 And it's sunshine outside today, still cold, but it's a little bit sunny, but of course, as we unfortunately have to say every day, the situation, it all gets worse and worse. At the moment, over 3,000 people died in one day, now for three days in a row, the numbers were the same. There's like three World Trade Center crashes, one after the other. And New York City is still at least also in mid-home, seems to be leaving. Businesses are closed and boarded up, but the good news is most probably today that vaccination will be approved in Washington and things will move on, but it will not really solve, I guess, all the big, big problems that this moment brought to us, Richard Schechner said here on the program, it's like a nuclear reactor. The roof has been blown up and we're looking at a catastrophe, it's life, and we look and see the inside. The question is, what do we do with this moment? And the Segal Talks since March really have tried to hear and listen to artists and their voices, artists who have been on the right side of history, the complex, struggle for freedom and artistic expression, these fundamental right, access to healthcare, access to education, but also access to art and access to the political process, but the arts are very, very important. They are significant over thousands of years, may have been part of what it is and what it means to experience life. The great Joseph Boyce, the artist, who also knew, he would say, you know, we are born into forms, or forms are there, and it's our job to change what's not working and to preserve what is working, but we have to be an active participant and create, like artists, the world we live in. Since a little break in August, we started to talk again to theatre artists, but we also opened it up in this kind of enlarged idea of the field of theatre and performance, the curators, producers, academics, researchers, people, dramaturgs like yesterday, the LMDA, the representatives who are here, and one of those great, great, how would one say, rocks of the landscapes of the New York Theatre, that especially we don't know, but I would say of all New York series, who are with us here today, the Valejo Gantner, who we look up to and we know him for many years, so Valejo, thank you for taking the time. Thank you for joining us. I think he is one of the leading curators globally in the world, a thinker, a forward thinker, often here on the road, always looking what is ahead of the curve, was a great concern and also love for the field and he has had a real impact. I'm going to read a little bit from his bio. He is actually now, since 2019, the artistic executive director of the Onassis Foundation, USA, a foundation that has done a tremendous amount of work for the arts globally, but also and especially here in the US and in New York. And it is an innovative program, the Onassis Foundation, based in Athens with satellites in New York City and Los Angeles. Before he was the artistic director of PS122, the great performance based PS122, which he helped to revitalize, to reinvent what it was all about and why it was a home for New York artists, but things changed, the neighborhood changed and he said, we also need to listen to global voices. And he invited so, so many great, great artists early on in their career, but also a significant established ones we perhaps didn't know about and it's now called Performance Space, New York, of course. He has been a consultant to BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the great Theatre Development, maybe one of the best festivals on theater and performance worldwide. And for over 20 years, he's been working across live performance in all disciplines that include cinema design and hospitality. And he has always thought innovative artists, work and ideas, building new experiences and new forms of communication for audiences. And this is what this is about. We say like Brecht said, new times, need new forms of theater. And this is what we will be talking about. He also is involved in film distribution models, who we, you all should look at H-O-L-V-I-E and to have film screenings and private spaces and marks, which is supporting urban ecosystems of artists, artisans and ideas of people. M-A-K-R-S is a member of the family of Maya, Maya family investments and Duango and Melbourne. And he is finding new sustainable structures at the moment. He's on the board of Between Time in Bristol, the great chocolate factory here in New York City. And as we know, know all of it, but many, many various institutions in Australia. He comes from a great theater family and is one of the great things also when families are able, whether they're doctors or artists or producer, you know, that somehow they built on decades of work that has been there before. So Valejo, we always say it's about radical listening. And then I go on and on, rambling in the beginning. I hope you will forgive me. But really, we want to now know what's on your mind, what you think about. So where are you? Are you in Melbourne and Bristol and Edinburgh? Where are you now? I'm in New York City, Frank, just like you came down this morning. I've been very blessed and fortunate to be able to spend a lot of the last seven months out in the countryside, but have been in and out of the city and trying to take the pulse and be connected to the pulse of the city throughout the pandemic. But yeah, today in the beautiful city, as you said, it's the blue sky, but winter is coming to be terribly cliched. Yeah. Listen, Valejo, we know you also as someone who is always in New York, but also flying around the world. And he would say, let's meet tomorrow for a coffee. Oh, no, I'm in actually Melbourne or whatever. So the world has radically changed as it has changed for all theater artists. There are no jobs, spaces are closed, most probably till next fall, nothing will happen. We hear early reports that universities will go to online teaching also for next semester in the fall, the devastating news, also not good for theaters news, you know. So what do you make of the situation we are in right now? I mean, globally, it's, of course, it's very simplistically, it's a catastrophe and it's something that, you know, in a way was clear in March, you know, that this was happening and it's been a fundamental change to all of our lives and profound change to all of our lives. But I mean, what do we make of it? We should I feel like what we need to be making of it is what are we going to do with this? The thing I keep thinking about is the thing that makes me almost more afraid than the perhaps direct consequences of what is happening around the world, but particularly in the US as a consequence of the pandemic is the thing I'm afraid of is is that we waste this crisis and we must not, cannot waste this crisis and fail to use this moment and whatever we have, whatever abundance that we do have to come out stronger and better and in a better place when it stops. I'm trying to avoid using the term when things get back to normal. Normal wasn't that great for so many people and so many artists and so many parts of the society that we're in. So what was wrong? Oh, where do we begin? Whether I mean, I think there were power imbalances between artists and institutions, the funding relationships and the way we imagine the kind of network or web of relationships that we have within the field. We're all skew if things were out of order. Obviously, there were issues around representation, but not just representation, but, you know, the way we were dealing with different communities, the who was in power in site institutions and whose stories were being told. And who they were being told to. So who was in the audiences? But at a certain point, the challenge of many of those things, of course, is that they are a reflection of the society that we're in. And at a certain point, as I've been in so many conversations, as we all have about, you know, where do we want change to go and how do we want it to work? The part of the thing is you end up, you keep ending up on this brick wall of all that's how the society that we're in works, you know, and can we now imagine changing everything? But so I don't even know where to begin to answer that question, Frank, it's a but and we can't fix everything. But I think we need to try and imagine a future and a changed environment where things are more equal, where the kind of centers of power of all the power itself is more distributed, where there is a much more kind of open conversation between around what is needed and and what is wanted and and and figuring out different levers and different mechanisms that we use to make work to make work more vital to make it more abundant and to perhaps make it make it step forward with a greater level of confidence. