 Tegel Talk at the Markney Siegel Theater Center at the Graduate Arcuni in Midtown Manhattan, New York. It's a sunny day outside and it looks like finally we turn the corner here when it comes to weather. I hear it's raining a lot in Germany. We have guests with us here from the important region, the Huhr in Germany, a former industrial landscape that was dominated by steel and industrial productions and has turned in a corner and is now also known, very much known for its cultural work, artistic work, festivals, great theater, dance that is happening there. It's a great model for decentralization of the arts away from just the capitals. And today we have three guests with us, Bettina Mills, who started and works as an artist and now works from the Ministry and there's a support for art. I will go to a bio a little bit later. We have with us the great Festival Theater der Welt, Theater of the World, which is going to happen or not or opening or not. We don't know yet at this time and also the important Huhr Festival. So they have two big festivals about to open in the middle of a lockdown. And so we want to know more. What is happening in Germany? How is it all working? We just had this devastating call yesterday from India. The darkest call. I mean, we have done these conversations since last March. We have 150 conversations with almost 200 artists from 50 or 60 countries. We produce talks every day. We were one of the only theater institutions really creating the program. It was the darkest talk we had. And this hopefully could show us that things are possible, that we can do something, that there are also nations where things are working and theater is have a strong footing and also it's alive and fighting with the time of Corona. So Bettina, Olaf and Stefan, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Where are you all? Maybe you can tell us where you are at the moment. Bettina, where? I'm in Düsseldorf in the middle of Düsseldorf and in my apartment because it's a free day today. It's a foreign lifestyle. So it's a yeah, it's in the evening. We are in the evening at six o'clock in the evening in Germany now was a very sunny, beautiful day. And I was in the forest because it's very good to leave your office sometimes in this times of COVID and just be in nature. And it's beautiful in nature right now. Yeah, thank you. So it's kind of a day of the dead. One could say in Germany is an appropriate holiday in the time of Corona. Olaf, where are you? I'm right now at the festival center. I'm in my office because the festival is running now for about one week. So I wasn't in the forest, but there's a huge park around the actually quite massive festival main building. But today is like a very, not a low day, but today we only have prerecorded shows in our digital festival because we have just started digital even though we're a live festival usually, but in times of Corona, we decided to start as a digital festival. And the city you're in is a... The city is the city of Wecklinghausen, which is a quite small city within this huge former coal mining and steel plant area, which contains an area of 53 cities. It's called the Ruhr area. And we are the northern part of it, but it's just like there are huge auto barns, waste connecting all these cities and there are about five and a half million people living around us. That whole region could be looked at as a mega city, somehow connected so close, there are no more big forests or fields in between. It's one big city of an alien or spaceship woodland. They would have a hard time to know where one city starts and end. And Stefan, where are you? Hello world. Good evening. Now, hello, we are here in the evening. Hello, New York. Dear friends, I'm strictly following the stay home rules. And that means at the moment I am in Berlin and you have this view here outside. It's a rainy, cold day. It's fantastic for staying home and for being creative. And I'm very warm welcome to everyone who joins us in this beautiful day. I'm very delighted to have you around. My place to stay is Berlin and working in home office most of the time. Our festival will be happened in Düsseldorf, the capital of North Rhine, Westphalia, Germany's largest stage with 18 million people living there. That's the highest concentration on population in Germany. And I'm just neighbor to Olaf. It's a kind of 30 kilometers apart where the warfest spieler happened. And theater of the world is a festival which is like a grasshopper jumping through Germany from one federal state to another. So we are just guests in this region for this season. The next edition will be in 23 in Frankfurt, the capital, or not the capital, but the largest city in Hessen in South Germany. Yeah, that's true. This is the London's hotel. This is the capital of Hessen, you're right. Amazing. And that Berlin weather, people always wonder how come German, so many philosophers, musicians, and composers, the weather is really bad. So you read books and you write books, you listen to music, and you make music. It's one of the reasons that makes us very... There you've got it. From other places, like in Italy, where you're within half an hour from the beach, wherever you live. Let me talk to our audience a little bit about everyone here. Bettina studied in the great Giesen University and the Angewandte Theater Wissenschaft, also with Ange Wörth and Mollin Davis, George Taburi, and she did great work there. She did a Beckett work and Maite Dior work, which is very well known at the time. And she was a dramaturg and executive director of the youth opera department of the Staatsoper, the opera in Stuttgart. And she was the artistic director of a significant dance project, the German dance platform in 2006 at Theater Stuttgart. And she was the head of the Independent Theater Festival, Pavel Ritten, the favorites in also the region that she is working now. And she has taught at many, many universities and dance study departments, what a great combination she has found for herself in universities around Germany. And right now, she has an important job. She's supporting arts and culture within the political system of Germany as an artist. She followed perhaps was in 69, the student revolution said, a march through institutions, we have to also go into institutions to change them, to provide change, to be part of change as a working artist, a big decision, what she made. And she is the head of theater and dance in the ministry of culture and science at that region of that state of Notre-Dame Westphalia. Notre-Dame Westphalia would be something like Texas, Florida, or the New York, in Germany, it's one of the states there. So this is a very significant big job where she was able to double under her term there, the funding. And then with us, we have Olaf Krauk. He's the artistic director of the World Festival, the festivals in Recklinghausen we talked about. And he took over the European festival, from the European Festival Trans-Europa, he went to the World Festival in 2018. If I have that right here. And he also worked at the Schiata. Here at this time, an important theater, Germany has a decentralized theater system because 50, 60 tiny states existed before Napoleon ran over Germany and they all wanted to be like Versailles in London and all the little kingdoms had their little theaters. And we somehow were able in Germany to keep them afloat, to have them running. And it's a fantastic system. He was the tourmoutourk and artistic director of the experimental stage, Aguigi, or I have no hope to say it right, at the Lucerne Theater. Like underground, yes. Underground, okay. And then he was at the Schauspielessen, again in that region at a very simple, important theater. And then he moved to Schauspielhaus Bochum, which is a legendary stage in Germany for many, many reasons. Our directors who have been there, who came out there, worked that open there. And he was co-director of the International Detroit Project. He was the artistic director of Schauspielhaus Bochum. This is a very big deal. This is like saying, you run the public theater in New York City. And he has been a member of the German Academy of the Performing Arts since 2019. Just to remember, our American viewers, there is an Academy of the Performing Arts in Germany, fantastic. And then Stefan is with us, who is running this great theater festival, Theater der Welt. It became obvious in the 70s and 80s that innovations in the world of theater often are moved faster through festivals, international world, global work that has been seen. So he, like Olaf, is putting together his collaging, like Robert Rauschenberg, things what he feels is important as a curator, follows his instinct, but also tips from friends and longstanding friendships with artists to show the audiences what is contemporary theater really about as does the Warfest Schpieler. What are artists working about? What are thinking about? Artists often anticipate the future. We already have a hard time living in the moment. Most probably Bettina and I, we still lived somewhere 30 years ago and he said, what happened at our universities? So it's hard enough to be in the moment. Artists can do that, like the great Zen masters, but they also anticipate, and we hope they have the right questions for us. And at Theater der Welt, Theater der Welt is a part of