 Welcome everybody back on Seagal Talks here at the Marpeny Seagal Theatre Center, the Graduate Center CUNY, another day in New York City in Manhattan, another day on planet Earth, and another day of this COVID. And things keep on happening in a relentless pace. The Seagal Center is embarking since many, many weeks over 14, now on a tour around the globe, but also in New York City and in the U.S. and to talk to artists, to hear their experience of this unprecedented crisis, what it means to make our essential questions we all ask ourselves, what are we doing, where are we coming from, what should we be doing, what is changing, what has already changed, and what really should change. So it's a kaleidoscope of experiences, of particular personal ones, and we are honored and privileged to have these great artists from all the continents, and almost 100 now we talk to, and to get their insights, and it's been the most valuable for me personally, but I think also for listeners who did let us know, and we thank Halwa for giving us this forum, though the United States officially left the WHO, the World Health Organization, yesterday. In the moment of the greatest health crisis of the country, they think it's a good idea to leave no longer influence in policies, no longer having access to studies, no longer being part of the world, the community. 60,000 people in the U.S. were infected yesterday, the highest number ever recorded, and we are all stunned of these developments. There's a half a million infections in Africa, 3 million in Latin America, and over 3 million alone in the United States. So it's a shocking in Israel, Serbia, Romania, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and now it's hitting very hard after all that this poor country suffered through another great, great, great crisis, and we don't really know where all of this is going. Shocking news also for us at the university overnight, basically the Trump administration said that all foreign students basically have to leave the country if there's no in-person teaching. It is a shocking. Harvard President Larry Bacoff said the order came without notice, and its cruelty is only surpassed by its recklessness. It's a shocking to break up the lives of foreign international students here in the U.S., so Harvard and MIT is suing the U.S. government, and it's rightfully so. Also at CUNY, in our PhD program, we have many international students who make the program so great. What it is, and it is most probably just a tactic to force universities to open in the fall to do in-person teaching, which puts lives of faculty, students, the staff, the people in danger. Even New York schools and other schools, normal schools in the country are being forced to open. Trump just threatened this morning to take away subsidies and funding if they choose to stay close in a time, as I said, where we experienced unprecedented losses. The New York stores are still closed. New York indoor restaurants are closed. Brooks Brothers, a 200-year-old company, filed for bankruptcy this morning. It's a shocking development of what we have, and I think it's fair to say that Trump has failed this country. Like, no president before he refuses to wear a mask because it's not a good symbol of encouraging people that leads to death. So he is personally responsible for so many deaths, and he suggested that people should inject disinfectant in their own blood, and he thinks the only problem is we have too much testing, and that's why numbers are high, even so people cannot get tested. Long lines I tried to yesterday in New York. They say the next one is the 17s or the 19s that's available, so it's a shocking. And the question is, what do we do as human beings and, of course, artists who are so close to the presence, the experience of the presence and experiencing and anticipating the future are more for sure struggling even more in this experience. And today we go back to the great country of Japan and great superpower in a way in theater was the great tradition, long as they are re-staging performances the way they were done 400 years ago, but creating on the same time great contemporary work, whether it's playwrights or buto that came out in Japan as tradition, so it's a fantastic unique mixture with a rich tradition and also globally connected after perhaps moments of more isolation. And with us we have the great Satoko Ishihara. She is here with us a young, a significant voice in the chorus of Japanese theater and Aya Ogawa, a brilliant translator and New York director on her own and writer. Satoko is a playwright director novelist. She directs and writes plays that steal with human behavior, the psychology of the body and the unease surrounding these themes using her unique sense of language and physical sensitivity, themes like sex, cross-making, breathing are clinically portrayed to the viewpoint of women. She's a post-feminist feminist, post-punk, punk, writer, creator I would say. And Aya, the great Aya Ogawa is a Tokyo-born Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer and a brilliant, brilliant translator. She was also part of the translation session of the Center for Humanities, which we helped to create. And she uses a stage for exploring cultural identity in other facets of the immigrant experience. And she was part of the play company under the radar here at Artwork and the Great Suicide Forest. When she directed Haruna and Lisa and play, that I think was a fantastic, one of the best works of the seasons of both of you. Thank you. I apologize for my long opening. And Sato-ko, where are you? What time is it? Now I'm in Tokyo and now it's one o'clock midnight. One o'clock past midnight, wonderful. So