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a bit vague, but no, no, that's it. I mean, talking to me more. Well, I think, you know, I think is the the situation in the US. And as we tend to talk too much in the in the States, I think we always sort of talk about how hard it is here. And it's not that it's easy everywhere or everywhere else. And we are always looking at Western Europe and thinking wouldn't it be lovely to be in the land of subsidy? And it's not it's no picnic over there either. It's a different set of challenges in a different set of situations. There is a kind of resilience in in the US that is incredible. But there is also a constant consciousness of precarity and of the sort of, and I think a sense of impotence that strives that that can be that can become a mobilizing. And I think the challenge for us now is to find ways of breaking that trap of precarity, of finding ways to realign the resources that we can control to better serve the the artwork or the performance or the theater or whatever it is that's being created and put in front of people to find ways of bringing different kinds of people to that work and to figure out how to actually articulate and extend or amplify the impact of that work. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess also we are used to normally we said we criticize the world and if we ran the zoo, everything would be fine. But in a way, with the Black Lives Matters moment, white the white theater was the corona for us being declared non essential. We understand maybe we also will have to change right we have to do things differently. What what do you say that people that people you talk to also curators, producers, festival artistic directors, is there a sense that something is changing? And that will be changed? I mean, I think many of the conversations that have taken on such huge kind of visibility and presence now post well, since George Floyd was killed. You know, they were already happening to some level. There was, I think, a lot of organizations and a lot of lip service being paid and they've taken on a much greater depth and urgency now. I think it's far too early to tell whether things change in a in a fundamental way. But I think I'm optimistic that we will end up with organizations that look and sound and behave in ways that are far more conscious of the society and the community in which they exist and and from which they draw their strength. And there will be a much more kind of perhaps egalitarian kind of dialogue that happens. Yeah. And Valero, you are one of the people who make things happen. One of the people I know, people who listen, think and also put something in a forum. I know at the time at the UNASUS Foundation, they are, you know, now they are things you created, which we might not all be aware about about the hire artists, the studio or commissions. What did, from your experience, and I think you for over 20 years, is that right to say you have worked in the field? Yeah, well, I've been in the field for 20 what year is it 2020? So 22, 23 years. Almost a quarter of a century. You were put in charge of the institution, say, and then something they gave you some toys, some money to play with. And you said, I think this is important. This is the time of corona. So tell us, what did you come up? Tell us about those initiatives, what you put into place? So, I mean, well, there are a number of different things. It's interesting. So the extraordinary thing about the UNASUS Foundation and the brief that we had there was that it didn't, it wasn't a fixed entity. It wasn't a venue or two spaces. We didn't have to sell this many tickets a year or a season to do anything. It was a place where which actively sought the integration of kind of humanities, ideas and artistic activity. And as such, kind of was incredibly freeing. And I think the and we didn't have a fixed program that we were about to roll out this, this spring. And so we were able to, to imagine what we were going to do. And one of my colleagues, Sophia, came up with this wonderful idea for the enter program, which was a program that we rolled out throughout the spring and into the summer of sort of a rapid response commissioning program where artists were given, and they were artists from Japan, from the UK, from, of course, many from Greece, and from the US. And they were given about two weeks to create something that needed to be made in conditions of quarantine or lockdown for audiences who were in the same state. And so many of them would were video based, but some like Risa Puno, she created an entirely new Dungeons and Dragons game that was based on kind of a subterranean fear of what was going on with COVID. Others like Kimberly Bartoszic created a game that was a visceral kind of reflection of the collective insanity that her family was feeling, being stuck in their Brooklyn apartment for so long. The breath of work was remarkable. And we were fortunate to work with the Queens Museum and the New Inc. and with the Chocolate Factory to curate three other programs with them. And for us, what that became at a certain point as well was us as, I guess, trying to understand that there's a responsibility as someone who does have some of the levers and some ability to make things happen, as we all do in different ways. But, you know, perhaps I did more than others, was that we have a responsibility to create and to evolve and to lead the way that we will respond as kind of institutions and create possibilities for artists to make new forms, as you referenced earlier, and to create new opportunities, not just for the artists to create, but for audiences to experience. Because, of course, we do tend or we talk a great deal about the challenges that artists face in this particular moment and the economic impact of what's going on and the racial disparities that are present and the discrimination that's present. But we, in that context, but we also need to kind of constantly, I think, make sure that we're feeding an audience, that we're bringing people into find artistic experiences. Because if people forget that sense of discovery and that sense of engagement with creative activity, it's much harder to bring them back later. And I think those of us who have this sort of, and also those of us who have security in our jobs, those of us who have an income and who have programming resources, it's absolutely, we're beholden to use those and to bring those to bear to continually try and bring things forward. But for the audience, if I understand right, you said to artists, 120 hours work, do something in your home and your living room in your kitchen, we give you whatever you want, we support you, but also share that moment. And everybody, so many theaters say, well, our theaters are closed, so we can't do anything, but they should have a budgeted for the year. There must be some money. We are not talking about millions and millions, it's just ongoing support. So this is a model, you know, that is of course different. You don't have to come to that theater and go and buy the tickets, sit and let's say, no, we do it in your home and you can consume it, you can look at it in your home. So it's