that. He has been the director of the Warfest Schpieler. Oh no, sorry. Stefan was the assistant director at the Volksbühne in Berlin. This is a great, big and important theater. We had Sebastian Kaiser with us. We hope they have come stock with us also one day. So I know the theater that defined the aesthetics of Berlin after the opening of the wall, the most significant, perhaps most copied Stadsteater, a city, a theater. And he has a direct number of productions at the Baracke. Also, Ostermeyer started out. It's also a legendary place in the mythological history of German theater. He was at the Omsk Drama Theater. He was invested in Siberia and the Gitis Theater in Moscow. We just had Kirill Serebranikov with us on Friday and he gave us an idea of the contemporary scene in Russia. What is happening also to him and his vocal center. So we know how important that part of the world is. He relaunched festivals, the Theater Form in Hannover in Braunschweig, and he was part of the European capital of culture in Tallinn in 2011. And he has translated plays from Russian into German, something we care very much about also at the Siegel Center. We translate, produce and also publish in small editions plays with the largest translator of actually our plays in English translation. So we know how important that is and how much work goes into that. And he was the chief dramaturg of the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus. A very important deal. It is way beyond what's called the literary manager in America. Every manager in America sometimes helps a bit to rewrite a third act and writes the press releases and works with the writer. But I might say that a dramaturg in Germany is very close to the position of the almost an artistic director. Often they are the archival history of that theater they work with. They make real decisions about the identity of this theater and really help. Like the Sherpas, they help the mountain climbers to get on the mountains. They have been there before. They know what to do. But they help and support to find the right way or the way that works perhaps the best at the moment in the contemporary sense. But in the moment what we need, and he was also the head of the trauma program of the Wiener Festwochen, a very significant, big leading festival. So we have really, I think, a great collection with us to hear and to hear what is going on, what the hell is going on in Germany? Now what is going on with all your festivals? Maybe Stefan, tell us a little bit what's happening. We hear you having that big festival and the program is out. But there is no dates, no times are published. The news are I got a date for vaccination next Thursday, which is quite a day. I didn't expect this coming that soon. And for this I have to go from Berlin to Hamburg because the vaccination in Berlin is quite slow. You might have no imagination how much Germany is a patchwork country as our further system is facing many of problems between Berlin, Bavaria, Hamburg, nor foreign risk failure. The way to manage the crisis on further standards has many pluses and many minuses. The pluses are for sure in the arts. We get different way of support under this system. The Festival Theater of the World, or Te Atere Welt, this is a brand which is normally not translated, is created in the end of the 70s and had its first edition in 1981. And please allow me to say some words about the history because the situation in Germany after World War II, as we have two German states, East Germany and West Germany, is quite different to the other European major nations. As they decided after World War II to create huge national festivals, the very famous brands now as we have Edinburgh Festival, Festival d'Avignon, the Holland Festival, Wiener Festival, all these are artistic creations in the after-war time, founded in 36, 37, 38. And all these festivals been created to recreate an atmosphere of peace and understanding via the arts in Europe, all across Europe after World. Germany went a completely different way as the Germans had to struggle with completely different political demands after this. And the Germans obviously couldn't decide to create a so-called national festival as all the other countries created national festivals. The festival Te Atere Welt came up as many interesting things as a more or less anti-establishment movement and a very unique and single movement from the grassroots by artistic interest of an incredible team around the artistic director of the Hamburg Theatre in 1979 as the International Theatre Institute gave at that season and title, which was called Theatre of the Nations. And after the successful inauguration of the Festival Theatre of the Nation, which was shifting from country to country at that time, the Germans decided to have own Theatre Festival from international standards. And so in 1981, the first edition called Te Atere Welt Theatre of the World was happened in Hamburg. And this was a huge success because the introduction of international artists and international aesthetics in the beginning of the 80s in Western Germany was quite a revolution and an enrichment of the existing theatre landscape, which was struggling with their redefinition of their national idea. And Western Germany defined itself as a very cosmopolitan international state with liberal constitution and democratic circumstances. I'm an East German, so the situation for me is quite different. I'm the first East German who is taking over that remarkable brand in Western Germany Theatre history. And that is for me even a more proudness as I'm allowed to do this in Düsseldorf, which was for long periods, the cultural capital of West Germany, from boys to music. This is a place where I could just dream about as the East German by listening radio in the night and listen something from West Germany and what the hell is going on in Düsseldorf. So this is a little bit my very personal introduction to this. Theater der Welt is a festival, as I told you already, a city or an artistic team has to bid for. This is a brand, Theater der Welt is just a brand, and this brand is in the hands of the International Theater Institute of Germany, which is based in Berlin. And the theaters or the cities who wants to have and to make the festival Theater der Welt have to run a competition, a bidding process where they have to propose a concept, how to do it in Frankfurt or how to do it in Berlin. And in this competition process, normally they are fighting three or four different regions and theaters for this. In this competition process, there is a jury, this is the head team, the artistic members of the International Theater Institute. And in a very late stadium, they deciding we are giving it as the next edition, we are giving it to Düsseldorf. And the Düsseldorf team won it with an absolutely remarkable and outstanding idea. Düsseldorf is one of the major German cities they decided in the new century, which has just started and is 20 years young, decided to have remarkable changes in the inner city structure and architecture. So Düsseldorf was quite destroyed in World War II and was rebuilt after war. And now in the last 10 years, Düsseldorf made an outstanding and exceptional step forward to refigure the inner city landscape and to reopen places. They've been reservated for business and for shopping. They wanted to create a new atmosphere area in the city, which we called a cultural area. And in the end of this process, which Bettina has running through 20 years already as the Minister of Culture was guiding this, the Düsseldorf Playhouse, Schauspielhaus, which is a remarkable iconic architecture building got renovated. And the whole area around this building is refigured as an accessible cultural area. And the idea was to have the festival on the top to reopen this part of the city as a completely new public space in this city. So the idea is it was many years in the planning and now it happened to slide into the time of Corona. When is the official opening or when was it? How is, tell us a little bit about that. Thank you very much. I'm coming back. I have to explain this because this is a remarkable interesting way how to make festival and how this movable vehicle as feared of the world which jumps really from region to region is an engine for separate regional processes and always a blending this with international artistic, aesthetical movements. That's a very important point for this festival. The original edition was planned last year and what I have here in my hands, this is our booklet from last year. We have 190 pages with fantastic artists, companies and the amount of works we wanted to present is 36 productions from five continents. They are involving all continents and involving around about 400 people from all over the world. The running time since its beginning is 18 days. So the last 40 years through fear of the world was happened every three years in a different city by 18 days. And as we know all the reasons, the worldwide pandemic came over us and we decided together with the minister of culture that we will not cancel the festival but we will postpone it on one year as we've been very hopefully that in a year time everything will change. It changed quite a lot but not that remarkable yet. So we are about to open on the 17th of June and we'll run