how is the situation in Tokyo and Aya can translate for you? Tokyo de ima no jyokyo, donna kanji desu ka? Aya, ima wa fijojitai sengen teyuu no haa kaija sarete ano shibaraku chotto tattan desu kedo ano mata tokyo dake de ichi-nichi no kansen-sha ga haku-niin o koete kitari to ka teyuu kanji desu ne chotto mata kansen-sha ga fuete iu teyuu kanji desu. So right now we're in a moment where they had released us from the state of emergency for a while, but just recently there have been about a hundred infections per day just in Tokyo. So things are turning towards the worst right now. A hundred infections per day seems to be U.S. relatively low, but it's high for Japan. So right now we've been cutting hundreds of people so it's been a long time since they've been released. So right now they're saying that the second wave is coming. Yes, a hundred per day is actually quite high because after we had been released from the state of emergency we had not hit that number and now we have. So people are talking about this being the second wave. Second wave, yeah. New York City is doing well I think last week in some of the days were only 18 under 20 infections. So how was your experience? Were you in lockdown for a long time? So I had been in lockdown basically since the end of March and in April I was supposed to go to Munich Germany to be in residence there for three months to write a new play, but obviously that couldn't happen. So I've just been here in Tokyo writing. So are you alone in an apartment or with your family? What neighborhood are you in in Tokyo? I live in Tokyo in an apartment with one roommate. Yeah it's a little strangely peaceful because I don't know anybody personally who has gotten sick. I don't have any friends of friends or acquaintances of acquaintances even who have gotten sick from this. I've only heard about really famous people getting sick. So it's a strange time. I've just been at home in a seemingly very peaceful time. Your work deals with Japanese society, the complex and complicated role of women, an aging society and society also experiencing a loss of labor and work. How are your thoughts in this time of corona about Japan? I think I'm dealing with women's work, but I think that because of the corona pandemic I was influenced by what I was thinking. What are your thoughts now? I have a project called the problem of the fairy that I played in New York. When I couldn't get out of the house, I was writing the script and I was writing the script and I was playing it in the Zoom. It's a script I wrote three years ago, but now I'm reading it in a situation of COVID-19 and reading it in a completely different way. So it's not about changing the script, it's about using Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic to make the script as it is. And then, three years ago, the current situation has changed a lot, so I thought I'd try to do that. So one of the things that I've been doing or I have done is I wrote a play called A Question of Ferries, and this is something that in New York we had a reading of. But during this lockdown time, I remounted this piece, which I wrote three years ago over Zoom. And I really felt that there were kind of different resonances to this piece now in light of this age of corona. It's not necessarily that I've been rewriting or re-editing that work, but just finding new resonances and new things that are hitting me about work that I've written in the past, which has been a discovery. What other new things is finding? It's a great play, but at that time, I was talking about whether the work was really good. And now, when I'm living in society, I have to work on my work every day. And there are other things like hints and wills, but there are places where they overlap. And there are places where they overlap. And there are places where they overlap. So A Question of Ferries is a play that is written in three parts. There are three sections to it. And the third act of it, it takes a form of a lecture performance. And basically, it's about bacteria. And specifically, through the course of this third part, the topic is about how to take the naturally existing bacteria within women's bodies and to make yogurt out of it. So in this part of the play, I explore this question of whether sterilization, antibacterial sterilization is really, truly a good thing. And now, obviously, viruses are different from bacteria, but I think that there are enough similarities to the way we think about them. And now, of course, we live in a world in which we have to sterilize everything, sterilized surfaces in order to be safe. So that's one thing that felt very vibrant to me about the play. And that's the thing that I've been thinking about is evolution or change. And one form of the human evolution, of course, is a vertical evolution and a vertical change. What is it? We are all born from our mothers. We inherit certain characteristics from our parents. So there's a verticality to our progress or to our change. But there's also, as human beings, we live within society and there's a horizontal inheritance. How are we affected by our environment by society? So it's made me really conscious of this kind of horizontal way of change and evolution that we exist in. Is it easy for you to write at the moment? Is it easy for you to write at the moment? I think things that are happening in April and things that are happening right now have changed a lot. In April, there was a time when reality was like fiction. There was a time when I couldn't make a fiction that I could stand up to. But now it's calmed down and I can see things with a little more distance. I feel that there are a lot of problems and there are a