 Welcome to the Martin E. Siegel Theatre Center here at the Graduate Center CUNY and to Prelude 21. Start making sense. It is our annual Theatre and Performance Festival celebrating the work of New York theatre artists of ensembles and it's hard enough in normal times to create work for the stage and for spaces inside and outside but in the time of corona we all are faced with exceptional challenges and we are here to celebrate again the extraordinary achievements that come out of the New York Theatre community. It is time I think and we feel to start making sense to ask questions why are we making theatre but also how are we producing it and for whom. And this is a great investigation again into the mechanics of making art in New York City and we also invited theatre ensembles from around the U.S. from Detroit and Cincinnati and Lewis and Philadelphia and New Orleans to join us and this will be extraordinary. Look into what is on the minds of artists right now. Now we also have many panel discussions. We have an award which will be giving out to honor outstanding members of the New York Theatre community so I would like to all of you to join in and get an insight of what is happening. It's my mic on now as it works. So welcome everybody here at the Martin E. Siegel Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY in Midtown Manette and I was just saying it's getting already dark. It's five o'clock and it's no longer a bright sky so we are slowly entering in the twilight zone and as we are perhaps a little bit in this time of COVID where we are in between COVID and non-COVID or still COVID we don't really know where we are, where we are going and this is the last panel actually. The festival is over tonight. We have a presentation at seven o'clock tonight but this is the last panel and it's a very important one I feel. It's looking at why we do not have a global big theatre festival in New York City in the summer of festival like Avignon Festival, like the Edinburgh Festival, the Theatodeveld Festival or Nina Festival. So we feel it's something of importance, it's a significance to have a global exchange and so we are looking here if something like this could happen if we could build this coalition in this time after Corona and perhaps there is a chance to reason we learned that the Avignon Festival started after World War II the Edinburgh Festival started after World War II the Ruhr Festival started after World War II so perhaps there is something of a rejuvenation, a celebration of the city and life but every city needs its own festival. People really want it. Maybe there are reasons there has never been a big festival in New York because it's a year-long festival anyway. So with us we have great leaders of cultural institutions all great thinkers and artists and so we just want to listen to the ideas. There are prelude creators but also outside and we have with us Elena, David, Krista, Nile and Libos. So thank you really for joining. My name is Frank Henschka. I'm here at the Siegel Center where we normally bridge academia in professional theater, international and American theater but you feel perhaps at a time now we go a little bit outside of our place. Everybody advice us and look at the city and the public spaces and festivals how we can make a meaningful contribution after all we are this at the city university. I would like to take the moment to acknowledge the Lenape people upon whose land we are gathered today and also the airwaves in a way and we do pay respect to the Lenape people and the ancestors past, present and also to the future. So this is important to us. So welcome everybody and maybe we just go clockwise and start with Elizabeth who is maybe here with us in the last minute Woody King and has a shoot today from the Federal Theater. She's just started running the great new Federal Theater in New York City with that long history but she also speaks for this theater for the collision of colors theaters of the color. It's like over 50 now they got together got also a big support from the city a big shot in the arm. So Elizabeth tell us a little bit about you and your work. Hello, I'm Elizabeth Van Dyke and thank you so much for having me. It's a great pleasure to be included in this illustrious group of artists. I am currently the producing artistic director of Woody King Junior's New Federal Theater. I feel that I am honoring our legacy and building a bridge for the future and I am told representing the Coalition of Theaters of Colors which was founded several years ago about 13, 20, 15 years ago to face the inequity and funding for theaters of color. And so initially it was 13 original members and now it has grown to over 52 and it's wonderful and I'm just happy to be here. That's it in a nutshell. Yeah, and you really, the city listened to all of you and I think Jimmy Van Bremer, the great, you know, councilman or speaker at the time, majority whip who supported you guys and everybody. It's a great support of the arts and helped you to be there. Niall tell us a little bit about you. Hi Frank and hello everyone. I'm really grateful to be here. My name is Niall Harris. I'm calling in from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. I'm really excited to be on this panel. It's just that I'm not representing an institution here this afternoon or this early evening but I'm an independent artist and a curator and I'm one of the curators of the Prelude Festival this season as a part of the chain curation which has been really, really exciting and a really wonderful new way of bringing in new voices into the theater space and I'm really excited to be with you all here today to vision about what we might want the future of a festival in New York City to look like. Thank you. Kristen. Hi, I'm Kristen Martin. I'm the founding artistic director of Here Art Center and also co-founding director of the prototype festival. I'm interested in contemporary, relevant, socially immediate work in all disciplines, theater, music, dance, puppetry, media, arts. Here has been around almost 30 years and we do all kinds of stuff. We support artists from inception through work in progress, workshop and fully produce their work and help launch an entour. We have guests in our space. We're a hybrid organization. We're a producer, a presenter and a venue and prototype is an opera and music theater festival of contemporary work. It goes all around the city. Here is the smallest venue and we usually work with five or six other venues and I co-produce that festival with Beth Morrison projects. So I'll just start there. Great. Thank you, Elena. Hi, everyone and great to be here. I am executive and artistic director of PS21, Performance Spaces for the 21st Century. It's a new venue in the Hudson Valley, two hours north of New York City. The closest town to us is Hudson, New York, about 15 minutes. We are at theater on two stages. One of the stages is an open-air pavilion roof covered theater and the smaller stage, which is a black box for about 120 seats. And we are on 