 I visit. Okay let's start from that one. Yeah, I was like, oh yeah, this is before we even walk into the audience and do the border crossing moment. So we just exit there. Right, but we are getting dressed and everything, right? Yeah, getting dressed and everything. Okay. Then let me take out El Estatua. Eric, after the performance, I have a proposal to you to talk a little bit about, like, what you could see or the background piece. I don't know. Well, there's an also there. Oh, I mean, I know I said my lines as famous, but there is an also there. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I'm much happier talking about the process. Brilliant, and then I'll talk about, like, the idea of making visible. I'll ask you. Right, so then, so just take, bring that, just follow the same thing, bring that here. You take that opportunity to go. Yeah. Get the hat on. And then we end with, and then we left a los Estados Unidos. And then I think you can. Oh, well, I can't get my backup to have it. I mean, that's why we have an MTA. They burned our farm. And this won't be here, so you'll still be able to cross down stairs. Okay. So, so bring her here. Yeah. The blocking is like. Yeah. Okay. Just trust yourselves. I think you'll, you'll think, you'll figure it out. We usually just go back. Yeah. I think so. Excellent. We do that when you're picking up the code. I admit the rest of the words. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We're referring it now? Oh, I thought they were going first. We're going first. We think you can start on stairs. Can I bring it there? Okay. Laura, we're ready to go. Do you want some of these things over here? Sure. That's okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. Thank you. It's over here, okay? Thank you. So, you guys, will you start? Yeah. Yeah, this one. Great. So if you want to start seated, and then get up for the mic. OK, then I'm going to start over here. Yeah, over at you. Sarah, Danielle, this is for you. To the end of the gathering, I'm so excited to be with you all. And I have been, for the last couple of days, it's been such a privilege to be here. My name is Davika Vrenjan. If we haven't met, I work at the intersection of migration and performance. I am one of the inaugural Lab Fellows. And so, yes, woo! And so this really feels like a coming home to me, and being with the new generations of Lab Fellows and the extended Lab family at the gathering. I am also a Georgetown alumna. So this is also a coming home in that sense. And currently, I'm Associate Director at Albany Park Theater Project in Chicago, Illinois. Where I work with immigrant youth to tell the stories of immigrants in Chicago. All of our work is ethnographic. It comes from interviews and true stories taken and collected with love from the community and performed by high school students who come from immigrant backgrounds within the neighborhood of Albany Park on the northwest side of the city. Currently, we're doing a lot of immersive work, playing with the idea of sitting side by side with young people who are telling the stories of their community in a project called Port of Entry, which is premiering in a couple of years. And that allows us to bring really personal storytelling into large ideas of migration. So for the next hour and a half, we are gathered together in thinking about migration, the future, and especially around youth as the idea of what comes next in migration. And that allows us to think about, as we close this really amazing couple of days, where we're going next. So we have a really great program lined up for you in the next 90 minutes. It's very multimedia, very future. And for that, we will ask your patients as we transition from one thing to another. We're starting with a performance, a 10 minute excerpt from Linda e Libre, and then a small conversation with the director and the team. And then we'll be hearing from the creative team around The Walk, which is a massive international project that is coming to us via Zoom. And we'll close with a Q&A in some discussion. I'd like to hand it over to the director of Linda e Libre, Eric Schwartz, or El Chalito to introduce the piece. Please. Hi, everyone. So happy to be here with you all today. Linda e Libre is a work in progress. We are currently presenting a pilot tour through Montgomery County and DC Public Schools, which is also where the story originated from. So the story is inspired by the experiences of newcomers of migrant youth from predominantly the Northern Triangle countries of Central America. So the story is all set in the bedroom of Linda, who is a 14-year-old Guatemalan girl played by Daniella Hernandez Fujigaki. And it all takes place in her bedroom over the course of the last day of Zoom school. So the next day she's going into school for the first time. All of her schooling has been online up until this point in the United States. And she has been given an assignment by her teacher to create a box that you won't be seeing here as part of this excerpt. The outside form is supposed to be about her present life and the inside is about her past. And doing the project surfaces all of these memories that she has been suppressing and trying to keep down. And over the course of the play, over the course of the 45 minutes, the other performer, Sarah Hernandez, plays a series of characters, including her best friend Marcella, her mother Magda, her aunt, and then also Marcella's superhero alter ego called Libre, hence the title, Linda y Libre. And this excerpt comes from about the middle of the show and takes us from a memory of her life in Guatemala then up until the point where her journey to the United States begins. So whenever you ladies are ready. Les dijeron lo que nos dice todos. Que las niñas are not strong like us. You are not smart like us. Que las niñas deben quedarse en casa y limpiar y estar tranquila. Pero ustedes tienen un poder más brillante que 10 millones de soles dentro de ustedes. Echenle ganas y hagan el barrilete más lindo de este mundo y let it fly. Comenzamos el primer grupo de barrilete para niñas en nuestro pueblo. The first group of girls en nuestro pueblito to make a barrilete, un papalote. En inglés se dice kite. Para volar en el día de los muertos. Y lo hicimos. Hicimos nuestro propio barrilete. Y fue entonces cuando nació Linda y Libre. Sí, the day Linda y Libre was born. Las más fuertes superhéroes en el mundo. Linda, estos recuerdos son tu poder. El amor, la fe, tus memorias, todo queda adentro. Uno chiquito y I'll put it inside my box con señoroso. And it will fly. Y Marcela lo mirará con mucho esfuerzo y dedicación. Puedes lograr todo lo que propongas en la vida. Pronto estaremos juntas. Dios will bring me to you, mi hija. Chicharón, chicharón. Barrilete, barrilete, barrilete. OK, tengo paper y scissors y glue. Necesito palos, tres. Tal vez tres lápices funcionen. Yo necesito un listón para la colita del barrilete. Tal vez puedo usar algún barrilete, barrileta. Necesito un listón. Necesito un listón. Aquí lo tengo. I just need a little bit of it. I made a little one to put inside my box. Remember how the first barrilete in a round? Redondo, recuerdas? Y popo, morrado y anaranjado. Y rosado, como se dice? Pink. Y amarillo, cielo. Las azules, linda y libre. Y las pegamos. Y flores y muy orgullosas cuando lo terminamos. Ay, we did it. But then, your tía Rosana said, ella nos dijo, olvidaste la parte más importante, la colita. Ayuda que el barrilete huele estable. Estable y fuerte. Necesitas una buena colita larga para ayudar a que el barrilete se eleve. Y tía Rosana nos enseñó a trenzar ese día. Haremos una tranquila. Haremos trenzas juntas. Lete. Ba, fi, lete. Ahora tú. Dos, tres. Uno, dos, tres. Ba, fi, lete. Ba, fi, lete. Oh, finalmente, the chest. La prueba. Podrá volar el barrilete. How do you say? Fly. Will it fly? Intentemoslo. Yeah. ¿Estás segura que sabes conducir esta moto hasta en la lluvia? Yeah. My brother taught me. This moto loves me. The 2019 SXF450 Sayedaya. Verde y negro. That's like lightning. Nuestra primera. Hablamos que éramos invencibles. Que nada, nadie podría detenernos. Y por eso es esa chica de 10 años en nuestro puro sotción. Sí, something warm. Ahora frío por la noche. Buenos zapatos y nuestros rosarios. A los Estados Unidos. Sara Daniela, I'd love to invite you back to receive some applause. Thank you so much. Sara Daniela, Eric, thank you for this performance, for creating such a beautiful combination of storytelling, of joy, of the