lot of materials. Yeah, I think that things have changed. I mean, back in April, I would say that it was very difficult for me to write. Because reality itself seemed like fiction and it was hard for me to kind of then from that place generate a fiction that could kind of stand up to that. But now, with a little bit more calm and with a little bit more distance from what's happening, I'm finding it easier to write. There are a lot more things and problems to write about, for sure. How is the mood within Japanese artists? Fukushima is on the mind of so many contemporary work. Toshiki Okada talked about this. How is the experience of this global catastrophe influencing the atmosphere? What is the current situation like in the theater or in the art world? What impact do you think you can see? There was a conversation with Toshiki Okada a few weeks ago. At that time, there was a talk about Fukushima. What is the current situation like in the coronavirus that is affecting the world right now? What do you think Japanese artists are like? Well, I don't really think that Japanese society is a need for art. For example, there are people who are doing theater, and there are people who don't think they are professionals. There are a lot of people who say that they don't really need to help other people. So we have to raise our voices to make sure that our performance cancels and that we are in trouble. There are a lot of people who don't want to be crushed economically. When I experienced Fukushima, I graduated from college in 2011. At that time, I didn't understand anything at all. There were a lot of young people who were doing the acting around them. There were a lot of people who couldn't show that they were interested in the social issue. I think that Japanese society doesn't really consider art a societal necessity. There are quite a lot of people who think that theater makers are not professional artists. When we were in lockdown and lots of performances were canceled, it was really up to the people within the theater industry to create a movement to try to save the economy of the theater industry. You mentioned Fukushima, that was 2011, and that's actually the year I graduated from college. As a person who is just ending a student life, I really didn't know anything. I was surrounded by young people who, it seemed like at that time, really were not engaged with societal issues or problems. We're really trying to avoid that kind of political conversation, but I do feel like now it's hard to remain indifferent. And in the theater world, there are a lot more vocal voices. Will your work change? Will the character of your work change because of this corona? It's a play based on a Giri-sha-ki-geki. It's a play based on a Giri-sha-ki-geki. I thought I wanted to be able to do that. Until now, I've been trying to do that, but I didn't really want to do that consciously. I was looking at the situation in Japan right now, and I was thinking about what I wanted to do. I wanted to be able to do that. Yes, I do think that I have been influenced. In fact, the script that I just finished writing at the end of last month is structured like a Greek tragedy, but it really intentionally reflects what is going on societally. In the past, I think that my work may have ultimately gotten to a place where it reflects societal issues and such, but in the process of writing it, I was never that conscious about being explicit about that. But this new play that I've written is very much intentional and conscious in the way I interpret the things that are happening in society, including the coronavirus, but other elements of Japanese society as well. The situation right now is very special, and if you look at it, it's an interesting situation. The reason why I wanted to do that was because I wanted to do things that I wanted to do. It's not about the coronavirus, but I think there's a lot of people who are very strong. Recently, there was a election in Japan. People who had been doing it before continued to do it. It was a result that I had expected. Among them, there was a person who had a strong desire to say something very personal. Of course, this person had won the election, but he was more expressive than he was before. I was very scared of that. Did you include that in the play? These are really extraordinary times that we're living in. I've really felt passionate about talking about the circumstances right now head on. I think this is not specifically about the coronavirus itself, but I think we're seeing globally that right-wing voices are really coming to the forefront. There was an election recently in Japan, and the results of the election were not particularly surprising to me. But there was one candidate who was from the right and who was voicing very extreme racist things. I felt that it was really terrifying that this person was receiving more votes than they had in the past. That was something that I had to face head on. Do you think art and theater can be a part of changing Japan into a place where there is perhaps less suffering, where there is more understanding, and is art for you an individual practice or a social or political practice? For Ichihara-san, do you think art and theater have the power to change Japan? Or do you think you can change Japan into a society where there is more understanding? For Ichihara-san, do you think theater is a personal thing or a social thing? Until about three years ago, I think I was making my own work with personal expectations. Recently, I thought that I could be able to change society and make society better. I was very embarrassed to say that, but I was thinking that I had to say that. Many people say that there