world many say the greatest and And now everything is shut down. So the idea of today is to really hear from students what What's going on in their mind? What are they thinking about? How do they experience this moment a moment of remote learning where you Even learn that you're taught through screen something especially in theater Is something we know would not ever consider as a mentorship, but now this is a fact So with us as students from different universities in New York City, I would like to thank Corey here Corey Timler from the Graduate Center CUNY a greater collaborator who has worked a lot was at the Segal Center mostly known also for all work and With our mere vision on the performing the knowledge at least first they created two days now of performing knowledge of Works from students interdisciplinary drama took it and there were presentations by students on the work. So Cory Maybe you start you all about introduced yourself a little bit, but Corey. So where are you and? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah I'm in Bed-Stuy in in Brooklyn In New York So I'm in I'm at home I did spend a decent amount of the summer in Maine Which is a place where I do some performance work. So I'm in a I'm in the PhD program in theater and performance at the CUNY Graduate Center Where I've also done some work as Frank was mentioning with the with the Segal Center And I'm a I'm a PhD candidate in the program. I just advanced to candidacy this summer Meaning that I am essentially working on my dissertation and sort of and sort of nothing else that I'm past my coursework So I'm not having to take Which I'm thankful for I'm not having to take any coursework online We did have to do some teaching online at the end of last four in the middle of starting in the middle of last semester I Had been teaching at Brooklyn College in the theater department there. So I sort of experienced That part of the of the student theater experience from the from the other side of things I Yeah, I am in a very academic Program I think we're we on this panel are really a mix of different kinds of programs that we are in as students The PhD program the one that I'm in is is very academic and what I and what I have to do is my Dissertation as my capstone for that work is a very academic thing. I work on the intersection of physics and performance And I'm interested in understanding physics as performance and what performance theory can Can contribute to To understanding what physics says about reality and representation and sort of vice versa understanding science also has creative production and so one one of the ways that we may get into at some point is one of the ways that COVID impacts Students in my sort of in in the sort of academic field is through the impact that it has on the kind of research we can do and the kind of Archives as well as performances. We have access to But I also am a theater maker. I work in community based Theater and research based theater and performance experimental stuff and do a lot of work in Maine working on this long-term performance project that follows the Penobscot River through the state of Maine and I'm from Pittsburgh, I've lived in New York for the last almost 10 years Fantastic, thank you. Thank you, Corey. Sean if we go Is that clockwise? Yes to tell us a bit about you Yeah, hi, my name is Sean Anthony Chia and I am in my third year at Columbia University in the theater management program I also work closely with a Broadway producer the lead producer of Dragon Little Pill as my day job and I'm in my thesis here, so I'm currently investigating the Essentially what theater is in terms of the digital space and kind of the transportability of theater across Media and if that's even possible particularly I'm looking at television and Digital capture and like what those audience reactions are what spectacle is on the screen And what is going well and wrong during COVID and how people are adapting? I'm also an independent producer and I work on developing a lot of new work new plays specifically But right now I think I'm really interested in learning more about how artists are Engaging in education around the arts because it is changing so much and now that live events are on hold for quite a while What does that mean in terms of adaptability? Should we be adapting and what that looks like, but I you see him pronouns and nice to meet you all Thank you Can you hear him? Luke we cannot we cannot hear you. Are you on mute? We cannot hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, I think he's working on it. Yeah, maybe we go to Gabriel and look you try to find out what what's what's happening Gabriel tell us a bit about you Hey, so my name is Gabriel Torres from Columbia. I grew up in New York City. My pronouns are he him is I'm a first year grad student at the new school. I study media studies. I Have several different concentrations. I'm doing innovative storytelling which means some mental reality and virtual reality and technology and I also I'm pursuing a certificate of media management and Community development creative community development I'm a theater director. I'm also a community organizer I work in intersections between technology performance in community What else can I say? I was an actor at some point and then I became a director I'm actually currently Developing a project that is going to be up in January. It hasn't been announced yet But I'm doing a residency at an art center on the lower east side and That has different components from an interactive game online to a performance and immersive theatrical experience on site Where the performers are being projected film projected on the walls to leverage How we're doing with COVID? I'm super interested to hear about what everybody's thinking about collective creation and collectiveness versus Community and I think bringing my point with this is how I sometimes feel that the theater community is more like a Club than a community and how at this point the need and necessity of change can bring people together To figure out what community actually means Yeah, thank you Look, did you did we fix it? I think so. Yeah Brilliant. So I'm Luke Perlberg. I'm a junior studying at the Pace University School of Performing Arts as an acting major in the international performance ensemble program so I specialize in The devising creation of new works in the Jacques Lacakian style so me and group of my ensemble members and peers and classmates have over the last three years now developed several pieces from scratch We are just hearing up to begin a new project in the early months of the winter where we're going to be kind of splintering off and developing a series of I think five to six twenty minute to one hour long adaptations of some short stories that will be ready to run in repertoire next December December 2022 So it's going to be a long process and hopefully by then theater is somewhat recovered state but as of right now, I am Currently in Manhattan doing classes high flex so I'll have a vocal production class that is online because of aerosol Whereas is like I'll have a Shakespeare class that is in person with masks and face shields that we will conduct final work outside in courtyards in the school or in parks My theater of the oppressed class meets every so often outside in the park because it's so improv based Whereas my my theater history class like I have later today actually will be online it's a very bizarre set of circumstances I'm also right now working on Steven Elegirges's The Last Days of Judas Iscariot which is being conducted solely online via zoom And it's being run through an OBS software to be live streamed out and edited so that we can have some semblance of blocking with These zoom boxes. I mean hence the green screen behind me That is being used for that production So we're experimenting with like how can we do uh, I guess I would say commercial or you know traditional style theater in a digital forum That has been quite Interesting. I'm also a teaching artist at the Algonquin Arts Theater back home in New Jersey I work with kids ages nine to 14 primarily I'm teaching them skills of acting and improv and devising new creation works and Next summer. I'm going to be hopefully Expanding that to include stage combat, which will be a lot of fun Great Thank you Duyong tell us a bit Hi all I'm Shinto Hyun. My pronoun is she and her I'm a PhD student in theater and performance at the city university of New York graduate center with Karey I'm a