 Everybody back here to the Martin Siegel Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY, Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Again a little bit of sun out here today and the vaccine has been approved yesterday. The first vaccination will take place I think next week. And so things in a way are moving ahead around us that the Graduate Center of shops are down almost 20 percent of shops are closed. And again and as we always say everything but belongs to the field and the landscape of theater performance is devastated. There are no performances, no jobs and no nothing where we really can see go back to what we normally practice our field and it does not look very good that it will even pick up next fall. So it's a moment in the history of New York City and especially then also for the performing arts and this is our field that is historic it is catastrophic and in a way apocalyptic and calyptic is that Greek word of revealing. Something is taken off you look at the inside and it was not always a negative doomsday connotation it was also often a connotation of the divine on that Montaigne this is I think what theater and art is also close to as John Cage always reminded us in his work and but the question is what is really revealed in this apocalypse is we are going through now and and it's an important moment to remember and that even as intense we are experiencing this moment there's a long history of mankind a long history of the US a long history of New York City and there have been moments where the city's life has been deeply infected it was in danger I changed radically whether it was World War one World War two the rough triads the time of the revolution that famous Hamilton's period where we heard so much about it now but also the 70s in New York City and it was a time of a great upheaval of dangerous moments for the city Wall Street I think threatened to leave and it's only because some brave citizens and people got together and paid taxes I had for 10 years and to kind of keep the city afloat it didn't bankrupt and but it was also a time that marked the arts especially the performing arts also in the in the US but also worldwide and globally it produced a generation of artists was remarkable so with us here is Hilary Miller Hilary thank you thank you for joining us Hilary is a professor of theater and she wrote a book she really researched intensely the period of the 70s the book is called drop dead performance in crisis 1970s New York as came out of that red litch and she is teaching 20s and 21st century drama and Queens college and also at the graduate center and her area of specialization includes theater post World War two in the United States performance in the city and contemporary playwriting and also I think writing for the screen television she did a great book this was interviews and she wrote for everybody was published the who is who whether it is a pha a ttr the journal for black theater and performance theater journal performance research so it's an important contribution actually she is making to this so Hilary how are you how is teaching going in in New York City oh it's going okay it's going okay I'm doing great so thank you for for having me here I mean great overall fine right with everything happening um teaching is going good I mean I think that's one of the ways that I'm experiencing this whole time is through um the teaching um online and I think I mean I teach at Queens college so the the chances that someone in one of my classes has been affected extremely closely by the disease by the illness is actually pretty high and that's been a kind of overlay of the challenge right now is just thinking about thinking about all of the aspects of teaching as I'm as as as many people have been trying to suggest it's not just a process of saying how do we take the classes we're doing in person and just putting those online it's actually that much more about how do you attend to different aspects of students that are under such immense stress so it's been just a journey along with everyone else who finds themselves teaching online where you feel quite lucky to be able to be doing so but then on the other hand the challenges whether it be um students who are sharing a laptop with their you know siblings and cousins and don't have privacy to be zooming or whether it just be access to um streaming materials it's been a real wake-up call I think for me being aware of how hard it is to find good performance teaching materials that can be streamed and made available for free to students has only been amplified now so um so it's been challenging it's been um challenging but also an experience of figuring out what it is that can not only help students pedagogically but maybe students who are incredibly isolated um as a lot of people are feeling and they might be grieving and and one of the things that I was actually just thinking about that I had been mentioning to you before the call was that um you know the experience of teaching somewhere like um like in the CUNY system when you pick up the New York Times and you pick up the newspaper generally what is being discussed is how residential colleges are responding you know how many times a week these schools are testing in order to be able to have students living on campus or um you know how this is affecting the enrollments of um residential schools when actually um I mean the last number I was able to find was close it was over 75 percent of students in the country were commuting um were commuter students and that means that those students um really need the resources that are at their institutions and that means that when they're at home they generally have other demands that are keeping them there as commuter students but also making it harder for them to learn so you know I've been trying to think through myself like how um I guess as you mentioned how something that I studied and researched so the 1970s was a period that was devastating for the CUNY system um and it really brought it kind of ushered in a wave of austerity in the CUNY system specifically that um we still live with right day every day so having studied that and and having seen what it meant for public education and and in some ways how it kind of altered the conversation so that um essentially just not having the funds for public education became kind of the baseline even after the city recovered um it's it's pretty terrifying to be now in a system where the cuts are not small or vague or general they're actually on the order of something that people are saying um if it if it happens in the worst case scenario it it would be a kind of loss to the system that we hadn't even seen before so so for me all of that kind of comes um all that comes together in the classroom because you're also teaching students who um are very likely um still working right they're the ones who are delivering amazon packages or they're living with um uh healthcare workers or they are driving ubers so that people can get to doctor's appointments um so I mean the more that you start you know hearing the kind of uh I don't want to call it lip service because I think it's so important that we have leaders who are calling out the people who are doing um frontline work but you do start to feel a little bit like okay well what's behind that like if you're really acknowledging that these that CUNY students or the students who are um making the city run I mean I'm assuming you had a similar experience Frank where during the lockdown um in March I could look out my window I was living in Woodside Queens and now in Brooklyn but when I looked out my window um I saw who was making the city run right you saw the delivery people and you saw um uh largely immigrant workforce keeping the key food open and so when you put on the tv and you hear your leaders acknowledging that as well um what is going to happen beyond just arguing over hazard pay or something which is very important but but really thinking long term so that a system like the CUNY system or whatever institution it is that is is public um in its nature what are we actually going to be thinking about doing in order to make sure that those people are not left behind in the recovery which would probably be I guess like if you needed to put some of the takeaways from my book on kind of like a thumbnail it would be about the sort of uneven recovery for a lot of theater artists companies professions so in some ways the teaching ends up kind of you know running smack into this conversation about um austerity and budgeting uh post uh fiscal crisis in New York yeah it is it is quite something and it is true what will the health really look like we already learned that the small business loans from the Tom administration 99% did not go to small businesses it went to gigantic corporations like thank god it's Friday so thank god it's Friday it got more money from the Tom administration than CUNY colleges you know CUNY colleges that serve 250,000 students almost 80% of every first African American Latino Asian American student first generation go to these colleges it's such a significant important contribution also over 20 stages in New York City bringing arts and culture to the neighborhoods and it's of course one of the big questions how will that work is that what it is is it 20 stages in CUNY yes yes I never knew that wow and we are working on this to also get back together and also for our festival in 2022 to reactivate that it's much more the largest conglomerate