 break over the summer and the Prelude Festival where we presented the work in progress from New York City artist 13 curators selected actually 20 works and it was a chain curation where one curator selected the next one and we was I think a very inspiring model and we are now back to our talks, our university theater, our space which actually is called the Seedle Theater, a small black box but actually it's brown, it's still closed for public programs, we cannot go in still fast, it's very complicated, we get testing every week and especially... Significant on your internet connection is unstable. I hope I didn't miss too much, I don't know what happened, the internet went out, so I hope we are alive here. If I'm back, I apologize, I don't know exactly what that was, maybe someone doesn't want to create the program but anyway we are truly am happy to have you guys here with us, it's an important moment for us to restart this season and I apologize for that disappearance in the digital space. I'm going to read shortly about the project which we're going to talk about, it's called The Walk, an amazing project, many say the most probably the biggest or one of the biggest, if not the biggest worldwide theater production, theatrical production this year and then I will read a little bit about Basil and Adrian about their work and then we start. They just came back on Monday from this very long talk, walk and through, I think if I'm right, eight countries and 140 stops with Amal, a large-scale puppet, a nine-year-old Syrian refugee girl and we will hear how it went, how it walked, we actually happened to have Basil and Adrian with us the day before the whole walk started, our whole round for India so it's incredible for us to be on the bookend of this project. So Basil and Adrian, first of all how are you and welcome and thank you for joining us. We're very well thank you, I'm Adrian and I'm Basil and we are thrilled to be back talking to you now at the end of the walk, we can tell you all about how it went and we're very very very thankful that the whole walk survived Covid which really was something of a miracle and due to the great diligence of the organisers and incredible rain across Europe. It's a stunning what you did so let me read to our listeners who might not all be familiar with it so the walk, a giant puppet of a nine-year-old refugee girl with the name Amal travelled 4,900 miles about 8,000 kilometres from Turkey-Syria border through Europe, all of Europe to the UK and the team, the good chance team it's called that created also that brilliant performance, the jungle that Susan showed us at St. Anne here in New York City, the production that celebrated, the celebrated production of the dramatisation of the refugee life in Kalei, a village, a refugee village that for a moment existed and then was destroyed and it was the memories about what people experienced, I saw that it was truly a significant work, the same team invited Basil and Adrian who are in New York more famous for the war horse, a puppet they created for the production of war horse which if I remember right from the book was the story how an animal looks at war, it ended up by the National Theatre a little bit like a story of a little white boy and how he experienced it but the pub is where the stars of the show but their work, the Truce Commission, White Second, the Truce Commission and so many others, the work was kindred, it's brilliant, it's stunning, one of the great works of the 20th and 21st centuries in theatre I think and but anyway this walk traumatised the story of refugee children and there are millions of them right now as we speak all over the world and they used a 3.5 metre high puppet which means like I don't know 12 foot high I guess, it was called Amal and she travelled from the Syrian border through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and France in search of her mother, more than 70 towns, villages and cities welcomed Amal, it was art from major street parties and city performances to more intimate community events in July, little Amal arrived at the Manchester International Festival where she became a centre piece of a large-scale participatory event, the production team included director Stephen Daldry who said it would be a travelling festival of art and hope and the most ambitious public art event ever attempted and David Lahn who also helped to produce the great David Lahn who said you know we don't want to forget the girl or the little girls, the refugee children say don't forget us and I think you made that happen so a little bit about Basil Jones is a very long what we could say but he's the co-founder and executive producer of the Hand Spring Puppet Company and he completed his BFA at UCT which is the University of Cape Town where he met his future husband Adrian Kohler who is with us, they are a family business in the good old sense of a living theatre and where they collaborate together and he set up the Hand Spring Trust, the non-profit trust in 1990 which produced the award-winning Spiders Place, an innovative multimedia educational series for television radio and aimed at young learners from disadvantaged backgrounds just for us to think about this were intended audiences in the very beginning. He set up the Hand Spring Awards for puppetry which recognised and encouraged puppet design, direction and performance in South Africa, the Hand Spring Trust is involved in a number of performance projects in urban townships and rural areas using puppetry as means to educate and empower use theatre in a sense but especially here the puppets and he speaks and writes on the subject of puppetry and is deeply interested. He received the Nalidi Executive Directors Award, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chavane University and honorary doctorate de Kreen Literature from the University of Cape Town and their productions as we said before have been significant influential and changed the face actually of puppetry and what we think about the art of puppetry. Adrian Kohler is the co-founder as we said before with Basel and he is one of the world's leading masters of the medium and also in creating the puppets. His mother was an amateur puppeteer so he continues actually the family business and his father was a yacht builder, a ship builder and cabinet maker and that gave him a grounding in woodwork, wood carving, wooden construction and the creation of moving figures and so very connected to what we always say the theatre is connected to the craft that mentorship is involved whether it's families like all traditional theatre in Japan it was families also they were the traveling companies in 19th century for example in Germany you know where the craft was transmitted and used by the next generation but it came from parents or you joined a company you didn't really went to university. He actually also studied at the Cape Town University, spent time at the Space Theatre at South Africa's pioneering non-racial theatre and its important note also to say that handspring company was influential, significant and important in the time the fight against the apartheid regime. We had an earlier seagull talk you can go back to it but if you really wonder what can theatre do and this is something to look at and to understand their work and also the idea what Basel said well you know if your puppet says something you can't really steal the puppet you know it's not so easy so they can do something there's a space there and they created it. Adrian spent a year then also at the Botswana National Popular Theatres Program and he was a member of the Midu Arts Ensemble he and Basel returned to Cape Town in 81 and founded handspring puppet a company with two other of their graduates which also shows you you know people at universities your best friends or the people next to you you create work with the people you have as practices you build the house with the stones you have it's a real model if you want to start theatre I want to do theatre look at what these guys did in the lot it's astonishing and amazing and Adrian was the lead puppet designer and maker as well as the designer and scriptwriter he got many many awards War Horse of course became world famous the Evening Standard Critics Circle Lawrence Olivier Award in London on a Broadway a special Tony award and little Joey was you know as close as to a theatre god in an animal form one could be in New York a city I think people came out to touch even the little horse and children and people who saw that great show actually his work has been exhibited at the National Gallery the Barbican Art Gallery at the National Theatre in London the Museum for African Art New York City in Cape Town of course Johannesburg and his puppets are in collections at the Munich Stutt Museum the South African Constitutional