level one student and currently taking coursework I moved to New York in 2019 quite fresh and new But I'm currently staying in South Korea since my temporarily near Seoul so it's like 1 a.m. Here 13 hours difference So it means that I usually take my course works at like 3 a.m. Or 5 a.m. It's like that So I'm still working with my research interest till now I can say that my research interests lie in representation of woman and lgbtq and contemporary korean theater and contemporary adaptation of pansori a tanga traditional korean theater and the us american Gothic theater and This semester. I started teaching as a graduate teaching fellow at the city and college of New York I teach introduction theater arts online and while here in Seoul I am a pansori student traditional one person performance of korea and I started a student journal who like Which is about like writing like contemporary theater and performance usually and like soul And I'm interested for today. I'm interested in sharing my experience as a national student To research theater outside the us Incredible. So you're teaching online in the middle of the night to students in new york, but you pay down and sell incredible But before we go to this themes, how I would like to know how are you all doing? How are you? feeling as as People humans artists, how are you experiencing this time personally? I'll go um I I don't know how good it is for me to say this, but I'm feeling good at this moment. Um I think I'm happy to have a finally a moment of just reflection and of going back and Having to figure things out and experiment and truly experiment and be In a moment where things are changing. Um, that I hope that are changing in many many ways I think isn't this sorry and important Um, so personally spiritually physically and feeling very well I think there are other things of surviving that are in the air that that's always another conversation um Grounded wrote it with myself and my community and my people Can can also go. Um, I had I think I think I've had quite a roller coaster emotionally with um From from march until now and uh, I um Spent months Thinking like this is it for a while. I'm not making anything creative um, or I'm not I'm not pushing myself to make uh, to to make things um, I uh was um Just like taking a break in a way And finding some space in a way in the same way that maybe you just mentioned Gabriel, but um But uh, there was a lot of I think I was making space for grieving in a sense um You know just I think I was talking with a friend about this last night that it was a sort of a sense that um That uh, a lot of things that uh That I knew we are we're going to need to Handle in my lifetime Um, suddenly our our real things that uh, we can't keep kicking the can down the road. Um And uh, I'm not always sure how much uh, all of the all of the work that I make or all of the artistically or um, all of the uh academic or other work that I do is part of actually addressing that and not kicking that can down the road further so sort of Reckoning with that to some degree Feels and continuing to do so feels important, but I I've also come back around to uh, to Making things in a way that feels good, um, and not sort of not sort of frantic response Yeah, I'll go if no one is uh, dying to go right now But I think for me like kind of combining those two I'm in a very pivotal moment in what Theater means to me and like what theater has become because I think being specifically in new york and being a student in new york You get very influenced by like the the energy of the city the energy of the arts and kind of what other people are doing Quickly becomes either your aspiration or your competition And so I think being at home and starting to see theater online done You know very very low budget or very high budget You start to see like okay, like where do I fit within the industry? and then for me, I think I've come to this realization that I only want to return to this industry if it shatters itself when you know things reopen and so I'm starting to really challenge like what that means to me like what is the value of theater? And maybe for me that might mean theatricality and not so much the actual art of theater and like what is community when live performance is taking away and so I think I've been really a lot of existential crisis In this period, but I also think I I've challenged my dreams in a way that I haven't ever done before and so I think that's why I'm grateful for this moment, but also I want people to be healthy and that's I think my biggest priority right now Yeah, I'll say as an undergraduate major it is quite a wild time it is it is a time when across the board professors both artistic and academic have realized that the solution to increased anxiety in a global pandemic is just fill your students schedules with as much work as possible which is not great it is been a really really stressful and detrimental major semester across all undergraduate programs I mean this is a conversation I've had with peers of mine in my program across many of the other programs with the people I'm working with with Judas across friends of mine that go to entirely different universities across Manhattan the Bronx out of state entirely I don't know why this has happened this way it's some sort of an assumption that we have more time now so fill it and it leaves ironically it leaves a lot less time to let all of those pieces breathe I'm working on probably five different pieces right now and normally I would be okay with that but for the fact that they're the most part being done virtually and there's no sense of space as a construct so I'll come into zoom and completely in my head be like what am I working on right now what space am I coming into I've just written an essay and a half and read a 74 page play because of the sheer amount of overwhelming homework that I have and now I'm coming into a space to work and I don't know which one it is and it's been a chaotic really difficult time a lot of my peers have been struggling personally I have been trying to maintain a sense of okay this is how the field we're entering is going to have to be for a little while so why why complain about it I mean of course complain about it like there's plenty of material to complain about but but that doesn't really help experiment about how this new form can be explored so I guess I'm caught in the middle um is what I would say yeah well like short form I'm caught in the middle for me I think I'm in the middle of adapting like it was a roller coaster yes and like bar and quarry's expression um but I think now I'm feeling quite stable in a positive way or numb in a negative rate right now so um and meanwhile I thought a lot about productivity why can I produce results as I did before I have more time as many of you have pointed out but and I also don't need to prepare and commute to the graduate center which saves a lot of time but why do why can't I produce something in would there be any reason to produce something in such a difficult time where why do I research theater right now so and with questions of that I felt quite lost and it was only after I thought my desire to know about theater um rekindled and it's like after I actually came back here and went to the actual physical theater and went into rehearsals and while doing that I thought a lot about caring about theater practitioners' efforts and labor here when visiting theater that are open because as a theater research student who research theater I think it's not only about like researching the theater itself as a kind of an object but it's also about knowing more about community and knowing more about the actual practitioners who are putting their efforts here but I thought in this situation they are somehow left out and or all of their laborers and efforts are somehow raised in the situation that's where theaters are open right now and so because of that I got to think of we um the question not only about reopening and safety but also how we can actually manage theater and consistently care theater practitioners who are putting all their efforts of labor into theater and I think that's where I am right now thinking about like researching and actually going to theater and I'm trying to like teach theater while in here do you all think it was good to continue or some say well take a year off take half a year off a semester or you come back when you you know things back to the old ways um do you feel that there's something significant