100 acres of apple orchards and rolling hills and meadows that we own in the theater. And the reason you may not have heard of PS21 because it's kind of an emblematic also case of US philanthropy where it was built singularly by one person out of a checkbook. And it just shows you how US really is the country where you can give away that much money and you can either build a shed or you can build a small PS21, which is truly magnificent state-of-the-art LED lights, geothermal and allows the most sophisticated creation in multidisciplinary work. And that's actually what we indeed are very interested in, the kind of work that pushes the boundary of form that really would bring you to a concept, to the very different conceptions of what theater can be, how audience can experience it. During the last two years, we ran both seasons live. The first year that, and I'm the first executive director of the space, we re-imagined the season, ran it in 2020, both live and live streamed. And then in 2021, we launched full-scale and presented a variety of productions from international contemporary circus. We were one of the few presenters who brought international circus to the US and presented several premiers to contemporary opera. I raised the entire budget for all of our salaries. We have a tiny staff. Our season was from May through September and I raised the budget both for administration and for all of programming. I also program. And you will be more than welcome when we launch the next iteration. Good. And you know, and you have some ideas what a festival could be about Smithling or if we have another to be David. Hi, I'm David Bruin. I'm one of the curators of this year's Prelude Festival along with Nile. I'm also the executive artistic director at Celebration Barn Theater, which is a theater center in western Maine dedicated to physical theater, devising, clown, some circus and performer-generated work. We have 11 acres, so a small percentage of what Elena has, but we do have a few orchards on the property. So if you're ever in western Maine, please come by and let me know. Fantastic. Really, first of all, thank you all for joining us. The group is a mixture of Prelude curators and people like Elizabeth and Elena where we think highly of their work and the institutions and we just want to hear. So we are listening. The Segal Center, we are really thinking of getting involved or perhaps pounding something like a festival, a global festival outside perhaps in the public spaces. But we need to listen. We need to want to know what our colleagues and friends think and reflect. Warnings they have or some enthusiasm. What's there? New York City is a city of artists. I think there is no city in the U.S. where so many artists work so successfully in so, so many disciplines. Most probably no city in the Americas has so many artists among their population everywhere in all the five boroughs actually and not just as it used to be. People look at in Manhattan and it's so diverse. I think we have 150 languages in New York City. White population is actually now in the minority. It's not really reflected on the stages on the stories we hear and see. And public space is not fully used as perhaps it was in the 70s. We just had a talk yesterday about theater in the 70s and it talked about the time in the New York City at similar problems when they saw there would be the end of theater, the end of the city. We'll have to shut down. But performing arts were alive and people went outside. A lot of it actually happened. In public spaces. And there were small festivals touring the neighborhoods and small mobiles, jazz mobiles and Shakespeare mobiles. And so perhaps it's a time to reconnect and reinvent. So I would like to hear from you a little bit about the work of your institution and what, if someone has joined us or what can we learn from you for a festival. Also a global one where we present work from here, but also from our colleagues and brothers and sisters from around the world. How would it look like? We do know problems are global problems. Issues are global issues. Climate change, racism, sexism, homophobia, fascism. The limited access to education, to arts, to healthcare. And so we feel also theater has to be kind of reflected global stage we are in. And it actually has done that I think for over decades, but it's not as visible in all the theater that's already being done in the Bronx and Staten Island and Queens and everywhere. But how it's not as visible and not so supported if I'm right per head in the Bronx. You get four or five dollars cultural subsidies in Manhattan. It's 60 to $65. So it tells you a story. So maybe a little bit. We start with you again. I know you just started, but if somebody would say to you, hey, you guys at the federal theater participate, show something what do you do? Maybe also host something. What would you be interested in? And what would you say? What has a festival to offer you to get you excited to feel like that is something we would like to be part of it? What would you need? I have to say that listening to you about festivals it makes me review what has been done in the past. Just to look what has happened in the past to guide us toward what's happening in the future. That makes any sense. And some years ago, I think it was in the 90s, there was a young woman named Jacqueline Wade. She was quite ahead of her time. And she had a women of color festival. She had nothing but this dream and an idea. And that young woman went to every venue in New York City. And there was work done. You just got space. Spaces all over the city. That's one prototype. You go to festivals. There's the Fringe Festival, the Solo Festival, the Under the Radar Festival. They are now housed. And everybody on the panel, please correct me if I'm wrong with facts. They are housed under one umbrella. Then you go to something like the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem that started 20 years ago and it's every two years. And they invite people from all over the country and all over the world to come to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And it has changed the landscape of the entire state as hundreds of thousands of people have gone there. So those are and I think of La Mama, Ellen Stewart and her legacy that she has left, Mia continuing to tap into this international, artistic, global family. And this is the things that come to my mind. And I in 1999 started something called Going to the River, which was a festival of first, initially black and then women of color playwrights. It was just a festival I think of a bandara, a feast, a lot of work all happening at the same time. Happening all over the city. And Ellen, it would happen in maybe in Maine and in the Apple upstate, all over here, all over. And now you're even introducing, I guess, all of these international companies in addition to American companies and national companies, white, black all colors to come and I can only say a bandara which is feast is a delicious and wonderful idea. So