Court Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta the Victorian All-Broad Museum in London and he's the recipient of Vita Awards Artist Award and the Mikaelis Prize and Honorary Doctorate in Literature at the University of Cape Town and the John F. Kennedy Gold Medal in the Arts well here we go so you guys are so highly decorated and for good reasons even saw puppetry often is a little bit more in the shadows you have really brought the art form forward and created something that is outstanding so Basil Adrian you are just back from how long was it two and a half months or three months were your way tell us about how does it feel we were away for nearly five months Frank we started in Turkey in quarantine we spent our first two weeks in a hotel looking at the Mediterranean but unable to to leave our hotel room for two weeks having all our food brought to us in the hotel room and Adrian and I particularly Adrian glued to our TV set all day watching and participating in rehearsals for a mile happening in London so we went to work every day in London but we were in Turkey we never left the room that's for how long for how long that was for I think about two weeks for the duration of our quarantine because the whole thing happened like that because as South Africans there was a ban on South Africans traveling to the UK at the time although COVID numbers were coming down and were better than the UK figures I think that news hadn't got through to the UK yet so we were there and they changed the rehearsal venue from London to Turkey and the whole team then shifted into an empty hotel where they had a ballroom the temperatures outside were 41 42 and it was I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit but very hot so the inside the hotel was a lot cooler and the space was huge and so we had a we had a very convenient rehearsal time there they had lasted about a month and then we traveled across Turkey the walk started and we traveled across Turkey we started we started in Gaziantep which is a Turkish city fairly close to the Syrian border and it's a city which many Syrian refugees aim for as their first port of call and many of them never leaves so on her first night her very first at the start of the whole walk she was she was led through the Syrian section the narrow streets the Syrian section of Gaziantep and led by Syrian children into a large square where there was a big crowd and lots of lights lots of lanterns and above us a great fortress the the fort fortress of Gaziantep Gaziantep which was also lit up with projections this of course had all been managed by good chance and by Nazir Nazir who is the artistic director of the whole walk he's Palestinian and he's a man of great imagination and fortitude and determination he he worked a non-stop every minute of every day for the entire walk we couldn't believe his his energy and and his his great dedication he said I am Amal and because he is also a kind of refugee so it was a great start the the people of the the Syrian people of Gaziantep really understood her immediately and at the end of it all we were taking the puppet down and putting her back into the truck that she travels in and a woman came up to us standing outside the truck and she had traveled five hours to come to see Amal she brought children sort of young teenagers some girls with veils and they had to get special permission to leave their parents but she brought them all they were about 30 of them all this way and she said tonight thank you thank you very much for this this experience cheers yeah she was nearly weeping and she said tonight you you have allowed me to forget Aleppo and I think too that the kind of metaphorical nature or the the the puppet representing something means that you you it's not like only a personal experience it belongs to all of those people who were watching and all of those people who were no longer in Aleppo incredible maybe we can look at a little bit I don't know do you have something from the moment I know Andy is with us he has the Instagram site do you have something from that beginning or another clip so our audience can see you you're awesome yeah and you know that would you change the very beginning of the Instagram postings yeah and he could you share if you hear us some of it if not become back to it later yeah here we go so let's see where that's would be more on here you see the puppet Amal on the top right how large she really is and the and the and the photograph okay yeah that's her the photograph in the middle between Amal and the map that is the still from the jungle you mentioned that's the jungle production yeah and that's that little girl is the is the little girl that Amal was modeled on there is an eight-year-old girl in that production so tell a little bit what was the idea how that's incredible like a piece of a performance inspired you a character to create something tell us a little bit how did that happen she was she was in the production she heard as a character she never spoke she was always you know simply the little girl um but David Land had the idea to to take this um mute character from the play and make the puppet um so so and he proposed it to the good chance boys Joe the two Joes and um so the pro I'm not sure I I think David wanted to make a war from Syria to the UK to the UK across Europe and the two Joes at good chance wanted to make a giant puppet but we this was before us and so we're not sure about how exactly that idea evolved but in fact we've never seen the jungle because it didn't come to South Africa so you know we were simply sent photographs of little Amal when we were asked to make the puppet so can we see can we maybe see her walking if that's possible on the Instagram or maybe some of the WhatsApp messages we send these are early ones that's too early she was modified carry on no you're going in the round down first uh and the other direction these were the rehearsals in the hotel you know that's the prototype as well um more oh okay is that that can't be all no there you would have to get to another page it's on another page this is all very early stuff before we arrived in you in in Turkey uh huh because you're going backwards in time yeah so Andy maybe go off for the moment see if you find it something from the messages and let's let's talk a little bit more about the the the concept why do you think a gigantic puppet made out of wood and cardboard and fabric why is that better than a film or what a theater of playwright why you know it seems to be you know the emotional response but it's working why do you think it got such a response why what is that what is it I mean first of all she's in the same space as you're watching you know it's the reason I suppose why we after working with television have stuck really with live theater is because the the moment in which you are performing in front of a live audience there's an electricity between you and them that doesn't exist in the cinema in the same way so first of all she is not real she's three and a half meters tall she's 12 feet tall and she's you can see the puppeteer inside her chest working her and the puppeteer is outside so she's she's an artificial performer and she invites the audience to fill in all the gaps to to recreate her in their own imagination I think she can walk and she can smile and she can look with her eyes and she can move in a fairly convincing naturalistic way and so she's she's I mean Basil calls her an empathy machine yeah I think I think partially it's it's very much a two-way two-way activity of of creating life though the the first of all obviously the designer Adrian has to make make this machine that is very lifelike in its movement so the the structure of the machine and the way it moves is is a is a is about creating life but then next thing is the puppeteers who have to take this machine and make it move in a in a gorgeously authentic way and that takes a lot of work because it's it's not easy movement it's it's very subtle movement based on breath this is one of the early things that we learned in our company in well in the late 90s and 98 run when we did our first opera we we learned about breath and how important it was and and how one cannot ignore tiny movements in fact it became clear to us the tiny movements and subtle movements based on breath are the most are the most essential movements for authenticity in in in a in a puppet and and it's there's a whole vocabulary or a language of breath so then that is another way of bringing this puppet to life but then from the audience's point of view they their desire for her to be alive adds to her life and and amplifies her life as as experienced by them so there's a very great desire I think for the audiences on the street for her to live for her to be who they have come to see for