of theaters in the nation Hillary um it's uh devastating of course you know the situation with the Queens I think the Queens corona neighborhood ironically enough it's really called like this it's 78% of infections already I think in June or July and now it's again the epicenter for so many reasons of course as you mentioned and you're teaching there this great service you do to the city to the students to humanity I think the access to art access to education and outpace of what is of significance and to participate in the political process and you're educating an next generation and it should be supported is the most valuable asset we we have so we don't do what happened before I know also you are you're a practicing artist and how did you experience corona what happened um it was uh I think like a lot of people I was in a actually this would be an interesting thing to mention maybe later I'll mention it but I spoke on a panel of essentially performing artists during the pandemic and they were all independent artists and I was on the panel and there was a burlesque performer Pearl noir on the panel and she talked about um you know when when things really kind of shut down she had to go through this kind of morning process in a way both for uh for what was lost in terms of her community but also her professional life and and all of these things and I feel like in some ways um you know the the loss of life and everything that is happening around us um in some ways you become not quite numb but it's hard to quite know where to categorize that and um for me at the at the moment when everything was quite terrifying in March there was a lot happening professionally that I just kind of had to shove aside like the book that you had mentioned playwrights on television was actually being released I think the exact date was like March 6th right it was like the week of um the lockdown and um and I was upstate um doing a play development workshop at a great um art center called Hubbard Hall and they have a relationship with the Bushwick Star Theater where they they it's a fairly new program where they bring up the Bushwick Star season artists to Hubbard Hall um in order to develop the work and essentially do a workshop um so I was in this tiny town of Cambridge, New York and um uh trying to develop this this this play called um preparedness which is actually somewhat about this kind of sense of um precarity in higher education and my director Chris Thor a really fantastic director who's worked primarily in immersive theater um came up to the development um site with me and I remember I will like never forget him walking in with a huge thing of Clorox wipes his wife is a doctor and he just kind of walked in and put them on the table and at that I I sort of think of that as like a beginning moment because my my alert was not yet up right I think we were like washing hands more and things like that um and we actually had got we went out to dinner that week um and his wife had said you you have you can't you guys have to you know like you're in and it was a really touch and go time I mean my my wife is a actor who also teaches in the CUNY system and so there was a even though I was upstate there was a big question of when are they going to cancel classes um it was that very um it felt like such a vulnerable moment you know where you realize that all of your your your that your physical health is now in the hands of your leaders not necessarily just federal federal state the people making decisions at your college the people making decisions on the mta I mean you're now um looking at the people next to you saying what decision did you make before you entered this cafe right it was like that very heightened moment where people didn't also quite know which precautions for sure to take and the the shelter in place hadn't been announced yet in New York um and while I was up there they basically it was just supposed to be for a week but they made the decision to cancel the showing that was to be Saturday night and uh and then New York announced the lockdown and the the the reason why I think that was also such a profound place to be at that moment was because it was such a small town that it was like a microcosm of what happens when you close down an arts center it was like they made the decision to lockdown and then you could see how this tiny town the restaurants the people that would normally everywhere that myself and my director would go we weren't going and we weren't going to go to the brewery and the children that were going to this arts center for after-school programs didn't get to go there so it was like you could see it because the town was quite small the ripple effect and that was quite chilling in a way if you think about the city and the arts and you just just have been kind of trained to think of this as an ecosystem yeah and you don't necessarily think of the arts as just an industry that stands alone um it was very clear to me from that moment that um the way that that ecosystem was kind of I don't want to say shredded because it sounds too dramatic but it did feel that something had been kind of you know yeah and then yeah and I think yeah it's really one of those moments I mean I saw I was there in Berlin when the wall opened up you know more than world trade center and smokes up before the second down and of course we were there on this march you know when the shutdown was implemented I actually falsely warned three days earlier all my friends because I had heard from someone in Washington that this is going to happen and everybody says it's a joke you know it's fake news and I felt bad but I I thought it's inevitable but let's come to your book I'm Hilary and I would all our listeners to know um this is a very serious uh a contribution Hilary made and what we're going to talk about is very serious and of importance and I think also of consequence um she studied the 70s the moment we live in right now will be studied by historians sociologists uh anthropologists but also by theater historians and others and by people who look at urban development so that we are in the middle of it we actually are also part of it part of change where we can do something so Hilary in a way um I said before was like a back to the future so she is coming with us something with some messages and she perhaps will write about in the next 10 or 15 years if she will do a book about post-pandemic theater in New York City and there will be studies done about this but we're still in the middle of it Hilary has studied for many many years I don't know how long you worked on the book my guess is five six seven years you went through archives she looked at the greatest crisis uh in the cultural landscape I think at New York City um experience besides perhaps World War two um but we're still theaters we're open and we're working and but um it's called the book Drop Dead Performance and Crisis 1970 as I said and it's a fascinating what I'm reading a little bit on the description a fascinating and comprehensive exploration of how the city's financial crisis shaped theater and performance practices in that turbulent decade but also beyond New York City performance arts community suffered greatly from the severe reduction in grants in the mid-70s and uh Hilary you know put together you know skillfully and synthesized economics urban planning tourism and immigration to create a map of the interconnected urban landscape and to contextualize the struggle for resources and she looked at many theaters and professionals Alan Stewart, Lamama, Carol, Bulbasso, Joe Papp from the public and very very closely and she combined theater history and a very close history of productions and it's a case study of companies or productions and as elements of the infrastructure of New York City and she visited the Broadway off Broadway off of Broadway, Coney Island, BAM, community theaters and she really had a close look at what happened and it's a it says now it's a lively account of the financial crisis and the resulting transformation of the performing arts community chronicle and also kind of bearing witness to the choices that have been made to affect us to today so I think this is the most serious subject we are talking about I think everybody should listen to Hilary what she looked at what she found so Hilary tell us a bit about New York City in the 70s when it faced a moment like this. Yeah it's a big it's a huge question I think um I mean one place to start is to look a little bit pre-70s I guess in the sense that the one thing that continually came out in my study is that it's it was a very reactionary period and a lot of what is sort of appreciated and today celebrated about theater in New York in the 1960s including something like the real flourishing of outdoor performance for example a lot of that was then curtailed by the 1970s fiscal crisis and so what was the most I think startling for me just because it hadn't necessarily been something that I had really thought about in terms of thinking of theater as a kind of public service in the city I hadn't really thought so um committedly before this book about how when you read in the paper that because of the fiscal crisis funds for say cleaning the beaches are cut or if you read that funds for the parks department is cut something like that it's really hard to understand how that kind of cut then sort of filters to performing arts but it does and how and it's hard to sort of um exactly conceptualize how things like cutting