till 4th of July, the remarkable 18 days. And as it looks like at the moment we will be able to present 26 international productions and we might have the chance to bring 300 people to Düsseldorf. This is what we have now and I allowed myself to send our reason just yesterday finalized booklet for everyone to read in English language. You can introduce, you are introduced to all these productions. You can read this PDF file 130 pages. So we lost around about 60 pages but we did not lost our hope and our efforts to bring this festival to Germany. Yeah, amazing. Thank you for the introduction. Of course, there's so much more to say just about this festival and it's postponed for a year. Supposed to open in June. Stefan actually got a call shortly before we started, you know, from his boss or less, what can be done? What can not be done? He said, I'll wait, I have to do this talk. It's in the flux. Nobody also really knows what can happen, how much and how little but the good sign is there will be, we understand now a festival in the week ago. It was perhaps not so clear all up and thank you for waiting. And it's all about listening in our talk. So you also take your time. Tell us about your war festival. What is the concept? What is the idea? And how come this is all happening so close to each other? Yeah, Stefan just mentioned it. Our festival was actually founded at the same time as Avignon Festival, for example. We were founded in 1947. So this is the 75th edition and it's the oldest festival in Germany and actually one of the oldest in Europe. And there's a very, very special story to be told while this festival was created and was founded. And that was that in 1946, 1946, just right after the war, there was a heavy winter in Germany. And due to the fact that all the cities have been destroyed for a reason, also some of the theaters have had huge problems and especially the theaters in Hamburg, they were so cold and that they were running out of cold to heat them up so they were driving down with very improvised kind of truck vehicles down here to the Ruhr area where all the coal mines are placed. And so they're not on the first coal mine that they found that was here in the city of Recklinghausen and they asked for coal to heat up the theaters again. And these coal miners, they agreed, even though it wasn't allowed, was kind of smuggling due to the fact that the Brits were just controlling everything but which was like the right decision at the time. So they were smuggling the calls for heating up theaters in Hamburg. And in exchange, one summer later, the Hamburg theater people came down here to perform theater in front of these coal miners. And that was the founding moment of the festival. And maybe for a non-German, non-European audience, it might be really interesting who is founding the festival from the very moment till now. One is the city who's giving money for the festival. And the other one is the States Council, which is Bettina's working for it. But the third one is really interesting because it's the German unions who are financing the festival. So all the unions, they have a head organization and they have a certain amount of money. And so they are also giving their money for one arts event. So like a contemporary arts theater festival is found by German unions, which is a very unique situation. So our festival located in this area of, that is just like structured through labor because this is an area where people are working, where they're working in plants and huge industries. They're going to see once a year, always in May and June, a contemporary arts festival that lasts for nine weeks. So our festival is for nine weeks. And even with the corona pandemic, last year we've been canceled, but this year we're taking place and it lasts for nine weeks. And we have about 90 productions each year and like 800 artists come in here. And the average, if we are live festival, the average amount of spectators is between 60 and 80,000 people watching performances. But this year, due to the fact that we are also in a lockdown situation, the pandemic still holds its hands on Germany. I'm not vaccinated so far, as Stefan said. But so that's why we decided to start the festival as a digital festival. So a lot of our productions are just transported into a digital area that we call our digital warfare spiel theater. But we are just positive because there are some news that the numbers of infections are really going down right now. And so hopefully we have the chance within two weeks time also to open our spaces for a live audience. So let me get that right. You postponed it for a year. You didn't do something last year. You will have about nine weeks of a festival. Officially it has started. You cannot bring the theater artists in. You do a digital version. You use the money. You pay the theater artists. But you're on standby from a call from Bettina, the ministry or someone else to say, okay, then they would come in and play. Do I get that right? Yeah, in general, that's right. Yes, we are paying the artists. Also, those artists who are just due to the fact that we had to cancel a live production, they also receive some money. So because we have had contracts with them, we wanted them to have them here. And just from yesterday on, we know now how this perspective of opening up theater venues could take place. There's a very specific way of opening up. We should start with open air productions. And later on, we might also have the chance to open indoor venues. So hopefully till the end of the festival, which ends on the 20th of June, we also have real peep, real audience spectators and artists in the building. But the opening of the festival, which was on the 2nd of May, was opened by the great Japanese actor Yoshio Iida, who is from the Peter Brook ensemble, who is now 87 years old. He was live at our building to perform in front of cameras and we streamed it live onto our festival platform. Incredible. I think to both of you, we will come back to that idea of presenting the rules and how to deal with the digital and the screens. But now we come to Bettina. Bettina, listening to your colleagues, what comes to your mind? First of all, I want to thank you. I didn't do this in the beginning. I think it's amazing what you do, having 250 artists you set in this last year, starting in March and opening a window into many, many global countries and giving the opportunity to have this exchange. I think it's a fantastic idea. So it's really nice to have us here in this Zoom. I always think this region in Northern Westphalia is probably the most dense theater landscape we have around the world. So there's like 25 big city theaters. There is an incredible independent scene. There's many, many production houses which work in a very experimental way, like the Dance House in Düsseldorf or the Opak-Zölfer-Ein on the UNESCO World Heritage Zölfer-Ein, which is the former mining area. And there is festivals like Ruhlfest Biele. And today we open also Stücke, which might be interesting also for some in the audience. Now it's a festival on new theater texts. This will open now at seven o'clock. So there are people like René Poilage or Frédéric Yenilec, many, many great writers, dramatists had their big prizes there. So, and we have today the opening of Ballina Theater Train. So this period of May, June is a period of a lot, a lot of festivals. And I have to say the doubling of the theater budget was of course done by the government. And I think it's very good because it gave a lot of strength and it's in the same time very hard because now since one year, in the same moment you give the strength, we renovated the Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf and then everybody was running against a wall of bitong. And since then everybody is working very, very much. I think we have a fantastic situation because there's really a lot of financial support for artists. Only in North Rhine-Westphalia we had around 200 million Euro to give funding to independent artists for fellowships. And there's a lot of... The 200 billion are special or part of a budget? Yes, special, you get around like 7,000 Euro, but you're quite free to do what you want to do artistically because we realize one thing is the institutions which are quite well protected in Germany also in this times, but it's a very difficult situation for artists to work independently. So this was one of the first fields where the government really put energy and money to help artists which are not connected to an institution. And I always think it's like an incredible beautiful garden, but of course the situation is quite hard and we are right now in between like two areas because there was a very hard lockdown for the last four weeks to get the numbers of infections down and they are getting quite well down now because you also have the vaccination and so on, but the theaters are not able to open again and there's very different developments now in Germany. Today the opera in Munich will perform for the first time and also when you look at Euro, it's very different. Luxembourg is performing, Paris is opening on the 19th to April de la Ville, so Europe has very different rules and I think like Stefan said, there's a lot of plus and a lot of also some problems, but I think there is more plus because