is no discrimination in the world now, but I think the world has changed more and more so that people who have not been able to say so far can raise their voice. I think that's a wonderful thing. Art is something that people can change society in a way that is not possible in the way that they can do it with protest movement. For example, it is important for people who have been discriminated against to say that they should not be discriminated against. I think it is very dangerous to say that art is something that can be taken away from people. For example, I think it is very dangerous to say that I have been discriminated against on Twitter. People who have been told that they are the least human are very scared to say that they can not stand up on Twitter. But in reality, there is definitely such a discrimination in humans. I think there is a saying that you can not live because of what it is. It is not something that is heard in short letters like Twitter. Up until about three years ago, I would say that theater had been quite an individual practice for me or something that was driven by my own personal desire. But these days, I would say that my theater practice is very much in an effort to improve society. I would say that I was probably embarrassed to have to come out and say that so explicitly. But that the world is changing in such a way that we have to be that explicit and that we can be that explicit and it is necessary to be very explicit. In art, I really think that it is another way to change society that is separate from Twitter or larger protests and protest movements, which I think are also necessary. For example, I think it is really important for people to come out and say that it is wrong to be racist or wrong to be prejudiced. It is important for us to hear those personal anecdotes of people who have suffered because of prejudice or racism. But I think art is the space where we can create the space to explore why humans are prone to prejudice and racism in the first place. And you can't have these nuanced conversations on Twitter in just 140 characters, you will just be devoured and never be able to leave the house or face society. But art is the place where we can have a more nuanced conversation about exploring why do these racist or prejudiced structures exist in the first place? Why are human beings have the tendency towards them in the first place and how can we dismantle them? How is it for you as a young female theater artist to break into Japanese theater? How complex is that? Is it easy to deal with these questions? How was it difficult for you to break into Japanese theater? On the contrary, I think the number of female theater artists has increased a little bit now. I think it was less than 5 or 6 years ago. Since I appeared in the show, I was able to stand out. I think it was a very special opportunity for women. And I learned a lot about women. When I first started, I didn't have that kind of awareness of how women express themselves. I gradually became aware of the fact that I am a woman. I have to think about the fact that I am attracted to women and that I can be seen as a woman. I had a good experience, but I also had a lot of worries. Actually, when I was just starting out as a playwright, I would say up until 5 or 6 years ago, there were not a lot of female playwrights as I was just getting started on my career. I felt that I gained a lot of attention because I was a woman and I was invited to participate in a lot of female-themed projects. And for my part, when I was just starting out in my writing, I wasn't conscious of writing about women's themes in particular. But over the course of my career, I had just been told by other people that, oh, you're writing about women, you're writing about themes pertaining to women. And also, I had to recognize that I was receiving a lot of attention because I was a woman, because I was writing about things that people considered to be women pertinent themes. So this is both good and bad. I felt like I was getting the attention for being a woman and writing about women's themes, but also coming to terms with that consciousness about the things that I was writing about. In this time now, in this time of corona, do you think there is a sensitivity in audiences to hear and see new work? Possibly also work from women artists, but possibly also work in the digital realm, in the digital field. Are you exploring representation of your imagination on screen? Do you want to express your imagination on screen? I did a work on Zoom the other day. At that time, I wanted to experience the situation of not being able to do anything on Zoom. That's why I did it in a hurry. Before everyone gets used to the situation of corona, I wanted to experience the experience of watching the play on Zoom in this chaos. I wanted to show it to the audience and myself. There are a lot of plays on Zoom now, and there are a lot of plays on YouTube. Of course, there are also a lot of things that I recorded on the past work. I think there are a lot of plays that I can show you in the video, like Mr. Okada is doing. In this current situation, what I want to do now is that I am not yet found. I was originally made by a video artist, so I was not able to find a person who would play the play on the video. I wanted to make a great video, but I didn't have a chance to find a person who was originally making the video. I had to think about how to use the video as a person who has played the play. There is only one person who has played the play on the real theater, and there is only one person who has played the play as a video. It's very difficult, and I'm wondering if I need to think about it so far. As