I would say how can I be a part of it? Fantastic. We think also for the coalition it would be something of interest to host some international people but also show their own work. I think it would be something to explore. Sure. Nile, what do you think, what comes to your mind? When I think about what a successful theater festival might look like in the 21st century or in 2022, I think like you would have to be artist driven, I really think. I think that what we learned during our pandemic with so many institutions were speaking to listening to artists and trying to let artists steer the ship in regards to how we could create an ecosystem that was really sustainable for artists to participate in and I think that a festival of a new festival for the city would have to, I think approach it in the same way. I think that something that's been really exciting to see this summer and it wasn't contextualized was the city's artist corpse program where they're giving out grants to artists of $5,000 to do public interventions across the city and in a way that was a festival in a way maybe we may not have thought about it as such but giving artists $5,000 to do what they will with it and to collaborate with different venues across the city make permitting a lot easier to get public space to do interventions and I think that's a really interesting way of thinking about programming and then how we might intersect internationality into that is thinking about how we can really create spaces for collaboration of maybe curators putting together artists from different countries. I know Niles worked from New York I think he would really love so and so from Lithuania and bringing them together for a discriminant small residency at PS21 to come to a new work and to premiere it in the city for a summer because I feel like not a lot of what I think is great about festivals is you get to see a lot of work from all across the world but there is not a lot of opportunities for international artists to come together to create new work together so if we can find some sort of infrastructure for that if institutions are housing residencies to bring international artists together to make a new work for a festival in the city later in the summer that would be something as an artist that would be so thrilled and you know I work very sight responsively as an artist and you know being paired with another artist from across the world would be really exciting for me to make something new that maybe I would not have made with the suite of collaborators that I work with here in the city so that's something that I think would be really exciting for me is to think about how we can bring international artists together to create new work and really leading and letting artists steer the ship in regards to how they want their work to be presented well both of you said this it was significant and something we really would agree on Kristen you have done a lot you have seen a lot what comes to your mind well I also ran a summer festival for 19 years but I want to build on what we said like the history, there was a lot of summer at one point in the city there was Lincoln center there was my festival the American living room there was the French festival there was the Midtown theater festival the solo festival came later music theater festival came later there has been this but I think the thing that happens in other cities in the summer and particularly in Europe is that there's this really exciting decentralized opportunity to see a huge range of work and really building on Nile it would be awesome for it to be completely decentralized and I also thought there was a lot of exciting things happening this summer because of that city artists court fund and I think that a lot of organizations started to work outside because of COVID and my organization included we did a ton of work outside in the last year and we hadn't done as much of that and we did it in all five boroughs and there are audiences that you're reaching that you don't reach when they have to walk into the door of an institution and I think that's a really exciting opportunity is to invite people to participate who don't think they like art or don't necessarily go to art and then they discover it in their backyard in their home, in their park in front of their courthouse wherever you build that I think that there's a real hunger that people have and a curiosity when they have the opportunity to participate for free and that would be a really essential part I think to really welcome New York City to come to the work I think it's fundamental so artist driven public spaces people who normally don't go don't come yet or don't think theater is for them but Elena you have strong ideas also how it should not be what you feel is wrong you are what is your background your cultural, continental background where you're from maybe also a bit from the outside of New York where you've worked for long I grew up in the former Soviet Union and I came here as a student first to be in college and then graduate school and I stayed and have worked here ever since so I'm not so much an immigrant but as you would one would say gastrobiter in the cultural sphere and the only reason the only reason I mention my background is that it does inform very strongly my ideas especially progressive ideas of access and how one thinks about creating access for as larger number of people as possible but I mostly want to say how much how strongly I agree with my colleagues Elizabeth and Kristen about the importance of decentralization where people from the zip code 121 will take public subway public transportation to the Bronx to Queens to experience all kinds of work and to you know since Frank you mentioned festival they present all over the town and they present in all kinds of boroughs in Paris some which you really have to take quite a long subway ride to get to in a place like MC I think 93 it's called one of those Maison de Couture the palaces of culture that Anremal Rue built and I'm not sure I remember the quote correctly but he really was trying to build this kind of points of access where everybody everyone regardless of their background the aim was to offer to everybody the experience of culture or tempting experience of culture wherever they are just to give them a taste so that's a crucial aspect that is decentralization the second one it seems to me when we speak about access is what Kristen already pointed out affordability the meaning of the festival is people's celebration getting together so the affordability of tickets whether free or very affordable which is really not the case with any of the recent festivals as much as we like Lincoln Center Festival that's really not the festival that was uniformly affordable to many people so that is an extremely important aspect the third one is actually drawing people in and distributing tickets to certain population groups I know I sound like I come from a socialist space where there is suddenly a distribution of tickets but hey why