library hours then filter into theater performance but it absolutely does and it happens in more abstract ways because of the way that we just start to sort of almost expect less right we expect less free performance or we expect less decentralized neighborhood performance it just becomes almost like in the 70s in some ways the expectations became very tamped down of what of what sort of theater could be and and that is one of my bigger fears for right now actually is that um I think that um among the the theaters for example that I looked at in the book um the ones that were the most successful in surviving the 1970s and this is a generalization that I think can hold true is that many of the more um experimental and that could have been politically experimental or formally experimental um theaters that had just been formed in the 1960s couldn't survive because it was grant money that they had been surviving on or it was just um you know the way that uh that their theater tickets uh you know couldn't sell as much or it was the way that they lost the people who had been helping prop up their theater because they left the city right so those theaters were so much more vulnerable than the ones that were on city lands and that was one of the biggest people that theater companies died theater companies absolutely oh I mean so many that they it can't even be counted I mean we can think of the ones that died in the in the late six in the early 70s um at the bigger ones but I mean there were so many that couldn't survive and and that is actually I have to say one of the things that kind of makes my skin crawl right now is when you hear this rhetoric of um well wealthy people believe the city and so for that reason we can't make uh let's say changes to uh I don't know the tax structure for example it's it's a little bit of a it's not quite a red herring but um mobility is a concern for everybody in the city right it's not just like yes wealthy people have a higher level of mobility but there are plenty of instances in the 70s and today when um we need to also be thinking about keeping the people who are at every level of the income bracket because it is not the 70s showed that that fear that line of fear of people are leaving people are leaving people are leaving um wealthy people are leaving that then dictated certain decisions and it turned out that those people pretty much weren't even really leaving right they were like going to the suburbs but we're going to come back anyway for the theater so there was a whole line that I think a lot of decisions were based off of um you know one example that I look at in my book is TKTS and TKTS was created during this time and it was entirely explained with what it is for people who don't know oh absolutely yes so TKTS is the discount tickets that you can buy uh usually either the day before or a few hours before a Broadway show also some off-Broadway shows and some other theaters um and it was created during this time ostensibly yeah oh did you want to say something no oh no so it was ostensibly created because um they Broadway realized that that um they needed to try to diversify the people who were coming to Broadway and Times Square was at a moment in which um its its reputation was uh not great and there was a lot of um hesitation and concern about going to Times Square so um you know part of what I explore in my book is how much that was true and how much it was just becoming a neighborhood where there were um let's say a higher number of um young people of color going to the movies you know the neighborhood was changing all of these neighborhoods were changing so that's not to say there was zero crime at all um but just to say that um the narrative that was pushing Times that was pushing a lot of theaters to support TKTS was you know we it was part of this we have to clean up Times Square narrative um so they created TKTS but when they created it they marketed it pretty much exclusively to tourists and they didn't really think about what TKTS could mean for other neighborhoods and for other people around the city and they really created a program that um is phenomenal I mean I love TKTS it's a great it's a great um it's a great almost asset to the city um but it it's pretty clear that it was not designed to actually change the audiences going to Broadway or expand the audiences growing going to Broadway and that's what I mean about certain decisions being made that in the process of creating this great program the concern became how do we keep people from leaving the city and there's a really wonderful I should say wonderful I mean wonderful as a researcher when you when you start stumbling on it but there was a major disagreement with um Joseph Papp where Joe Papp basically um you know made a really strong argument for changing the audiences that were going to be showing up at the theater he wanted he he didn't quite so much care about getting back the suburban audiences and was making an argument that in some ways is echoed in discussions that we have now about the heterogeneity of audiences for theater Broadway and otherwise still and he was absolutely accused of driving people out of the city I mean people accused accused a lot of the the changes he they accused him in terms of the changes that he was trying to make um at Lincoln Center where he was for some years as being part of this as being part of convincing people that there was a financial crisis the city was going down the tubes and um and it wasn't for them anymore so that's potentially a sort of long way of saying that because it's a very different time I mean obviously a global pandemic you know we do need to look at other examples right Spanish flu all of these things it's never going to track exactly on to the 1970s because there is so much that is so unique about what we're experiencing right now but I find some of the the return of these narratives to be the part that is very disturbing because it is a very different time so to continually go back to this kind of this way of thinking about what could happen to the city and this continued sort of lack of attention to the how just varied our arts landscape is and how it's not just about big centralized art spaces that is concerning because it's a different time but we sort of continually fall back into these similar ways of responding or similar fear-based narratives about New York as a place yeah yeah and people people did leave the city some as people left Newark after the riots and all that perhaps even until now has not fully recovered from that struggling is on a good way but what roles did the artists play they stayed I think a lot of them what how did they react I mean you just said there were less grants there was also a conservative climate into the production of culture about artists stayed what did they do and were they part of the reimagining of the city mm-hmm yeah I think in absolutely they were and you know one I mean one thing that I think is so different right now is that one of my fears is is that a lot of artists won't stay because the city for many artists especially just if you I mean I guess just again like I don't like all the generalizations but just broadly speaking it was still at that period relatively easier for an artist to remain living here and that means rent availability of jobs all of these things and so one of the concerns right now is just that it without things like rental assistance and all of that stuff it is harder and harder and harder if you are an artist to then reach any level of employment right and so if if there is no help if there's no help for a restaurant industry that employs a lot of artists then the fear is that that would be a really big difference from the 70s because they wouldn't be able to stay so that's just like a baseline concern so you say potentially this crisis is more dangerous than what New York City experience in the 70s when it was broke I mean for sure that would I think that that's a distinct possibility for the arts absolutely because even if you look at you know there have been some really wonderful oral histories done I did some interviews for the book it wasn't heavily interview based but I did a decent number of interviews and the issue of precarity and the issue of the cost of mounting a show and producing a show was certainly a concern but the issues of getting priced out of the you know the boroughs was a lot less of a concern and people the sense of artists leaving to go elsewhere certainly there were plenty of artists in the 70s who said you know I've had it I'm going to Vermont or whatever it might have been or I'm going to LA to do film production work there was of course a huge exodus in the 70s of theater artists going to LA but it's it's really incomparable you can't even compare it to the sense of how challenging it is for an artist to stay living in New York right now especially with with no no federal support no sense that there's going to be a light at the end of the tunnel right since the vaccine doesn't necessarily mean financial help for artists so so yeah so that's just a general concern I mean I maybe I'm completely off base but that is this that is my that is a fear so in terms of how artists were a part of the recovery you know it's so I think one of the ways that artists were a huge part of the recovery was neighborhood was entirely about neighborhood health so for example one of the great successes I think of the period and I say successes but in the book I look at sort of the