still that one could gain let's move oh no go ahead Luke go ahead oh uh so I have friends and acquaintances people I know that are doing just that they are taking a semester off they're taking a gap year because of those exact reasons you know we we can't really work the way that we were and especially in a program like mine when it's so collaborative and so working up on our feet is sharing a space and sharing an energy and that is I mean there's no substitute for that online you just can't lead that kind of a collaborative energy but while while I understand the reasons and the prospect of wanting to wait until things go back to normal I found my response to that being like I mean it's not ever really going to be you know it's never going to be it'll be close but it's never going to be the way it was I think that everyone living through this is sharing a really I don't want to use the word special but unique set of experience and tools and emotional trauma I mean frankly that is going to forever change the way that we operate in public spaces so rather than wait it out until I mean there's a vaccine and it's been regularly distributed and and accessible and we can start going back into theaters and have normal rehearsal processes I have kind of operated with a sense of pioneering you know why not be at the forefront of experimenting in this new wave it's never going to go back to quite the way it was we'll have that we'll get back to live theater of course but I think that the forms and the ways that we are theater making and creating and showcasing work right now is never going to leave again I don't think that we're ever going to see digital theater completely disappear anymore for a myriad of reasons so why not like figure out how that works you know why not experiment with how can we play on zoom or on google forums or or facebook live or what have you you know why not experiment with the forms I mean that's ultimately like that's our job isn't it I don't know I see it that way okay I think I do young first and then Gabriel yeah for me it's not only about time for but also about financial reasons because in case of like the Graduate Center we have five-year fellowship here and also we can take ear off and freeze it of course but it means that I'm losing another chance to do that having to take um ear off of what I need to do that when I actually delve into the research and have to do my like fieldwork or something so I think that's the kind of like practical reason that I'm not taking a year off but I think many of international students I know are actually taking a year off especially when they are MA students because like they have to pay their own tuition and they have to earn their own stipend to actually be in New York and experience theater scene there but if they are actually doing that right now it means that they're they have to like take all the courses online and they cannot go to the theater which means that even though they have to like pay like double amount of like like like US citizen students here in New York it's kind of like not worried of money that I actually try to like pay so in that way I think is that they're kind of like strategy to take a year off especially in case of like MA students so many thoughts oh I think in my in my case I feel like I was a little prepared for the online training uh both because I don't go specific to a theater program I go to a media program and I for a year I lived in Hong Kong and I was studying abroad like online my school is in New York and then your scope but I was living and working in Hong Kong so I was familiar with online learning and the new school has actually my professors have been really good at training themselves on how to create everything in interactive ways I go into classes where we have different sorts of activities with online platforms and they ask us how we're doing and they've been really careful with giving us time and understanding that it's an anxious time and that things are going to be late in assignments like my school has been really good at that if if I can say but I also want to say now to the way the question that you ask um I also don't agree on the idea of the old ways and I truly think that the thought of of always coming back of having a nostalgia of the past in the arts and a romanticism of the past in the arts is what has put us in a space where the world switches switches so fast and we don't have neither the tools neither the foundation for us to think how to navigate between fast changes and I think that is not only in education but in across different sectors inside of capitalism that's one of the issues is that we're not being trained as human beings to know how to transform into change and to evolve we're being trained to be inside of a cycle that repeats itself and then when the cycle is broken then what is there to do so I agree with Luke and in the idea of experimentation I do think that performance right now is the most valuable and I think that putting things expressing things through art and culture are the most valuable coming back to also what Cory was talking about how do we propel into the future into the changes that we need to make and I think it's a really important time for us to get away from the preconceived ideas that we have about Eurocentric theater making and then going back into the idea of collectiveness and rituality and coming as communes and making things happen that don't have to be inside of a box that can happen everywhere theater is not defined by by the space where it is created theory is defined by the community as all of us have been talking so I think that's where our focus should be at the moment with the online platforms I also have some thoughts I I do think that virtual theater is something that should be explored especially because we live in a world where technology has become a third arm to us technology is not part of ourselves so you could say the technology can be potential but I don't think Zoom and Facebook and those platforms are good for that because in reality we're just giving them money back we're making sure that they just keep on perpetuating themselves and commodifying out of our all practices which is not better than what we were doing before so I'm just really curious of also seeing who inside of all this craziness is going to say I've been taking the time to listen to see everything experiment and now here's a new tool here's a new resource here's the evolution of theater I think that's that's what we should be thinking about instead of doing instead of like producing on the spot rather thinking on the long term what is the future and how do we achieve the future yeah I I wish that that we had taken the the rest of the semester off in spring I think and and I really feel for what Luke was saying about and I think you're referring more to more to this semester but just about how how overloaded undergraduate students are with with with work I saw it I heard it from my undergraduate students I was teaching a theater history course and I and I heard it from my students in regard to their other classes that semester which to me made absolutely no sense my my approach as their professor was to say I'm here to maintain a a semblance of structure for you if that's what you need in order to make it through a really intense time emotionally and in terms of family and all of these things but I'm not you're I'm not requiring you to um I don't know maybe maybe some of these things I shouldn't say on record uh actually but I but I really didn't think that it was uh that it was that it was the right thing to do or the fair thing to do for for uh for what felt like honestly a sense of some of some other professors not personally because I don't know them personally but just had the sense that um that some people sort of on my level on the on the other side of things we're trying to grasp onto some sense of normal and to hold things together for themselves by by by cracking down harder on the requirements and that that was that that was a a way that they sort of pushed forward onto their students um what what they understood to be happening with you know with not not consciously um so I really wish that we had uh for everyone's sake also as a student myself just said like this this semester is a wash nobody signed up to teach an online course uh nobody signed up to take an online course in the CUNY system um I think too what uh what Gabe was just Gabriel was just saying about um technology this