not to certain kinds of population groups who as Kristen said may not think that it is for them and of course concomitant with this kind of festival spirit is a creation of public space and a discussion and a forum where you can freely discuss ideas your impressions and a hangout space try to have a drink at the Lincoln Center Plaza if you have a drink with you or somehow they you cannot stay at the Lincoln Plaza it's privately owned so the diminishment of public space even to spend time which is affordable I think in New York City is a huge problem the underutilization of public spaces and parks just like what Kristen mentioned one of the initiatives we had in the Hudson Valley because we are also overwhelmed by this exodus of wealthy New Yorkers and gentrification in the Hudson Valley we took our international circus productions to town parks where people are and they are the town park is 10 minutes from us where a lot of families would never come to our space and we decided that this kind of conceptual circus is in the way certain companies work which is very much embedded in the community and where the work is very much based in the idea of working with you know the nature of work is not the product the show that you come and present and then you leave but let's say a theatrical participatory installation is one of the circus ideas we are bringing next summer so those are all sort of festival ideas from the type of nature of work to you know affordability of spaces and a lot of spaces parks you know parking lots everywhere around David tell us a little bit what's in your mind you've been a curator you've worked a lot with the foundry theater with Melanie Joseph on a great project that really also reflect on the city what comes to your mind when you hear a festival well the thing that interests me is let me start from maybe a premise that the rest of the panel may not share which is for me there's a lot of opportunities in New York to see work that artists are presenting from around the world I mean even if you just look at the larger institutions the park avenue armory the performance center that's going to happen downtown bam there's a lot of opportunities to see work so what interests me the most I have to say I'm not doctrinaire about this maybe it's my own peculiar interest is the opportunity for artists and audiences to train and to study and when I say study I mean basically people getting together to kind of figure shit out it doesn't have to be a kind of curriculum and work at universities you know that actually getting together with your peers to kind of figure shit out is one of the hardest things to do at a university right because the university is about a kind of certain professional certification assorting assignments and such sorry I'm in a hotel room not in my home and my computer is on an ironing board so that's why they give here so I'm really interested in what the festival can offer artists to study and so I mean I guess Frank I'll say one thing which is like I am maybe less compelled by the model of Avignon or if you have to develop than I am in something like the Prague Quadrennial which devoted to design and sconography in this kind of very broad European sense so the question I ask myself is what would we focus on in New York and what I see my peers asking each other and trying to figure out on their own is how can we be workers how can we change the industry so that it aligns with our values what levers do we have and to pull and what ways do we have to organize and maybe rather than thinking about what work can artists bring to the city a question we could ask is what do artists need to learn who can they study with because the people at you know Hunts Point Produce in the Bronx you know they know how to seize power we saw that in January 21 or they had a six day strike you know the teachers they know how to organize and how to struggle right strike MoMA and the movement for Palestinian lives was kind of certain Sunset Park those people know how to fight so maybe the opportunity for the festival is less what can we bring to the city but what can we learn from the people you know engaged in their work in their habits of assembly in their forms of study so that was a kind of contrarian take but that's really what's on my mind no no no I think that that is all very very significant point let me also repeat what we heard a little bit throughout the day I think the idea of we had a panel with CUNY theaters we have about 21 theaters into CUNY or 25 with the largest theater system actually in the nation but it's not visible there's very little money it's completely underfunded like every public institution they're struggling for survival there most of them are closed only Lehman College is going to open up we learned today we're lucky to get a big grant and so they said we have to activate these public spaces artists should not drop in and then you know drop out like come back to to tourist destination you know where you're flying in a gated community and then you leave two days later artists should stay slow down collaborate what Nile said you know with local people and create something together new artists as curators also said it should be really a lot about refugees about immigrants and the stories that we need to hear now so we deal with problems that are in front of us also people who never go to this theater how we can reach them has to be affordable big theme was families kids theater for kids for teenagers people who now it wants to go with two or three kids and grandpa to a Broadway show or somewhere it will cost them six or eight hundred dollars to get transportation they go out and eat something it's impossible that's why nobody goes in these audience are significant and as everybody said the workers the ones who are celebrated in the hospitals the bus drivers the people in the stores the shelves where's their access to the arts where the stories we can look at create life and be part of that kind of civilized world we all dream about other said it should really feature artists from neighborhoods also that's important people who live there you know should also show their work and they see them later on the streets and then we also should have small works not just the big Bolshoi ballet crying in but the idea of small works and small spaces that are significant in countries and continents all around the world and there is a lot what we are missing so what do you think would be a big mistake what should be avoided you know what would be the wrong thing at the moment to do but what might be tempting and I think Elena spoke a little bit to it but what do you feel is of urgency and what should not be done I'll open it up to everybody what should be afraid of in case theater fully starts again my sarcastic answer is a single white man curating that that's my my flip answer for you but nobody's going to do that and that's a big answer and that's an important answer you know like this prelude also we had this chain curation we had 12 curators