complexity of how we evaluate it but it would be BAM it would be the Brooklyn Academy of Music as a kind of model for you know an organization that became a kind of I guess you could call it a stabilizer in a sense you know of a a nexus of neighborhoods that were incredibly hard hit right you could look at everything from trash collection to movie theaters closing down I mean the neighborhoods around BAM were so hard hit by the fiscal crisis period and the fact that there was a stable arts center that was protected by the city that had strong leadership and again there are many caveats to this and that had also committed in many different ways to bringing in artists across the political spectrum across you know of different disciplines I mean that kind of stability I think that ended up being one of the great case studies of the book because it is so complex and you could find a lot of missteps and a lot of ways in which you can criticize the role of BAM in its neighborhood but I think overall that's an example of really a nexus of neighborhoods that were strengthened by having an art space like that and whether they did this enough or not is part of is one question but BAM's method of kind of bringing in companies that could then stabilize those companies was also a great model and and I you know that's one of the reasons too why I looked at a very sort of city supported institution like BAM and one that went that had a very long history and then I also looked at a neighborhood like Coney Island and I think when we look at something like that the the the city has in some ways been so negligent about developing the just the sheer performance entertainment arts potential of an area like Coney Island and they've been that way for sort of decades but but even worse from the 70s on that it's really hard to look now at a space like Coney Island and realize that it it's an area where artists are still flourishing but often only supported through a very small number of institutions and it could I mean an area like that could be so helped by sort of like sustained support for the arts but I I often times in the 70s the lesson that came was that there's something safer about going back to the same institutions so that it almost like re-centralized an arts landscape that was becoming decentralized in the 1960s with all kinds of you know arguments for community neighborhood control and community control and then there's a fiscal crisis and all the belts are squeezed and suddenly it goes back to the safe the safe organizations and like you said we saw that now with the federal money you can now go online you can look up what theaters got PPE and you can compare the amount that a Carnegie Hall or a Lincoln Center is getting versus an institution that might be in a neighborhood have been there for 40 years but is just like right on the margin in terms of you know it could it could fall off so I think that that kind of unevenness hampered how artists were able to be involved in the 1970s and in some of the best case scenarios they were able to be very involved in this kind of neighborhood I don't want to say revitalization but sort of neighborhood stabilizing and and the question is sort of what are the things that are going to be able to do that now and do that better because as I mentioned from the beginning there are some areas like for example outdoor performance that that really the city entered into a much more restrictive period in terms of its use of public space its availability of public space and it it didn't recover where it had been pre pre fiscal crisis for something like that that's that's quite a quite stunning to think that somehow advances as you say and I would agree in the 60s you know of an opening definition of our performances of theater outdoor parks parking lots that we haven't basically recovered till now now we are hit with a crisis that potentially and not put up but most probably it hits the communities harder exactly in the most dangerous time for the arts in the last century of New York City what's what's what's your what should people do I I guess as you follow a little bit also New York city policy the commissioner for the arts I mean they are really trying also to help the implementing policies at the great Jimmy from Bremer's and yesterday and also helped to to to get things done and to open things up but what are they doing do you think that's right maybe you can give us a little overview in case you know yeah I try to I mean well so this might be one very instructive thing from also from the 70s because it's a program that hasn't been talked about quite a bit I talked about it a little bit in my Lamama program but there was something called CETA and it's not as well known or popularly discussed as you know like the New Deal arts program 1930s and I and a lot of people today I mean there was just a really interesting article in city limits magazine actually I think it was by David Brand about you know we need a kind of New Deal for the arts today because as I'm sure as I know you know Frank I mean when you look at the kind of I think the arts got like 0.01% of the of the first coronavirus spell outreach and all of that much of that was funneled to things like the you know the National Center for Humanities and things like that the National Institute for Humanities so on the federal level it's like there's a gaping hole right and obvious there's a gaping hole on the federal level while we have this administration but the concern is who's actually advocating you know we don't have a cabinet level position and anything like it in arts and cultures so and I think almost more instructive than looking at something like the 1930s era public works programs even though I think those are such important sort of inspirations to look to is in the 1970s there was a program that was actually signed into law by Richard Nixon of all people that was meant to try to help the unemployment the national unemployment level that nationally in the 70s was incredibly strong not just in the city in New York and so SETA I'm forgetting I think it stands for like comprehensive employment training I'm gonna forget the A but it essentially gave block grants to America I'm sure it's America exactly it essentially you're probably right it essentially gave block grants to states which you know republicans were able to sign on to and it it ended up nationally hiring tens of thousands of artists once they included artists in the SETA grant funding and there are some amazing examples in the 70s of you know Lamama was very involved I write about one production of Faust there was actually a German director Benowitz Benowitz directed a SETA production and they did chamber music concerts and so this was really federal funding the states and then the states dispersed it and it included things like photographers I mean there were so many artists involved in this and that was just in the 70s and that ended up being you know billions of dollars of employment not just for artists that was for the whole program but it feels to me like there are examples that are closer than the 1930s like SETA and I know there's actually a group of artists who got SETA funding in the 70s led by a photographer who are trying to advocate for this approach to funding and I find that fascinating because I think that the people who got direct funding from SETA in the 70s are in a really unique position to say this worked this is how it worked so that's you know that kind of approach of looking at states figuring out their needs is very attractive to me on some level because we already know that in terms of the arts every single locality is going to have its own needs and so connected to that as you mentioned I think it's exciting uh it was as you said council council member van Bremer who's who's been sort of the leading voice for cultural affairs in the city I think Brad Lander and a number of other city council people have supported this and so yesterday the city council was voting on a on a whole package of basically a bill that would have allowed that would would make it much easier for arts organizations to perform outside very similar to how they were able to kind of push push forward outdoor dining and things like that and so this would say to arts organizations we're going to lower the costs we're going to make the permitting very simple and we're going to just make this easier for you which for us as you know as New York arts people Frank I mean that is saying something because that's also like well why was it so hard before sure why do people to die in a corona crisis right I mean it's one of those things where you just say you know yes we're not making this up right like we're not making up that the city has become through the years and and and in some ways this was from a lot of the 1970s sort of crackdown on public space and time square or cutting of services so that parks might be closed earlier I mean all of those things that were occurring then as well as all of the the kind of increased you know the other side that we haven't talked about at all that is certainly in the book is this sort of increased vision of the arts through only either philanthropy or you know if there's a wealthy developer can you like make a little public space you'll get a big tax write off that kind of thinking about the way that things can happen in the city and I'm certainly not naive I mean I wouldn't pretend like we're losing a ton of our tax base right now I mean I'm not going to say