her to be a living being and they a lot of people when they see her talk to her face talk to her eyes and they can see the puppeteer inside they can see that she is being manipulated by somebody they they know that she's not real yet they give her reality it's a donation from them to her which is a donation that we all make in in the theater always but it's it's become in a way clarified and essentialized in these live street performances where there are hundreds sometimes thousands of people who all want her to live I suppose they all bring their own stories as well you know yeah as as as she walks across her 8 000 kilometer journey the story of her walk is following and and growing inside that's because of the numbers you have seen her but each refugee person and each person who is empathetic to the to the plight of refugees comes there with their own story and so because we retained the muteness of the original Amal in the play that she doesn't actually speak that she only speaks with her body she's in a way completely uncontaminated by controversial utterances that she might have had have had to say and so you can impose all of yours on to her and yeah there's a tremendous projection on to her by the people who see her and and many people say like Nazir I am Amal I feel I am her and a woman that Adrian saw in Coventry for instance was standing in the background with a bouquet of white daisies and and she slowly made her way up towards the puppet and eventually was right in front of her yeah and and you know on the hand she had a little note just little card hand painted and she was not a young woman she was a woman who is nearly as old as me and and she found us found her position in front of the puppet was not always easy to get there because of the the crush and because people are trying to keep you away from the puppet because the puppet can't really move if it's completely encircled by people and she found her space and looking with this very kind of it's hard to describe the look on her face but it was one of almost like rapture looking at the face of the puppet and handing her the flowers and handing her the card and fortunately the puppeteers know how to do take them from her so they accept the puppet accepts gifts really well and she had her own moment in the middle of a great crowd of people alone with the puppet and it was eventually was able to meet her because she impressed me so much somebody knew her that I knew and and turned out that she works with refugees in England and she's hugely involved in their stories so this moment was her sort of talking to the puppet in her private capacity and it and it struck me that that people can invest a huge amount of belief which is kind of maybe dangerous even but a belief that they that she can somehow hear them and and can somehow take on your needs of her so she's you know we we of course we we don't really understand exactly what has been happening and we're grappling with it now and we we're trying to begin to create a group of scholars who will think about what giant puppets are doing and what they can be doing giving some sort of critical feedback to the people who are are actually involved in making them and performing them because when you come to think of it there there are actually a lot of giant puppets around but there's not much there's there's not much discussion about what they do why they do it understanding really of what it means when you take a a something that's of a statue statue dimensions like a large public figure that the the large public figures that we see a lot of are statues and what happens when you make that statue move and and and how different is it from seeing religious icons moved through the streets which which of course many people in many cultures we have moved religious icons through streets with great crowds of people that's something that that is very much part of our past and we kind of we we we grappling with our our attempts to understand what she is and how you know this seems to be a very real religious dimension to this we many of us have lost our faith but we haven't lost our hope and she is hope she her name is Amal which is is Arabic for hope I think a lot of a lot of migrants and refugees and people who've come to a new country who's starting afresh they need hope and and she represents hope to them and to us all it's incredibly impressive what you what you created was that it reminds me you talked about the she's kind of a machine it's working I think Heinrich von Kleist in his famous essay on marionette theater actually it's mostly mistranslated but he talks about the machinist you know as the puppet player he says he's the machinist who knows and the and the puppet doesn't make any unnecessary movements you know it follows physical physics and rules and and so and I remember Bezel many many years ago you came to the Seagal one of our great evenings and you talked about the what puppets can do and he said think about the holy trinity painters have tried to do it right father and son and a holy ghost on a painting it just never looks right it looks odd but if you have a puppet it's not alive but she's moved by two people who are behind it you know and but you don't see them they are so they're in black but they don't see feel alive but the public so something happens the moment of an opening for him for learning for a recognition and a kind of you know a wonder a sense of wonder you know that's by hypnotists like to do little explosion the sound the lightning you because you know you for a moment you see what's is that real what's happening and that it understanding is allowed and large scale puppets I mean I have never seen something in that thing like this seem to be doing something and you really found that I remember also you said they are puppet companies in Ghana right there was large scale puppets like it's an African tradition also you inspire me in your work was kindred kindred particularly in west Africa we we for for many years right from our time in Botswana you know had a huge admiration for the the Mali and puppets of Mali and the Bambara puppets of Mali who they do use large outdoor figures and and it and it goes back many centuries that tradition so yeah it's it's it's a very ancient African tradition as well and you know I just getting back to the construction of this one what we've discovered is that the choices we made to have her work by an a puppeteer on stilts with only external manipulators working the arms before people move the puppet right there are three unless the weather is bad there's a fourth person who supports her with the rod to the back of her in case there is wind or if the terrain is a bit uneven she needs that extra security but because because her technology is very simple really and she doesn't have great big machines she doesn't have computer driven everything she's she's really very analog very direct or controlled by the people working her she can respond immediately to anything that comes at her in the street and and that turned out to be a huge advantage because we do have an external director in contact with the radio to the person inside the puppet who can see more than the puppeteer can in the in the moment and he's saying there's a little child over there that's itching to to be recognized by you or there's a there's an old lady up on the balcony who's been watching from behind her curtain go and look at her and go and greet her and there is an outside eye that's directing the actions of the puppet all the time but the basics of her are very simple and what what actually happened you know it's the basics being simple it's true she is simple but you are walking on stilts and you cannot feel the ground with your feet so if there's a stone or or any kind you can't you can't also see your feet and one of the things that you have to understand i'm just going to go down here now the head is up here um directly above your head so um you are you've got in your hands some some some strings tough strings that you are pulling when you pull on the string uh the head can turn left or right not up or down but also there's there's a top lip uh which can lift up and um and smile but um they wanted that a good chance wanted that an agent said you know smiles with puppets can be become a grimace very easily they are tricky to do um so this top lip you can move up and so it does this okay so that looks terrible but if the top lip just does this so a little bit of a little a little bit of teeth that much then it looks like a smile so you are you are you've you've got something here which is moving the eyes left and right and up and down um you can also blink her um but all of this you are doing with the head up here you cannot see where it is looking um yeah incredible you cannot know that you've been asked to