the support for culture is really strong in this time. I think it's just an amazing garden and when you think of a festival like this, this Mütterst of Ruhfestspieler, the funding of Mütterst is really amazing, this exchange and it's still a festival which is attracting a lot, a lot of very different people, not like a festival maybe in Berlin or in Munich or maybe even in Frankfurt, but it's very, very different people that are coming, young people, I mean, you don't have the classical worker anymore. There is a big transformation of course in the area and there is also a use of this old industrial architecture, small farm in Westphalia is quite famous for like, we have the next festival, Ruhetrianale, which is taking place in summer, which is especially using this beautiful old industrial areas. And then I mean, I just realized when Stefan was telling the story of Teata de Welt, when we were studying in Gießen in 85, that was my first Teata de Welt and it was really like an earthquake. So I saw Jan Fabler for the first time, I saw Neat Company, which was called Ipigonen and I saw many, many other performances and I think it was so much opening my mind for the international cosmos which was there because after World War II, which is amazing is the urgence of people reopening the theaters like Olaf was describing this in 46, they made this effort to reopen the theaters in Hamburg. In 46, they were reopening the theaters in Duisburg and many of the industrial areas here. And so I hope this urgence will also be there, but it was this system in Germany after the Second World War was in a way very much also dedicated to the ensemble to German theater and Teata de Nationen and Teata of Nations and Teata de Welt and also the Warfestspieler which had always this European idea. They were like very important windows to know what's going on. You could see Japanese theater from Bali and from China and from South America. So like this festival which was supposed to take place in 2020 which will now be in 2021 and we hope it can open and there will be public performances, live performances. It's bringing fantastic performances for example from Chile with Cadorón or with Malen, it's a performance of Mapuche women and people are coming from Nigeria, from Argentina. So normally it's a fantastic situation to discover what you don't know and to get curious for all these beautiful artists. And we have a fantastic situation also because we have an open air stage on the place in front of the theater which is constructed by Rommelabor. So I think especially in this situation where we still don't know when we can open the theaters it's great to have an extra space and to have this outdoor stage which is a very beautiful one. Almost going back to the roots of kind of Greek outdoor theater if there's something we have to do in there. I also want to... Pina Pauche company, the Tanz theater comes from that region, was hosted in Guadalajara. I mean, the Bohom theater with Paimon and also early George Tabori. So this structure really supported incredibly the artist and I would like to talk later on also what is the time of Corona perhaps will do? Is it something like after World War II? Is there something new taking place before? I would like to go back to Stefan and Olaf and maybe we start with Olaf again. Presenting life work which is not possible it might be but not and the digital representation. How do you guys deal with it? What did you learn? Stefan, you wanted to say something or? We start with Olaf. I wanted just to give a two minutes lecture how does it works in Germany just to let the Americans understand how it is just to get a feeling. We are a further country of 16 states and each state has a specific rules. What is happen when? And everything works under an index. This is a number which contains meridian regarding the last seven days and how many infections came through or new infections came on 100,000 people. That's the index and the magic number in the middle of this is the index number 100. So if the index number is going below 100 that means less than 100 new infections on 100,000 people citizens then there is a chain of things that are allowed to us to do. So we are sitting in front of the snake and looking on this number as this is at the moment in Düsseldorf at 105. And there's only be going under this 105 and we reaching 99 for a period of five days. Then we are allowed to make art in public spaces then restaurants are allowed to reopen. And this is all about these numbers. And we have a federal law which covers above 100 and there's only 100 is reached. Every region is allowed to make single recommendations on or off just to explain this to you. So for the, and that's the crazy thing Frank for Olaf who is 30 kilometers far from us in Gelsenkirchen. If they are not reaching this number they have different rules to follow as the city of Düsseldorf we might reach it or we don't reach it. And you have a patchwork of very varied things you can do just 20, 10 kilometers as you crossing the city border or a state border which is a quite complex undertaking. The Düsseldorfians are very disciplined so I'm very hopeful looking for the day to be reaching 100 it seems to be this may become next Tuesday. And so that was it. So now I'm telling you about the good thing. Yeah let's ask Olaf first the idea and I think this is important what Stefan said as a meta rule before anything can be decided is that number 100? So you have 101 patients you cannot open you have 99 in fact you can incredible you know like the old German states that had different currencies they are again different rules. It's a big discussion in Germany about it but Olaf the idea of the digital how do you and the Ruhr-Ferspieler how did you decide to do it? What did you ask from the artists and what experience did you make? Is it working? Is it not working? Do you like it? Yeah a lot of questions maybe the first step was that we decided to have two festivals. We have a real life festival when it's possible and we have a digital festival if it's not possible so it's not the same it's the same productions but it's not the same amount of productions and then we started discussing with the artists who is like willing or interested in in transforming their productions into a digital version and there have been several artists who said now my production is a live show I want to show it in life so one of them was the Greek choreographer Dimitris Papayuanou who like during the last three years is the great Tamer was a very well-received show throughout the whole world and there's a new show called Transverse Orientation who should have a live world premiere at our festival but due to the fact that it's only a live show and we cannot show it we had to cancel it so the world premiere is now postponed to Lyon so congratulations to Lyon they will have a live show because they're in France and their opening situations are different than ours but others decided like and then we decided for several kind of systems that some of them will really bring them here within our theater so they're really a travel here and we have this setup with cameras and like film crews like people who are professionals in filming art filming theater and then it's recorded or it's live streamed on a platform what I learned is a lot of stuff I learned first of all how to film a theater show that it's interesting to watch because it's not just one camera you put up in the room you need five, six, seven maybe you need a and you need a life direction you need a life cutter and so I was confronted with a lot of technology that I didn't know before I know that it's existing but I'm a theater person I'm not a film person so there was an encounter with luckily very professional and open-minded film people who were interested in helping us out but the next step was where to what is the platform you're streaming it on so it's not YouTube or Vimeo so we had to find a German platform or European platform and we had to integrate it somehow in our own digital world and therefore we suddenly were confronted with reprogramming our webpage we had to program an own like a digital theater platform on which the stream took place and then we also decided that some of the shows are behind a paywall that you have to pay that you buy a ticket for it the ticket price is far lower than the life ticket price but it is a paywall so suddenly it's 15 Euro and so it's like 17 bucks or something and there's also a reduction fee but you have to choose and suddenly we've been busy for a long time with a quite small but very ambitious team within my festival team we're only busy with like creating an own platform on which we have can include all the stuff where you stream, where you see it, where you buy a ticket and then it needs to work and as Stefan told us there are some things that didn't work well in the first place now we improve them so while we are doing a festival we're learning technical technology stuff that I've never been confronted with and we have people here some of them but decided to stay in their places and stream it from there or prerecord it and send it to us but the maybe best encounter that we have because all the theaters have the same problem right now so we decided that every encounter that we have if we have an artist talk or something