that the problems that are facing the city are sort of easy to fix and we can just you know do outdoor Shakespeare and make everything okay but I think there's like a level of thinking through these problems that the way we've been doing it for example the Bloomberg era and and and by some accounts Bloomberg his his era was very friendly in some ways to the arts but in other ways you know look at a space like the shed which took a good amount of tax money to to create and I certainly think in many ways it was a huge achievement but in other ways look at the moment that we're in right now and how that has really not through this incredibly difficult period been able to be a place of resource for a lot of people for the numbers of city residents that you would hope would be able to get some kind of solace right now in that space it it's not happening as to my understanding million dollar project and and they're doing great and inspiring because about did they find ways to to go outside no you also still have to come to that space pay them be inside instead of what you pointed out to the 60s we say well maybe we have to rethink absolutely yeah and and you know I think for me part of that is staying at least alive to the questions of real estate in the city and I mean I've written a little bit about real estate involvement in Coney Island because that is you know Coney Island is such a vibrant arts neighborhood and the kind of whims of real estate have really altered the way that that can can even be allowed to develop the way that the arts can even be allowed to develop there so I mean Brad Lander to bring him up again he's a city council person as well and he's he published a really interesting op-ed in the Times essentially saying all of these buildings that sadly are now going to be vacant because of the incredible number of businesses going out of business the landlords what are we really planning to do so that it's not a kind of giveaway like it was after the 1970s what are we going to do so that all of that vacant land can it be purchased by the city and then can non-profit collectives come in to own it I mean there are some examples like the navy yard there are some examples of that being done successfully so how do we make sure that all of that real estate that might now be abandoned is not just kind of like auction off to the highest bidder of for-profit companies but actually suggests that there can be public interest in public good and I feel like the arts I mean I am not I don't run a theater I'm just somebody who's like reads a lot about and researches the 70s and says you know how can not hopefully inform today but I would hope and I would think that arts administrators particularly people who have you know led capital campaigns and really overseen successful theater spaces I would hope they would be very involved in this question of what there's going to be a lot of real estate and where is that abandoned real estate going to end up to what purposes and we need leaders who are going to think about increasing the footprint of the arts in the city as opposed to the way that we tend to think about it right now which is like piecemeal right give you a grant to do this give you a grant to do that you know or maybe or maybe some word thinking person actually thinks about you know more of an artist's career but I don't know my when I read articles like that I think yes we need the housing advocates to come together with the arts advocates because that's the only way that we're going to be making decisions about the space of the city that that take all of this into account you know I think you're right I think a Bloomberg administration has done tremendous amount for the arts because of complications in many other areas but still it was a support and I think Bloomberg understood that the metamorphosis of the city which used to be a manufacturing city at the turn of the century then it became in a way a banking city and but you can do banking from everywhere with cyber uh connections you know as we now know when zoom nobody needs to be here in Manhattan and he said now this is a city like London or Paris or now a lifestyle people want to be here because the most interesting city it's the most alive this the city that never sleeps but always dreams in the arts are central and the arts who have also brought that energy in the 70s and 80s and it was not made up it was really true it was incredibly exciting time and the arts have been a force in the recreation of the city and if this city will be a great city to live in it is because of what we miss so much now the experience moments life community discussions uh celebrations and the arts are the ones who bring the people together in circles who sit together look and create an identity and a connection you know to a public art piece people look at it and say yeah let's see my neighborhood there's a small community center art center in cornea yeah this is great you know there's a community center and I go there and if I have learned anything I've talked to over 150 plus 200 people is if you say no what is perhaps the most important thing at the moment the time of cornea communities small spaces supported this idea of the small business loan give loans to a small theater or small things and help them you know as someone said what art does anyway like the earthworms who create the oxygen that goes through the law but without them nothing would bloom it would die because and there and but they're invisible you don't really fully see it and and and also we all do know that we look look listen to music you look at films green books art helps us and it's also what is missing for a fulfilled life so the question is how will that be represented and how will people understand that it is actually not just theaters go to and then the restaurant makes more money also the history of mankind the mission the vision of humanity and civility and the civilized world is so strongly connected and how art is a representation of society and all the regimes we do not like the dictatorial ones the ones that are in the way of free expression of the ones who like the arts they hate it we had abu ja and mumba from india who said you know my things get get censored in india a tiny company where people don't like it you know and so it is important you know but but i think we really have to hope and work for it that the city understands that right it's a dangerous moment what what would you think if you were one of the commissions what would you say this is what needs to be done on the city level what are the structures from your experience for you looking over for such a long time of the documents what remains what do you think will be successful i think one of the things that will be successful is um something that has that really hasn't been done enough but when it is done is is remarkable is when you have a company that has a promising track record um giving them the same thing that you give to the very few the very lucky ones like bam and saying uh here's your one dollar a year lease right it's not i think there are very few i can't remember if it's 37 how many organizations there are that have that relationship with the city um i'm thinking about sorry new york you know workshop and lamama bought it then for in the bloomberg time for one dollar they own you know the space even yeah and i think that um we're we see rightfully so a lot especially now with the movement um you know if you read the um the uh you know like the the the the protests and the black lives matter movement in the way that it has also been um sort of formulated in theater right now is i think very appropriately also questioning things like um you know oh you spent all this money on building and what about what about investing in the people so um if you can take that burden away from some theater organizations so that they don't need to spend x amount of their time and salary and all of this on trying to secure a building i think you would see incredible results and i'm talking about in every neighborhood and not just saying let's grow in arts um street but actually let's think about this in terms of outposts and and you know one of the reasons why i say that is because uh one of the most incredible organizations in the 70s that i looked at um called the urban arts core which was led by vannette carol they did incredible work and she um in the 1950s ran the ghetto arts program which was a a name for the program that she never really was fully behind but went along with it to have a kind of impact on how the state was giving out money and it was 1950s was the very sort of early days of state funding for the arts and when you look at her progression as an artist vannette carol from the ghetto arts program to then um she directed langston hues's work in the 60s in the 70s she created the urban arts core um with mickey grant they took plays to broadway um don't bother me i can't cope i mean she had a phenomenal career if the city had given her a space when she when her company was really really in danger in the 70s um it the legacy of that would have probably continued even today and instead the urban arts core with everything they did for the city with everything that she did um it was constant constant financial precarity and she was also running a training program so if you think about how these how these you know i don't want to say over maybe privilege that you know we need need need space but i do think that in the instance of many of