something radically different and it's something that can be done. Absolutely. I mean, I was thinking about the Balkon, is it that the project that Joanna Warsaw and someone else I'm forgetting their name in Berlin curated, which was a program of artists who are making work on their balconies in Berlin. And I keep wandering around the East Village thinking, why the hell aren't we doing that on the fire escapes in the East Village? Why aren't we using the windows of these buildings around us to make new dance works or new theater works that might be heard remotely? Why aren't we doing that? You know, why aren't we bringing it? As Susan Feldman said in an earlier talk with you, you know, that the inversion of that relationship where you normally are trying to bring people into your space, let us bring it out to other peoples in ways that are safe and socially distant and so on. But to do that and I think that's our responsibility. It is to figure out how to pivot our organizations and it's really challenging because, you know, one of the things that's been frustrating is I don't see that our organizations here in New York and in the US we're not nimble, we're not agile as businesses even, you know. And perhaps we need to think more about the kind of start-up business model of being very nimble, being agile, being able to pivot and in doing so sustain our kind of mission of bringing ideas and bringing artwork to an audience without having to sell them tickets, without having to bring them through a lobby or a space where they don't necessarily feel at home. And this pandemic and this crisis is perhaps an extraordinary opportunity to do that and to find new ways of talking to people. You know, thinking about something again, Robbie Mulvray said recently in his talk on this platform that he was talking about the fact that, you know, watching theater on Zoom is an incredible emancipation for an audience. And I kind of, I was driving as I heard that and, you know, felt like the top of my head had lifted off because we've been talking about how limited it is and how stuck we feel looking at this two-dimensional screen all the time. And thinking, okay, no, let's actually say, okay, this is one of the tools, this is one of the ways of doing it, but it's not the only way. It can be interactive, it can be different, it can be challenging. But there are, there are so many other sites, so many other spaces within which we can create and within which we can both, you know, support audiences but support artists to make that work and, and try and engender and trigger people to do that. Yeah, yeah, that is quite, I think that's quite significant what you say and that we perhaps will not be able to think very simple, very, very simple things like why would it take a pandemic to say let's have a rock concert on the roof? Why would it take a pandemic to say let's do something on balconies for the people? Why even, why wasn't that part of, why was it even on-site or off-site work as Bertie Furtman says, why was it in the big sushi meal we have, the little cut ginger on the side, you know, all the time it means a lot of it, people like it and it reaches so many different people and why aren't we doing it? And I think in this moment, you know, if it does anything and perhaps it, it will help us to really radical rethink as we want artists, we ask all the artists to radical work, rethink, question the institution, you know. But what are we doing? As, as institutions we have to do that same question. We don't. We have to, we have to turn ourselves into something where we are porous or, or, or flexible or nimble enough to actually reimagine the economics of how we're doing things, where we are also open to the idea of changing ourselves, you know, not being fixed about this is how we manifest, this is what we look like, this is how the public perceives us. Certainly, I think there's ways of staying true to your mission and, and to your core, but, but to do it in ways where, you know, when you transport work into different environments, the quality and the nature of it changes and being open and, and, and kind of excited about the possibilities of that. Just as doing work from one part of the world, in this part of the world, or vice versa, often transforms the way it's seen. It's no different. It can happen within one city or within a block of a city and, and I think, you know, being open to that and, and, and able to, to take advantage of this moment is something that I think, you know, the organizations that, and the institutions and the, and the structures that survive and thrive after this pandemic will be those who were able to, to not waste the crisis. Yeah. Yeah. And, and of course, as Hans-Tis Lehmann said, who wrote the great post-traumatic theater book, you know, theater performance is a big house and has many rooms. Nobody says this is now all, all what, all what we do, but I think it forces us to rethink and if I say maybe in it goes back to the very, very, very beginning, whatever, the first maybe funerals of mankind when they throw something into a grave and they, and they had a concept of, you know, an afterlife and some shaman did a dance. It was outside, it was natural light, people got together in the circle, they were singing, they were speaking, you know, and it was not in the highly specialized expert spaces where you train for decades on expensive schools and then you are allowed to do something and of course we love all that too and it is great. No, but of course we've seen, yeah, we've seen so much work like that recently that started down that path of working with non-performers or untrained performers or really documenting things, whether it's the work of kind of a remedy protocol or others who have been sort of focused on excavating that kind of reality in different ways and I think this is an opportunity now to sort of extend that even further, perhaps in art forms where, where the audience has given even agency to generate the story and perhaps this is one of the things that this digital moment will also give us is new ways of giving audiences the power or the agency to navigate and to steer that ship, I mean it's a question. We had the Paper Moon Company, the Great Paper Moon Company Indonesia and they said what they did is they said well send us ideas for stories, give us a bit of money, however you want to, we'll create something for you and make it soon or they say a process with material to build puppets and then told them you know to do something in their homes they said you have a loved one, someone who works in a hospital will make a performance for them, just for them, you know and you tell us what I mean it's a side thing but things are happening. Valeo, you are someone who really has his ear on the global landscape, in New York, in the U.S. but also globally, you talk to so many people, you have such a vast network, you're such a great communicator and what are you detecting global but what are your talks, what are you guys talking about at the moment? I mean the question I've been trying to ask people is where is it working, what's working, you know, who's doing it well and I was talking to a colleague in Athens this morning, Ash Belayev and I put that question, he said well you know the Belgians have got a whole lot of things figured out that we're not doing, I was like oh what is it about that and you know one of his points was that it was the organizations and to some extent the artists there had a greater sense of security and confidence about where they stood and about their future and they weren't possibly struggling in the same way and one of the challenges about the situation as it's unfolding here but of course also across the world for artists whose entire livelihood has gone is that now everybody is engaged in sort of day hand to hand combat of survival rather than in and so somehow I think what he was articulating was that there was a need to make that space where we can imagine different