for 12 works it was fantastic the mixture the diversity and also the surprises but it's risky and it's not we are not in control really we give up but it's I loved it it's so vibrant it's so great but this is a good really good point not someone in charge and I think Niles point that artists should be in charge I very much want to continue what David brought up where the kind of forum that a festival would provide is really a forum for maybe descent and the creation and the kind of breaking of structures and the elucidation of what impedes equity, access I don't want this festival to be another kind of new NYC Go opportunity with a generous funding from the Bloomberg Foundation to other big foundations and then going as business as usual where the action this event is funded generously but the actual conversation and how we work stays the same so that I think is to be avoided I have a question for you Elena do you think an institution has the capacities to actually facilitate something like that the institutions themselves they don't have financial capacities now but the institutions and artists and other actors in this so called industry or community do just what David said about teachers organizing there is a there are examples of the kind of community building and resistance building that if we are not an institution or a single person but coming together as a community that I think we can do a lot more than what was done before I think something that came up in a conversation that Frank and I had with some other presenters was an idea of thinking about okay you have a Manhattan set and even in Manhattan you have different subsets that are kind of representing their communities and then you have Queens and you have a set of Queen presenters and people that are working in smaller communities in Queens and so that there's a lot of independence but there can also be some dialogue and conversation about how you might influence each other and feed off each other and build off each other in an interesting way yeah you really have to be also perhaps even tour a piece within the boroughs Brooklyn is the fifth largest city of the United States it's a city actually and often something that's been shown never even goes there will never be seen it doesn't touch it a little bit for you and the 50 theaters you collaborate with what do you feel would for everybody of these theaters would be asked to be a part of it what do you think what they would like to do what would be helpful what would be inspiring I'm thinking yeah I want to ask David and Elena a question about you're talking about dissent can you explain that a little bit or banding together would you explain that I'm just curious I just want to explore that where that's going if you don't mind is that a right question Elena would you like to speak I'm happy to go ahead well I think in here I'm really just following the thought of the black scholar and poet Fred Moten and his collaborator Stefano Harney when I say that for me any kind of dissent any kind of comportment against the institution so if we're striking you know, Broadway let's say which I'm not saying people should but if we are I think that that orientation toward the institution is really thought of as a defense a protective layer against what I think is really important which are practices of sharing and solidarity and ways of getting together and ways of coming together that are not privatized and conditioned by capital by the need to work so for me I'm less interested maybe primarily in dissent as in a kind of like reacting to what you know a party is doing whether it's the public theater or the city of New York or related companies the developer then I am in kind of how can we work within but also outside of the institutions that we call the theater which is really the theater industry how can we all get together and by all I mean communities who share values who have a vision for the world who have questions they want to pursue together how can they get together and not be waiting for a larger institution to give them the green light so I'm not sure if that answers your question but that's really how I think about it do you feel that smaller institutions are waiting for big institutions to give them the green light no not necessarily I mean I've certainly my own work I've tried to be proactive and forthright and tried to create fair working conditions try to advance anti-racist imperatives but I think so no I don't this is not me saying that well smaller institutions are incapable of doing those things but I think that if I understand right from your question but also from the answers we can also see that perhaps the festival that should not be feeding the machine the big entertainment machine the Netflix's the kind of sugar industry you know of the everything is fine we should go ahead there are real problems in this world in this country and the festival should you know highlighted the importance of finding solutions and show it and it's not just we are great we love New York the big slogan New York is great and let's get started and also to say no we have to what theater has done over thousands of years problems of a society of a city personal problems is being shown on stages and you think about it in a way that hopefully it changes your mind it changes your thinking you haven't seen something so I think I would see it in that way that a festival is really contributing towards understanding the world and seeing it in a new way I think I'll say one more thing a little bit of an answer one second so it just sounds like he was talking about maybe new forms but when we get back to what you're articulating Frank Frank I just simply don't see New Federal Theater one of the oldest black theaters in the country that exist because there was no place for us to exist and a place was created for us and the coalition of theaters of color which are an array of ethnicity and races I don't see us doing art that comes out of that place our art comes out of a place of our history of our ancestors of our struggles of our triumphs of our inequities of our love I just simply don't see I don't see commercialism or or capitalism it's not a reason why I exist it's not a reason why I create and that would be not anything that I would that would not we're gonna the six people I'm looking at on this panel I have no fear that your creations your art is going to inform uplift enlighten broaden because that's who we are we're not we're not doing this for money I'm not I hope I'm making I hope you don't know that's making sense you do may I ask a question back though Elizabeth sure sure which is have you received any support or funding due to covid and the reason I ask this question is the following we may say that we are not dependent on the environment and capitalism this or that during covid when there was a conversation it will never be the same we will start a new it will change what really strikes me so much is how quickly we got back to so-called normal not normal how quickly