I mentioned earlier, I did do a Zoom performance of a play that I had written. That was because I wanted to experience something that was unique to that moment, which was the necessity of doing theater over Zoom. I wanted to experience what that was like first hand, and I wanted my audience to experience that. In order to meet that moment, we really rushed the process because I wanted to experience the crisis of the moment. Now, of course, some weeks and months have gone by, and there are a lot more things happening over digital platforms. There are performances and readings of theater scripts happening over Zoom, and obviously you can access more past productions over YouTube and such. There are a lot more opportunities for theater to be experienced over video, but I have to say that I haven't discovered yet what it is that I want to do moving forward. Honestly, there are video artists who have been making work for this digital platform for a long time before this. What I am doing as a theater artist, I still need to think about it because right now what I can create is still lacking compared to a live theater experience. It is also still lacking from a seasoned video artist perspective. I also am not sure whether it is an absolute necessity for me to think about having to evolve my theater practice in this way. Thank you, Satoko. Satoko, Aya, a question to you. You are part of the New York theater scene, your work as a writer, director and also translator. So fundamental essential, you go back and forth to Japan. How do you see the situation in Japan? What are the differences to the New York experience of Corona and the place artists are in? Well, I have to admit that I don't. What I can say is that my work in New York has been totally canceled for the rest of the year and possibly longer. It is a very, very sad and scary situation. But Japan, even though they did go through a period of lockdown, everything has opened up again. So most of my colleagues, friends and acquaintances in Japan are proceeding as business as usual. So the bulk of my work at the moment is almost 100% translation. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen. I worry about the second wave. But I mean, I feel like everybody is in the same place of just waiting and seeing what's going to happen. I was recently, you know, I was scheduled to direct a puppet show at here Art Center, but they've just made the decision to not have any live performances in their space for the rest of at least this calendar year. Yeah. In Japan, it seems like much more normal now after a brief period of shutting down. So shows are going on. There's a complete opening of theaters also like the social distancing or as far as I understand everything is back to normal. Ichihara-san, right now, the theater in Japan is almost in a normal state, isn't it? Well, the theater has been open since this month. I think it's open to my recognition. So theaters are, it seems like starting the beginning of this month, things have been going back to normal that most theaters perhaps are working with a smaller capacity. With space in between audience members, but, but things are moving forward. That is amazing. Is there a Japan, of course, also is famous for having been so isolated from the world for so many, many centuries. And now these are these kind of lockdowns and isolation. Are there historical comparisons in the history of Japan with the moment of the corona crisis now such infections? Well, in Japan, the situation of corona is historically something common. Have you ever experienced something like that? What should I say? Well, there was a time when I had been isolated as a country, a few hundred years ago, but in the situation of COVID-19, how do you see it in Japan? Well, I think it's been a very long time since I've been on TV for a hundred years, and I've never experienced anything like that. I mean, on the TV, they're calling it, you know, the danger of the century. So I don't think that there is an easy historical parallel that people are drawing in Japan. And do you, Aya, what do you think? Where does that fit in in Japanese thinking such a crisis? How does a society deal with this? Well, I think one thing, I mean, they talk about this in the news, too, about how mask wearing is much more common in Asia or particularly in Japan, you know, and that probably has had a lot to do with the way the disease has not spread as badly there. And here. But, you know, as a frequent visitor to Tokyo, and with a lot of acquaintances in Tokyo, I do feel like, particularly in the large cities, Japanese people have a different sense of space, a different sense of personal space. And that there is a lot more inward looking. That is more accessible, perhaps, to people than in America. I mean, you can see it when you go to the theater in Japan and versus theater in America. The American audience is so eager to laugh so eager to express so eager to kind of respond to what they see on stage. If you go to the theater in Japan, it will most likely be total silence, even when the audience is like fully enjoying themselves. That's one of the comments that I hear from Japanese artists when they tour to the US, you know, that they're just shocked by how responsive the audience is, but I think that it's really reflective of how the two cultures are different in terms of how the way they feel themselves and their bodies with the way they feel themselves as a culture, and that they will react and respond to this particular moment in history in different ways. It's more stoic personal experience, not an outgoing emotional response. Yeah, I don't know if it's stoicism. I'm not sure if it's stoicism because I do