go and talk to the lady uh in the up in the first floor window who's hiding behind the curtain but you don't know if your head is um is actually looking at the lady or looking past her or down below her with your eyes so part of the the month of rehearsals is taking already very experienced puppeteers quite a lot of them were warhorse puppeteers who had had years of experience in warhorse and came to the show uh uh came to this rehearsal period with with great experience but some of them were newbies who um who had uh you know we had an acrobat from from Ethiopia a Syrian refugee actor from from Paris he was originally from Syria obviously so they had some some uh you know the acrobat had some background in in uh in being able to work with the body for sure but it was a real learning process and in the beginning when we were in Gaziantep um everyone was scared of being in the puppet um some people remained scared uh for much of the walk but slowly slowly everyone became more and more able to forget the the mechanics and really work freely in the moment and be able to uh dance and do amazing things the the Gaziantep walk the the first night was quite terrifying you know from a from a from a performance point of view because over the bridge right yeah it was before that even it it was before the bridge uh but nobody knew what the response of the public was going to be we actually we'd rehearsed riots we'd rehearsed naughty children running under the legs of the puppet and chased by a parent you know who might upset everything and we we tried to anticipate what might happen in the street but nobody knew um and so they were prepared but you know it was pretty scary and very very little um has has happened to her from from the crowd she's working it's an incredible end you know i want to also point out the scope and the risk in a way and the concept of this great project by the way someone says the humans are the only animals who show their teeth when they smile you know all the all animals don't do that it's a something interesting what you what you touched on there and you know knowing about japanese bunraku theater where you in the first three years or four years you are just allowed to maybe move a leg a little you know you takes a decade for training you know this is a great craft and so i also want to point out this is a what often we think of theater in the traditional way is you know you write a play and then some actors we learn the lines and they rehearse they go in a theater and then it's going to be shown people buy tickets they like it and they go out this is a socially engaged participatory artwork outside in actually nature where you cannot control the surroundings where you actually touch on one of the most highly controversial political issues of our time like if perhaps more emotional and climate change they have been killings you know motivated again there's violence against refugees it is a theme that our society has to confront and it tries to and it has to discuss that and work through you took that on and you said we're not going to write a play we're not going to make a film we create a 12 foot puppet and we walk 8 000 kilometers or put it through you had a team of four puppeteers you prepared for you wrote the script you had 12 people preparing the events this is not also just casual but the engagement with the audience was also work and part of the artistic work if i understand right also vastly expensive with a three million dollar project you know which is nothing compared to film which is nothing compared to tv and how many people watched it but i want to turn out this is an incredibly ambitious project i think it's a avant-garde in the sense of it's a step ahead and points to all theater and performance maker also as a way of making a meaningful artwork so i would like to hear from you a little bit about the that operation that you know almost sounds like a campaign a military campaign you know i don't know how did you plan that how could you take on such a big project and have the whole good workout i think everybody leapt into it not knowing exactly what was coming at them you know the the the scale of it only really presented itself as we went along and of course um covid multiplied the problems immensely because the whole team every single person had to be uh tested every two days all the way along the walk we were incredibly lucky in that we only had two incidents of covid during rehearsals one of the puppeteers got covid and fortunately no one else got it he was isolated for two weeks he had to stay behind in the hotel where we were rehearsing and we carried on so he missed the the beginning the opening but he rejoined us and then there was one more incident but we were we were adamant all the time to keep separate to we traveled each puppetry team there were two major teams five and four there were nine puppeteers actually and they traveled in separate vehicles um and the um the organizing team traveled in another vehicle uh the the documentary team traveled in yet another doc vehicle we had um we had an instagram documentary team and a long form documentary team um and a a stills photographer so with it there were three forms of documentation happening and in turkey uh curiously enough we had an ambulance so we had two trucks for the for the puppets to go in four vehicles or five and an ambulance because for something like this you have to travel in turkey anyway something as big as we were doing you have to travel with with an ambulance so so that and that's just the crew that's moving um that in each of the towns in each of the countries actually there was a a local producer who was whose job it was to coordinate all of the welcome events so if you can imagine every single day there's a new event and the people you know or three or three presenting the event have have been rehearsing it for maybe months beforehand and so the the local producers combined with our producers um and nizar and tracy seaworth uh were challenged each place each little town each little village maybe a refugee camp were challenged how would you welcome little amal when she comes to visit you and and there were many different answers to that to that challenge there were dances there were food festivals there were speeches poetry many times other puppets were brought in uh big and small um on one occasion when she arrived in uh chaos in Greece um there were about six different little it was a theater festival so they were along the way along the the the harbour wall and harbour walk uh there were six different musical groups and they had a fantastic idea one one song one melody and each group was playing that melody in a different way as she arrived and would greet her with that music and there were some basic words in Greek obviously and then that group would follow her and and to the as she came to the next group the same music would be playing and all the groups would move together following her um led by drummers and trumpeters one of the groups was a group of of refugee teenagers from the camp who were let out for that day um they normally became so kept isolated in Greece um but they were let out and they had an incredible they practiced a whole rhythm thing with cardboard boxes as their drums and they followed her with those um and then every everyone that evening gathered in the town square and it was a big musical thing and there was a huge uh lit uh ball of light um like the earth and um and different people read poetry or made speeches and uh it was a big celebrate musical celebration so that was one instance but there are many many different ones one that we witnessed in Marseille where um one of the groups of uh young refugees had came out with masks on sort of African masks and we we wondered what that meant and we were told no they are undocumented children and they may not be seen um and so that was there they had a real reason for for wearing a mask but they but to join in the in the event meant they had to wear the mask they couldn't be they couldn't walk in the event without a mask maybe you should talk about the mask as a face mask not a corona mask and you are a face a face mask in the shape like a neutral lecock there were there were elephants no there were animals there was an elephant you're a liar also in in in marseille um there is a beach that is a small beach in you know as part of the city um which is a contested beach on the one side of the beach is a very uh elaborate swimming club closed off to the rest of the world you have to be a member it's extremely expensive to belong only olympic swimmers you know kind of swim there or it's like a very exclusive club next door to that they were building a very expensive hotel and the hotel had um um i don't know bribed or had managed to acquire the beach um next to um