ways of working, different art forms, different ways of surviving, different ways of thinking about how we relate to audiences or the kinds of spaces that we're going to make work in or how the economics of it might work and it's difficult at the moment to imagine being able to do that but I think it's the most important thing we can do during this period and you know one of the things I think that we need to start doing in organizations in the city is actually bringing artists into the institutions to help us be better at how we work whether that's bringing them in as curators bringing them in on funding panels bringing them in to advise us as we run our organizations to give them a sense of to give or to make sure that the sense of agency is not just held by the gatekeepers by the people who are running the organizations by the funders but actually by the people who are at the cold face of making the work yeah I think it's I think and I think it is happening I think there's really there's beautiful examples of people trying to figure out how to how to also think about what does it mean to be very local and very global you know and and there are so many challenges to the global peace right now obviously the fact that we can't travel but I think in the bigger picture as many artists and institutions have really started interrogating the sustainability of the mobility that we have enjoyed and I particularly have enjoyed over the last 20 years it's it's probably not viable in the same way we cannot the climate crisis does not allow us to continue to behave that way and perhaps how is that for you how is that for you to be at home in your apartment basically since March I know you're upstairs at beautiful space but still how do you experience this as a I mean it's it's it's it's it's comes in waves um there's been something magical but particularly about being sort of stationary and being so much more conscious of the duration of a season you know for the first time at my place upstate I watched a tree kind of bud leaf out be green go violently red and then and then one day I woke up and the leaves dropped and I've never been there for that whole thing before you know I when I think you know I've been jumping north northern hemisphere to southern hemisphere for two decades and I've never been in one place it's the longest I've been in one place for 20 years and it's been there's been something really magical about it um I wish sometimes I've had more time to sit still and and and to contemplate it and to think about it to read but it's been to be honest it's funny the pandemic began and I feel like I just got busier which was slightly frustrating but but I mean obviously that frustration comes from the great privilege of having had a job and had things to do and projects to deal with and so on which so many people didn't but it's been very strange it's been very strange and very very it's been really inspiring when you find something and you start talking to people and and you know there is a new group SEPA of independent producers that is forming around trying to figure out new models for how to support that critical piece of the infrastructure in the US there are there's a group of artists that are trying to argue for greater levels of economic equity between the way they are presented particularly in the area of dance and the institutions there's a web platform being built for indigenous artists to kind of share and communicate if their work across the US or North America rather and Australasia and kind of finding parallels in that kind of work so there are incredible things happening and it's so exciting to sort of in some cases stumble across them every time I as I was saying I said earlier every time I kind of click onto HowlRound's website I kind of feel like I'm falling down a rabbit hole but but you know at the same time it's been infuriating and sometimes difficult to imagine kind of finding the set of energy and get up and go again to go and do do work but but that's what we've got to do we've got to find these new platforms and we've got to commission new work and we've got to make things happen and and we've got you know the great power of the artists that we work with is their ability to kind of see new pathways through all of this and you know I'm really proud and excited of the work that we've done with Onassis not just with the ENTER program but the kind of the exchanges that I see happening in Athens and the work that's been done in Athens about finding new ways of sending the work that our center there, Steggy did and has done we've opened we've opened a new XR or mixed reality production studio on an exhibition space in the basement of the building that we're in in Midtown in Manhattan where 23 artists creating not only new XR works but but also building a community amongst themselves that will share ideas and share knowledge and share skills and that we'll begin to show that work we also just rolled out or we haven't publicly announced it yet but we are we this is a premiere announcement yeah yeah this is the premiere announcement we've commissioned 15 different artists kind of as an extension of the ENTER project but we gathered a group of curators and a jury if you will and and we reached out to to try and find work from artists that we knew and artists that we didn't across all disciplines and the kind of primary curatorial criteria was to try and find work and ideas that were I guess native to this situation and this context and in that I mean both the kind of context of the pandemic and whether it's social distancing or finding different platforms by which ideas can transmit but also the moment of social justice and the moment that we're in culturally and socially and politically in the US and you know there are some thrilling very exciting projects at all the different stages of development that are going to come out of that over the next year or so that will happen with us at MoMA at the chocolate factory here in New York and on the boards in Seattle in San Francisco or Oakland and in the Midwest something they artist some of it will be at home Kristen Cosmus and hopefully a couple more artists are making work that will be sent through the post in a kind of a domino chain of gifting Nature Theatre of Oklahoma are doing a kind of riff on Easy Rider called Uneasy Rider where they will ride a motorbike across the country Builders Association is doing an incredible piece about the micro workers who work with Amazon and others sort of the current kind of piece workers not piece P-E-A-C-E P-I-E-C-E for micro workers Kenazer Sharl is using the Mark Twain King Leopold novella or book to create a work about that that will happen in different locations around the country and around New York in the public spaces that were built as theaters in different parts of New York City that now have become unused or underused inside the housing project so you know an array of work that it's incredible this is like a research lab in the basement of your foundation where normally people store old printed books you know about past programs from 20 years ago you create a research 3D lab and now you're putting that out what almost sounds like something with a what a bam or whatever like a Lincoln Center or a public theater oh it's it's exciting because it was you know the thing that we wanted to move beyond I think you know Enter was really about a digital transmission and in this we wanted to move beyond a screen-based kind of concept and really think about different ways digital is still part of so much of it Stephanie Dinkins is doing an extraordinary new work Annie Dawson is using her algorithmic theater to I guess finish the the the Prometheus and so you know it's here it's not like we can run away from the digital transformation of our lives but the way we think about it doesn't have to be about a passive experience of sitting in front of a screen and how it infects and how we work with it yeah it's exciting