think that the impulses are the same, but in Japan perhaps they're much more accustomed to kind of turning that inward. So, you know, you will have just as violent a Twitter war in Japan as you would in America, but what you can see in the world outside walking around is probably quite different. A question for both of you, do you think Japanese theater will look different? I mean, there's the commercial theater, which we in America never see because it's so complex to travel and translation, and also they're so successful and then there's the traditional theater which we do see sometimes they know the Kabuki, the Bunraku and the experimental work of works like Satoko and Toshiki, but will there be a change in the fabric of theater if there's a year without performances or in case it goes back and second and third and fourth and pips wait for it, or do you think it will be stable? Do you think there will be a big change depending on the COVID-19 situation in Japan? Do you think that the commercial theater, the traditional works, and the experimental works will all change and will there be a big change in the theater? I think it will be interesting if it changes dramatically, but I don't think there will be a big change. I think there will be an announcement before the production starts. At that time, there was a time when the earthquake and tsunami occurred and we were able to escape like this, and I thought there would be such a small change. I think it's scary to go to the theater now, so I might be infected. For example, if the person next door is sitting on the theater, I think it would be a bad feeling. I think it's going to be difficult to get infected at that time, and I think it's going to happen when someone is in a situation where they might have a virus. It's hard to predict, it's hard to imagine a really big change happening in the theater world. I think that it is an opportunity that is really interesting to consider, but to look at things specifically, for example, after the earthquake of 2011, you know how there are pre-show announcements before performances, they started to include as a habit in the case of an earthquake, this is the way to exit the theater. That was the largest kind of change that we saw. I do think, though, that there could be a real change in people's hearts really about the idea of gathering together in large numbers publicly. Like, if someone is coughing next to you in the theater, you are going to be affected if momentarily. I think the fear of catching the virus is real and it's going to really prevent people from being able to participate in being an audience fully. So, I don't know, it's yet to be seen how that kind of change in people's feelings might later change the larger picture of the theater world. What do you think, Aya? Well, I've kind of been in disbelief about how little Japan seemed to have changed. I remember earlier on when New York was locked down and Japan started to open. I was convinced that they were just lying about the numbers and I just couldn't believe that it was safe. I don't know. I can't really say anything beyond that. I mean, if I understand right, the new art form, in a way, a revolutionary new art form of Pluto came out of experience of post World War II rejection of traditional Japanese tradition that led to fascism. Also a rejection of the values of the West who dropped the bomb and the idea of the body, the skin, the burnt skin, infected skin, created something completely new outside the metropolises. It was more in the northern region of Japan. Do you think that is there anything detectable of a new form or of a new approach to a theater that will have as strongly perhaps as I think as the butto discovery has given to the world? I think that the butto is an art that came out after World War II. I think it was an art that was born from the waste of the atomic bomb, the city, and the disease. Do you think you can see a new art form or a new approach in the theater now? It's hard to say at this moment whether there is such a large, and pivotal shift that would give birth to a movement like butto, as big of a movement as butto was. I mean, as far as new approaches, I would say that people are moving towards the digital platforms like Zoom, but it's hard to say right now from this distance whether there's a larger emergence in terms of art form or approach. Do you see anything in the digital world? I'm sure you follow performances, screenings, and things in Japan. Is there something or if this is really interesting, this is innovative? Is there something you can point us to? Me? You know, I've really just been hard at work translating for Toshiki. He has a new art exhibit, like video art exhibit coming up right now, and also a new work. I'm not sure if it's an exhibit or a podcast or a combination, like a sound installation for Yudai Kamisato, whom you know, but I haven't not yet seen these pieces in full. I've just been dealing with the text, so yeah, if they turn out to be something that's accessible worldwide, I'll definitely let you know. Certainly something to watch out for. Could you ask Satoko if there are things she saw online, but she feels these are innovative approaches from artists or companies? Is there anything you can share with the audience? I haven't really seen them, but I don't think I can see them right now either. I've seen Okada-san create a modern theater with the structure of the brain. That was really interesting. Zoom can use the background that people live in, so you can use the background of each of them. In Okada-san's videos, they also used the background to create the background of the city. I think the background of Giri-shageki and the