stories that have come out of the young people that are in our communities. Thank you. Eric, can you tell us a bit about what it's been like to share linda y libre with young people in schools? I mean, it's been informative. The piece is still in development. And we're really developing it for student audiences. And obviously, these stories that are in the show often come from the students who are in the audience themselves. So that's been very powerful to witness. Oftentimes, I will find myself watching the students more than I'm watching the performers. But it really has been invaluable to be presenting it to them for dramaturgical feedback, for emotional feedback. What is the response? Are you connecting with the story? Do you think that the story is something that other people will connect with? Do you find it true to your experiences? Do you find it false? And they are very free with their feedback, which is wonderful because it really is about the future of the piece. We're building towards a full tour through Montgomery County, all Montgomery County public high schools, and then a lot of DCPS. And that'll be happening next spring. So this pilot year has really been about collecting feedback. And also, there are portions of the show that are immersive and interactive. So a lot of it has been also data mining of, does this work? Is it something that actually draws the students in? Or does it create a distancing effect? And if it does create a distancing effect, is that also useful at times? So that's been very impactful, and they really are the best dramaturgs, the students themselves. Absolutely. And Sarah, Daniela, I would love to know about your experience performing in front of youth who are newly arrived to the United States, many of them Spanish speakers. Maybe this is the first time that they're seeing live performance in a language that's so close to them. What has the reception been like? The reception has been pretty great, especially. I myself am an immigrant. I immigrated here as a child, though, so very different immigration story from a lot of our students. But they appear to be engaged. Theater etiquette is something that is a bit elitist, ableist. But these kids have been engaging with the piece and processing it in a way that they feel comfortable. And you can see that. You see that in the giggles and the noise and their responses to certain pieces of the play. And their feedback is great. A lot of it has been very complimentary. But they also, like Eric mentioned, do not hold back. And it's really great. As a Latina, I feel really good about performing a piece that is for my community, by my community, and that speaks to the next generation and speaks directly to them. And I think that they see the impact that they are having on the piece, because they start opening up about what they like, what they don't like, how we could improve it. At the end of the piece, they share their dreams for the future. And you expect that maybe high schoolers might draw or say stuff that's a little light, jokey. But a lot of these dreams and stuff that they have been sharing with us have been extremely vulnerable and important to them. So that means that they feel comfortable with us in the space and with this piece to engage with that in that way. Oh, yeah. It's been especially moving for me. I feel like there's such a responsibility to keep them engaged. I think that a lot of, I mean, I'm from MCPS. I was a tan girl that went to MCPS, you know? And from a working class family, I know what it's like to feel like being around adults who don't have patience for you. And, you know, that if there's something you're not doing well, it's your fault in carrying that. And I feel like for these kids, it's a tough experience being at school. And I think that, I think as an adult, my responsibility and as a performer, I have to keep these students engaged and I have to be the one that's creative enough to do it. Creativity is harder than using shame, you know? But it inspires them. And I feel like it's been moving enough to be like I'm the one responsible to keep you guys fun and keep you guys involved, especially with the motto scene. They're so, they're like teenagers so they're super awkward and they're like, do I clap here? And I just, I spot one and I'm like, yes girl, this could just be you and I, you know? And I amp her up and then slowly Christian knows until like all these claps, it's important to, yeah, it's just the responsibility to honor their feelings truly. And their stories in an authentic and respectful manner. And see them and reflect that back, right? That's what is resonating the most with me about this amazing tour of Linda y Libre through Montgomery County and D.C. public schools is this countering of the invisible, invisibleization of migrant stories, especially of undocumented youth and their stories. I think about a piece that we're working on right now at Albany Park Theater Project called Amor de Lejos, which is based on interviews that were taken by the young people with day laborers, jornaleros, in Chicago almost 20 years ago. And we heard the stories of this group of men who worked every day in various construction jobs under the table in order to send money to their families to try to create a better life for them back home, back in the Northern Triangle mostly. And this Amor de Lejos, this long distance love that they had, they have and they harbor for the families who they haven't seen in years, some of them. And we talk in the piece, it's a very physical, it's a very percussive piece about both the journey to the United States and the work, the physical labor that they do all for this, all for their families, all for these connections. And this piece is performed by high schoolers. It was the interviews were taken by high schoolers, it's been devised by our high school company. And when we talk about the importance of this piece, why we're doing it, they feel so strongly about representation, about seeing their family stories on stage, seeing their stories on stage, that they've never heard about Jornaleros in the news. Maybe they've seen them every day driving on Lawrence and Pulaski where they're waiting for work, but they don't know who they are. And in this way, they're countering this invisibilization that happens with especially undocumented immigrants in this country. And especially with teenagers, with high school students, both seeing that and then getting a chance to portray that is so special. In thinking about making visible, in thinking about creating this larger-than-life visibility, I want to invite our dear friends, collaborators, David Lan and Amir Nizar, who have been creating this piece called The Walk. They're gonna join us on Zoom as I give this introduction. Please bear with us as we make the tech shift. In July of last year, a three and a half meter tall puppet of a refugee girl named Amal made a four-month journey all the way from the border of Syria to Manchester in the UK. And many thought that this would be totally unachievable. It was happening during the global pandemic. But for the creators of The Walk who are joining us here on Zoom, this made it even more crucial to tell Amal's story. When Amal the puppet arrived in the UK months later, millions of people had been part of her journey. Today, producer David Lan and artistic director Amir Nizar are gonna tell us about the inspiration behind The Walk and how they managed to achieve such an incredible project at such a vast scale with really local impact. Welcome, David. Welcome, Amir. Thank you for being with us. Thank you very much for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Can we get their volume up a little bit? Can you guys hear? Great. Yes, we can hear you fine. Thank you. Brilliant, thank you. So before we begin, we'd like to introduce our audience to The Walk with a short video. I might watch these videos. I am so struck by the acts of care that the audience, the passerby's offer to Amal. The holding of her hand or like stroking her hair or just the act of walking alongside her. There are a lot of videos on YouTube that document this experience. And to tell us more about the inspiration behind this project, I'd love to invite in David Lan. David was artistic director of The Young Vic for many years. He created multiple Tony and Olivier winning productions. David, I would love to know more about the genesis behind the project. Where does the inspiration behind Amal come from? It