and the the citizens of marseille already pissed off that the swimming club was so exclusive now the whole beach was going to be taken as made a private beach for the hotel so they there was huge protests about it they won the beach back and so everybody who swims there regularly every day is incredibly proud of the effort that they put in to keeping this beach a public beach then a quite an ambitious dance piece for amal who had been designed for on that beach um a palestinian uh corolla had got um her own team of of uh professional dancers plus 80 amateur dancers were going to participate in the event on this beach and they wanted to rehearse it the day before on the beach and so they came with a small group of professional dancers and cleared a space amongst the people there and there was huge objection to their prison they said you this is our beach you can't just push your way in here what the hell do you think they were adamant they tried they started rehearsing in a smaller place and then eventually the crowd allowed them to continue their rehearsals and then afterwards they said so what's this all about um there's going to be an event here tomorrow and every single one of those people turned up with performance the next day and with a huge crowd on the beach to see a live dance piece on a beach with a big puppet in it and it was the one of the major themes visual themes of the dance piece was all of the dancers were wearing orange life jackets and the piece ended when they all had to go into the sea and they released all of their life jackets and swam away and all of these life jackets were left floating on the water and Amal was just looking at them from the beach and then she turned away and left the beach and the crowd parted as she went and that that was one of them one of the highlights for me of the whole walk what you know and so we had both the performance about refugees but you also had the story of the beach which resonated with the people of Marseille one of the things that I think we began to see um and became became aware of it you know a friend of mine Papatier who was in another show we were doing he said uh yeah she's meeting all these Jude Law and the Pope and and so on it looks like a bit of a gimmick sometimes and I said you know what you don't see is when she is walking in the back streets of a town again like Marseille she went to she passed a junior school in Marseille where a lot of Syrian refugees were were learning and they all lined the streets and they were shouting Amal Amal Amal and they were donating to her their soft toys um and we we our organizers ended up with an armful of soft toys that these children had had had insisted on giving to to Amal it these toys on they're not they're not spoiled kids this is a special thing for them so that degree of identity is is amazing um but more particularly in in the center of towns what you beginning to see and this was very apparent in England um you were seeing people coming from different immigrationary origins um from Syria from Bosnia from Ethiopia Jamaica Somalia all together in the center of the town um all sharing their um experience or thinking about their experience of being um uh illegitimate in a in a new environment but somehow legitimized by this figure who was who was walking with them and um and speaking to them through her um very elegant body language we we were I think seeing for the first time their realization that they are not separate that they are that the the category of being a migrant or being uh someone who's descended from migrancy is something that binds us all together not um you you're not just existing in a town where you only see your own Bosnian uh friends or your own Somalian friends here we had all migrants coming together for the first time um and realizing that they are are a new category of of person in a way and a lot of people beginning to talk about the fact that we are all migrants we all were migrants um we were riding in a taxi uh in one town and the the guy said to us uh uh he said uh my parents came here in the 50s and they were um they they were sort of doing they were cleaners he's now a taxi driver but he said um my daughter is studying medicine and my son is is a geographer um so you know this kind of beginning of the realization that that we are all migrants and that migrancy can start in a very humble way in the city but it begins to uh the migrants begin to become major cooperators and contributors to the societies where they um have have arrived into by and large somebody who who has the resources to abandon the life they had however destroyed it was but it is resourceful enough to leave and to to go through the difficulties sometimes it's a year before they arrive anywhere um they they are survivors they have overcome many many difficulties before they find a place to sit yeah and so yeah and i think um in a way the history of mankind is a history of migration the great bbc documentary journey of mankind made clear that racism not only morally ethically politically is despicable um it proved the oldest dna if that is still true you know is the kalahari bushman um from africa the entire mankind uh comes you know from that group of people there's some emigrated 10 12 15 of them suddenly stayed in europe then some went on someone to australia some to asia over the bering sea the Siberian hunters went into um in north america most probably 10 12 15 of them and the entire history of mankind is a history of migration and um and i think that also what you show in your work and you make it visible and also it's a fact we have to live with and art has to prepare us for the future make us comfortable with the future and i think one of the great um um results of this book is that people say yeah it's not so bad you know we have people from different neighborhoods different countries and there's a puppet and there's a dance you know why should we only be hungarians live next to hungarians in an hungarian town listen to hungarian music and wearing the hungarian you know traditional clothing maybe there's more fun to be next to some of them india was the hind the indian traditional closing and the listening to their music you know and it's a fact anyway it has happened what but if i remember right there not all were welcoming all communities they were also um complications i know the pope which most head of states try very hard to get to an often don't uh don't uh have success but amal met him and he was kind to her but we also heard of throwing stones or tear gas or people not allowing you to work which also shows this is something real this is not just you know some kind of beautification and wallpaper for a downtown uh uh soulless neighborhood to bring a little bit of art in this or something just tell us a little bit about the complex reactions yeah i suppose you know she she didn't have a hundred percent smooth ride um and there were these incidents they they were however not very many at all very very few yeah out of 140 stops yeah yeah and and for for anybody trying to to make a story out of her journey they're actually very useful because they are they they give a bit of conflict to the story um but uh in in in Greece it was the first time it was Larissa yeah uh the right wing uh fascists in Larissa were demonstrating against her and through tomatoes and eggs at her and and at the puppeteers and the i'm not sure the name of the place but there's a wonderful wonderful beautiful area of Greece where there are kind of small mountains and there are monasteries on the top of the mountains Mount Athos Mount Athos it's another place but it's incredibly beautiful and they're all Greek Orthodox monasteries up there and the the bishop of the monastery would not allow her to pass by the monastery on the grounds that she was Muslim and he felt it was inappropriate for a Muslim person to be permitted to go past his Christian citadel which was there were a lot of the response from left in Greece by the way there were a lot of satirical cartoons about these people throwing stones at Amal and the stupid bishop who was making ridiculous assumptions I mean that a puppet can also be Muslim is a very odd concept too like it's taking it so literally that you know that yeah well it was it was good that he was treating her as as real um but but the worst thing I think that happened in a way was what happened in Coventry we were in the in where in Birmingham sorry when we were in the march we didn't see it happen but Nazir told us about it Adrian you can yeah he he was about to turn into a shopping centre where the main performances were going to happen and he saw this guy come running out of the crowd and as he got to Amal he threw a bucket of marbles at her feet which would have you know which would have if she'd stepped on the marble there