these anchor kinds of companies their longevity would be incredible if the city thought through a little bit more which which companies really specifically which companies are going to become kind of a node in their area and obviously that's hard to ascertain but i think many companies by now have a track record of it and you know we lost vannette carol to uh florida and then you know that was where she ended her career so so that would be one thing is just this idea of of thinking again about a decentralized network of spaces as opposed to um a more centralized idea of you know a theater in a business district or something like this um so that would be one thing to say and then i think that the other thing um i mean this is you know this is pie in the sky but i just feel like it's a good time to think outside the box i mean we've never been able to really have repertory companies in this city the the financial model doesn't work out for theater and i think that um being able to really think about art's investment in terms of artists more connected to the institutions a lot of the artists i talked to and even administrators even before this crisis we're starting to say things like if i can hire a marketing person can't i hire a playwright right and i know that that's a very small obviously very small number of jobs but i think that if that kind of practice becomes more widespread because of this time and we understand that artists whatever role they have in the theater um need this kind of true stability right that they can't if they can't find it in teaching for a whole variety of reasons including what is happening in teaching and employment and precarity is there a way that arts organizations can really proactively not just say okay grant by grant by grant by grant but actually um think in a more long-term way about artist sustainability so that would be more on the artist end and then on the um on the question of the city and on the question of um you know arts and and and what is sort of like the city government's role in encouraging it and all of this i mean i think that that it again comes down to this question of access and i don't want to keep you know uh i don't want to like take a word that maybe has been like oh become over determined but i really do think i mean as someone who teaches somewhere where sometimes i meet students who are going to their very first play on campus and as you just said which i didn't know CUNY has 20 stages um the sort of like closeness which with which the city thinks through something like that um is very frustrating so to give you an example i think that something like um a CUNY theater stage could be a lot more vibrantly connected to its neighborhood during the height of the lockdown if i walk past brooklyn college the gates were slammed shut and that's acres of green space for people in the area that might not have any green space right that's acres that you could have performances on or this or that it's not that it's small thinking but do they have the money to keep it open to pay for the security staff right it's not like a lack of ideas but if the city isn't thinking about um a CUNY institution as also an arts institution that has a responsibility to its neighborhood it's not really going to think about well can we open the gates on a week on a weekend and i just feel like that's the kind of thinking that um needs to happen in every single area hyper locally because it is terrifying the degree to which this unevenness the way that in the city all of the inequity in the city of course is just as as we all know as we all read it's just being put on display anyone who wanted to deny it before can now no longer right that someone in one neighborhood does not have the kind of arts health care any kind of access that someone in another neighborhood has so if that isn't part of the conversation it's going to be somebody writing the same book right in however many years they're gonna write the same book about an uneven recovery um and that i mean that would be i think um incredibly sad if if what we were left with was sort of like a whole slew of maybe like you know dying more permissible dining on the street standards but actually not anything that is substantive in terms of what you were just describing before cultural spiritual you know everything that we get from the arts um so those are the you know those that's the i know that it perhaps that sounded very abstract but i feel like those are the terms that i'm trying to think about how the city can imagine this because i don't i wouldn't know the first thing about how thick the red tape is to achieve some of what i'm describing yeah i am no but i think it's very clear what you say there's also it's not just as a statement what you think you have looked at it you have studied it you should be actually part of those city commissions to say give ownership to the organization that are already out there support them in that way in a sustainable way to have the real estate especially if so much is empty now um you know create um these kind of the artist workforce you know for for for prejudice hire them in a way and that they also communicate and come are in contact with communities the arts the sciences and all the men kind men kind perhaps had since iris total and what the role role of the art and could be and to take serious um the contribution and many people in europe do wonder why there is no ministry of culture in the u.s why is it so complicated and to buy a theater ticket you know that is exactly or goes to a broadway production and has has to take subways or taxi and then eat out it will be i don't know maybe six hundred dollars nobody come nobody goes and it's very clear it's not produced communities it's clear that her had investment in manhattan for the arts is what i don't know it's like over a hundred dollars a hundred twenty compared to maybe eight seven eight or nine dollars is i might not be completely right this means where you teach it is under ten dollars exactly on these neighborhoods they were worthy especially vince manhattan is already so fully developed didn't it show very clearly the incredible impact linkin center had in also stabilizing the west side you know marty seagull after whom or yeah this name was such a great uh uh proponent of the linkin's and helped you know to implement so the idea always was that it's connected um to the city and um i think we have to understand that this role can also play in state and i don't even perhaps you know the timescreen might not go there now but they will yes the decentralized structures like how it is in so many countries of the world where you don't have just one city for america one part of the neighborhood the life will be richer and there's an interesting conversation we had also before we on malzhakar a german curator who as his witness called shantal mufti she's a political scientist in belgium she said we have to realize there will never be an end of struggle the leftist ideas that perhaps one day to an agreement and uh the workers and the laborers who have the money and the states say no it will always be contradictory ideas we have to get used to in fact it will not be solved what we have to do is to accept to live with us and have spheres arenas spaces where there is some kind of a competition of ideas where you show things and where you discuss them in all the complexities and everybody who says it's black or white like the trumps of their line the world is not like this so they are really manipulating us and they are the ones who we should be afraid of and not the ones they tell us who they warn us against and the theater music dance poetry actually is the space where everybody can come with an open mind everybody's welcome and you have an arena as she said agonism is the term coming out of theater where you have a competition of ideas with some rules but it's really uh uh people come and talk to each other and listen to each other and have a have a moment of of a community and we do not talk as this becomes clear and clear on this election it's going away and she said ultimately if we do not accept the idea of um that we will always have to you know struggle that democracy is always to come it's not here you will always see uh in the future if we don't accept it will be civil war basically because people will never agree the scissors will open and more and more and that theater and culture as it has shown the history of mankind but it flourished and it helps us to connect and I think we all are it can be afraid for this big city we are very concerned about the artists who I think made the enormous contribution and as you pointed out it was in the 70s how devastating the situation New York City was bankrupt and couldn't okay everybody would have left waltz she would have left the city was right and the rodent family the unions who said we pay taxes up up for 10 years up front we will not have we will have lower wages they saved the city and the artists who got actually also till the mid 70s if I understand right also from here but were supported in a good way it was easier to grand the female feminist filmmaker to make a 60-year film we showed them it in the seagull often you know out of the parts of Lincoln Center that um and it connected people it worked and but also perhaps it's forgotten now we have to I think not only stand them for that incredible recovery the city made with the help of the artists but now they are suffering the most they also have something