came from one of the last shows that I produced when I was running this theater in London, which was a play about the refugee camp that there had been in Calais. A play that recreated as well as we could the experience of refugees and also of people from the UK who came to the camp in order to try to help in whatever way they could. And in the creating of the show, I and others, the writers, the directors, the designers talked to many people who'd made these very, very long journeys. These journeys out of danger, out of war, out of persecution, with enormous courage and endurance across very long distances. And having heard so many people speak in that way, I felt, and others of us felt, that we wanted to find a way in which we could respond to that experience. And as it were, salute them, pay homage to them. In whatever way we could, as I say, as theater people, which is really what we are. So we came up with this idea of recreating as a public artwork, as a piece of theater, of that journey, but not with an actual child, but with a puppet. And we commissioned the very brilliant puppeteers, Handspring, who were based in Cape Town, South Africa, to create for us our child, our little girl. And to our very good fortune, they created this really extraordinary being, which is very, very big, but it creates the illusion of being an actual child from the way she moves. And also the growing skill of the puppeteers over the four months that we walked made it feel, as you're saying, Davika, to its audience, that in some magical way, it was an actual, very large, but actual nine-year-old Syrian refugee child. We had three big ideas, really, from the beginning. One was that she should walk, to some degree, a route which refugees could actually have taken. There were many, many routes, of course, from the Syrian border to the UK. We chose one and followed it closely. And along the route, we invited artists, initially artists, to welcome her, a very simple suggestion, which is to say that a child, a young child, a refugee, will be coming into your territory, village, town, city, whatever it is. She will be very tired. She will be very hungry. She'll be frightened. She'll be very interested, curious, in the new place she's come to, but she will need your care. How will you welcome her? And artists of every kind, arts organizations, theaters, opera houses, balanced film people, working with Amir Nizar, who you'll hear from in a moment, conceived acts of welcome. Some of them were very simple. Some of them, as you saw from that very brief version of the 8,000 kilometer walk, some of them were hugely complicated events. So it was a walk, it was a walk of welcome, which was joined by civil society leaders, mayors, religious leaders, faith leaders. People of every kind you can imagine wanted to be part of this welcome. And the third idea was that we wanted to have to be welcomed by power, and keep it simple, by power. And we want, so if she was coming into a village, we wanted the mayor of the village. If she was coming to a capital city like Athens or Marseille or Paris or London, we wanted the mayor of the biggest cities in the world to welcome her and to be seen to welcome her. One of the really great moments was at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where the dean of the cathedral stood on the steps surrounded by thousands of people. Very often in the events there were thousands of people there. And said in a, holding a microphone, London is a very big city. There is room for many, many refugees in our city. And events like that happened all the way along the route. So beautiful to hear you describe this experience of welcoming all the way through Amal's journey. I'd like to call in Amir Nazar to the conversation. Amir is a playwright. He's been working across staging work as a director all over the world. New York, London, Europe, and his native Palestine. Amir, why did this project speak to you? What brought you in? This project was from the moment David told me about the inkling of the idea. This project became very important for me. I come from Palestine. The refugee experience runs very deep in our history. But more than anything, there was something about the story of this nine-year-old nine-year-olds that starting a journey that is so vast. It became impossible to not get interested in because it was a chance, I'm a theater person, and it was a chance to create a theater show on the biggest stage in the world, an 8,000 kilometer stage. So I was immediately drawn artistically to the prospects, but of course also because of my background, because of my upbringing, because of the way we do things back home, which is a very harsh environment to create art. It meant that in a way I was prepped, I have been groomed for this voyage for many years. So it felt very, very, I felt very, very lucky to have been given this enormous responsibility and very privileged to lead this fantastic company of people through this voyage. You know, Amal is a puppet. She summons from our audiences a great need for empathy because without that, you need to reflect your story into her for her to exist. That's the beauty of puppetry. And without that, she doesn't exist. And in a way, that was one of the most fantastic things about this voyage is we needed the collaboration of our audience, the collaborations of our partners to create her story. When I started designing the events along the route that will tell her story, we really approached it as we are telling a story of one individual puppet, one human being, one girl going through a very big odyssey and every day was a new experience for her. What she learned, we learned. Every day was a discovery. And peppered into these acts of welcome that were complicated. They weren't always just welcome. Sometimes they became very traumatic moments for her. Sometimes her past would haunt her. But it was very important that we craft together with our partners, with our collaborators along the route. And there were 270 partners when we finished to craft a real journey for her, to see her develop, to see her become from a vulnerable nine-year-old that just left a war zone looking for her mom, to see her become a fully fledged 10-year-old because she had a birthday in London, that is learning about the world, is going through an experience and is growing. And that was the idea. She had a very, very elaborate journey that in the way it was designed was very open for people to contribute their experience, their hopes, their love, their generosity into. But she was the glue that kept everything going. And yeah, I think it's a good moment to show you a video from very early on in the rehearsal room where it was still not fully fledged. But even then you could see the potential of her as a very, very good storyteller, as a very good vessel for, you know, we started calling her a vessel for hope at some moment because people really lived something through her. So yeah, it would be great to see that early video from rehearsals. And then we can talk some more. Yes, thank you, Sean. We're queuing it up now. Thanks, Amir. Amal is a nine-year-old Syrian girl. She's a refugee in our story. She's left her homeland and is on this incredible adventure that starts on the border of Syria and goes all the way to Manchester. I've been working with 250 partners across 65 cities to create artistic events that welcome her along her journey. We've learned a lot in the first few days here in London. It's amazing to see how much the puppeteers have progressed even in such a short amount of time. It was first time in Little Amal and I'm trying to find the balance, how she worked, how she carried, how I carry her. You want to support her and wish her well. She's like a beacon that you just want to go along with and that's such a beautiful thing. She's a little girl, but on front of her I feel myself pretty small. They say that you're playing a little art while pepitating, which I feel it's a very beautiful metaphor. There's a lot of hard work that's gone into this. There's a lot of hard work that's going into this now as we prepare because we know we're walking in somebody's shoes, which is a big responsibility. Most of my friends and my families make this journey, not I because I had a visa, a French visa, but I will make this journey again. I think about Amal, who's literally a signifier of hope. Amal meaning hope and how huge she is and how huge this hope is. For our American audience, three and a half