assumption that the the idea that technology is our is sort of a third on for us that we're all uh cyborgs in some way is is true and also it uh it's taken for granted in a in a way that because technology is so ever present we all have access to it um and it's not true even in uh a highly developed country uh in the most developed city of that country like the students in the CUNY system don't have access to across the board to the kind of technology they needed to sort of seamlessly transition into these online courses even if they were well designed and so that was I mean we were just dragging ourselves through the semester um and uh yeah I can I can stop this tangent that I'm that I'm going off on but I just wish that in terms of in terms of whether things should have continued I think um that giving ourselves the the space I do just to sit in um in what was happening rather than trying to uh force things along within the higher within the higher education setting um I think we really did ourselves a disservice um and I think there are some other conversations I know at the at the level of PhD students maybe this is also happening for master students but um but definitely lots of conversations with my colleagues sort of uh feeling a lot of frustration around um you know we are we don't feel supported uh by the administration and by our funding in order to finish our degrees and it's always a struggle when it's always a struggle to finish your dissertation that's uh you don't sign up for it thinking it's going to be easy or smooth sailing and there are always people who even when things are are better take 10 years to finish or don't finish at all but it in this particular situation a lot of us are sort of staring down the barrel of a gun where we're about to run out of funding um we're being told that funding is being cut and is shrinking and that so funding our sixth year or seventh year is going to be really challenging and at the same and adjunct positions are vanishing and so even that kind of supplementary income is going to be really hard for us to find um and at the same time they're still admitting a full new class of students um and so dedicating funding to them rather than figure finding a way to take a pause and say like let's figure out how we can graduate every everyone who is already in the program um I think a lot of pausing could be taken. Sean. Yeah I think I think you bring up a really good point about resources and what that means for the theater and how theater has always been leap years behind in terms of finding a way for limited resources to produce not only excellent excellent pieces of theater but also to reach mass audiences and to provide a very sustainable lifestyle for those artists that are involved in the creation of theater and I think that's something that digital is kind of training us on which is like here's how you can also extend your reach here's how you can also involve more people in uh creation of work but I think for me in terms of where I'm at in the master's level is that I'm really starting to think about the the why of theater for a community and um I know Gabriel you said that as well but it's like I think now we're looking at theater specifically in New York City as part of the resilience of the New York economy and so what that means for us as creators um for me as a producer but also as an artist like what is the intersection between us moving forward to demand that our city is uh you know becoming resilient but also how do those artists and how do underrepresented communities with lower income become a part of that conversation because something about me really worries that we're going to return 20 30 years ago when discounts weren't available when you know program for young affordable tickets was not available and so from the venue owner perspective something that I beg these people to do is to take a moment to say okay we might need to reopen and be at a deficit where we might not be able to take in loads of cash based on a production and so from the studying standpoint I constantly think about like okay what is what is a financial model that works and no matter how good or bad you are at math that you find out that Broadway theater specifically even off Broadway theaters that it's going to be very very difficult to even reopen to have an audience but how do we I because I feel like as a theater community we were just reaching a point where we were being uh we were offering a sense of belonging for everyone and a sense of acceptance but where is that going now and like has that come to the back burner uh now that we are looking at reopening I see some theaters that are you know starting to think about how they can reopen uh so that's just something that's on my mind a lot um but I also think from the creator standpoint it's like I know a lot of my artist friends who are writers or actors they're starting to really understand that their work is uh of a greater value in some other spaces whether it be at this moment or whether that be historically in terms of the pay they're getting for the same amount of work they're doing in theater um but they're getting paid more you know working for a company somewhere else or in a different industry and so I think the people are starting to understand that artistry is something very transportable and that what theater can do in terms of community building and storytelling is essentially what drives all corners of everything from advertising to medicine to tv to you know just teaching english and for preschoolers so I think like that landscape is really exciting to see how it's opening up but I think what I'm grappling with right now is what is a return for theater because theater has always been something about preserving the past like looking at the greco method like looking at things that you uh you know you were influenced by but moving what is the future of theater if we have to create something new that doesn't involve you know the greco method that doesn't involve a recitalian way of performance so that's just something that's really exciting right now and uh I think lots of people are looking at different ways of involving everyone I think in terms of the who's in the eye of the public right now which is and I people feel free to argue but I think streaming services are right now essentially in the zeitgeist and I think they are really embracing what theater had which is the musical which is you know interactivity and stuff like that so but yeah I'd be interested in what people are thinking I have some thoughts um so I I'm also feeling very frustrated with the administration I'm a professor but the administration of my university and funding um there's been some news about how they just got funding and what cutting funding meant is they cut the library workers and they cut the the professors while the people at the top of my university is still getting very very high salaries um so that's very frustrating also thinking of the new school and what the new school represents and why I joined the new school because I do think that it's based for um social discourse and critical thinking at large um so that's that's been complicated um I agree and it's also it's hard for me to I'm a master student but I'm paying for half my tuition and it's going into loans and right now I'm thinking like even if before everything I was thinking how am I going to pay for this now I'm really thinking how am I going to pay for this it's getting the question is becoming bigger so I'm even considering uh I'm considering the idea of trying to figure out if I can go into a program that will give me a full scholarship this year or having to to decide if I'm able to continue my education or not that's something that has been in my mind um with the conversation about what you were talking Sean about um the past I think I think something on that aspect is that I feel that theater until this point has always been about education but education about culture as you're mentioning and we are living behind a little what is now being called as creative place making um just want to put it out there there is a big summit by our an organization called our place that happens next week um one of my professors from the new school sara called the run is the managing director of this place and it's a place that has been looking at what are the intersections between culture and other sectors and how how it can change in the other sectors like health mental health and then um like agriculture