we do it on our main stage and we put the cameras on that position where usually the actor is placed so we film the empty, huge, empty theater venue where you see that usually you as a spectator would sit there in these red chairs but you can't because due to corona and so we had some artist talks connected to a theater in Berlin for example or in Greece where they did the same thing in their empty theaters so we were sitting all on our stages and you saw the empty stage, the empty auditorium and we were talking with each other after we've seen a show on this digital platform so we have a festival, we have arts we have a social distancing version of theater production and we have artists who can do their art and they get paid and we have an audience and so somehow even though it is a very new step for us it is also very, very interesting because we also figure out new forms of doing arts, we have this Zoom game for example we have these interactive kind of stuff we're exploring a lot of stuff that would never have happened without corona because then we would have just simply be a live festival with 220 performances in nine weeks. Incredible, so incredible innovation that are taking place by force and Stehan, how has it gone in your festival? What are you thinking? What are you doing? How are you, what are your decisions? Yeah, we are in a little bit different situation as Olaf as because my obligation was the invitation to the artists of last year and I had to keep this obligation on this same artist so I couldn't say you are uninvited and I'm making a new festival next season so my process in this last year which took at least really 12 months is the same as Olaf's as I spend probably months and weeks on Zoom hopping from Argentina to Chile to South Africa to Tanzania to Japan and I visited nearly every one of our artists at home in his office on his balcony in his kitchen and it took me an incredible journey through all these homes of all our artists to think about how to transform the piece of art which was created already into a possible piece of art we can bring under this or that circumstances. We created three versions of a festival as we decided first of all, we are planning to invite everyone and to bring the people to Germany. In a second way we decided let's review what is existing material on these groups we can might create so-called hybrid forms of interaction with our audience and at least we are running the same system as Olaf we equipping our main venues like theater studios and we are ready to create artistically high quality streams or transmissions that are allowing our audience to have an artistic experience and not just watching something which is probably dead and these are huge challenges as we for instance had planned co-productions with Canadian and South African artists to collaborate with German companies. What we created and what was amazingly new for me was so-called online directing as we had a many artists in Canada and we prepared a production for 20 young people and contemporary play written by Jordan Tannehill a young Canadian playwright and we wanted to invite a Canadian team of artists to work with young Germans in Düsseldorf which is probably obviously not possible. What we did, we find a shadow team in Germany with young German directors who want to learn from Canadian artists and we created two teams the Canadian team sitting in Toronto and Montreal and the German team they are ready in Düsseldorf as because rehearsal work is allowed. So theaters are not allowed to play for public but they are allowed to rehearse. And we brought into move a very unbelievable interesting process which breaks the rule of the director is the king as the director is sitting in Canada and following some rehearsals made by a German team and just giving advices and he has to trust the German team what they are doing and they're doing right. So this new way of shared knowledge and shared responsibility brought us to amazingly fruitful productions they never ever have seen the world born and we will bring this to productions they're nearly ready to be performed in Germany in Düsseldorf directed from outside. This was an unbelievable process with a lot of obstacles and completely different division of power because if the Canadian director says I want to have this like that the German easy could say no we will do it this way trust us and he has no chance to interfere on this. And it was quite absolutely amazing and I would tell you the most fruitful result this was a collaboration we initiated with Port Parole from Montreal and the Munich Kammerspiele a very famous theater in Munich. This is about a documentary play where the Canadians insisted that an old person in the play will be played by an old actor and the women will be played by women and so on and so on. And Munich Kammerspiele said no we want to make it different the old women in the play will be played by our youngest artist and the black lady in the play will be played by a young white lady and this mixture of characters and the written characters and the actors they were filling enriched this play a lot but the Canadian artists did not expect it at all they couldn't trust in this they can be an elder woman has to be played by an elder woman and our colleagues said no we doing it with a young woman and this was an incredible artistic process which went online in an exchange and we'll finish I could talk hours on this kind of finish at this point. What happened with your all the plays you invited they're already created so there are no commissions most or more or less or some of them but so you are preparing to have them on stages. We are even in a more interesting situation as the last year all festivals have been cancelled we took over some heritage from other festivals they've been cancelled so the Ministry of Culture and there is sitting my boss Bettina here and I like to say it publicly in front of her we are very grateful to the ministry as they allowed us to take over a potential high aesthetically very important potentially projects to take them over to our festivals so we got an extra funding for this and we delivered our production body to make this possible. One of these amazing things we've been allowed to take over is an installation on the public space which is called the third space and this is an installation in a 500 square meter place made by a Berlin architectural team which is called Raum Labor Berlin and this is a quite interesting thing we never could afford this this is a cost of money to create it to build it up to design it and we got this as a gift and this gift meant to us that we have an open air stage in front of our theater which is an additional venue for our festival to make productions happen they normally had to be in-house but we now can do them outdoors and now I'm coming to your real question I invited a beautiful opera production from Indonesia which is called The Planet made by Gerin Nenguro and with a 47 hat women choir from Kupang this is on East Timor the Indonesians are allowed to travel to Germany but what the Indonesians are not allowed is singing in indoor spaces this is one of the worst thing you can do this is strictly forbidden you are not allowed to make opera you might have no idea how with sweat and tears I met this artistic artist via Zoom and I said Gerin can you imagine to transform or to transfer you opera from an opera house indoor to an open air concert opera and it took even two seconds he said yes this was my original idea I wanted to have a street procession and for the Melbourne festival I was obliged to put my performance into an opera house and I'm so happy you're offering me to bring this opera back on street so this is Festival Maker's Live I've finished now I can tell you the next 14 hours how many seats? the space you created how many seats are in the outdoor theatre? we have a flexible tribune for 500 people and we will watch very carefully the index number as the index number is going below 50 we even allowed to sit very close if we are reaching 70 or 80 this tribune will be for 300 people and they are seated the audience are seated in distance by one meter 50 each to other and we have to follow the rules with mask and testing before entering this place so that's still open and we created an incredible system for selling tickets as we gave each seat one number and if we are selling 300 tickets and the day before the performance the index changes we can add easily another 150 tickets in the salary in the evening box office so this you see as an artistic director you are more or less a businessman you're busy with all these recommendations and that's quite a new job I learned I can just answer all of I learned so many new things in this job and how theatre can work as an interactive meeting in the internet and many things there are more than just Zoom meetings possible incredible and we will see how much stays but that outdoor structure in 30 years from now people will say well there was the time of Corona they built this and now we have it who knows what will happen? Bettina you work for the ministry and in general politicians have to make a value the judges we had Jean-Luc Nossi the philosopher who said you know the question now is how much is the value of the value of life because we all know