and seamlessly and how very glad all kinds of organizations were upon the receipt of funding some extremely comfortable funding just like large organizations and the higher as you may know your earned income was meaning the more tickets you sold the more money you would have received the more seats you had bringing wonderful commercial productions produced with European funding selling a lot of tickets for much higher cost than they actually anywhere in Europe that's probably the region I know the best and how absolutely okay the situation was for a lot of people who work in this industry and whether we think we are independent of that I'm actually not so sure so when I mentioned the word of dissent it really was part of that place of assembly that David was bringing up of how can we create a forum for the discussion of how we can actually affect real change structurally and I would have that's why I wanted to explore deeper for clarity so I understood what you were saying in a deeper way but we make no mistake we are non-profit and we seek grants and there's a great inequity in those grants a great inequity that's right that we have been facing after COVID so that hasn't so and I felt that where you were going and where David was going was deconstructing form that we were going to do something new and different that was not a broad way structured form so that's why I was exploring the question but I don't in any way want to say we are independent of philanthropy Kristin how is it for you and your art center do you feel there's something very different the way you are funded everybody said we should support an artist you are one of the few institutions that host so many residencies do we have more funding isn't getting better or do you say this has to change I'm upset it didn't work out as I was promised I want to touch back on a couple of points I just feel we learned a lot about how to be more humane and caring for each other and how to stop being such unfair inequitable and greedy field and how to stop mistreating each other in this field and we also at the same time had a racial reckoning that has been present for theaters of color and for artists of color but it was not present enough for white people and that is bringing back different thinking but my fear is that that's not being carried forward my fear is that people are going back to business as usual and they are going back to like oh we are going to do 10 out of 12s we are going to work 6 days a week we are going to pay people unevenly that people really haven't taken that message and interiorized it for their practice that they pay lip service to it without the practice of it and the practice is hard and daily and needs to be happening in our field for us to be a place that is truly welcoming artists of all different backgrounds a place that is welcoming audiences of all different backgrounds if we really think about the theater playing a role in community we need to really self examine what that means in terms of our own practices so I just want us to go slow and careful and caring as we go forward and at the same time to open the doors as widely as possible and go outside as much as possible and really have conversations and listen and I think that's also what both David and Elena were talking about listening to what's already happening not be the ones that we're setting the table but how can we learn how to set our table so I'm thinking about those things Nile I really agree with what Kristen said I think that it was really interesting to hear this sort of discussion kind of turn around the sort of definition and our understandings of descent and what that means and I feel like you know there's a lot of theaters that Elizabeth are working with no descent very well and no fugitivity very well from their cultural histories of trying to survive in predominantly white spaces and trying to create their art so I think that it's too half of the coin approaching descent but I think it's a beautiful conversation and I think that why I asked Elena earlier around if an institution can actually hold space a dissenting festival that is rebelling against institutions is that how does that actually work out but it's an interesting question nonetheless but that's all I have to say I like this idea the notion that it's a place where you learn something you're not entertained though you have something before after that it's a place where you learn and create something together and I like what Nile also said that artists have to be in charge of their content on the arts in the United States buying paintings giving money to artists, galleries big symphonies, big museums you know of course it's highly highly you know on the side where we don't agree where it is but no artists are really in charge or part of it as far as I know Lincoln Center as the entity altogether has 85 or 90 board members all could be board members we pay $350,000 we could be one tomorrow but there are no artists involved I don't know how many of them talk to artists that time in Leonard Bernstein and Leah Kazan, Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were there and were running it in a way I think that's not there and also how many artists really are board members in the boards of also what David calls an industrial theater complex I think here Art Center is a big different organized that way and most probably Elizabeth and her theaters also but a lot of them are not and it's non-profits moved into Broadway mode with their plays and subscriptions and pleasing audiences having big things and you know people who look at money or understand money and study business whatever are in charge for decisions and not artists and so I think an important thing really is also the participation of artists in a festival to be in charge and our little festival as small as it is and it's also free something is possible and it sets energy free and connects people so we have to find how can that be really done for such a big city it's a big question to organize it I just heard this morning we got an email someone said that Lincoln Center is putting together a we are back in New York festival and they are asking 40-50 organizations all around the city to participate I don't know did anyone of you get an invitation or no it's a very large outreach celebrate New York City but it's a New York festival I haven't also heard about it but it would be interesting to see what the ideas are what they want to do and if they have such discussions as we have now what do you think would be pragmatic steps to take towards such a festival and how could we be respectful to all what we said today in the creation of the first edition of it I don't know maybe a symposium or something or getting people together I guess I'll just say briefly I mean I think there is a real appetite in the field and by the field maybe I have a very small perspective on it from my peer group in New York City and the northeast maybe but for different leadership structures you're seeing it at different