meters is about three and a half times me. And what a great privilege to be able to see Amal make this 8,000 kilometer journey, this larger than life symbol of real hope. David, can you, as the producer of the project, can you talk to us a little bit about what, when you've set out on this journey, what did you hope would come out of this? I think really when we set out, we hoped we'd get to the end of it. I'm not sure until we actually got there, we ever believed we would. It was a huge, huge, huge undertaking, but it was very exciting and exhilarating to do. And I know that many of the people, including myself, who are on it from beginning to end, think of it as one of the highlights of one's life. Look, what did we think we'd get out of it? When we started it, when the idea was born, the idea was born out of the powerful experience of the war in Syria and the response of Syrian citizens to the extreme danger that they found themselves in. And a little old story, it was that she comes from Aleppo, she was living with her family, war came, her mother left to look for safety, didn't come back, and Amal's journey is a search for her mother, as simple as that. So the experience, the appalling experience of Syria is very much in our mind at the time. Today, as we speak, there's a different focus that the world has in terms of refugees. And we're thinking about the people who are leaving Ukraine in order to escape the war, the appalling, terrible war that has burst into their lives in the way that it has. And I guess it's made me think about what we were doing, what were we doing? Why did we respond in the way that we did? I guess when I was running a theater, which as you, I mean, I worked in theater all my life, but when I was running a theater on my own for many years, there's two ways you can think of a stage. There's a hundred ways you can think of a stage, but let me suggest two. One is as a mirror in which the audience can see a version of itself. The other is as a window in which an audience can see things which it's never seen before and have experiences that it's never had before. The response of European countries to the Ukraine refugees at the moment, which is wonderful, which is a wonderful and amazing response, I would characterize as being the mirror because people are receiving and recognizing the need in people who are to a large degree similar to themselves. The walk of Amal across Turkey, across Europe was somebody from a different part of the world with different experience, walking through territory that she didn't know. And as we know very well, in reality, very, very many of those refugees from Syria, but also from Iran or Afghanistan or Iraq or Eritrea or many of the other countries in Africa, after which refugees come, we're not welcome. My own country, the UK that I'm talking to you from now has an appalling record of the way in which it responds to refugee currency. So as a little Amal walked through these countries, what we hoped to do through the relationships that she developed with the many hundreds of artists and the hundreds of thousands of people who greeted her along the way was to try and make a connection of friendship. That's really what we were after. It was to provoke in a way to challenge the people we met to make of this slightly ridiculously large human being a friend. And we thought of what she left behind her in her wake as a corridor of friends. It was once we come up with a phrase, we liked it very much, that Amal created a corridor of friends, unlikely friends, surprising friends, friends that in many circumstances are very difficult to make. But because of her beauty and the artistic genius of the creators and the puppeteers, and my colleague, Amian Nizar, who led the whole project, it proved to be possible to create these friendships. And she has become, and we don't expect this, but Amal has become a symbol of human rights globally. She's known all over the world, and the evidence of that is we get invitations for her to visit from all over the world, from unexpected places, from Iraq, from Korea, from New Zealand, from South America, from Africa, from all over the world. So that idea of sure making connections as if the whole of Europe, the whole of Turkey was a single auditorium in which strangers came together as they do when they come to see a play at a theater in peace, in order to experience something, a value between them. That's how we thought about what we were trying to achieve. Thank you. Amir, as artistic director, you talked about this project as being on this 8,000 kilometer wide stage, which is so interesting, but I know that all of this work was also very local. I'd love for you to talk to us about how you brought that local and the international together in Amal's journey. You know, for me, there are not many requirements to do theater. You need a good journey. You need integrity. It needs to be real. It needs to be honest. And it needs to involve collaboration. These are the ingredients, if you want, in a way. And when we started thinking of this very, very complicated logistic feats, artistic feats, and it was complicated, we understood intuitively almost that it has to start with a very, very local approach. It needs every... And that's also to do with the way we wanted to tell the refugee story. The refugee story is not only the story of one person who's a refugee, it's also the story of how the environment, the host communities, the surrounding accept them. With this in mind, we started a very, very long process of listening very carefully to hundreds of partners, trying to explore what's interesting for them and building together with them the puzzle that created the show. I can't tell you that it was always straight sailing. Sometimes I'd finish a Zoom and went to bash my head. But in the most part, people were very generous, very willing to engage, and maybe that was the most humbling experience, the amount of generosity and creativity that came out of a very simple offering, which was how would you welcome her? What can you add to the discussion? You know, David talked about what we wanted to achieve. I think one of the important things that became very clear while we were doing this is we were trying to retell a story. That's what we try and do as artists. We were trying to retell a story again, but from a different angle. And we told the story of refugees that is usually portrayed as the cause, the issue, the problem, the other. We wanted to tell a joyous story. She comes into a city and she's magical. Something happens to the city when she arrives. If that's what you want to do, you need to listen very carefully to the artists in the city, to the political conditions in the city, to their traditions, to their language, to the culture that created them in order to be able to pull out the threads that make this event special. It was important that in every place she visits, she creates a memory. She creates a memory for herself. She will remember this place. She will always remember Bari. She will always remember Musalat in the Anatolian Heights. But also the people in Musalat and the people in Bari will remember her. I think that was a very important piece of the puzzle in order to create an experience for her. She needs to remember them and they need to remember her. And that was always a question that I asked at the end of the day, are my local partners who we had so many of, how will you remember her when she's gone and what will she remember of your city in 10 years time? Will she remember a passing image, a fragrant? Will she remember the way a light hits a building? Or will she remember a face of a child? And these very, very complex conversation went on for a very long time on Zoom, because there was a pandemic. And part of the magic of this project was because of the pandemic, we weren't in these places before. It was all done far away. But when we arrived, we arrived amongst friends, we arrived amongst people that we spent a long time with that were very excited to celebrate themselves. There's nothing better than a stranger that walks through your city to show you your city from a fresh pair of eyes from a different perspective. And that was done again and again and again over the walk to the degree that in some places we connected partners that cohabitated in the same city, but never did anything together. But because we came from outside, because Amal is a Syrian girl that knows nothing, she was curious enough to