it has a value but you know when 100 people 50 years when do we take risk or not so what is the value of the value of the arts within that government why do they think you know this is so important that these massive amounts of resources at least to American or New York proportions why is that important that the regions as we do this? I think it's very clear that it's an investment into the intelligence of people and into the being ready to or being prepared for unknown things because that's what art is about very much that you develop things you don't know and you get in touch with worlds, ideas, text, images sounds, people you don't know what's I think for me in art is very much meeting the what is strange for you that's also why these I mean you have here Olaf and Stefan which are both so positive and so with so much energy in a situation which is also in Germany quite difficult and we don't know exactly what will happen in the next two or four weeks but it's not clear there will be new rules on Saturday and we are all struggling to have the theaters open but it's really an in-between situation but I think the value of the arts is you can talk to so many different people now when you're on the market buying your apple or you go to have a coffee and everybody will say oh I'm so hungry for going into a museum it was the birthday the 100th birthday of Jules of Bois yesterday and there's beautiful exhibitions there's a beautiful exhibition of on Khristov-Schlingensied and then museum in Düsseldorf and there's so much so much things you could see and that will nourish your brain and I think there's periods of one year where many things were just forbidden and public life what was not possible but it was very restricted is many people really suffer from this and also very exhausted but I have to say I saw a beautiful or great not beautiful work of Liaro Trigas on his industry and how and have a lot of ufa and you just told about the situation and in India so the situation in India or Brazil or in many other countries is so difficult for artists so I think we can and I'm very happy that Stefan and Olaf go with such an energy to realize the festivals in between four versions it was quite clear that not like in 2020 the festival will be cancelled but it was it's still not clear if it's analogue, if it's hybrid if it's digital and it's this kind of mixed everyday life and but this has also to do and I think people really learn a lot we always say we jump into digital life but it's like this but I think we realize also that we really all have to prepare for the transformation we are faced by the development of artificial intelligence and the change of the working world and so I think this the arts are so important to prepare the ground for people to get courage to not get be stuck to what has been behind us because there was a big problem so many people say no, let's not go back to normal because normal was the problem so I think there's a big jump right now in the whole questions of how we deal with nature how we deal with the climate exchange and all this this digital transformation and these questions on climate they get together how will artists travel in future? I mean, there was so much global traveling and I think this will not be possible in a way but still we want to produce together and we want to have this exchange so I think we have to invent new forms of collaboration and of staying in touch with many many countries from Indonesia to Japan from Russia to Chile we don't want to lose this but it will change, I'm sure and so I think for this arts can give a lot of inspiration to people who are in economy to people who are in the technical field because it's opening the brain and it has always art has always been very much related to science and to the development of the new society and we have to work on social justice it's the global situation as really there's so many problems we don't face here in Germany but they are there and I think many people think about this and how this world will transform so I think and for this the festivals are very important reflection space that people need to get also along with the experience that they have made in the pandemic that's why I think it's important and I think the situation what I know about New York is really terrible that so many things stop that so many people got their jobs cancelled and at the same time there's no jobs in restaurants or cafes I know when Stefan was talking about the young lady playing the old lady I thought of the Wusser group I don't know how they I also saw them I think in Teata David and Joan Jonas was playing Irina and the three Schwestern of Czechia embraced up so there's so fantastic artists in New York and what I hear from even the big museums and from Ben Mooma it's so difficult right now so I really hope that I heard that theaters will open now again also so I really hope that that the arts get a lot of space and when we are slowly going back to a more public life situation is devastating I think met opera singers haven't been paid since last March unimaginable because ministries like yours your position doesn't exist it will be incredibly hard the mayor just said it all most probably Broadway will open in September nobody really knows they cannot play for 30, 40, 50%, 60 it's a highly commercial theater so there's so many questions here it's stunning and things have to change question for Olaf and Stefan maybe Stefan this time and you go first is something changing between presenters, the theaters and the audiences will this be a radical change is there something a moment like after World War II, after Corona something is different in this or that case I feel there is starting point for development of a new form of art which is really driven by digital technique and new ways of interaction theater remains theater it is not changing people are demanding to sit near each other with uncommon each to other people they want to experience sweat and breath and tears and all this together but the wind in this is there are remarkable new experiments on online art which will find its way this will be maybe a very unique separate way the hours to sit in front of a monitor are not that easy to come over and I think when someone is coming we believe all these monitors hopefully very quick I'm very optimistic on this there is coming a new form of art and will be developed I have seen remarkable experiments where I felt introduced into a different world by just taking part in an interaction we have an Israeli company it's called a puppet cinema they're working with puppets and different worlds they are bringing us in different layers you will find this in the booklet it's called The Big Bang that work now outstanding I have never ever seen that kind of artistic approach I'm very happy to have this now in the program but in common theater will remain theater this is and it might will become even more value because of that experience of loss that's my conclusion on that some of the things the same theater will stay theater and I think we will have roaring 20s late 20s after the pandemic somehow not disappeared but maybe that we can get to public life and as Stefan said I'm sure that Broadway will be very vivid again and all the museums will be full of people again so that's what we experienced we have sold tickets for a festival for a live festival where everybody who bought the ticket knew it might not take place so we have several shows which are sold out already even though we do not know whether we can perform them live and on the same times we have people who want to see the digital streams and we are connected now more to the world than before because usually you have to come to our place you have to come to Wreckinghaus to see what we are doing here or you have to go to Avignon or you have to go to Edinburgh or Vienna or wherever but this time you also have a chance to connect tomorrow night German time we will have a like a first digital premiere of Fakre by the new circus company Silke from Australia who have decided not to travel around the world and stay in Australia due to the no COVID strategy of Australia everything is open so there they can perform but they cannot while they're here so we will have a stream of their brand new show as the first ones who are streaming it online and we will have artists talks afterwards and the artistic director has to get up at five o'clock in the morning Australian time to get to with us in German time late evening, 11 o'clock these are new experiences for a theatre festival we encounter, we keep on meeting each other we keep on exchanging our art but now you through a digital version and I hope that some of the stuff sticks with us maybe the more clever, the more intelligent stuff maybe hopefully more the stuff that we develop from the very first moment to be digital or to be streamed some of the stuff that we are streaming now wasn't meant to be online but now we are doing it because therefore we have a chance to present it and on the same times I'm very sure and very convinced that we will have a very vivid theatre life within the next years again that brings up new forms and encounters Who are artists you feel? I mean, Shetha mentioned the Israeli company maybe you could give us because we so far away we don't see enough here