it's been a really it's been a really exciting time in that sense where the pandemic did create space for us to be able to sort of reach out and push you know try different things and to experiment and to take those risks and so that's been that's been very it's been fascinating and yeah and I guess it keeps us busy in the in these days which is also important it sounds like a lot of work as some comedians that are this beautiful but it's a lot of work so really amazing why can only imagine talks and mails behind such a gigantic project coming out of one organization I mean I always loved the quote from a German poet I think it was 18th century Friedrich Halderling who said if there is danger that what will save us also grows you don't see it right away but it's also growing like your your tree you talked about you know and yeah something that we have to be reminded of there's something happening you know also reminded me till the 19 till the 20th century almost 90% of world population was in agriculture now this gigantic change has happened and and how do we react to it and what have we lost and what do we have here and this moment is reminding us perhaps also we are part of that critical zone as Latour says the 10 15 meters of 30 feet above the earth and below the earth this is what makes life the only lift because we live the only they have plans only yeah yeah plans we are no longer in the center of it and I think of the universe we have understood that there's something like invisible like a virus you cannot even see under a microscope will kill us and could be theoretically the end of mankind and so I think inventing things like you do is that is significant also like if I understand right you have the nature theater of Oklahoma out of this world and the great artist but you also created something like an Etsy for artists where people can offer I didn't know about it and tell us other ways yeah I am it was funny one of at the beginning of the pandemic and you know it was very clear in March that this was going to be a catastrophe for the living the ability of artists to live and was trying to think about how I could help and without it just being sort of lending people money or whatever you know without it so making it something that is work that is productive and I thought oh great I'll get dear friend choreographer Petra Zunky who's also an amazing French teacher and I thought great I'll finally learn to speak French and so I've been learning French for the last six months seven months and that triggered a whole kind of again a domino chain of thinking well every artist that we know has a other skills other hustles other all their skills can transmit in other ways not necessarily in the context of being on a stage with an audience over there but actually whether it's choreography or or other things like Lucian Zion at the invisible dog is an extraordinary chef who's been running cooking classes Sybil Kempston is an expert forager there are artists who are making custom crossword puzzles others who are building playlists and others who film editors or script editors or vocal coaches or portrait painters so we created a marketplace called hireartists.org which was a way for people just to create an alternative revenue stream for themselves another way of trying to sustain themselves that was work and said okay we're not going to take any fees it's really a relationship between a buyer a supporter or whatever and someone who has a skill that they can lend that they can offer and and it is it's language classes it's editing video it's accountancy it's foraging classes it's there's a whole sort of a collage of amazing skills that people are offering are writing songs for you creating playlists for you DJing singing live at your event via zoom all sorts of things and and and it's you know it's ticked over quite a bit of the way we thought about it initially was that we didn't you know there's that thing in New York where fundraisers I always used to say that the same $20 is being just kind of recirculating around the system and the idea here was that it wasn't that it wasn't artists trying to kind of pay other artists to teach them how to do something but rather for those of us who who are sustained who continue in our jobs who continue with our income are able to support people to do something and something that you want or you need how many artists are this I mean hundreds and hundreds yeah it's like a policy it was incredible I wasn't like yeah yeah no it's it's quite interesting it's amazing brilliant teachers artists are great teachers so I encourage them but it's higher artists and higher artists stop org and they're from all over the world so it's and you know my mother's learning language is now in Australia with Petra here in New York and you know so there's there's like buyers and sellers from all over the world and and again the condition of it is that these services or these products or whatever it is have to be given in a way that's safe and secure it's amazing but now if I may ask how did you get to curating and to be an artist what how was your journey how did what what makes you run well as you said I mean I grew up in theaters I I my mother was an actress my dad was an actor he ran a theater company and my mom was a became a director she's still directing shows like crazy my mother's been busier in lockdown than anybody I know she's opening the Victorian opera season this Christmas with a production of Sleeping Beauty so I grew up kind of backstage and and you know sitting underneath the box office getting fed candy from box office people as I was hanging out waiting for my parents to come out of rehearsal or out of a show so I grew up in it and then went away from it for a while but kind of wanted to be an actor realized I was terrible I was a terrible actor and and then but what I was able to do was produce and kind of bring things together and try and synthesize different elements of what was going on started doing that at university what was the first thing you put together I became the producer of our university production of a mid-summer night's dream which was this kind of very felt very radical at the time kind of version that had an amazing cast and team associated with it of incredible people writer Mitchell Dana Glenn Adam Brunovski and Jeff so many so many amazing people amazing acrobats performers and incredible design and it ended up touring to Singapore and playing sort of three different seasons in Melbourne and that's where I got the bug of being able to go okay let's put these things together and when you're and I think maybe I'm too much of a control freak to want to give that up so and then I started working at the Melbourne festival when Jonathan Mills was the artistic director there and I was given responsibility and I didn't realise at the time how enormous gift that was I was given responsibility to figure out how the festival needed to integrate back into the city in into the fabric of the city and to weave kind of surprises that perhaps only a festival can bring in that way and so we had projects in laneways and we there was an amazing project where we built a rice paddy that was being worked eight or nine hours a day in the central square and a whole range of other projects and then I went came out of that and decided that I really wanted to leave Australia it felt like I could see my trajectory too clearly and I've never really wanted to see I've always avoided seeing a clear future somehow so I and I perhaps on a not on a whim but perhaps ill-advisedly took myself to Dublin to interview for a job as the director of the Dublin Fringe Festival and for better or worse they gave me the job I think perhaps because they were just terrified of someone who would fly that far for a job interview and so I was in Ireland for three years running the fringe which was extraordinary and fun and you know an amazing opportunity for me to discover and explore all that was happening