connect people that never connected. And I think this was part of the true magic that happened on the walk. She connected unlikely partners and connected communities together. So in each place, there was a celebration of the community itself and itself in the way the community wants to perceive itself as well. They were, humanity has its worst and its best. Along the route, we saw humanity as at its best. In an unbelievable shows, hope and solidarity and unbelievable quantities of generosity, which was humbling. I'll just come in though. You mentioned Nizar Bari anticipating that Amal would remember Bari. I mean, I remember Bari. I mean, as producer, people might expect me to know what's going on and what's gonna happen. Very often, I didn't know what was gonna happen. I mean, I had certain responsibilities, but they weren't the same as Nizar's, which was to create the event. So I didn't know very often what the event was gonna be. And the event at Bari when she arrived, I remember sitting there in the courtyard outside the cathedral, watching it at night, surrounded by, oh, I don't know, a couple of thousand people from the city and from the neighborhood. And event followed event. There were dancers, there were singers, there were musicians, there were pianists, there were a bunch of people turned up from Brazil. There was a Palestinian singer. And I remember thinking, I can't believe it's going on and it's going on and it's going on. And the reason it went on and on was because so many people wanted to express their commitment to the needs of vulnerable people. And the fact that they were enabled to express this, their goodwill, their people of goodwill looking for a way to express their powerful feelings of goodwill. I mean, it is one of the ways in which Amal, we believe, I believe, had to some degree unexpected, maybe to a large degree unexpected effect on the lives of the villages, towns and cities that she walked through. That commitment to welcoming, that commitment to care is really sitting with me. Anybody, anyone of us who works on migration and as many of you do are often mired in the hostile environment or Governor Abbott's declaration of an invasion of migrants on the Southern border, right? And these things sit so heavily with us so often. And what is so striking to me about the walk and about Linda y Libre is the rootedness in community, the rootedness in asking normal people, ordinary people to make up for what our governments are lacking, to make up for the ways in which we can take care of each other and depend on our communities in order to keep moving. I'd love to open up to audience questions. Can we have some house lights, Andrew? And I don't know if we have a roving mic, but what I can do is just amplify your questions once you ask them so that Nassar and David can hear. So any questions for Nassar and David about the walk or for Eric about Linda y Libre? We're open to the process, we're open to the ideas behind it. David, David Diamond, is that you in the back? Yeah. There are microphones on either side. Oh, brilliant. Yes. And they'll be helpful for the live stream and for the Zoom participants. Thank you. You're welcome. Hello, David. Can you hear me? Hi, David. Hi. It's great to see you. This is really more a reflection and a comment. We were fortunate, Elamama Umbria to welcome Amal and last summer. And just to share from the other perspective, the experience of having Amal come to Elamama, we had arranged our own welcome for her. She, we had, there are local refugees in Spoleto who came to Elamama and a lot of the musicians and dancers who are part of the Elamama family were there. And we created puppets as they'll tell you, like birds were a theme throughout the walk. We created these bird puppets to that Amal would follow through the journey. The experience for us, maybe just for me, was moving experience to not only be with Amal, but to see how she related to the community that was there. The refugees and the Elamama family offered her their will, their wishes, their best wishes for her journey, the wishes that she'd find her mother and they did it in like seven, eight different languages. We danced together, which was really wonderful to see Amal dance with members of our community and there was a joyous feeling about it. And it, talk about memory is something I will always remember. And I know that everybody who was there will as well. There's a kind of, as they described, you know, a feeling of being with her, you forget this is a puppet, the way the puppeteers were able to show her expressions so vividly. And maybe that's part of the question that we're doing to talk about is the way the puppeteers work and how they manipulated or embodied this character was really extraordinary. I don't know if you want to speak to that. I'm happy to say something about that. Obviously we were working with Hand Spring, which are spectacular and the Hand Spring puppeteers, the people that kind of the Hand Spring alumni are fantastic, but we brought a lot of puppeteers that went from Hand Spring. We brought puppeteers from Ethiopia and Palestine and Syria and Taiwan and South Africa and some Brits. So the human experience and the diversity inside the team of puppeteers was important because everybody shared their story. Every puppeteer that was in Amal made a different interpretation of who this girl is based on their knowledge, based on their experiences, based on their hearts. And that was fantastic to see. Obviously we also had a huge learning curve in rehearsals about who she is, what she can do. But from day one in Gaziantep and until the last day in Manchester, there was continual growth. One of the most beautiful aspects of this project for me artistically was she kept developing, she kept becoming more and more detailed, more and more complex. She grew in the story, but also the company that was working with her grew to fit the needs of the story. So it became this two parallel lines that merged our ability to become more and more detailed, more and more elaborate in what we can do. And of course it's a physical feat like no other. It's a puppeteer standing on stilts, carefully manipulating a very complicated system of pulleys and levers to make her be expressive. And two other puppeteers that are the hands that all three of them become one person in a way, all three of them become Amal. So there's a lot of listening and a lot of careful negotiation. And slowly, slowly as the team gelled, this experience became more and more profound to see her suddenly take off and become her, she's never a real human being, but as close as we can. Puppeteers. Thanks you guys, good to see you. Thank you, David. Nazar and David, it's Derek. I just wanna thank you for, I've had the privilege of having a few conversations with you, but I just wanna share, I've had coming to the end of four days of this gathering and I know you hope to be here in person, but you're here huge on our screen as we wind down and it's hard for you to feel probably the degree to which the themes and energies of Amal are sort of the themes of these four days, the number of performances and conversations that Amal resonates with and your lab family, Nazar, we've hosted you a number of times and so just wanna sort of acknowledge how close we feel even though you're on the Zoom screen to you and to thank you for taking the time. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit because we're honored to be in conversation with you about the future steps and thinking about bringing Amal to the United States and what that means and what the kind of early thinking is about, obviously the big differences and I know other parts of the world as well, but specifically as you look ahead to the US, what might be on your mind about that? Thank you, Derek, it's great for us to be with you. It's privilege for us to be in this gathering. You're right, we are. When we started the walk last year, we imagined that it would be one journey. Even while we were walking, we received some invitations that we couldn't resist. One was to go to the climate summit that took place in November last year in Glasgow. She was invited to go and we couldn't, on her behalf, we couldn't resist that. So she spent a few days in Glasgow and was presented one of the big plenary sessions, a session on gender from the platform introduced by the president of the Climate Summit. Speaking as it were through some of the young activists from various parts of the world and then she was invited to the Hague to open a new art center there and we had some days in the Hague where they were especially keen for a mile to suggest to the city, the Hague, that this new art center was for everybody, including the many refugees who've now settled in the Hague. And so yes, we are looking to find ways to honor some of the other invitations. And as Derek mentions, we are in the process of planning a visit by her to the US, possibly two visits. It's early days. We both just returned from New York where we've been meeting possible partners that we can work with. Nizar, do you wanna say anything about that? Yeah, we're planning a journey in the States. Obviously it will have a different emphasis than the one we took last year. For me, there's one thing I need to say about Amal because it's important in the context of understanding who she is. And she's a very big girl and she's very visible and that's part of the idea. She renders visibility to invisible people. But she's also vulnerable somehow. Also in the mechanics, but also in the heart. And I think that one thing that we're taking very, we're kind of starting to think very carefully about is how does the different vulnerabilities of different communities, how can they manifest through her? And when I talk about vulnerabilities and that's important to say, we're not talking about misery. This voyage from the beginning wasn't, oh, poor refugee, let's feel better because we're taking care of her. It was a celebration of who she is and the celebration of the people around her and this is something we want to keep investigating. We are planning a journey across the States. We're obviously in very early days of what the shape is. But I know there's many people in that auditorium that we're on the screens of. And it would be great to hear your ideas and to make partnerships if this is something that is interesting for people in the room. Of course, we can't go everywhere. But the collective experience in the lab, I'm sure, is a very, very rich place to start digging. So, and you can always reach us on through our website, which is Walk With Amal. And if you have ideas or suggestions or when I get involved in any way, it would be great to hear them. We're very keen to do the same grueling process again. Yeah, I mean, just to underline what Nazar was saying. I mean, when we walked through Europe, I mean, Nazar described this, but we worked by trying to understand what meaning Amal would have to the people that she was visiting, working very much through the understanding of artists and other people in the localities that she went through. And we will do the same in the US. I mean, a lot of the work we're doing at the moment is exploratory, is finding partners who can teach us and then work with us. What the meaning of Amal's visit to them might be. Yes, thank you. We are so thrilled to be collaborators with you at the lab, but there's this, you can't see them, but I can see them. And there's a whole room of people who I think would be just lovely hosts for Amal's journey. So thank you for that invitation, Nazar. The website is Walk With Amal, right? Yes. On the other website, you will find an email address that you can contact us and we'd welcome all communications from anybody here this evening. We'd be very happy to hear from you. Thank you. A question on the side. Hi, thank you so much to both of you for this presentation and the amazing work that you do with so much thought, consideration, and care for these stories. I have been following Amal's journey in part, not the whole journey through social media as she started walking from Turkey. And my question is that unfortunately in reality, sometimes the migrant and refugee narratives are not all welcomed with positivity and care the way that Amal has been shown to being received by many communities all over the world and across Europe. There is still a lot of resistance towards migrants and refugees and also many of them are not necessarily welcomed and are not able to integrate into the new host communities. So I'm wondering if any of these stories that are not positive, that are of resistance and not wanting them have come out with Amal if there were any people, whether in communities or in any of the cities that she passed through, can be from authorities, people of power, the communities, artists, I don't know, anyone who were vocal about this. So I'm really curious about that. Thank you. I'll start, and I'm sure Nizam will have things to say about it as well. Thank you for what you say. Of course, what you say is true. It is true. I mean, again, just with reference to the UK, our government has deliberately created a hostile environment. It's called the hostile environment. That is the intention. And again, I mean, the way in which they failed to welcome Ukrainian refugees the way the rest of Europe. But we're aware of this. I mean, all over Europe, but probably all over the world. You're entirely correct. And in working with artists, principally with artists, but civil society leaders as well, we were working with people of goodwill. I mean, it was only people of goodwill who would choose to work with us. We did have some experience of hostility, not a great deal. I don't, you know, one sort of feels like I don't want to, in this conversation point, to particular places or people, but there was hostility to her on faith grounds. I mean, just in one country. And that made a few days that we had challenging. Nizad, do you want to say any more about that? You know, obviously, nobody in this project is naive. We know the hostility. There was a deliberate act of shifting the focus from the harsh environment to the possibilities. And I think the potential was a big word for the walk. The potential of collaboration, the potential of riches, that migration, be it refugee, be it immigrants, be it displaced people, the richness that these people come from and with was a big focus. I think of Kholm for a second, where on the footsteps of the cathedral, there was a beautiful dance from Kurdistan. And for a nanosecond, the grayness of the cathedral of Kholm was less gray. That's exactly what this project is about. You know, refugees, being a refugee is a political term. A refugee should be a very short experience while somebody is seeking safety. It's not a culture, it's not who you are. It's just a political circumstance that should stay as short and as humane as possible. Alas, it isn't. You know, I come from a Palestinian background. We have refugees that are refugees for now almost eight years and still live in refugee camps. And all over the world, this is a phenomena that is happening again and again in hostile environments. So we weren't naive. We just wanted to shift the focus to the potential, to what can happen if people think differently. I think that was the attempt in the walk. And at the same time, also, while we are walking in these hostile environments, people from refugee backgrounds, from immigrant backgrounds, from second migration generation that can see their father or their mother's story is told and is celebrated by a community. I think this has changed for them as well. So it goes both ways. And that was the attempt. Of course, reality is much crueler than the way Amal has been welcomed. We have time for a last question from Ifrah Mansour, puppeteer, brilliant new lab fellow. I'm so glad that you're in on this conversation, Ifrah. I absolutely love this. Thank you so much. I feel like Amal did something most refugees often do in the most private, painful way. You go through this painful journey. It's so invisible. Sometimes you think even God can't see you. So even the simple fact that she was walking, that the world can see her and touch her, I think is enough for now. It's enough for now. I did this walk as a child, the walk that I melted. And I felt like I got to be seen. So I feel like I don't have a question. I just wanted to admire on you. And I did want it to know if you had any connections. How did refugee children reacted, connected, responded to Amal? And thank you so much for giving me a healing. Niza, do you want to take this one? Thank you for your kindness, first of all. Yeah, along the walk, she met many refugees, many refugee children. That was part of the idea. Her being visible and rendering visibility to the story, to the narrative, to the dignity, because it is about dignity at the end of the day was a big part of the walk. And time after