and aqueduct and different other sectors um transportation and I think it's a good time for us to start to go back to that like instead of saying theater is representational it's saying theater is a way of activating of activating community and activating community projects that at the end can end up creating professional work like I think there is this weird um isolation between what we understand as community theater and then professional theater and it comes a little from an assumption that what comes from the community is not going to have the same wisdom as what comes from professionals and I disagree with it and I think the community can make professional professional productions if they're giving the tools and they're giving the time and they're giving the nourishment of making that happen and there's a big area of getting funds and getting grants for projects that are going to have more practical like practical um the results on other sectors of our economy and of the different things that we need to be thinking about at the moment. What do you all think is so wrong with theater or has been wrong what needs to be done different because I hear from you say it will never go back how it was before this is gone I mean it's of all the seagull talks maybe everybody agrees the most here that oh I hear from it that you say we live now in a different time our life has completely changed so what do you think has was wrong and what needs to be done what is the most important thing what theater has to focus on now. Well I had some things I really wanted to say bouncing off of what Sean and Gabriel just said which um I think somewhat yeah it's also somewhat going in that direction Frank but um I I I think that one thing that I am thinking about a lot these days is um that I mean in some sense Sean what what I think you were talking about Sean was what theater does formally um and there is also the there is also the or aesthetically there's also the fact that theater and performance is is deeply rooted in the body and in physical presence and what we're dealing with is a crisis of presence and a crisis of understanding our relation our our physical and maybe crisis isn't also always the correct term for it but it's an an upheaval in the way that we are able to safely relate to one another um face to face in the same room and that that is something to um to mourn but not to get stuck in the in the morning of but to understand how to move forward and um and to move and and how to take lessons from uh from communities that have been thinking deeply for years many many years about consent and uh and open conversation um but also that that performance practitioners have something really as as people who understand the body and work with the body have something really real to add to or even to lead in um in the way that we figure out how the how to to continue to live together in space um and not just be on these screens all of the time um and and I think along with that something that I am just recently thinking about is that uh I've had a frustration for a long time as someone who does work in community-based theater and in social practice I've had a lot of frustration with the rhetoric that um that sort of like self a grandizing rhetoric that can happen in those in those circles or in publicity about these kinds of projects that are all about creating an event creating an experience um giving people the chance to connect with one another um because uh pre-pandemic um that is not something that was the exclusive provenance of theater um or social practice and it was actually like very frustrating to me to think that you had to go to a kind of uh art version of a party that that was somehow better than a party um it's actually not the case but now you know just I mean I think just as we were talking I'm sort of thinking that there is a different kind of validity to that claim I don't see a lot of people necessarily thinking about that but I made a kind of a a performative kind of performative kind of ritual ceremonial walk in Maine in in September with the people I collaborate with there and we had about 15 members of the public come we did it at dawn um and uh we had to think through sort of all of the safety precautions and um the things that you really do have to think through now in order to have a public gathering um and we and it felt like a very special experience and it felt very that like some amount of ritual and ceremony um that people really needed uh and who came to it um so I think there is a really there is actually in some sense a different possibility and mandate there to um to create safe ways of being together um that uh that is more crucial for for theater and performance to be able to fill um and we have speaking of history like of course we have a long history of entanglement with ritual and for ritual in performance going all the way back to the beginning of time so there is also plenty to sort of excavate there and learn there from our history as theater makers uh let's look I think look oh sure uh I I just I wanted to bounce off of the idea of uh lack of presence um and grappling with the inability to be in an audience or or be fair audience and reach out and feel the power that the presence of body resonates and uh just really quickly I wanted to note like you know that there are ways that we in the undergraduate have been playing with to not replace but reclaim that kind of a thing because there is a serious issue with virtual theater with people's attention spans sitting in a lecture all day like I have been for the last several months it gets really hard to just watch people it gets so easy to to check out which you can't do in person it's you know because you're there you can feel that energy and you're you focus in on the presence of body so we've been experimenting with that and and my friends who are doing a production of Blue Ridge uh which is um about addiction recovery they are like how can we focus people back in on the presence of body in this performance when they can't feel us and what they decided to do not for performance which hasn't happened yet but just playing around in rehearsal as an idea is they flipped sideways for an entire rehearsal just to make the audience uh who in that case was just the production team focus in on every movement of body and face because they couldn't see it as well they were forced to engage in a deeper level and so I bring that up just because I wanted to say that like there are other alternative ways to break this form and force people back in on the presence of body that's not something that we've lost it's just something that we need to find new ways to do I just depending into what you're saying look I think that something that we're taking for granted is the sum was not created for performance some was created for conferences so whatever tool sum gives us it's gonna be to what is given to a conference and I think there are so many like if you think about it when they were designing Facebook when they were designing Instagram there were so many people thinking about what was the psychology behind creating these things the design and the reasons why so that they're making a specific way to be marketed for specific reasons so these I do feel that this idea that we can keep on utilizing a conference platform for performance it's it's a little wrong I think that we should those who have the funding and the the ability to do so they should be investing on people that can be thinking about what the platform what software what the space can look and be like and what tools are necessary to create these things look how to recreate presidency how to recreate the what we don't understand that we kind of understand about being together and communication on real time in person but I also wanted to also say great that I think even beyond to think about a ritual or or a collective party celebration I think community work can go even beyond that it's not only the creating a ritual or celebration but rather seeing how through the making of theater we can start to understand other things that can be changed in our communities and in in our civic practice of citizens like even even that simple thing that comes to mind but you know the things that a stage manager has to deal with thinking about logistics and organizing a short production manager in all of these things that's something that could easily in weird ways be implicated to transportation and how we're dealing with transportation in