in there that can save us and I think we have to listen carefully you know to what you said because there will be books written and stuff but right now is the time also for action so anybody who listens now really this is a very serious moment these are very serious uh evaluation um that comes from you as a question as a really really honest question what do you think what will happen what's your prediction what will this be 10 years of of complications will it be the 60s it's now 60 years ago 70 years ago and you say maybe the yesterday they make it easier to do stuff in public places it took 70 years to do that but what do you think will there be we talked about in this week the roaring 20s will people after like after world war one where people went out and enjoyed that or do you think lessons that have not been learned are repeating itself someone said we have to study history because we don't learn from history so um do you think what do you really think what will happen in new york oh gosh um i'm i'll tell you why i'm pessimistic and then i'll tell you why i'm optimistic maybe i think i'm feeling um a little bit um i tend to get a little bit pessimistic because the conversations can feel very cyclical right so um for example you know exactly what you were just saying about this continued disparity between how much money is spent in queens on the arts versus you know in Manhattan that same debate was raging in the 70s um people were saying museums are not um you know fully representative of the diversity of the city for example they were there were protests um stat the the borough president of statin island was saying how dare we give so much money to uh the brooklyn um academy of music statin island gets even less money per person for their arts this was the the argument in the 70s so there can be something a little bit um you know that time is not exactly this time many much is different and yet when you start to hear that the the terms of the debate haven't shifted because there hasn't really been a meaningful investment in in changing those conditions um that can feel um like that kind of researcher deja vu of like will we just continually be let's say catering to the vision of a um you know wealthy Manhattan urban center and sort of continually forgetting about um this network of boroughs and how dynamic the city is and where people are actually living and the contributions of let's say immigrants I mean all of these things you're saying you know why do we in the city continually sort of um um I don't want to say forget because I don't think it's forgetting but the forces that are um in favor of one vision are you know again winning out and so I think that the concern is that we're not um uh I don't want to say not learning from it but I think that the times that I'm pessimistic about what the future will look like is when it feels like we're back um we're back on our heels when we advocate for this so for example advocating for CUNY right now can be very challenging because the entire city is hurting so massively and if somebody said to me well um the New York City Health and Hospital system it has essentially kept this you know us from entering a health care a full blown we're already in a crisis but helped us you know from entering it even deeper and plenty of people in New York City Health and Hospitals would say well we deserve that money too right so everything is always about this kind of like competition for public resources and the forces that want to make that seem like oh well but there's this tiny pie and you know everybody needs to cut it up those those voices are often um often feel as though they are sort of in that upper hand position so I think that sometimes that can be quite frustrating because um it feels as though we're not operating I mean you just mentioned this kind of um sense of meeting somewhere and the space where we all kind of battle out these ideas there can oftentimes feel as though well we're just not operating on even a shared value system and I don't mean that in a conservative way but I more mean that as every person in the city should recognize that supporting CUNY is as important as blank right something like that I don't know um so for me that's where some of the pessimism comes from is like we're not all kind of right like looking at these things as saying these public goods theater is a public good and it is important I mean there are still people in the city who see CUNY as this kind of through this lens of anti-intellectualism like why should we support right I'm sure you have have come up against that yourself so those are the reasons why I tend to get pessimistic but the the reasons why um I can feel some optimism is because I do think that there's an incredible um there are incredible sort of um enlivened forces that are advocating for a different future right so in the arts that is that includes the kinds of demands that are getting much more mainstream um attention for all for understanding how equity works right and so I try to be very optimistic that all of those conversations that have been happening right the conversations that the seagull center has been a part of the conversations that many of us have been trying to be a part of that those are not um even though those happen pre-covid it adds to the steam of like we have to do this differently um so that would be a hope and then the other hope would be I mean I don't know if this is something that you see as well through these conversations that you've been having but the vulnerability that everybody feels I think I mean the sense of really being shaken um whether you've experienced loss in your family whether you've experienced loss of just friends or people in your community whatever it might be um and the way that the city had to um share in the burdens of really sort of taking care of each other whether it's mask wearing or making a sacrifice you know that you that you previously might not have made I try to really stay optimistic that many of us are individually being transformed by this so the hope is that that individual transformation as difficult as it is will also lead to more honest conversations or you know political leaders who who see the importance of making these changes so that we don't just constantly sort of revert back to the old positions that have gotten us to the same place you know that we will allow this to sort of shake us to such a degree um that the changes will be made because the of course a big difference with the 70s was that there was a huge amount of um financial vulnerability people suffered an enormous amount um but the the physical like the healthcare ramifications of that were um not as direct I mean certainly there have been papers written on how the physical crisis in the 70s affected people's physical well-being and health but obviously nowhere near with the kind of direct connection so that is the hope I think that that is the hope that um that we need to have that we're all going to be so transformed by this that the kind of work we do our arts administrators will be transformed our politicians um so I'm not sure maybe that sounds a little naive or something but I think that a lot of people have been um pushed right to consider new alternatives right now yeah yeah no I think the I think you're right with both evaluations of course our hope yeah um that the little power will also take place and I think there's someone said there's a difference between optimism and hope optimism is kind of a vague feeling but hope is you actively work for it yes you do something for any actually you can do something you're part of it we are no longer subject to the greeks gods or to our faders decided no we are participants this is the great promise of democracy and this is a time now where we all have to take it serious and we have to find a new form not only because the world has changed because of covid also the old forms did not work that you can find new forms but it also depends who you bring in the room who is at the table exactly yesterday maybe there shouldn't be a table anymore you know and um but you want to be as everybody is in the room and I think that lessons we learned from the artist to listen about you're not knowing perhaps where we are going but doing your very best to create something listening to each other um is something of of of really important so in our own lives you know we should bring in people our neighbors people we don't talk to hosting radical hosting as someone said you don't mind absolutely you're home have it to stay overnight with someone in queens or what tanya brugera did for five weeks she exactly Emily and queens and she said um and I want to say it again she said you know the french revolution was such a great democratic gesture but somehow we all still go to look at the castles of wasai and we are impressed by it in a way often theaters or museums are these kind of you know institutional cathedrals she said we should go to the houses of people through the parks so the public spaces that series as a lot of contemporary theater makers have shown us we had a long series with carol mark noff's you know the real documentaries where there's an interest in the realness of life we as the entry of the spectators in the work through remedy protocol on so many others that's perhaps the biggest change and it also means something it also means you know that we have to perhaps you know participate again and more and see this theater how it was also as a