time, after time, we heard people react in the same way that you reacted now, where people say, thank you for telling our story or thank you for telling my mother's story or my father's story. Some of our close friends on the walk talked about this as their moment of closure with the departure from home, which for me was mind-boggling because she's just a puppet. But she wasn't just a puppet. She became the hopes of a lot of people. A lot of people that went through this journey and a lot of people that want the world to change. And I think that was, she was an excuse for many people to think in a certain way. And that became her power. You know, one of my favorite quotes from Judaism is if you change or save, and the word in Hebrew can be read in both ways, one soul, you've changed the world entire. If we changed one person doing 8,000 kilometers, it was worth the walk. I hope we changed more. Thank you. Thanks, Nisar. Thank you, Ma. We started the gathering with a question around hope and around hopeful. What gives us hope? And so Eric, David, Nisar, I invite you to tell us as we close not only what you hope for with these incredible projects, but what is it for you that is making the grayness less gray? I'll start. Give you some time. And then we'll go to Eric and then to David and then to Nisar for the last word. For me, the grayness is less gray because I get to work with high school students who are extraordinary young people. They're so smart, they're so engaged and curious and passionate. And every day in rehearsal and in workshop with them, they bring such care to our storytelling and to each other. And that gives me hope. I think the thing that gives me hope around this project and around my own practice is that for so many of the students, this is their first theatrical experience and that we're able to bring something to their school that is in their language unapologetically and honoring their experiences by creating space in an environment where they hopefully feel comfortable and hopefully feel like the theater can be for them as well that this can be a seed for them to tell their own story in a more complete and fleshed-out way. David? I guess in these gray days, what gives me hope is the memory that when we started this, it was an idea, it was a little idea that just popped up one day out of nothing. And when I first started to mention it to people, the response was, that's a terrible idea. And secondly, it's impossible. You can't do it, it's too ambitious. Don't, you know, why don't you just do a nice little show in a nice little theater? What gives me hope is that it is possible to take small ideas and turn them into big things. And I hope that we can share hope in that if we could do it, other people could do it. That your ideas, which seem impossible to achieve, can also be achieved. For me, of course, pre-walk, if you'd ask me, I'm a complete pessimist coming from where I come from. I think that what gives me hope today is the depth of the emotion that we can create in people. And that is very powerful to see the immediate effect that something positive, something hopeful, that hope is contagious. I think that what gives me hope is suddenly realizing that hope is a bit like a plague. I am sorry to mention the end of two terrible years of that, but hope is a bit like a plague. It spreads and it's our responsibility to spread it. I know it sounds a bit like a commercial for kindergarten or something, but it is our responsibility as artists to spread new ideas and spread a different way of thinking about our problems because we are the only one who will rethink them. The politicians won't. They're getting busy to get reelected in the same old patterns that they have. We have a responsibility and that makes me hopeful. Thank you for this responsibility. Thank you for sharing it with us. Eric, Nisar, David, thank you so much for being with us this afternoon. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. I just want to echo the thanks to Nisar and David and Eric and the extraordinary company of the piece and I just want to, we're sort of end to Devika for sort of masterfully orchestrating this symphony with such care and Devika-ness for lack of a better word. We're sort of in, so we're gonna do, we're moving to the final movement as we're of the gathering. And what we'd like to do is, because we've been sitting for a while, is sort of like just a couple minute pause or a stretch to sort of allow people who need to clear things to reset because we're just gonna move into kind of a very simple but hopefully meaningful sense of closure. So we don't want a like intermission with new energy in the lobby and trying to grab you back. We're gonna just start that in like, and frankly, nothing could sort of be more perfect than this conversation in terms of the energy we want to take into that. So if we could just take a three to four minute pause, be where you need to be, but then if you could join us back for closing rituals, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for the board. All right, come on in, friends. Join us, join us, join us. We could keep our slides up or most, yeah, that would be good. Join us. I'm gonna actually not speak for long. You've heard from me a lot over these past four days. I just have some to express on the end of these four days. At the welcome at the invocation, which many of you were out, although it's kind of been beautiful that each day there's a slightly separate configuration of entrances and exits. I just kind of sum in some of the meanings of the word to gather, and I'm just gonna repeat those and just as a group to sort of, if we can think about, you know, at the Gar Modest Hope is that some of these are what come together to assemble. To bring together and take in from scattered places or sources, to harvest, to embrace and unfold, like gathering a child in your arms, to develop a higher degree of something as to gather speed or momentum, energy, to gain understanding or illumination, like I gather from what you were saying, to summon up or to conjure thoughts or ideas. And I think the one that I'd like to sort of end on that I think is the one that's the deepest in the heart of what the lab would hope to be, what we hope this event is, is to draw and to hold together as we gather fabric. I think what we do, what this is, is about radical hospitality. We mean it, it's not casual, it's learned from the people in this room, it's not something we made up to be nicer than other people, like it's learned behavior from this work, from the material experiences of what people in our lab family endure and persevere and make art through. It's not casual and we mean it. This is free for a reason in the sense that it's not about like who paid their $12 to get into this show. Like we want this to be a home, a refuge, a catalytic space for the people who care about what's going on here. And so the fact that it feels that way for many and for more is special. We don't tend to do it perfectly, but we draw so much energy from the community that chooses through various distances and challenges and obstacles to come together in this moment, in this pandemic, in this way. And it's been an incredible four days for us. We didn't know it's for sure that we could do it and certainly knowing those these days what it will look like. We really had no idea. We were nervous and stressed and it has been really, really important for taking the, not really the chance but for coming and giving it to yourselves. So specifically, there are some people to thank and acknowledge. You're seeing that the first day it takes a village and that's true, but it's a, it's not a, again, it's not, this is not an uncomplicated thing and there's really no one whose job it is to produce the gathering. So what happens is a lot of people with a lot of other things to do come together to figure out what this event is and it's not easy. And so I just want to acknowledge the care and human initiative and engagement that we've got from a lot of people. I'm not going to get everybody but I do want to, first of all, just acknowledge that as you move through these spaces and experience these events, there is a incredible apparatus of technical team in these spaces making this happen that had, you know, very little time, few resources and really was extraordinary. I could say someone tried to put these events, so many of these events in this space together, the support and humanity of that