were children all around she would have crashed into and there could have been a terrible accident um and so he just told her to freeze and she stopped moving she didn't hadn't stood on the marbles yet and there were lots of little Syrian children around and they started picking up marbles like fury and um and then they're all standing saying what should we do in arabic you see I'm allowed to keep them Nazir said like just stick them in your pockets the marbles disappeared like in two seconds they were gone and great it was a pretty horrific thing to do and would have required planning and some financial investment to buy all those marbles and yeah so there is that that dimension but it fortunately it was rare and tell us about meeting the pope how did that happen did the Ituan's team just call him up and say Amal is coming and the Vatican prepared festivities what happened I suppose there there are sort of almost myths around that now but um Tracy Seward is a is one of the producers of the Netflix movie two perps um and um and but uh David Lanz says he knows the cardinal you know somebody who works for a catholic charity who has access to a cardinal who has access to the pope probably somewhat private oh yeah what was that we didn't hear that you were whispering well we we're not 100 sure you know if it's sure it's private information very uh very uh uh complex piece of diplomacy but yes because because the pope must not be made fan of no there there has to be some level of security or assuredness that this is not going to be a joke and and he he spoke he spoke to Amal as as it as talking to her face and a cardinal one of the cardinals in the Vatican also read a long speech to her that day and when she went to Westminster Cathedral which is the Catholic cathedral in London um a cardinal made a beautiful speech to her which um uh I I would love to get a chance um uh um that's a cool trend but um but um yeah she's she's uh it's been amazing how um how she was accepted by um by religious figures and the doors were big enough for her to walk through and yeah yeah she liked big door there is we didn't mention that for every outing that she makes there's a recce beforehand uh by the puppetry directors and uh Nizar uh obviously um Nizar and Tracy Seawood have done the whole walk already um you know last year but every day there's a there's a recce the puppeteers don't have to go on the recce because that would exhaust them if they had to go on recce rec the recon or yeah research and yeah yeah um so we check on all those things we have to make sure that there are there's a toilet nearby we're in certain circumstances that there are two puppets we haven't mentioned this but when there's a very long walk um there'll be a puppet hiding here um and uh the one puppet comes walks and walks and walks maybe a kilometer then we'll go up a little alleyway and the second puppet will go walking out on the other side um so we need to find out of the those things traffic uh traffic and and we need to talk to the police to the traffic department then there are many things that uh are part of the preparation for for every walk so how much did she really walk of those or did you drive in between how much walking was really walking walking the original concept of of her what she was going to walk or but it would have taken two years two years yes oh yeah and and the original concept was that we were all going to be intense uh we oh and and one uh sort of rock rock um how do you describe like like a rock tour bus rock tour bus with banks yeah we wait for dad yes they're setting up every night on it on the peripheries of town with a food wagon you know local food and water and and you know like a lovely romantic idea there was you know we even had graphics of the kind of camps we would have but the reality of that is no to find a piece of land in any big city that's anywhere close to where the events have to happen um parking for all the vehicles yeah setting up maybe in the rain taking down maybe in the rain the food doesn't work uh people need wi-fi uh the toilets are non-functional um so we had to have uh we had to have professional hotels and because we had to be able to move in and move out uh at difficult times sometimes the puppeteers would arrive at one o'clock in the morning after a long drive um so your your question is how much of the walk how much did she walk the answer is she walked um very little in between towns although she she did walk in some landscapes but with um 90 cities in uh sorry 90 days and 65 cities i think her walking took the walking took place in the cities really through the cities still enormous it's enormous um but it wasn't it wasn't a walk that went across great uh landscapes because she walked she takes about 40 minutes to walk one kilometer mm-hmm so yeah and you know if you imagine the kind of red tape that you have to have in advance prepared in advance to even walk in any street in a city you know that you have to have police you know there have to be uh some level of crowd control um so the police will have been incredibly well co-co-co-co-co-operating with the event in every country um and it's it was so charming like so the police have also in each town are anticipating her arrival and in Coventry that same day a lot happened there she the police were standing in a in a sort of casual huddle while the the puppeteers were getting into the puppet and and this this one police woman was on the edge of them and she saw the transformation from the sort of object being put on the puppet you know first of all the stills and the object being put on the puppeteer and suddenly this little girl came to life and walked over to this police woman and put her hands on her shoulders and she just burst into tears and there's the last thing I expected from a police a police person you know they're normally so firm and sort of confident in the kind of job they have to do she just melted incredible it's almost like a Twitter France that also doesn't really is one tour you go you have a stop and the buses take you the bike they go a little while how many people you involved uh administration artists and dancers but it's it's stunning we were we were 32 people all together including the photography team of of 10 and nine puppeteers and all the other people were producers and organizers yeah and you know and there's there is a sort of disjunction between the touring party and the and the producers work in Coventry again they they they had made a beautiful dance piece on the steps of the cathedral between the bomb the cathedral that was destroyed in the second bomb the old cathedral like the Benjamin Britain memoir yeah composition you know and the one next to it and and you know they should their piece was about how the city of the second world war which was flattened and has become in the empty space of the city has begun a place where migrants have been welcomed and are now you know doctors and nurses in the national health system and and and they you know they showed movies of the destruction and and and a lot of the people were in the performance were refugees and after the show all of the good chance people went back to the hotel and the people in the performance who'd been rehearsing this piece for a couple of months um see we're having a big party where you're going and while you're joining us now um you know we've done this for you and the truth of the matter is you can't stick around you know you're on the bus you off to the next town and you know they have to have their party alone um but I think what she left behind there was a group of people who'd worked extremely hard and extremely in an extremely focused way on making a lovely production that really worked in the site but it was about the subject of refugees and and and the and the rebuilding of a city with people who came off to the destruction and I should say that that in that uh that partially ruined cathedral that afternoon uh the mayor of Coventry had bestowed British citizenship on a group of uh of former refugees um children um and included in that group was little Amal and she now has a an official uh document signed by the mayor uh affirming the fact that she is a British citizen incredible this is in a way so also you made if I see it right 140 stops in those 90 places so you created communities of people who work together to welcome her is that right like people who prepared for a long time thousands and thousands and thousands of of children have made cards have made puppets have heard stories about refugees have uh come out into the streets and welcome to uh many children across the whole of Europe now understand something about what what it means to be a refugee and and how to respond to refugees when they meet them and not in the idea of victimization of over and over