in our country and what happens when we are able to realize our creative thinking to start a conversation with people that may not be thinking about going into the arts but that at some point can go into other sectors and start to think creatively and critically critically and creatively because it's also proven that citizens that think creatively make better decisions than others that don't so I think that's that's to answer your question Frank I think that's where I'm coming from I think that I do think I I don't think that is that is not going to happen but I don't think that the future of theater should be creating representational stories I think the future of theater should be creating stories that represent communities but that also work with those communities to create factual change in the world and I think that is a non-explore area of funding and of opportunities through other ways that can have better impacts on communities than what we've done so far especially especially thinking about inclusivity and diversity in communities of color that that we should be tapping into and thinking not not even implementing or rather thinking and developing so that when the time comes we can start with something a new and a new way of making. Yeah. So for Lukes and Gabriel's point about like Zoom that are not and that is not designed for theater I think of how theater can actually tactically like pursue their performance like in a way of tactical performance like how can they deal with what they're given but actually play with that so we can actually expand and occupy and recreate space for theater that it's not designed for theater in a way I think and I think we still have potentiality in that which we can explore while we are still like stuck in our like home I think that's in a way what we can and have to do but I also think about how theater I'm not sure about New York because like theater is not open there but I when I came back to came back here I thought of how theater is failing to be a safe zone for practitioners and it's not being persuasive enough to be one because like I think what mostly frustrates the theater practitioner here is a precariousness of the situation as you all know we have a Bay system when we talk about the pandemic so Korea is no exception theater is not as I say close here but luckily but what throws your practitioners in difficult situation is those constant changes in face numbers so for example if the government announces phase two they have to cancel all the tickets they already sold and reopen it after ingesting the seats accordingly and the thing is the audience might not buy tickets again after their tickets actually got cancelled and if things get worse and the phase 2.5 is announced they got to postpone the show and stand by for further directions which often leads to the cancel of the show itself so I think what matters here is a kind of like consensus that is actually burdening theater practitioners when facing the phase change hardship because for example there was one small theater company who published their manifesto on twitter a few months ago and it was against soul studies regulation according to phase change that stated all theater company have to put six feet social distance between every audience in their seat and even though they followed all the measures that they were already doing like wearing masks like taking all their temperatures with the monitor and putting all their personal information there and it was kind of like safe while doing that but I think what theater company said was that it's impossible to actually do such a like practically it's not practically impossible it's it's not practically possible to do that because if they put actually six feet distance social distance between like the audience in such a small theater with like like 10 people how can actually they can earn from that and how can they actually live with that money that they earn from the theater and I think that's a how way of like small theater companies shows some frustration of self city as being kind of like extra harder on theater and practitioners not like on like restaurants or bar but I think what's lacking here is how theater itself is not becoming a safe zone and they're trying to like stand up against some of the like measures that they don't think is like I would say fair but in a way I think like it's not being I think like persuasive till now it's not being persuasive enough to like like actually perceive all the people who have consensus that we have to like stop theater because theater is kind of like a second thing we can do it's not necessary in this kind of like epitomic and now we have to like think about how can we actually persuade those people who think art is not necessary in this kind of like situation it has been theater persuasive enough to like persuade all the people who are actually saying that and have ready that's kind of like strong consensus between among them and I think of what is ice as I said in the beginning is kind of like lack of raising coal how labor and likelihood of artists are like significant here and how they are actually conveniently left out and I think theater as a community here at least are trying to do that but are not like doing that enough to actually accommodate all those like needs and significances and I think that's one of the things we can talk about when um theaters on Broadway actually reopen think about like how actually can theater practitioners be um I would say protected but at the same time how can actually theater be persuasive enough like to convince all the people who are thinking art is kind of like secondary thing in this pandemic I'm just going to bounce off of some of the points that were just made there using what I've come across doing last days of Judas Iscariot we're still charging for tickets $15 standard university ticket price for any of our main stages and we have gotten a lot of pushback not from the administration or from within the performing community but from the university at large and even like people outside of the university entirely that I just know from my private life that are like how are you like how dare you like how how are you charging because you know this isn't really the experience of theater and I think we have a unique opportunity to break down the barrier that has been present for so long in our traditional style of theater presentation which is this is not a presentation for you I'm still working we're charging tickets because we're working and if you would like to come see us work then you pay us for our work regardless of the forum people have been like no you can't charge because the experience of me being in an audience and watching and experiencing this this energy from a live performance that's not fair and I'm like yeah but it's still my work I'm still working live in front of you for you for me so I think that there's this opportunity that we have to break down this barrier that theater makers are more than presentational which has come up occasionally a few times now as well as finance and how artists are going to continue to be paid and I think that that is a problem that a lot of people have come across doing zoom or otherwise virtual productions of things or classes even teaching over the summer the normal rate for a lot of those classes was was upwards in the hundreds and it was dropped to 60 bucks and I'm like I'm still contributing my time in artistry and work for this why are you short changing me for my work because of a change in forum like I understand where the logic has come from but my work has not changed and you can't treat it as such and I think that there's like something unique in there that has the opportunity to change with the forum I think the front before we got into this and I know there was a conversation with Annie yesterday but Annie hamburger is somebody that has been thinking a lot about this and what happens when when we go into these areas and then people are not getting paid for work and I just to give an anecdote and I may get the the dates wrong it's history from my own country but I may get the dates wrong but at some point in the in the 90 in the 1900s in my country there was a war and after this war the big there are two big TV channels like major channels and at that point actors were still getting royalties for the work that they were doing and then what the TV network started to do is they came to actors and said well we don't have money to pay you so if