background of Gya-gai-geki was the city. It was really interesting to see the background of fiction in a realistic way. They were supposed to have an actual production this summer, but because of what was happening, they had to postpone the full production until next year. Instead, they had a performance reading of the plays over Zoom, and Satoko was able to catch those. She thought what was really interesting about them was that each individual performer would be in their home, and you get to see the background of their home. Imagine what it would be like for them in that particular environment for them. There was a background created to the individual squares for the reading, and it was reminiscent of how I imagine the Greek amphitheaters to work. You would see the stage, of course, but then beyond the theater, you would see the landscape or the cityscape, so it was kind of an interesting moment to experience that background to the background. But I'm not sure whether they just had two readings, and I didn't personally see them because they took place at 3 or 4 in the morning New York time. And I'm not sure whether the recordings are available to us now. But yeah, I mean, he also talked on the Segal talks about his engagement with the new media, and he said it was interesting that actors now have perhaps the same presence as the director. You know, if they share a screen, even in the rehearsal process, there's some kind of a democratization going on. He said, I don't really know what it means, but it means something. How is this support becoming closer to the end of the session, but how is this support? Is the Japanese government, the city of Tokyo helping you and you, Aya, as someone who has done so much for a Japanese leader, are you getting help for your work? What do you think, Ichihara-san? Is the Japanese government or the city of Tokyo supporting you or are you currently in this situation? Well, I got one of them. I made about 10 minutes of video, and when I made it, I got 100,000 yen per person. Well, the 100,000 yen isn't that expensive. If you make a video as hard as you can, it will cost more than 100,000 yen. So, if I were to say, as a way to get the money, it's a little bit like that, but to get the money, I have to make a video so that it doesn't cost more than 100,000 yen. It's a video where the people of Tomin can watch it freely, but this is my work. It feels like I'm not that happy to be shown, and I think I'm trying to make a video to prove that I'm doing art. I didn't think it was a good idea, but I wanted the money, so I did it. And, you know, $1,000 is really not a lot of money. I mean, if you really wanted to make a fine work, a video artwork, it could easily cost $2,000 just to make the work. So, I did participate in this, but really, I'm not sure it was a, I could say that it was a good project. It's hard for me as an artist to say that, you know, I am proud of the work that I made for this project, just because for me it was really a means of trying to make some money. And therefore, to try to keep costs down so that I could have make that money and not spend it on making the video. But that was something that I participated in. For me, I'm speaking as myself, I feel extremely lucky, because I am, I have a partner who is able to continue working at home. And so that is my support system and I actually have not, there are a lot of emergency grants that foundations are offering right now that I have not been participating in applying for because I feel that there are other people who are in who need the support much, much more than than me. So, I think that as a writer and also as a translator there is work that I can do, but the same is not necessarily true for performers or designers so I really hurt for them, my all of my colleagues in the field. You know, it's devastating as you pointed out, nothing will happen till the end of the year, potentially something in spring but most probably also not. It's a devastating loss, I think the UK with all they have done wrong, they have one of the highest corona infection rates, they neglected it like Trump for such a long time. But they just two days ago announced a $2 billion injection into the art industry and the art institutions and could have already made such a contribution to the life, and especially in New York City. The arts are so vital and they have also helped to turn the city around and create catastrophe of the 70s when the city was almost bankrupt again. And so I think we all need to find ways to also honor the work of artists and having great art is a reward for working society, having great performances. Music just shows that things are working and in America doesn't seem to be able to handle this well at the moment so we don't see any and it's connected. I think it has been on the right side of history of the right side of social justice and arms have been always on the right side of the fight for the complex struggle for freedom and for liberties and now we're here again but it's not not visible at the moment and not supported and I think it's not a good sign for this society and things will and should change. As a closing question we often do that Satoko and also Aya. So what what do you think is important for all of us to focus on at the moment in this time of Corona and was hopefully the TAC the time after Corona. Visible. The end of the year or beginning of next what do you think is of importance. The last question is for Ichihara-san. What do you think is the most important thing right now? What do you think is the most important thing in this time of Corona, including Corona 5? The story of the theater. The story of the theater. It's not related to