team, meeting artists for 90 minutes and being like, let's rewrite that life to you. Oh, I know what this will be. It was really, really incredible. I want to acknowledge Laura Smith, the stage manager of this. You need the best stage manager in the world. You go to Laura Smith and we got her for a couple of projects right now. But then around her, this team in this space, Ben and Andrew and Devin and I'm not even now going to remember all the names, Sean and that group in particular became like a well-oiled machine under Tori, our production manager and stuff just happened and it seemed to go smoothly, it's because of that. Around the building there were many, many other people in the other spaces who were key shea and so many people, Mark, who were helping and make things happen and we just deeply appreciate that. We have this incredible lab team that is its own machine and people with an awful lot of commitment to what this event is, a family of people working on it in different ways. I'm gonna save a couple for last but to Ijoma, to Melly, to Cornelius, to our incredible student team led by Jameson and Will and I'll say Colm, we have Colm and Sirica, we had an amazing alum, JT, who was back and really oversaw a lot of the kind of operations and audience and artist services for this. So I wanna just thank that incredible team. I wanna acknowledge that Jared Mazzacci, who was an artist who you saw last night on Here I Am but really was a sort of partner in helping us think about how this whole event could kind of happen technologically as a great, great kind of collaborator and brought to us a lot of these folks and I wanna thank Jared for that and I wanna acknowledge that in an event like this, in an event like this, a lot of vulnerable, beautiful, intimate stuff is happening and is going on and a lot of it is because we're trying to document it and remember it. People are taking pictures of it and this is no small thing because how that gets done and who's doing it and what the relationship is matters and I just wanna specifically shout out, we got also Teresa who's a brilliant photographer joining us but I wanna specifically shout out Manas and Catalina. It's a different thing when the people doing that at the gathering, it's big work but our people who are of the gathering, who haven't just been hired in to do it but are like here with their entire beings and these are incredible, incredible friends of human beings who are doing it with love and commitment so I wanna acknowledge that. I wanna thank Cynthia for 10 years which was great partnership. Tell you the truth which is that if any of this event has felt worthwhile, this has been coming together, I've been chairing a department which puts one in this pandemic in an extremely cranky city. The fact that this event is happening at all and the ability to feel like we could move forward with it at all and pretty much all of the really difficult things to deal with and to do this at Georgetown, there are many to do this at all in the world. How do you do this? Well, it's like so visas, food, travel, artists housing, the kind of care of connection, every sort of element of that is because of two people who just decided to do that with love and care and I'd like them to come up here and I think you know who they are but our general manager and associate producer who started six months ago inherited this project and has just kind of and has a lot else to do which she was not hired to produce the gathering she was hired to do a whole lot of things that just happened to include this so that's her syn-francois and then Emma Jaster, our fellow's program. Thank you so much. We have our fellow's which is actually a name that has evolved because now we also have the student fellows who are here on campus so the program just keeps growing and growing and growing and I want to acknowledge that we're now in this is our third round of fellows so we have the inaugural fellows and Devaka and Gideon and Manuel and Asif who've been with us these four days. Thank you so much for joining us to us and to the other fellows to have you here and to have that continuity so thank you and to the new fellows who will no longer be the new fellows but I need better like titling systems for your classes because hopefully there will be more and like 21, 23 is like what? So I'm open to suggestions but thank you all for being here it's such a pleasure to meet you all in person and to see you interacting with the other work and to see you being with each other and at this particular moment I would very much like to invite the COVID cohort to this stage. It is your work that has been the center and the anchor of these four days and please come and join us. With us these four days Tra and Gideon who was here and taught a wonderful workshop but it's not here today and Karishna Bakemi whom you may have seen doing the incredible panel around musical theater in Kenya and Lloyd, you have Dino, Asha, Tsuja Lodi, Jasmine, Karina, Frances, Longo, Ada, Mujina and Hector Flores Comaccio you have been such an inspiration to me over the two years that I have known you and when I look for my family and my people in the world I look to you. So early on I believe Asif who is co-programming with me in the first six months of the fellowship the gift of the fellowship is you to each other so this is your last official day but it never ends and for the rest of your lives you have each other. And I'm impressed. Moment on we have each other. This work is often feels lonely and coming to the gathering we find our brethren and I would like if you would be willing to come down and let's see if we can actually break the architectural hierarchy of this Western proscenium space and take hands in a circle. So I think we're probably about a good moment. Mamu, will you raise your hand? Could we make you that row, this edge of the circle and we can come down into the aisles and around and I think we will all be able to take it out. We'll be right across here. Do you know? What? I don't know. I don't know what. I can hear the difference. Yes. Across that road. We forgot too many speakers down. Oh, where's the head up? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I didn't think at all. Reach across, reach across, yes. We have to be in the light. Yes, yes. I want the lights coming up. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Yes, thank you, Katie. Reach across, reach across. That's good. Keep going. Everyone. Come in, come in. Come in, come in. No outside. There's no outside. There's one. Rafa, come in. I'm going to start playing. What? Come join the circle. Oh, she's too loud. How is that for you? Loud. Because we've been labored. Oh, I'd love to. I don't know. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Oh. Thank you Thank you. Thank you, thank you, yeah, to take the moment to reorganize the structure that we are given, but we are very capable of doing so. I just want to invite us, for those who are able to ground at the beginning, to take a moment to ground again what I have heard from others throughout from a desire to be around the fire, or coming back to the well for our nourishment and sustenance, and that we can be that for each other. So if you would like to just take a moment to remember a couple of things, moments that you would like to carry with you from the time you have shared here, however long, whether it was today, or since Wednesday, or since Monday, feel that, feel, feel, feel, and let those moments come into your heart center and make a home there. So that you may carry the strength, the wisdom, the challenges, the love, the feel, feel, feel of each other as we go on to wherever we move to next. Thank you for sharing your life, and I give you now to Ambassador Ali Madu if you can stay right here in this circle. Okay, what did he say? He said, oh, hey, oh. It's a song, it's whatever, originally from South Africa, borrowed by Zimbabwe's, but it has become a very global sensation. I'll give you the words for my colleagues who want to study. So let's go show. Go show? Don't say go show, but just do a show. Show. Show. Loser. Loser. Show. Show. Loser. Show. Loser. Cooler? Cooler. Zontava. Zontava. So, show, show, Loser. Show. S Music. So, show, loza. Show. Show. Loza. S Music. Show S Music. Show S Music. Cooler Guitar? Cooler Guitar? Cooler Guitar? Stimela? Stimela? Stimela? Spoonme? Spoonme? Let's say Zimbabwe? Let's say Zimbabwe? So, if you go like this, so listen, show, show.