in Europe in Belgium in Germany and Czech in the Netherlands in the UK in France and so on and then when Mark Russell left PS 122 my predecessor there the great Mark Russell who you know I'm always conscious that that in these jobs we're standing on the shoulders of giants particularly in cities like New York where the history and the body of work from which we build is so potent that and I got the job at PS 122 and was there for 12 years so I won't say that I consciously set out to be a curator or a producer it happened to me as much as I happened to it so you didn't study it you just went from I studied law I did a law degree I studied law but I mean I I guess growing up in it was was studying and and I fell in love with it and I fell in love with with the kind of contemporary work much more than the the sort of conventional theatre and you know I I fell in love with contemporary dance one of the actually I can really date when I really decided or not didn't decide but just realized that there was something amazing that I had missed in if I'd just looked at the kind of conventional theatre and it was Einstein on the beach in 1992 in Melbourne this production came out to Melbourne and I went to it and I was here and I don't know if he was I wasn't I wasn't conscious of it at that point I was 18 I went to it my dad said we're going to this production it starts at sort of whatever time I was I said all right you know the reluctance of an eight-ever school school boy being dragged to a piece of experimental theatre and I said how long is it and said four hours and I was like oh really you know can we leave it indibble he said there is no indibble and I said I went God you've got to be kidding and he said you can you can come and go though if you need to and I sat there and for four hours didn't twitch and came out of it and you know and it's been extraordinary over the last few years or over the last 15 years really to remember that production that I saw in 1992 and to see the sort of the it's it's descendants whether in the choreography of someone like Sarah Mitchellson or you know in other kind of contemporary theatre work to see the different kind of influences of the artists who worked on that project flow through the work that we still present and support and champion in New York today um and it was incredibly moving a few years back to go back to bam and see it again and I remember I was as it started I started what I'm getting teary just thinking about it I started crying and and I was singing along which I think was probably pretty annoying for everybody else in the audience yeah and Brumbach she brought it back I was not oh the amazing the amazing pomegranate what a force of nature they are it was amazing so um Alejo I'm sure people also listening now who are thinking I'll be there's something I should do you know do you feel that you know we need we need these producers these curators what what is it about what makes a curator a good curator an artistic director a good one what would you tell them do that but think of this this is what I think we need what is it especially in the time now I mean you should ask someone who's a good curator or a good artistic director Frank you shouldn't ask me but the thing I always thought about I guess was where are the gaps you know where are the spaces in between where are the places where work isn't existing or isn't thriving and and addressing the the opportunity that that creates I think you know trying to be incrementally better than someone else over there isn't the way to go it is about finding contexts and situations spaces if that's in a literal sense of space or places that that work that are unfilled and that are where there is as you were using that agricultural metaphor earlier where there is fertile ground where you can have an impact and where you can make a change where you can make a difference and I think you know that's that's I think that the critical thing that we can do is to try and and think about it always in terms of the impacts of the work that we do not just in terms of how we how many artists we support or how many nights of shows one of the things that when I was at PS that we were really conscious of was changing that vocabulary and that emphasis about you know how we landed where what was the impact of doing this what was the way that we thought about what that meant or or and who did it impact and that could be could well be the artist but it's not it's not the inputs that we should be measuring it's rather the external consequences and I think also to consider and to you know I guess all of our one of our challenges in the field which I think we all have to sort of bend our minds to is is to try and find new ways of articulating the value of what we do we're stuck on a treadmill at the moment where our event horizon of the consequences of what we do is far too short you know we need to be thinking about consequences of work that we might make or support or champion and how that affects someone 20 years later in the way that I'm thinking about seeing Einstein on the beach in you know 28 years ago and what is that impact going to be and and and of course we don't know it's a it's a rule of sort of unforeseen consequences where we can't always say what it's going to be and somehow though we have to find ways of articulating the criticality and the importance of that because otherwise what happens is we end up just instrumentalizing the artwork that we support all the time and and that's really dangerous as well because at a certain point we always lose that argument you know in in this field we always we're never going to be as important as the hospital or the school or the food bank or the poverty reduction program and somehow the work that we do has to infiltrate and to use perhaps it's an unfortunate metaphor in these times to infect you know all of these aspects but but without demanding a direct cause and effect relationship between them and but understanding that there is one but we just don't necessarily know what that effect part will be and so somehow we have to find ways a new vocabulary a new grammar new ways of considering and delivering on that value and on that that cause I think I'm turning my words into I'm twisting myself into a pretzel here but it's yeah that's the and and and I think as a curator I I think our what we try and do is place bets on the work and the ideas and and the people the artists who we think will have that impact 20 years hence that we don't and not knowing what that impact necessarily will be and and if we think about our work in that way then I think you know we we find amazing things even if we even if it takes you know longer than our lifetime to realize yeah no this is a this is a this is a this is inspirational and also real I'm sitting what do you think I mean it's talking about Einstein it was a big production it took internationally will we see small productions locally now is that more what the field will go to it's interesting I keep thinking that as has often been the case that the independent part of the sector the independent sector the smaller venues the smaller spaces that are more nimble that are perhaps more agile that don't carrying you know staffs of hundreds of people that they are trying to support that they will somehow lead the way out of this I mean I don't think we know yet but I hope so I was I was wandering around downtown sort of gallery crawling after the galleries that opened a few weeks back and discovered a space I think it's called store room I may be getting that wrong that is on on the Bowery just above Canal Street and it's a new gallery space and you know it's a guy in that classic New York way who has found a basement space that wasn't being used and has started using it and it was running it as a commercial gallery that's also very much about re-articulating power relationships between the artists in the gallery and it was so exciting to discover that happening