the theater. Yes, it's very difficult to talk about it. To be honest, it's really important for the family. I don't know if that's an interesting answer, but before the pandemic in Corona, I wanted to move from Tokyo. After all, the family is living in Tokyo, so I thought that I wanted to make sure that I could not leave from there. When something happens, I want to go and help. So I thought that it was very important for the people in the area to be able to walk. Corona. Of course, it's important to gather a lot of people, but I think it's great to be able to go to the distance where important people can walk. That's a really difficult question to answer, and this might be not the answer that you were hoping for, but I would say that the Corona pandemic has really prioritized for me family. And before the pandemic, I was thinking that I wanted to leave Tokyo, but my parents live here, and now in this new time, I have been feeling like I really want to stay close to them. I've also felt recently that what's within walking distance is very important, so the people who live within walking distance from me are really important. And I think that this will affect the way we gather in the future and how we are able to gather in the future. I mean, I think for me, and I'm sure many of your guests, American guests have said the same thing, but the fact that this pandemic has coincided with this moment in the Black Lives Matter movement here and police brutality, but also a real kind of confrontation with the racist structures in place in America. This is a real opportunity for us to imagine how to re conceive of a lot of our institutions and you know, there's that letter that we see you white American theater movement also happening, which, which I support but I also wonder how I wonder whether institutions that were built on white supremacy can truly be reformed. And so what I've been spending my time on is trying to in conversation with other artists, trying to really envision what kind of what theater can look like. And that is divorced from hierarchy that is divorced from white supremacy that is divorced from the system of rewards and accolades that truly serves community and what what that means what that looks like and how that can work. Yeah, these are these are some important, important suggestions to focus on your family to think about walking distance to think about how you gather how you get together and then you know the structures can they be changed at all and how can art contribute to to make visible what is corona crisis has exposed and check now which I can report the different did say it's like a Fukushima nuclear disaster but the top is open of the reactor and you look inside life, you see the people you see what's happening you see the melt and we don't know where we are going so I'm sad to go and I thank you for the update from Japan this is it was important to hear from from you and to get your experience how you live this moment tomorrow we have Nigel Smith with us who runs the flea theater in New York City and we really want to hear from Nigel how he is braving that storm which he has to get through as the deck of his ship and Jean Gaudet from Italy, a great playwright, a Belgian born refugee after local to came from Europe on this family and what was probably the most significant time yet now more play in the sixties and then continued his practice as a writer and now also created a retreat as stay upstate New York shantigar where he's fields, we also have to focus and then they engage with the spiritual life, mediation and transcending practices that art has done always over centuries so we will continue next week you'll have carried that speech and the board and more Mitchell from the Mabu minds that Thiago Rodriguez from Portugal, Suzanne Kennedy from Berlin who's a very significant work, a new generation that grew up with games videos and is employing and using an aesthetic that is an update I think on what we have seen so far so stay with us as thank you again both for being with us to our audience thank you for listening and now it's complicated with translations long listening to different languages but it's also a fact of the world. That we do live in multi legal realities it's on the streets of New York City, it's on the workplaces in collaborations we just don't see it on the stages. And we are not used to is the Gorky theater in Berlin is subtitling every show it's a short Turkish whatever they do they think it's important to consider everybody's languages and I think this is an important contribution also in this series that we do here. And those languages I thank you for your most brilliant translation as always and we hope you will get back to work soon to the suicides for us, which now seems like such a joyous occasion. And what you created and did and and that we get out of suicides into celebration of life and of theater and of community it's a significantly dangerous time which we're living in and I think artists help us and listening to them helps us. It helps me to to get through we can thanks for how round to teach a VJ and see I and Travis Andy and San Yang from the single team really and thank you for listening to to to take the time to listen to Satoko what she has to say in Satoko I hope you will be able to get back to Munich I assume the Munich Kamashina is it the one who invited you. New here and they are using the Gekijote don't get it. Resident Seattle. Resident Seattle resident theater Munich yes fantastic so this is a great honor to to be working there and invited so thank you all for listening and I see you all tomorrow I hope for a night shall stay safe to wear masks and stay tuned. Thank you.