it's very isolated and that's why we hope to create a 2023 festival and we need your help so to say maybe New York will come together and create something like a festival that might be close to what you guys are doing and the tradition you carry on but what are artists you feel at the moment? They are of interest Who are artists we say what they are doing is of interest? Are you inviting them? Who also maybe deal with this time and with the digital real moving? Just give a very, just one single example which is an Indian artist because you've had a chat with India last yesterday but who lives, his name is Abhishek Tapar and he lives in Holland so he has moved to Europe but he tries to, he tries to, within his work he tries to bring us together with his Indian heritage he's in his early 30s and he connects you through food always in his productions you have to eat something and then he tells stories about that specific food and it is very radical because he brings you into a very cozy situation where you feel comfortable and then he opens up to a huge political field to what's taking place right now in India what's taking right now with all these hyper-nationalistic Hindu focused politics of the actual government and the interesting with Abhishek Tapar is that now he is for the first time and he tries to transform this into a Zoom show because he cannot do it live with our audience usually you have to be live with him cooking, eating and so forth and now he even tries to transport it into something and then you have to cook it yourself to taste it because, so there's, this is somehow innovative in that way because he has a cultural encounter between his Indian heritage and living in Europe but he tries to open it to a world to transport something that is important to him even though it's a small work it's not like 50 people on stage, it's just one person I'm not sure, Bettina, what artwork that inspires you say yes that's why I do the job but who do you follow, who do you think this work is meaningful at the moment in the last year what you have seen your microphone is off, Bettina I mean in the last year I couldn't, I couldn't I could almost see nothing I saw, there was no theater there was a very short period there were some performances in June and there was this short period in September, October where the theaters were open and you, there was like one third of the audience where people could sit, very strict rules you couldn't have a glass of wine there were no breaks so there was almost nothing I saw here in Düsseldorf the premier of Dennis Wolpe who just started with the Nubale company very quite young director of the company very young company the youngest was 18 on the first premiere and they had to do things like dance the premiere two times one after the other because they could only have only have 200 people in the space was around normally 1,000 people so there was not a lot, not much to see I saw one rehearsal of Richard Siegel in Wuppertal with Anish Kapoor it was just a rehearsal it should come out in March no way there was, we had planned a big festival for November in Wuppertal because we are preparing which is great to have the Pina Bausch Center in the old Schauspielhaus in Wuppertal which has to be renovated and there will be an extra building that's a huge project we have this will be the first center in Germany at least maybe in the world which is dedicated to a choreographer we don't have this until now and this was supposed to be a big meet and of course Pina is one of the artists I'm so very fond of and they danced that shift but it couldn't be the public that was also kind of streaming because in November there was a total lockdown and so I kind of feel in distance to the arts in the beginning of the lockdown I was in New Zealand I just decided to visit my son in March so I met Lenin Pontifazio and Peter Sellersborsen in Auckland but this was only one week and then also in New Zealand there was a lockdown so yeah it's really rare and I mean of course he was a voice in a way he was more important for me than many theater artists in the beginning I think he was so important for many people working with performance and dance because my main issue is on dance and there is of course a couple of people I mentioned Woostergroup I think I still think it's one of the most interesting companies or people it's some kind of didn't see work of Jan Faber and Johan Siemens is doing a great work in Bochum with the company they also do quite a lot of streaming in the Schauspielhaus and have a lot of good artists and the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus Bob Wilson is right now working here in Düsseldorf in the Schauspielhaus and you know him very well and he's preparing a production maybe Stefan knows when it will come out I think it's only in autumn that it will come out but yeah so there is a lot a lot of great and there's many many young artists which are really interesting and a generation of artists developing different forms of cooperation and there's a generation which is also again more political in their artistic work I think which is very good it's a funny question in this because we all a little bit we all feel like in a vacuum of course you'll see some streams but I think we all really miss so much to have live performances I mean one of the last things actually I saw I initiated a big project in the framing of Bauhaus 100 years of Bauhaus in 2019 was Billy Forsythe and was an anterosetic gas maker and it was also always tandem of museums and dance houses so the Vorkbang Museum was working with Billy Forsythe and Pak Zollverein and Anteresa was working in Düsseldorf in the Kunstsamlung and in the dance house and people like Trevelle Herrera and Nick Maus were working in Museum Ludwig and in the university in Cologne and then Anteresa, the gas maker and Rosas where there was actually one of the last things I saw in I think it's September they were working in the Columba Museum in Cologne which is an amazing beautiful building of Tsumtua of the architect and they were performing all over this museum which was almost empty Anteresa was just curating some works in it and this was I'm for sure her work is one of the most important works for me and also to follow just to mention some people works on screen, sun outside things are taking galleries the white box, black box so maybe to again to I think it's just to add this I think it's not a question of white box and black box I think when museums decide for this kind of work they have to also really to decide for to put choreography as the masterpiece of visual art in a way and that's I think what we managed in 2019 because you all know how much in Bauhaus the arts were mixing and in a way in our world it's all called interdisciplinary but the structures are still quite separate and so it is a big difference if you just make a little performance in the museum or this Anteresa was here in Düsseldorf they really had a huge space where two dancers changing were working for 10 days and there were 10,000 people in this 10 days looking at father with the music of Steve Reich and people coming again and again so this was a really beautiful situation and also in Colombo that they really could like live and I remember Teatro di Parma a long time ago they were saying you have to in a way to live on stage and this was really like living in this museum and taking this space and the audience was being part of the space and I think this can maybe also be a new question to the future how we create common spaces which are less separated that's very important this is a model that some of our work I saw in the travail in New York but to Stefan and Olaf who should we pay attention to globally if you can I just wanted to add something to Bettina's beautiful description as which was for me a remarkable encounter with internet was the planet this the museum of modern art of the 20th century called K20 in Dusseldorf made a huge presentation of Anna-Maria Kassmaker's work in the context of Bauhaus and this frame and she was invited for an interview to an audience space which is a very academic one it's a wooden space inside the K20 for around about 300 people and it is a very academic setting and they put two little chairs in front of this tiny little stage and everyone expected that there are sitting two very little women talking by microphone each to other in the very last moment Kassmaker couldn't come from New York and it was a huge problem how we can do it and what the hell is going on and then they decided to bring her via live stream on a six by four meter screen and the performative moment on this event was just incredible because it was not as expected that I'm looking down 60 meters on two mice-sized people but there is Kassmaker sitting and next to her desk and celebrating her interview onwards to meet the audience interviewed by a very beautiful lady sitting on this tiny little chair down and talking to her this was a performance in itself on such an incredible aesthetic creation just made out of this mistake or problem that no one can fly from New York to Europe so there are many of these nice details we can learn from I attended last September an incredible meeting which is called Adam and this is a highly top secret meeting of young Asian artists which is there