you want to come and work with us you have to work for underneath the regular rate that you normally work instead of the syndicate and you don't have more royalties and what ended up happening is that people started to take a lot of work and after taking a lot of work the TV networks were able to pass a law as for law that as for the actors to be always be considered independent contractors and then they didn't have any options for royalties or pension or health benefits or other things and there was no syndicate in my country to protect them because he was this like dismiss so putting that to say I do think that it's a very important time and in any type of financial depression and any type of economical depression artists are unfortunately were the ones that go first and because people don't think we're important and people at large and I think people at large don't think we're important because we through the culture industry not the art industry but the culture industry we've made it seem as if we are not people we've made it seem as if they're celebrities and then they're regular people and we haven't made that connection of making people regular people also see that there are artists living in every single neighborhood doing work in every single neighborhood and that the work is valuable because they're doing work so I think there there's two things there's like the fight of for our rights to be able to get paid and to never stop doing that because if not then we're out of the picture but then there is the cultural work of integrating arts as part of every single other sector in communities which is what I keep on coming back and also I'm gonna mispronounce your name I'm so sorry do you I'm so sorry but I to what you were saying of like getting people to actually understand that it is important how do we persuade them into coming back to theater I think that the only way to do that is to making them understand that theater is part of their lives and that it has to be part of their lives for a reason like music is and I think music is so good at this it became part of our everyday life but we see a necessity on it now what is the necessity of theater to be inside of every other sector of life it's on the cultural side something that I'm also thinking about do you guys at the moment are you hopeful also with your work and your profession the future or did it cross your mind this is it I'm going to stop I'm going to do something completely different what do you and your your fellow students or what how do you experience this moment I'd say that in the undergraduate we're all pretty hopeful we have a pretty optimistic outlook on the future of the theater industry next semester we are planning to be able to get back to doing live performances and live in person rehearsal processes there will be no audience present it'll be live streamed out but we will all be together present in the theater working so that goal that plan that we have present is definitely helping to keep afloat those of us who are severely struggling right now um with this semester and with an entirely virtual season lined up and um I do have class at 120 so I may need to step out yeah I would I mean we I think you have to be hopeful because or else you spent a lot of money on your education to learn a lesson that you could have just asked some of a few people about like how you know society works and like what the value of artists to some people not for others um to answer your question from earlier frank about like what is wrong with theater I think something that keeps me hopeful is that I'm starting to see the blend between art as work and then art as appreciation and like I think a lot of the issue with theater is that for some of us it is sustenance and some of us it is how we are able to stay alive um both in a figurative but also very a literal sense when it comes to money but I think um leadership is shifting not as much as I would like it to or as any of us would like it to but there's I think there's hope in that the value of arts becoming more transparent I mean as much as we can love or hate digital I think platforms like Instagram are really just giving people a new value of what art is whether that be visual art whether that be poetry and I think um while there are things we are leaving behind in terms of what theater traditionally is or what poetry traditionally is and what however digital media is changing that I think it's uh it's giving uh arts a better place in the cultural zeitgeist which will be really helpful when trying to resume live performance at the mass scale uh so that keeps me really hopeful in terms of a lot of my other colleagues I've mentioned this before but I think there's been a resuscitation or just a stronger focus on how they're valued within certain systems and New York specifically I think is a really great example of what goes wrong when profit is at the forefront of theater because I do believe that regionally there are bigger risks that can be taken but also just things can open and close quicker whereas in New York it's your reputation that dies with the show and you know all these different layers that make art creation a very numbing thing that has few moments of excitement that keeps you going every day but I also think that New York is a microcosm of just the idea of the necessity of the arts and kind of how that can go hand in hand with the livelihood of the city of a country of the family so I am very hopeful I do think that and I encourage everyone here to really challenge yourself and like what the arts means to you and like how you are going to use that both either to create work for yourself or to create work for others but also to understand that what you might love about it may change drastically by the next time you're in a room with other people and so you understand like that adaptability is not so much a negative thing more than it is something that is bringing the country to a more inclusive state both in terms of digital accessibility but also the definition of theater is in the hands of different people now which is so exciting and that's what keeps me really helpful I'm glad that Sean brought up Profits we've all been talking a lot about money and you know I'm hopeful I guess a small a small and also large thing that I'm hopeful for or haven't given up hope on is that that theater and performance will reckon more fully with its relationship with capital and with capitalism and for me you know I will never stop being I'm being an artist whatever whatever that means I think one of the I think a really major thing that capitalism does to us is create is force us or try to back us into a corner where our we can only convey our identity through that which pays our bills and I and I think we also saw a lot of that happen or I was I felt very cognizant of this as people as artists were struggling to figure out how to what to do especially in the early stages of the pandemic how to how to be an artist and to help their neighbors and the answer is that you don't have to help your neighbors as an artist that you can do mutual aid as a human being and like it doesn't need to permeate the entirety of your art practice but I saw a lot of people making their art practice mutual aid and I think that's I think that's because of capitalism in a in a in a way I won't like dig deeper into now but I'm just I'm hopeful that that we keep exploring that potential for decoupling and uncoupling from that and and I don't intend to ever leave the arts whether or not that is how I'm keeping my lights on as long as as long as we have to have an income in order to in order to live which for the foreseeable future we'll have we will have to I do I think it's important to continue to also like question the the logic that on the one hand has been really powerful in allowing people to make a living in the arts and in supporting people in coming into the arts who are not independently wealthy because it's a huge question to deal with who don't come from uh don't come from financial privilege I think that's a huge question related to this and that's part of the driving force behind saying like we got to pay people we got to pay people a fair wage in in theater or in any sort of like sector of the arts that's one thing to deal with but on the other hand uh to to say that I'm only an artist if I'm being if that is where 100 of my income comes from this also a that's also a fallacy and one that like keeps us deeply deeply trapped in a capitalist