seeing images you know of of abuse and violence but you created uh as you would say an almost spiritual a figure of hope you know and and that we were Adrian and I were the two aunties in the background all the time we had nothing to do with all this amazing organization we were witnesses of course we we made the little amount but we sometimes felt a little like spare parts in those circumstances because we were we were really just in in the background yeah people that we have worked with you know who know our method were the puppetry directors on this piece and so we weren't doing that we incredibly proud of the work that they've done on the wall um and uh and they've done it you know every day relentlessly um because the puppetry directors Craig Leo and Enrico Way um they they they were officially had Mondays off um but in fact days off never materialized for the people like Nizor who were constantly on to the next the next incredible yeah we have a discussion at the Segal Center also how we go forward after our that time of corona of all the talks we did was over 200 artists and one of our ideas will be to do you know next year a festival in New York parks without electricity actually a mall also is a thing that we're without it but the idea is that artists in a way you know say who can we do this we don't have the money can we pay is it say in a way artists become almost like activists now they're like and I think maybe this is also a call to artists like climate change activists who are out there you know um who really put their life out so also perhaps artists now are it's also about doing art but it's also an activism to you know be dedicated um to a cause to open minds to hold up the significance of the of art in the in society and that we can work through problems and so complications and so contradictions without look at it from different angles without that we solve it but theater and performance is one of the possibilities and and I admire your project I didn't want to say it's not good to write a play about this or a poem or a movie or make a painting they're all of it like it's a big museum there are many rooms where you can express art but I think this is something extraordinary what you created that somehow yeah is something that is so very much connected to our time the chain chain is Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson these two young British writers went to the camp in Calais in Calais yeah they saw the need for a kind of a communal space they built a geodesic dome there which they found in Scotland and they got the people of the camp to erect it it became a meeting place for musicians and poets and eventually a play and which caught fire with the the young the serious experienced directors became interested Stephen Dole to become along you know so the people well connected to the movie industry and to finance in theater came along and and so and then it grew into the walk and so there were people with connections you could make it happen and as a result although it was a very expensive exercise it was free to every single person it came incredible yeah right across Europe um right this is also important to point out and I forgot to point that out it was a free participatory socially engaged art theater performance puppet event do you have very roughly numbers to how many people were involved preparing how many people watch is there any way to I think they're going to do the sums now you know in the in the in the they know that their donors want to know the funders will want to have an evaluation but we don't we don't have numbers yet but one thing is is one of our hopes in a way is to bring a mile to New York next year tell us a bit really that's a fantastic prospect how will that happen I I you know it's too early to say yeah I think that she's had invitations from all over the world many many people wanted to visit them many people feel that it's important that they come to where they are whether it's Australia or Cape Town or South America or there are many invitations but the one that that I think is going to become a reality is is a little amount visiting New York City that would be that would be a fabulous idea it's also a city you know of immigrants it celebrates immigration but also experiences the problem perhaps it's a step ahead of many European cities in in in its openness also of the problem but also I think 160 languages are spoken and and and you know people are saying we have Biden for three years but there's no no knowing what's going to be happening in America beyond that time and I think this is an urgent an urgent thing that needs to happen is that people need to understand what migrants see is about and learn how to engage in a in a creative way with with people who are coming into their society from other societies yeah yeah and also New York City is alive it's so beautiful and fascinating because of the population because of the people here and not uh because they don't come here so it's um and I think New York City has learned that lesson it's very serious about it even so you know it is of course um challenge like never um like never before that would be just brilliant so keep us posted that maybe we're finally gonna have a cup of tea in person and you might come earlier to New York then I'll make it to Cape Town I really would love to come and visit you another thought in visual arts is an art form that's called almost like instruction based art and we once had at our prelude festival a performance clear bishop brought it to us with German artists it was a take a dancer he has to be retired he has three hours in a space we would like for him to remember all the dance steps he made in his life but you can do it whenever he wants he can sit down and get up and he is not allowed to rehearse you know and this is her conceptual art piece so she writes it on a piece of paper with 10 rules and then you can do it do you think um a mile after a New York or some marquee events which you prepare really well is that also something where you say yes it could be an instruction based piece like a play that's been written and then people are okay you can perform it and stage it in Paris and number like the old-fashioned traditional idea of theater yeah I suppose you know there are people with imaginative nations all over the place and hopefully the street is going to become a more used space for performance I think in South America there's a lot more in Argentina there's a big tradition and you know we don't have it as much but I think that Frank is saying could she perform a play that I mean could her walk you say you can do the walk in India in Australia just follow these rules would you say go ahead we give you permission or the producers yeah I think I think one of the rules if they're gonna be writing the rules one of the rules of this walk was that she's not she's not sitting out to make any political points she's all she's asking is that you welcome her and she wants to have fun and she wants to have fun so that that meant that in Greece when there was they wanted her on a particular square where the the the fascists and the anti-fascists were going to meet one another over her they wanted Amal to be there and they they're insisting to the walk organizers that she must be there and the walk said no she's not going to be there she's not there to be the center of a conflict first of all it's dangerous see somebody up on stilts but second of all you know she's going to make all the wrong headlines in the in the press and so the the the anti-fascists were very cross that she didn't come but in fact she did come she came in she managed to find her way onto the top floor of one of the buildings that looked down on the square that had lights on and she did come but she wasn't right in the center of where they could have been in her hope and her vision is to unite to build bridges to connect and not to divide and to you know and to be a symbol for starting of the fight it's truly incredible I remember Basil you know you had your 70s birthday which we celebrated when you shortly before they walk started on the howl run for India as a final question how where does this piece fit in for both of you also Adrian in your body of work you have done incredible outstanding work war holes the truth commission work so many other things work with um Kendrick now how do you how where do you situate it is that uh one just one like the other projects or is it special or is it the same when you started out to make small puppet plays about same sex relations and apartheid which was very dangerous time thing to do well it's you know we we we're not quite sure what to think about it you know I think it's really important when you make art not necessarily to have an idea of what its meaning is before you've started to