belonging in Taipei to the Taipei to the Taiwanese center of the art what I learned from this young people making a two weeks conference and seminar just by handling their mobile devices and making walks through cities connecting people interacting by discovering spaces adding text into this never seen this before incredible, unbelievable and jealous I'm an old-fashioned boring person I'm delighted by these young people how creative they are dealing with this situation so there are many of good things to come I didn't answer your question I guess, but I'm inspired from this very much you know, that's true what's, yeah, what's inspiring but very inspiring, very inspiring as they're living in a completely different dimension as the mobile device they grew up with is a completely different part of their nature of communication you know, I was born we had black and white TV and in 1968 I remember the color TV came to the world what came up in this my life even my mother learned to work with a mobile device but this is a generation they're having this already in a different deeper layer in their everyday behavior which I'm not will reach I'm enjoying my 50th year of life but it is interesting how it works and it inspires me in every sense I can't handle it, but I'm following it but in terms of content to be honest I think the inner politics of the United States throughout the last year have been really inspiring also for artists abroad here in Europe because as I see it the empowerment that they've been brought up with the Black Lives Matter movement really is walked over to the European continent and the idea of empowerment and confronting majority society within Europe with people of other experience that we do not have any kind of ideas about our own privileges as a white male person in a position of something that was also really inspiring for our curational view on arts, on artists, on female artists artists of the thousand hemisphere and that was really astonishing for us that the whole election process the whole process of change of power was one of the biggest democracies in the world the shaking of that, the instability that has been shown suddenly the massive line, the massive destruction, the structural energy of a process that we all perceive as this is the pre-world and suddenly we thought maybe it's not that was really also in that term inspiring because it showed such a huge new energy of protesting and going against something and yes, to pinpoint it like I think the Black Lives Matter movement was also for a European art situation inspiring and it was came from some area that I didn't expect it so far because before that we were all focusing on Asia on Africa and suddenly it was the US and yeah, I'm sure that a lot of artists even in Europe, they got a lot of energy from what happened last year, last year in your country. Amazing, yeah. I think it is a lot about energy I think theater, the atmosphere in the city I mean the beginning of the work actually there was an exchange of energy and energy of call and an energy of performance the idea of a voice who also wasn't distilled of and then we can get the idea of stored energy how you use it, how it's released that it keeps us alive and this theater has shown that as you all pointed out the major festivals in Europe came out after a dark, dark period and it brought change for the better and global view that it brought the idea of the imagination it was at least some of the great writers here from the Caribbean who also taught at CUNY studies so much what is wrong is a failure of imagination they can not imagine a job normally in the coal mines could be as good as working in a restaurant or running a place or being part of a park service the idea of homophobia, of racism violence against women it's a long imaginations and theater really can help as you pointed out and as Bettina pointed out and this is why I think the work of festivals it's so important it travels faster it makes a point of a new artist and also has an impact in that idea of a festival and also congratulations to Thomas Oberhander for opening the Berlin Festival again it's also not an easy thing to do and I think also his festival the down to earth to say can we do work outside with no electricity like really radically asking questions why do we have an exhibition about climate change but it's climate controlled and if we don't change what else will change so there's so many questions and as you all said we could talk so much longer maybe we also check in in the fall and see how did it go what did you learn and how did it and really we need our help here there is no big major festival in North America it's shocking that was you know BAM who brought this out on the season the great next wave festival Lincoln Center Festival was closed down after some controversies or perhaps the people in Charleston it's no longer important to show theater from around the world we do not have a festival like this it's shameful but perhaps this time will help us to create something and we need that dialogue we need your help you said what happens here in the US also has an influence and it was all very, very, very significant what you talked about might all be obvious and clear to you in Germany and in Europe but in the context where we listen from now it is radically different it's also a model to look up to and we would like to thank you all for the big contribution you make towards global theater theater in general to keep the energies flowing Bettina you know for helping out making things happen in that part is his artistic creation that he supports that structure and for Stefan and Teata de Veld and for Ula with the work has been at least a significant symbolic representation that are imaginary but also real for the moment and what is real in that moment can also be real in life that's why theater gets censored Abhishek, who from India yesterday who's been up for five nights in a row trying to connect he's a writer and playwright as a volunteer to connect people to oxygen machines he said, my place gets censored in India and so it must do something TV and film goes on but people government doesn't like my place in a tiny little space so it has an effect and so you're working for that in a good way so really thank you all thank you for taking time to join us you're in the middle of festivals the middle of preparing after long days and one more Zoom meeting for you but this was really enlightening it's what makes me think and it's also a push in the arm to go and see if there is a way to create something like a festival here in New York City and what it would take and talking about it so then something helps also to create realities so we will see what will happen thanks for how long again for hosting us it's such an important venue and I hope that we will continue the conversation and that we hear more and that we will exchange ideas and contribute to that global world the problems we have as Bettina said the climate change problems the political problems problems of democracy we are global problems and they can only be solved locally but also globally we need to think in that terms and your festival are a reminder of it thank you all and I hope to all see you again join you one day in New York City here's the Ata De Verde look it up go to the festival program lots of it is free streamings are free Warfishspieler what's your website Ola? it's the same it's like I can no I can't show you the same thing yeah no it's not Warfishspieler.de Warfishspieler.de like the one we actually saw tell us however you want and do Google and you will find it you will find it yeah it's what the invitation to my team to turn back to make the website fit for Monday as we want to come with the program on Monday and all my team is following with interest I'm getting messages in between and hello team to other events have fun thank you for being with us and Stefan was at when we were starting this Zoom he was getting a mail and a call to inform him about the upcoming rules for next week right and what will happen and what will happen and he's online so it is all in flux Bettina thank you for making this happen for inviting help me to invite Stephan and Ola and also for your contribution your work is so significant it's so important in Germany it's perhaps taken a bit for granted what it is that's also what I learned here it is so significant so fundamental that the idea of support for the arts comes also from the governments we elect there is a human right to to access to healthcare access to learning but also the access to arts and the access to democracy and power to be an equal part these are fundamental human rights and it's great you know that this is part of that structure that makes it possible so thank you all and I hope to see you soon thanks for having us Stefan I hope to make good reviews thank you yes hand off communication say hello I just got the message all team of fear that the world says hello to New York thank you Frank for this beautiful conversation and hello to all you students and followers we are with you and enjoy the rest of this beautiful Thursday which is gray and rainy yeah still still okay thank you thanks a lot thank you we see you soon in York thank you thank you we need we need your good wishes bye bye hopefully soon life again