levels of the field and certainly in smaller institutions and independent institutions and Elizabeth I really love what you said about history the Lotus Star for me is a Mary Baraka and the Black Arts School and Spirit House that he developed in Newark which were kind of shared leadership models so I mean one question or I guess one beginning question Frank that I think about is like what would leadership and maybe to borrow Adrian Murray Brown's language a leader full festival look like and how could that itself in some sense be an artwork a thing that is an experimentation has its own kind of aesthetic to it yeah the way it's organized already has to be different in order to be truthful you all maybe remember the recent the kind of a running list a spreadsheet which was anonymous where museum workers could contribute their position and then the salary and compensation and how many years they worked in the field I'm bringing this up for two reasons first is completely unrelated which is how when we speak about ways of changing structures the the issue of incredibly inequitable compensation where the management is emulating the compensation of the management emulates the corporate model in America where the management of large institutions is compensated very highly and then the people who do the actual work can barely make a living in New York City but the reason I brought up structurally this spreadsheet is that there is a way to actually have a democratic quorum of how you think you can invite people to contribute ideas and participate and that's just the immediate thought that comes to mind that can run where you collect ideas now the technology allows this and then the next step I don't know but that's up for discussion thinking exchange so a forum where people can suggest ideas it's like the open space model the open space when you have gatherings and the agenda is made by the people who are there in that moment it's really self-select where they want to go and it's truly non-hierarchical and truly welcoming all perspectives of those present yeah and I heard that some salaries whatever I don't know the shed I mean it's out of this world if that's really true I know the head electrician at the Metropolitan Opera I think it's 1.5 million a year if that's true I don't know but it's just something that the inequity couldn't be higher you know in these institutions and compared to the work and instead of supporting also existing theaters but I think the idea of an open space gathering I think that's something to show you mean Kristin it should be people meet in a big hall or is it online or how do we do that when I've attended those sort of events they've always been in person but that was before the pandemic so I suppose there might be a model that could be in Zoom but I don't know if that would be as interesting because a lot of the interesting things that happen is maybe one-on-one when you're standing there trying to figure out where to go I mean there's certainly the technology to do it online that could welcome people from all over the world instead of just people who happen to be in New York City and available but I don't know in different ways you could tackle it yeah it's such a big big questions what are festivals you guys went to what do you remember what did you like about it Elizabeth you're mute I liked the array of plays and events and art that I could see I liked interacting with the people seeing people from all over the country all over the world artists from all over the world that was exciting to me panel discussions interactions coffee with people meeting new people seeing extraordinary work that was exciting Kristen what is the greatest festival you went to or the ones you did I don't know you did so much but what do you remember what worked I think what Elizabeth just said about the festivals that have been the most fun is when there's this range of work that you can engage in and there's stuff happening at all different times of day and it's really hard to choose because there's so many exciting things happening and you run to somebody and they just say oh I just saw this, this is amazing you need to see it so you change your program and you go over to that instead I just think it's that buzz of energy that real excitement about engaging with each other can be created in the festival I think that happens here in New York in the winter with all of our festivals happening in January there's everybody coming in from out of town to see the festivals that we're doing I think that that's a really exciting time in New York for that reason and even though it's cold and we can't gather outside we've managed to find the little pockets to talk to each other and to get excited about new things to go see now do you remember a festival where you went to the festival? I've had such great times at festivals, but again agreeing with Elizabeth's Ethos that a great festival is made of amazing people and amazing work I had a question for Kristen about curiosity that as you spoke to APAP season and the whole January winter moment as a community if it was still a good idea to be putting so much steak on so many stakeholders coming together during the deepest part of winter the greatest challenges for COVID and coming together indoors is already so challenging and I was curious if you had any thoughts about if it was and what is interesting about this panel thinking about the summertime is it still a great moment for us to be putting so much of our energies towards a collaborative effort in the deepest part of winter? Yeah, I mean we all we obviously we did a virtual festival last year like some people didn't do festivals at all other people did virtual and we are meeting we meet regularly the January festivals and we're all going forward with in-person festival and we're all going to have some hybridity we're all going to have some digital stuff but nobody has decided to just do digital this year everyone's so hungry to be able to the artists whose work we were making for 21 to be able to bring it for 22 and not push them to 23 but I also think that I can certainly say in prototypes case the work definitely changed we were doing one of our hero productions that's in prototype is Taylor Max The Hang which Matt Ray is doing the music for and that project has really changed because the piece is about this opportunity to gather in these precious moments and to enjoy each other's company and to slow down and engage and it's this jazz relaxed jazz piece with an incredible ensemble of folks and that piece, the meaning of the piece really changed because of COVID and it feels really like it's right for this moment and the artists have revised the piece for this moment in response so I feel excited and certainly really nervous but I do feel it's really great that we're down to like 1.4% here in New York City and the production rate and I just I have hopefulness I'm afraid there's going to be an Ernesto and a Frank and a Griffin and you know all these variants to come but I