and to discover that re-infiltrating Manhattan because that's something that was isn't supposed to happen here anymore and so yeah perhaps these smaller spaces re-occupying places refinding nooks and crannies that aren't there I hope that the it's not just about scale it's not simply a question of big or small but it's about it's about finding places where there is perhaps untrodden ground and that's not always easy in New York but I think that will be the place that we find it I think it's going to take longer than we longer it's going to take a tragically long time before we're going to be sitting in a theater with seven or eight hundred people or a thousand people again laughing and crying and watching this you know watching something as a collective action like that but there are certainly possibilities both at a small scale but also in other kinds of space in other kinds of rooms and I think you know if there's something that I'm thinking about as we go through this talk it's how do we create those alternative those how do we reimagine those spaces in which theater is made in which that dialogue happens between an audience and an artist whether those are digital spaces outdoor spaces balconies black boxes but you know that's the challenge of the moment is to reimagine what those spaces look like yeah yeah no this is this is true I remember the great Daniel Gerald a colleague and friend who died a couple of years ago he talked about geometamorphosis he said a geology geology term that crystals built whatever millions of years ago by pressure but then two million years later the crystal kind of decomposed because it wasn't built well enough by nature and then something else came into that space you know because some food was so it was in that space filling a form but it was completely different than it was before and and I think it's a time of metamorphosis what we what we are in talking about New York City we had some discussions here and tomorrow Hillary Miller will talk about the 70s but New York City was declared drop dead drop dead and the amazing art came out the roaring 20s we mentioned that also here and maybe this is a term term we can coin you know we are in the 20s the roaring 20s were after World War I after the Spanish flu pandemic which was devastating more dead people than the World War and they came do you will there be a roaring 20s or do you think it will be a very long painful recovery that will take 10-12 years as some some people say I mean that's something that we should work for isn't that an exciting idea that this is what we're going to come out do we know it when we're in it though or is it just in hindsight are we not going to know that we were in in the the roaring 20s or the whatever it's whatever we're going to call it but we probably won't know until we're in the sluggish 40s you know we may not know it it's look one can only hope and hopefully this the ideas that are nascent now that are being kind of developed that are sitting at the back of people's minds that are in some cases as people are in lockdown that are starting to take space hopefully they will transform things I think it is gonna I mean there are so many changes afoot in the United States at the moment at a political level at a social level at an economic level that I think there's going to be immense territory to cover you know I mean we're coming out of this insane moment this insane four years where you know this one figure occupied so much of our brain and talking to people after particularly after the Saturday when the election was called and and talking to people who who said to me that they'd slept they'd slept well for the first time in years you know finally they weren't going to wake up terrified of what they were going to read in what the headline was going to be the next morning and and so thinking about what that means thinking about the kind of what I hope what we hope will be you know challenges to the kind of economic status quo to the social and racial status quo that has existed here and hoping that those challenges are substantive and have you know some sort of transformative effect I suspect that kind of the the late capitalism that we're in is is perhaps more pernicious and and we'll find ways of staying with us longer than longer than it might but but nonetheless I think it's yeah it is an exciting time do we end up in a boom who knows who knows I think you know one of the really interesting things to see over the next perhaps two to ten years is going to be whether or not this shift not just in terms of office culture but in artistic culture where so many artists and so many people have left very expensive downtowns the middles of cities and spread out and whether or not that spread whether it's to upstate New York or to other smaller cities whether what sort of impact that has whether that kind of means that New York loses its kind of status as being the sort of premiere city of generative culture in the country or whether somehow it kind of ends up being a positive feedback look you know I think there's all sorts of things that are going to be really interesting about and I've been reading a lot of Richard's Senate lately and it's a wonderful kind of thinker about cities and urban environments and creative cultures and thinking about how do we sustain the this concentration but you know we've been talking for so long in New York about the fact that it's becoming increasingly impossible not just challenging but impossible to sustain oneself here that the the notion of being a generative artist in this environment was becoming almost yeah almost impossible so you know maybe there's something extraordinary as we become comfortable not being in the room with everybody all the time about being somewhere else and coming in maybe it changes the way we work and we relate and maybe other parts of the country rather than just New York start to participate and engage with and support smaller communities of smaller communities begin supporting communities of artists and activity that could be really exciting for those places and fresh in a way that sometimes you know we get that is sometimes in a in a jaundice New York we take it for granted so finding ways of not taking it for granted again I think is really important yeah and there are empty spaces as and Hamburger who said she's going to do some of the meat packing in the stores a friend of mine says she knows a guy who owns three thousand apartments in New York City 40 percent are empty and of the 60 percent half of them are paying full rent or six is something really big is going on there is a reevaluation yeah yeah to expensive it has been it was crazy and we all hope that you know that's perhaps well there will be some adjustment that the city will be stronger and I believe I love New York City it's a great city and it will come off strong in the long history and we are living through a history of this town the health crisis now I would say is the biggest in the history of the United States of the United States at the moment what we go through at the moment you know is the biggest thing since World War II so there's quite a moment I know you're also studying I can't believe it but you also it's grabbed at the university now and so we are such a leader in the field that we really look up to you we hope you know we talked about a little bit we are trying to think of a 2022 New York International Festival of the Arts in all five boroughs in the parks and parking lots and hosting this interview so you hope you know we will get together Nilo Rao wants to come we still have to find a partner for him to put it in Jay Wagman says you know this is great Susan said this is a good idea we'll see maybe we can make together a small contribution what at the moment this single talks Frank this is this is just you programming that festival isn't it this is what you've done with it we're repairing it we are repairing it brilliant brilliant strategy it was not the