logic that is eating us all alive slowly I feel like you said most of the things that I had in my mind but um I I feel like uh slowly I've been shifting from theater practice into community organizing and community development but I am a theater person I'm an arts person it's what's inside of me so that's the way that I think about everything um but I also I come from a low-income family so I really appreciate that you're mentioning this of the arts and how how is it to navigate instead of the arts as a low-income person so that that has always been lately that is one of the thoughts of do I really want to keep on trying to make theater or do I now I discovered that I'm really good at organizing people what if I just get a a job organizing people and I like it it's been in my mind a lot and also fundraising money it's always so like I'm I'm gonna say it because I'm in the space where people are watching but I'm doing a project right now um Tau look um I'm doing a project right now where I'm creating a series of different activations an online game for Latinx queer community struggling with drug abuse um and we're doing a game we're doing a performance inside that will actually happen and it's coming with all the compliances of of COVID um and getting funding is just so complicated no matter what you're doing or how you're doing that it's something that me as a low-income person is like ouch um how do I do it and yeah so I'm hopeful about people gathering together no matter in what format I think the moment that we stop thinking about communities as social clubs and we start to think about how do we are together because of our needs and how we can help each other we can make a big impact on everything else but it requires a lot of generosity that doesn't really happen inside of capitalism so that's what I'm not hopeful about I think most of the things that I wanted to say again is I think covered by like many of this like um like really in folks here but I just wanted to finally raise a call about international students research and future here because like I'm in a lucky situation that I could come here and hopefully can go back to New York this January but this summer I announced that they won't let students come into the US if students at school is not open physically in person or in hybrid and even though they stepped back with the regulation after all that low foods and petition and everything students like international students are still afraid to go outside the US because of possibility that they won't come back like all of this precariousness even though what happens in their own like personal life and things are changing so quickly and there is as much we can do about it except for pushing eyes which needs a lot of help from others and the problem also here is the first year international PhD students and other students too is not paid at all because like they do not have social security number yet and unless they are currently in the US and they have to work and study together and OPT is also supercarious some of my roommates had to go back this April because they could not get OPT training job because ICE was not actually giving them out OPTs so I think the kind of things are happening and the thing is that we are we are still not sure what will happen this January even like me here it cannot have a possibility of like not like being able to go back to New York this January so I think that's what's still concerns international students and their future so even as hopeful there are kind of like them light for international students I think so I'm still going to hope that things will be new normal but I think this precariousness is something that'll still linger upon not only me but also many international students that I wanted to finally raise a call to that. No more so this is a very important point and going back to what New York City is all about next to the arts and that the city defines itself as a closeness to the arts of theater galleries music and it is the international mixture the great unique atmosphere in New York City and as we heard from Jay Wegman visas for artists to come and perform it's getting increasingly more difficult it seems intentional international students coming here and studying potentially working here it gets turned down so there is seems to be a method behind it it's wrong that a student cannot get the funding because he or she doesn't have their social security or might be afraid to return home for a funeral and to come back here no longer being allowed it is something we are used from dictatorial states and others it is completely wrong and it underlines a point you all made I think professors and people leading departments are doing extraordinary work at the at the moment and I think also at the grad center and at the phd program Peter Ackerson others does is in these extraordinary but the administration of course is looking at bottom lines also is under great stress money for public universities public education is being cut it has always been cut it is so wrong and we do think that access to education access to the arts access to health care of fundamental human rights Jeffrey sex the great economist at Columbia University said there's enough money around for everyone for health care for food for access to the arts education it's just the political will is not there to distribute what is there into these fields it's wrong and we all hope that this crisis this pandemic changes this thinking you know that perhaps the military budget doesn't need to be as big the next 15 nations combined but that you should you know defund and put money from these resources into education into this whether it's police or military or others or the large prison system and industry of itself something is so wrong and I think students are at the wrong end of this as they are artists and this I think has to change so thank you all really for sharing to give us a moment of spending in your shoes I can only imagine how complicated that is I was a student I can really truly cannot imagine how would it be to be at it confined to not being out to go theater when you study theater when you make theater it is so hard perhaps even afterwards you will realize more how complex and complicated this is and the way you deal with this you know as Sean said and Gabriel Corrie Chen and and look here it's I think it's extraordinary and I have an incredible respect for the generation you are who said we deal when we deal with this we will look at it hopefully and we're going to change things and in a way that includes community that includes minorities and as in hamburger said yesterday unheard voices in unexpected places that this is something that is coming up and I think there's a lot to be said for what you all are engaged in also using the social media which we didn't grow up with and didn't really know how to handle there definitely will be a TBC as we said a TAC there's going to be a time before corona and a time after corona you have made that very clear I think this is also a good to hear for everybody and and and that we have to prepare for that and I think people are listening in a better way than they did before and I hope this will be contributing to to the change so really thank you and hang in there and and nothing lasts forever as I say here not the good but also not the bad but it is a time to reflect to think to study and to and to prepare what's coming hopefully we are ready and can can be part of the change we want to see want to thank howl round forum hosting us uh uh Vijay and Stia and Andy from the Segal team and next week we're going to hear from artists from our prelude festival that is going on at the moment uh since 15 years we are showing excerpts from work of New York artists work in in progress it's a great festival a first time online very complicated for us to put up but David Brun and Miranda Harmon did a great job as curators it's on www.preludenyc2020.org tonight tomorrow but also for three days next week and some of the artists will be with us for the Segal talks next week so to be here from working New York artists we're trying to create work also in the digital realm um how it feels like ers and many many others so thank you all and again you guys um thank you for taking your time and the energy and to be with us and to share to share the experience i hope you're going to all stay safe and also tune in maybe for others of our sessions thank you and good night in for South Korea so that's already my