do it and and and most of our understanding of what we've done and what we've achieved is always in retrospect and so we a little bit still too close to this really know what its meaning is for us but um looking back we we were recently reminded that we made a giant puppet for the first gay and lesbian march in in South Africa um we 1990 in 1990 Johannesburg um we were um friends with Simon and Corley um who in that time had organised uh a group in that area called GLO the gay and lesbian organisation of the vetvatist front we were trying to um get a constant get a clause about gay rights written into the constitution and um he was working with Edwin Cameron who was a um he became a judge but at that time he was a lecturer at the university in law at the university of the vetvatist front the two of them um Simon had been accused of treason and he was in in prison for treason um and in prison he came out as gay to his compatriots uh to to the other prisoners in the ANC and they initially spurned him but eventually embraced him so he and Edwin went to Mandela and and and persuaded Mandela to um to include a a a clause about gay rights into our constitution incredibly important thing that they did and we it was at that time that the first march was was organised and Simon was behind it and we made a giant bird for we were asked to make a giant dove uh for that uh that occasion and Edwin said I don't want to make a dove because it's it's got it's too overlaid with Christian symbolism I'd rather make a cattle egret and so he made a very beautiful cattle egret a giant cattle egret which was part of that march so that was our first giant puppet and and it it it was somewhat forgotten but now someone is writing about it and we realized that it was his choice to make a cattle egret rather than a dove made it a a characteristically African puppet and it was actually a better choice than had it been a dove with its easy symbolism um so where it fits where where the walk fits I'm not sure we obviously always been uh people that are very politically uh involved in some way or another with our work but I think we've also always said that it's also perfectly uh okay and important to make plays that are just fun and and not necessarily having any political objectives at all um so it's just that a lot of our work has been has had um some social connection I mean does feel like we are entering an era when um um you know the the industrial complex is so powerful um that the important issues of the day are being swept under the carpet with rhetoric um I mean it seems like COP26 is a has been useless again um despite the enormous uh groundswell of opposition to the petrochemical industry and and the great power blocks of the world true um yeah we we are defenseless that um you know the Russians are about to you know sort of dig for oil in the Antarctic um and uh you know what do we do I mean are we just going to sit back and let them um is it is is it our job to fight against them it seems like an impossible fight to win um but uh what is the role of arts in this new type it changed this new chain of events I think COVID has given us a chance at least to sit back and think about it um but yeah I I mean it after after the fall of apartheid all of the the air went out of our theater work for a while because it the the struggle theory in South Africa had been very strong um and and suddenly there was no need for it any longer um but now is a time when um all of us you know in humanities have to be questioning what's going on yeah and I and I and I think we do need big gestures big things for the time we live in has to be visible it can no longer be a little blurb in between commercials on television that's mediated I think what you guys did it truly um is a visionary um but everyone can have ideas I have a lot of ideas I struggle to put them you know into life and that the ideas of David Lam the people behind the jungle you making it happen the advanced in Amir who by the way also was in our seagull talks um and that they you know made that happen it's a fantastic event it gives us actually hope and um and Amal will be with us once I googled Amal and then George Clooney's Amal came up who gives gave him hope in his life he said and actually I sent it around I wanted to send around your link to our people although for our book talks and somehow I didn't think so at the time it's mixed it up they all got the Amal Clooney mail um but there is something hopeful and there's something different and also you know in the way her work um for human rights there's something where we are all connected so really really um it's so inspiring I would also like to let you know that your work inspired us also to be a bit more proactive we have been great friends of puppetry we think this is such a significant art form over centuries we have also published plays the Turkish puppet plays a place from the 12th century in Egypt um but um also now with Claudia Ornstein we will it was like a final push also talking with you and made it a non-brainer we will create a puppetry international research academic journal and there is no global disciplinary academic journal that is dedicated to puppetry and the elite arts of mask performing objects and material performance um as Claudia wrote so we will try to create a journal that will report on this and hopefully there will be a special issue about your work it will start in 23 maybe it could be um and initial man Claudia Ornstein will be the lead editor it will also be critical reviews of plays and books so it will also establish you know this important field of theater which over centuries and over all continents has been so important um to have a have a closer look we are coming to the end of time we actually went very much over our time and I just would like to get to the list of hopefully I have it here of our seagull talks it hasn't been announced yet and we will do it on on Saturday we will have book talks so many of our participants in the seagull talks over the last year were also writers a lot of them were women writers actually and somehow a generation of them finished in the time of covid books so we will talk with Bonnie Moranca about her book timelines writing and conversations Teresa Smalik about Ron Water the life of an actor was the water very beloved great actor um Alexis Green and Emily Mann we'll talk about the book about Emily Mann the rebel artist in the American theater Carrie Perlov will be back and talk about her book Pinter and Stoppart a director's view and and Catania on her book she finished in the time of covid the art of dramaturgy and inside look and Bogart will talk about the art of resonance undirecting and what theater needs and I think your work is something where resonated she talks about resonance that perhaps this is something we should be thinking about how much does it really resonate and I think your work really is there and then Avra Isiri Dolupalu and Frank Radatz Radatz from Berlin she's from Greece they will talk about her new book staging 21st century tragedies theater politics global crisis and Frank Radatz will talk about his new theater research center at the Humboldt University in looking at this changing times where we are and what we should be doing so um so when we felt your project was so significant what you dreamed up and then also implemented it so that we wanted to start with you guys so really thank you for sharing and I can't believe you just got back on Monday as you're barely over jet like wherever if there was one almost probably not to South Africa but still some of your clothes must still be in the washer so thank you for being such a good friend of the center your work is significantly look up to you but the service you did you know also to refugee girls around the world refugee children and refugees themselves um you know how you change people's lives and perspectives is extraordinary and I think it is what we need at that time so thank you thank you both thanks for howl around the R&B J for hosting us Andy and Tanvi here at the Segal team and I hope you will join us on November 22nd for our next talk but all the best and I wish I could be there and have a glass of wine or a cup of tea with you guys and on Monday I will come and visit you and you are such an inspiration thank you thank you thank you Frank and thank you for keeping this great international dialogue going it's really important and what you're doing for puppetry also uh uh is is going to be wonderful to watch thank you thank you okay bye-bye Basil Basel bye-bye Adrian and uh to our listeners thank you for taking time we know how much is out there online maybe started our talks last March not so much was there now there is a lot uh out there so it means a lot for us and you take your time and and listen to us bye-bye bye