feel like burdenedly optimistic I guess that we can find a way to exist together safely Elena for you for festivals what do you or what type of work from your travels the most favorite spot for me was Fira Tarega in a small town outside of Barcelona it's the largest festival and market for international contemporary circuit and street arts and that's really a model of the most democratic kind where the highest ticket prices 10-15 euros but most productions are free of charge and they end at midnight and it's dispersed all over the city it's incredibly accessible staying there and accommodation the festival makes sure that whomever comes to the festival whether it is a guest from a presenter from abroad although I have to say if it were not for our small U.S. group that was organized by Toho in Montreal there were actually no other American presenters and that amazes me because it's a festival incredibly accessible and that gives a sense of what festival could be for the most kind of democratic access for families especially and that one was probably my most favorite and then just recently I returned from festival Noia Dramatique in Chaubonne and what impressed me so much in Berlin it's interesting how the urban space itself that brilliant constructivist Erich Mendelssohn who created Chaubonne is a multifunctional urban space it's all about public space so you can actually connect with artists connect with each other at all hours and many hours after the performance the canteen with underboiled potatoes open late the prices are accessible it's not four times higher to buy a glass of wine the way we have in our institutions when we go to even you know APAP or ISPA whenever in January we go to see stuff it's a bit too expensive to hang out and that was a different and converse if you want to buy a drink or a bite to eat that aspect and I leave aside the actual wonderfulness of what I've seen at festival Noia Dramatique but I'm just relating my impressions of the environment and the vibe the space is open I think Chris Myers who was one of the Seagulls he was acting at the public but he couldn't afford to eat in the restaurant he was an actor and he said I mentally am wrong in these places theaters we had the Gorky theater I think from Sarah Brandicoff who said our doors are open in the morning from 9 o'clock it's a cafe all the actors come out and hang out after the shows people come students come it's a working restaurant but it's still trying to do that even in La Mama it's tough to get a coffee downstairs so I think this might be something of festival atmosphere that makes you feel at home in this space where you are we won't be able to solve all the problems and come up with everything it's kind of a starting of a dialogue we feel it's something in the beginning and we at the Seagulls center we're really thinking what is the best use of our time and our tiny resources the years going forward and perhaps it will be less inside the university to contribute to the idea of a global festival but also discussions take place we're a researcher, sure there were students, people come so I think this is something we want to do it's a big radical change for us and we are still rethinking that but I think it's something we can and want to we would need all your help and outside I like the idea to have a big gathering actually a global gathering from everywhere as Africa, Australia, Asia say what would we like maybe we should put together a council of ten artists in New York, ten theater artists you know and put them in charge of things and see and we start small with a small festival that can also slowly grow and involves the park, nothing has to everything has to happen in the first time but I think in the time you live in the time of Trump which we somehow survive that showed us what is possible and it has to take a stand we have to be out there, it's a forum of a discussion that's public and it's better than hopefully anti-vaxxer demonstrations or a pro-gun demonstration it's more fun, it's more interesting it's on the side of life and we learn something and we understand people's life and I think art has to take a stand if New York City wants to go forward it needs the art, it needs to learn from the artists and we maybe have to help to provide a space, I believe only the arts really will save the city make it again a city of culture what it's known for and it shouldn't go on the way it was as we also said that institutions are in charge but ultimately then it's about money or filling their own seats so we have to find a new model, I don't really know how to do it I would need help for that we would need help we all if we decide on that idea so it's a beginning this day to day with the three talks we had but I think there is interest and also caution but there's also a lot of experience and love for the city and for the art so hopefully we might be able to put something together, we'll see I want to thank you really for taking the time, it's our concluding panel, I thought it is important to have such a discussion also at the very end to look a little bit ahead and see what influence you know artists curators, public theaters as the CUNY theaters are in a way and also these international organizations we spoke with the Guta French Cultural Services Asia Society, you know what they can bring in and I think at least these are encouraging smoke signals again thanks for howl around for hosting us it's a big honor to be there so thanks to Thea and Vijay thanks to the seagull team and the Tanvi Cactus Chooses Sensational what they put together, we have our last presentation tonight Miriam Bazid will show Faggy Fafi Cairo Boy and a play she wrote about the Arab-American community and the trans community is struggling she actually happens to be in London and it's going to be live-streamed from London with actors from over there they are not here and so they will be our final thing and then hopefully in a couple of weeks from now we have a prelude party and we have a space and I would love for all of you to come a little bit if you can make it at Nile and David, Lena comes in and Kristen hopefully so we can continue to discuss but we are serious about this and so we can also all stay in contact with some new ideas and new developments on that scene so thank you all very much I can't believe our festival in that sense is almost over but this is a very important part and also hopefully stands for the idea you all spoke about that we have to learn something and there has to be forums and discussions and understanding takes place but also listening so thank you all and see you and to our listeners, thank you thank you for taking out the time of your life whoever listened in to whatever the week it means a lot to us but it's also great for the artist and our participants to know there is an interest that people listen to it so let them know in case you saw them, heard them and then you tell them and they hopefully tell us so it's a democratic undertaking thank you all and goodbye, stay safe