representation of a state a machine that was on its own it's been fed for entertainment but now we also had to be critical of it and say we need a new form and what was didn't fully work and we all the black lives matter taught us that I think and you know the white theater a bit also you know put the finger on that and and it is true where is the native american indigenous theater in new york city the city of 12 million on the grand exactly there can't be we had spider woman there is not space for a little 90 seat theater that the city gives them it's where the Caribbean or the greatest immigrant communities we did a festival a year ago and we had you know from I think from Haiti and Guadalupe and then I'm out of my way to else it was the first festival if we understood right in the history of theater not even in France were different countries from from the Caribbean came together and play I talked to and showed how can that be and some of them are very interesting good theater you know but they don't have the support they don't have even theater schools so where is that representation of all the people that live where do we see them on the stage where do we see their stories and everywhere and I think there's something great to discover to you know in those spaces that are in and yesterday said you know let's look at you know the open things that are there and if things you know won't work we will never perhaps define Broadway but I think we might take importance away if we say we show a theater we show work and performance that perhaps more interesting they are smaller closer but they touch us and as you said in our vulnerability perhaps it also um sense gave us antennas to be in these sensible spaces and to perhaps understand that the world has changed and it's not so bad if it's different than it used to be perhaps it's more real and I think theater can do that but it's a difficult moment and I think your research you know and about that moment this seven is so important and the lessons I think you should write an op-ed for the New York Times you should really put that out to your community it's an important contribution because right now we do not know where it's going also people make decisions you know need help and also this is where university can come in for the good of the city the cune system so um this is an important conversation I wish we had uh every day of the week and we could go on for much much much longer but I think it did thank you yeah thank you it's so useful to sort of step back a little bit and try to put all of this together right especially now it's so many demands on our time it's nice to just sit down and think about um you know you read an article one day and then you think where does that fit in right so it's this is this is great so thank you for that we are in houses and we are in the rooms and we think we are living in the room but then someone built the house they are structured sometimes they are hundreds of years old but if someone put the window in the door and what it was has already been decided exactly and the same invisible structures govern you know or our cultural policies also we have to I think you know in this collective way in the revealing that out there right now we see them and it's up to us to really change them and you are part of that and your work focusing on that which also I think is very was very encouraging you know that scholar said even though I'm not writing off the playwright or about this you know director let's look at the structure of a city the impact the arts had how it was connected how it also helped to change as I like that in your research that also the arts played in a vital role you know to connect people make them at home in the city and make them stay and make the city what it is so and it's a big house theater as Anstis Lehmann said there's Broadway off Broadway off of performances films poetry there's a big space and it's nothing as you said against more or less for the others but we have to know that it's a big house and we have to honor all the rooms and there's a lot of work to do and also everybody who lives in it the majority of inhabitants of New York City are no longer white we are actually the minority but where's it shown and they're so right the largest civil rights movement in the history of the United States this Black Lives Matter all that you know also ask us to change and Valejo yesterday voice to pit his disappointment also was the New York theater say what are they doing as you said why are things closed why do you say our stages are closed so we can't do anything but don't you have some kind of a budget or can you get somebody can you hire artists can they do something like he desk was this foundation so it's so many many I agree I think that's a question everybody's asking themselves to the theaters that you loved going to do you what is happening between you and that theater now is that was that an actual connection or was it more about what happened to be there then and how much are these institutions rooted I mean I think ballet whose question is is something I've been thinking about from the very beginning right why am I not doing more online theater watching for example why do why am I choosing the things that I am choosing and and the disappointment that I might feel in certain institutions where is that coming from I think that's a great question that he's asking and you know as politicians look at people as voters businesses look at people just as consumers and yes theater people look at ticket holders that's it you know but we have to be different if we are not nothing else will be different and I think we have to acknowledge that and and find a way yes let's give free spaces to jack how come that jack the great institution you know in brooklyn that they have to fight and have to change the campaign the work they did especially now in corona times they are snowbox the great so-ho rap you know give them spaces support them in existing initiatives and and it will be better for the city and everybody it will be a course of celebration and it's devastating to think that perhaps 20 30 40 years from now scholars will evaluate and say what did new york's interest do why weren't they taking an action they knew what happened in the 70s how important that is why are they closing the doors of weight like in a storm till it's over instead of you know perhaps reconnecting to the great promise as you pointed out of the 60s we say well it's a big spaces out there let's use them but it also speaks in a symbolic imaginary way and in a real way to the empty spaces in our societies in our families and our communities we have to use it and we can do something that's why theater is great the model for something and if it happens in this theater it can also happen somewhere else and this is why we have such a big responsibility so really again hillary i'm sorry normally i really try to listen you know but i felt passionate about about this theme and of course no i agree with you and i know we're signing off but just one final thing what you were just saying the the intergenerational performances i think are going to be more important than ever right with so much of us being so many of us being locked away from older people right now or older people dealing with isolation i mean the bushwick star one of the most interesting things that they've done is they move their their collaboration with a bushwick senior center into a sort of podcast radio show called i think it's called silver linings radio and that's artists with seniors just making art um during this period and i feel like that kind of a program that kind of thinking goes to the heart of what you were just saying we see these immense gaps and and difficulties and so what is the programming that's going to kind of fit in there and as you say these theaters that aren't supported we will only have ourselves to blame in a way right in 30 years yeah and you are someone who could be trusted who studied it who knows the field you're an expert and um and it's as you point out it's not so complicated to see the structures and to come to conclude so really really really thank you thanks for a little bit over time but i felt it was a very significant and important theme and it really really is so if you're listening and if you are some kind of a position of power it's something to really reflect about for artists also to hopefully a bit encouraging to see how significant this contribution is but they're always asked to work for free always asked to do something exactly they are not rewarded not in the long run and not even in the short run it's wrong you need sustainable support so and and as someone said great sports and great theater great music is a reward for a functioning society moment it's not functioning let's make it a great functioning one and this is the reward that we can enjoy these games these moments of of of collective togetherness so anyway so thank you again thanks to Hal around for hosting us thea and vj andy from the seagull center and and everybody it wasn't important we can really hillary this is important and groundbreaking and it's a significant contribution and we have also in the arc to understand these structures and we cannot just think you know about our own institutions and how we can sell more tickets than others these are big questions we thank you so much and thank you for everybody stay safe wear a mask and hope to see you so next week thank you thank you so much bye bye