beginning of the idea but what what do you read at the moment what inspires you what do you listen to music or poetry is this to you watch something on it what inspires you and keeps you going on coming to the end of the conversation now so tell us a bit what what do you do I mean I've been reading as I said to Richard Senate a series of books about about cities about craftsmanship I've been as you said I've just enrolled in an MBA program at NYU and the LSE and HSE so I am having to relearn high school algebra again which is perhaps less inspiring and exciting and at a certain point when I need to escape from it and I always know my my brain needs a break because what I'll be drawn to is science fiction so I was rereading you know the the The Hain series of Ursula K. Le Guin and the most recent William S. Gibson novels which are extraordinary and and thinking about you know the kind of signifiers of those and how to avoid that future and what else and and of course it's I'm finding the news addiction that I developed over the last four years of the constantly refreshing the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Guardian or the BBC's kind of websites and and more and more understanding that if I'm going to understand the situation we have to read Fox News you know we have to watch it we have to understand we you know otherwise we're just in our own echo chamber and so trying to I'm finding that habit quite hard to break I confess so watching Fox News do you watch online performances? Not nearly enough I told you not to ask me that I find it really hard I have to say I find I found watching shows online incredibly difficult there have been a couple that are amazing fun it's funny there's two different shows I've seen which I didn't mean to watch but one was the the guys from the elephant room you know Jeff Sobell and Trey Lippard and Steve and they Steve Chippo they they did a shoot to the elephant room in space so I can't remember exactly what it was called and it was fantastic magic shows are working really well on Zoom who would have thought it but there you are there's there's adapting this form 600 highway men that piece a thousand ways which I think is coming to under the radar but is currently happening all over the country in a way it can happen anywhere it's a telephone show there's a brilliant example of people adapting and evolving to this moment in ways that are incredible but I have been a very bad curator in some ways Frank in that I have watched very few shows online I found that you know Helen Helen Shaw in a talk we did the other day was talking about the challenges to our attention span and I'm finding that that's really true it's very hard to clear space particularly because you know when you've got kids as well I've got one son who's 13 August and and you know he's at home so much more than he was and we're in the same room which is wonderful but at the same time you're you know you're being dragged away I never was I never you know I confess I never had the greatest attention span to begin with but it's if anything it's deteriorated a little but tonight you want to test you said you're watching you are nowhere or some online oh so there's a there's yeah it's interesting one of the other we were talking about this but you know we were talking about this fact of being in zoom all the time and whether or not you should hide self view should you see yourself as you're talking so I've got self view hidden now but and there's you know there's a whole bunch of new spaces popping up that are spatialized chat rooms I think they're called so they're often in sometimes they're sort of like a game layout sometimes they're in 3D there's one called you're nowhere which is quite interesting where you're a little you're a shape in this three-dimensional space and you can't see your own face but you can see lots of other people and so I think you know all of these platforms are nascent they're very early and you know we haven't moved into the into the matrix yet where we're you know fully immersed in it and I'm not sure that we want to go there but I think again the extraordinary thing about humanity is that we constantly invent and invent our way through these crises and through these problems and and these crises are opportunities to create new ways forward Fantastic well that's amazing so that's I never heard of it you like you and R and then nowhere there will be interesting but I really thank you for taking the time and thank you Frank share with us your brilliant mind and we get a little insight you know in how you think and also what you think of is of importance and also to see things that are happening things are developing as you say so many we even do not know about but just the ones you mentioned and your great great work at the at the unisex foundation I think it's really inspiring also showing that looks like museums foundations or universities now taking over some of the development and experimental work that happened in theaters or performance stuffs or they collaborate as you say let's do that the chocolate factory I think these are fantastic hybrid models we kind of forced to but we said why didn't we do do that before and also you know to combine arts and science and economy and ecology I mean there is a lot to discover a lot to do and and I think yes most probably small spaces will be the ones you know that where we have these kind of experiences you had with the Einstein on the beach and then other things will come we as you've pointed out we will know only 10 or 20 years from now really what we are in but I would also like to remind our listeners it's the situation here and it's incredible and we shouldn't forget it's such a complicated time that's a desperate time that's a time of history and we are in the middle of it and we kind of trying to look it away and but it is quite amazing so it is a time of change if there ever has been one and really thank you for sharing and I saw no thank you for having me it was fun and and really you know congratulations of all what you have done in your life and in all your work how many people you have touched and brought together and as artists as friends audiences theater is this arena where people come together and see something from a different way different light and this is what we need as a public discourse to you know replace the you know rituals of the church or political dictators and yeah you're right when Trump lost in Washington Square was almost like a dictator in a country left and people were dancing on the streets and streaming and the cars were going around it's an incredible moment of time and we are in and and we are part of it but art has a place there and especially curators people who run organizations need vision need to reach out need to really rethink and we depend on them so it's a good reminder that things can be done and that we have to experiment the same what we expect from artists tomorrow as I said we hear from Hilary Miller who wrote a book on the 70s in New York when it was like drop dad and supposedly nothing was going on but the arts were actually supported by the city and it defined the city as people stayed because of the arts in great art that went around the world came out of the Bronx and Brooklyn and all the places and Academy Music came out of it hip hop and all the street dance and so much break dance came out of here and we'll see what might happen so we'll be good to hear from her from history and this is not the first time that the city is going through such a such a shake-up so thank you again thanks for howl around for hosting us and staying with us Vijay Sia and of course Andy from the Seedle Center so Valeo again really really thank you then thank you for taking this so serious it means the world for us and you know we really think so highly of you of your work and we of course will follow closely what you do and hope also to collaborate so thank you and bye bye thank you Frank thank you