 bedroom slippers nor parallels. The choice of these ready-mades was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. Good afternoon! Good afternoon my fellow citizens of the world! Welcome to the Cabaret Shindig. We are here this afternoon for a ready-made Dada Cabaret. Dada comes from the time after the First World War. Dada was a group of artists looking at the wreckage of war, political upheaval, a rising right-wing and a pending economic crisis, and wondering what the point of it all was. Dada will, sadly, perhaps be relevant to a few of us. Dada rejects everything. Dada is freedom. Dada is the lack of meaning. Dada means everything. Dada rejects linear storytelling. It rejects genius. It rejects the logic that led us to war. We are here this afternoon for a ready-made cabaret. Marcel Duchamp, ready-made artist, Marcel Duchamp, would take common objects like a wheel or a snow shovel or a urinal and place them in art galleries. He called these the ready-mades and said that they were art because they had been chosen and presented. He wrote that he took an ordinary article of life and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view. He created a new thought for that object. Art is not creation. Art is selection. Art is a point of view. Today we present to you a ready-made theatrical event, a cabaret. Is this theater? You tell us. Tristan Zara, Dada, Tristan Zara, said that to make a Dada poem, you must cut up an article, place the cut-up words in a hat, randomly choose one word at a time from the hat, arrange those words in a random order, and voila, you have a Dada poem. And that is how we will be making this ready-made play. We have scenes. And the scenes are parts of stories and narratives, but we are cutting them up and placing them in a virtual hat. And when I prompt you, one of you will come up to the podium and you will roll dice. The number on the dice will determine which scene we do. We will then perform that scene and then someone else will roll the dice and so on and so forth and so on and so forth. And we will do dances and songs, Dada dances, Dada songs, and like that we will make a ready-made play, a ready-made cabaret. The scenes are connected, but it will be your responsibility to make the connections mean something. Ready-made connections, Dada meaning. Now we're about to start. I will bring someone up to roll the dice, someone who has raised their hand, Dada hand at the bottom of your shindig screen. If you'd like to come up, raise your hand. If we don't happen to bring you up this time, keep your hand raised so we can bring you up next time. If you want to come back up and roll the dice again, keep your hand raised. We will see you soon. And now who would like to be first up to roll the dice and choose our first scene? Hello. Welcome. I like your background light. Purple is my favorite color. So if you would, do you see the lozenge at the bottom left of your screen? It says roll the dice. If you would click on that, a dice roller will open up. Choose the number of dice you want to roll, but not more than five. We do only have 27 scenes to choose from. Click roll and then tell us what number comes up. Number seven. Seven. Ooh, first date. Perhaps it is untrue to say that life is a perpetual choice, but it is true that it is impossible to imagine a life deprived of all choice. First date. So we do this experiment. We take the formula, well, several versions of the formula, actually 17 variations of the formula, some pretty similar, others with pretty significant chemical differences, and we feed them to our different rat populations. How? How do you just get them to eat it? Oh, you lace it with this chemical, this one, it's really addictive to them. You just add one drop, and that's how you get any of them to and like any of these experiments. So anyway, Dr. Burton's theory is that it's long been established that human beings are built to create meaning like literally manufacture meaning. Okay. Have you heard of the iPod theory? iPods? Yeah. Remember iPods? Like if you had a phone, but just for Spotify? Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh my God, I'm all over the place today. No, no, it's all right. I mean, I'm just, I'm just trying to keep up. I mean, it's fun to try and keep up with you. So anyway, the iPod theory. So this guy from Jersey writes into Apple. You guys, I'm convinced that the shuffle function on my iPod is great. What? Yeah. I'm convinced that it vastly prefers foreigner to any other band, the rate with which it plays foreigner completely eclipses the frequency in which it appears in my library. And he's got all this data, and he sends them lists and lists of thousands of different shuffle results that he's gotten. Look at the percentage that are foreigner. I get a foreigner song like one in four, one in three, even though it's only like 4% of my library. Okay. So he blogs about it or writes about it in a magazine. So it's public. And then people start weighing in. Oh my God, my iPod prefers Jimmy Buffett. Well, mine prefers 18th century classical hundreds of people weighing in about their iPods favorite singers. And finally, Apple weighs in. Yeah. No. No. No, it's complete BS. It's random. The fact that people are finding prime elections with their iPods has nothing to do with the iPods and everything to do with the people. We are programmed to find meaning where there is no meaning. I get it. Like us. Huh? Like how we assumed we had to go on our first date because we bumped into each other so many times. Like how we assumed it was like fate. Oh, I hadn't actually. Yeah. So anyway, we do the experiment where we get our rats to ingest a pseudo psychotic drug that causes them disproportionate amounts of disassociative symptoms in the hopes that it'll divorce them from this kind of self idealizing that leads to the search for meaning in humans. And then we kill them and we slice open their brains. And we check to see if any variation of the pseudo psychotic has caused shrinking in the sections of the brain that are hypothesized to cause this meaning making. Cool. Cabaret goers, come and join me on the podium. Get ready to roll the dice. Welcome. Hi. Hi. On the bottom of your screen it says roll the dice. Click there. Uh huh. And then choose the number of dice you want to roll. Okay. Click roll. Oh my. 20. 20. Fight. Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord. First fight. And the trick with the mouse in that lady's bag? Yeah. Oh, come on. That was awesome. Yep. Yep. Yeah, it was funny. Damn. Wow. Let me guess you hated the mind reading one too. I didn't hate any of it. Oh, you didn't like it though. Damn, there's something truly awful about sharing something you like with someone you like and having them not like it. I like how much you liked it. Don't you like to be dazzled? What? Just to sit back and be dazzled by something? Yeah, I like that. What? Do you want to talk about data again? I guess I just don't find the universe particularly dazzling. Why not? I like how much you I like, I like that you put 100 percent of yourself into things. Like, I really, really like that about you. When you watch things, you watch them. And when you like things, you like them. But I'm not. That's not how really didn't think the mind reading one was cool. You know, I'm sick, right? What? I know you've seen me testing my blood sugar. You're just too nice to say anything about it. Oh, is that the it's not a big deal. But I do have to think about it. Like, I would say at any given point, I have some percentage of my attention towards it. It just leaves less to be dazzled by things. I think it takes 100% of yourself to be dazzled by things. I think about other things, too. Okay. My dad is sick. He smoked and now he has lung cancer. I'm sorry. It's not the type of lung cancer you get from smoking, though. It's some other random kind. What do you think that means? Um, probably nothing. Do you think we should break up? Do you want to? I want to move in with you. Okay. Ready maids, please join me up here randomly combine the dice to choose a scene. Hi. So I think you know the drill by now. But down there, there's a little button. It says roll the dice. Rolling the dice. Okay. Six. Six. Ooh, that is chance dance number two. Sorry, chance dance number one. So cabaret goers, you are going to choreograph this dance. Please click on the question mark at the bottom of your screen and type into the text box, a body part, a mechanical action, and a number between one and 10. Press submit and watch your dance emerge. Who is next? Who will come roll the dice? Oh, thank you. Thank you. That's much better. So how are we doing on a number between one and 27? Seven. Seven. Ah, unblind date. This is fascinating. This order that we're going in art is either plagiarism or revolution, unblind date. Is this a moment we're going to remember forever? There's a lot of factors that go into that. What makes a moment memorable forever? Oh, I have no idea is what I mean to say whether or not this will be that for you. I guess I was asking if a big life event. Sure. I guess I was asking if if a big life event were about to happen. Do you believe in fate? Do I believe in fate? I've literally never thought about it. So I guess my answer would be whatever the natural default is for humans. If you haven't spent any additional time pondering the question. Do you believe in this relationship? Do I believe in this relationship? Like in the future of this relationship? No, like in the relationship itself. I've also literally never thought about it. So I guess my answer would be whatever the natural default is for humans. I think we should break up. No, no, no, no. Wait. I think we should get married. Okay. Dada has come up to find and reject the numbers. So cute. Oh my god. I brought my own. Hello. Hello. You brought your own dice. Fantastic. Well prepared. Okay. Well, those dice. Now you have to go look for them. Two. Uno two. Uno two. Amy does believe in fate. The creative act is not performed by the artist alone. The spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications. And thus adds his or her contribution to the creative act. Amy does believe in fate. I'm gonna need you to be a little more specific about what you did before that. How much more? A little more specific. I worked until about seven. I came home. I was hungry. I considered going out for ramen, but I didn't want to get back in the car. Why not? I was running a bit low on gas. I didn't want to burn through it before the morning. Normally, I just get some on my way, but I was worried that if I got back in the car, I wouldn't have enough to make it to the gas station in the morning. You didn't consider picking any up last night. I know. I get it in the morning. I always get it in the morning. I see. Go on. I had a lean cuisine in my freezer. I made that. I watched TV while I ate Deadliest Catch. Part of my dinner was still frozen, but I ate it anyway. I fell asleep on the couch, woke up at eleven thirty, took a shower, and got into bed. Thank you. I think that's about it here. Just one more question. Amy, do you believe in fate? Oh, yes. You do? Yes. May I ask why? Well, because because I want to be happy. I had a professor in college who used to say that no one had it easier than the Greeks, that they could take literally any amount of suffering. They were so obsessed with fate, so completely enslaved to it that it was almost like freedom. They just accepted abuse after abuse and they were okay with it because they had no choice, right? Fate. Interesting. Now, would you say you have suffered abuse after abuse? Maybe somewhat. Yes. What? Do you have any idea how many people have sat in that exact chair? Any idea? And they all, every single one who says they believe in fate, they always follow up with that. That they suffered abuses. Such abuses. The fate has not handled them well. I wonder why they believe in them. Faith? I disagree. I would say ease. Don't you have a judgment to pass? Very well. Amen. I sentence you to a lifetime of unhappiness. What? What? This is not fair. Please calm down. This is the courtroom. Well, if I had said that I didn't believe in fate, would you have sentenced me to great prosperity and happiness? This is not fair. Since when does fate have anything to do with fairness? Anarchists, come. Throw the dice. Reject the numbers. I brought my own. Ah, welcome back. Hello. Hello. 27. 27, eight minutes. I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it. Look before they cross the road. Eight minutes. I just realized that if the sun burned out right now, we've just started our last eight minutes of light because it takes eight minutes for a ray of light to travel from the sun to earth. So that means that when we're looking at the sun, we're looking at the future and when the sun looks at us, it sees the past. What do we do? Um, I guess we look at it. Seven minutes left. What do you want to burn out? I suppose we'll survive for a bit. What are you doing? Appreciating shadows. Hopefully some young intrepid scientist will invent a technology that will keep life going without sunlight. Or what? Or we'll die. No. No. This is stupid. Six minutes left. This is stupid. I don't want to do this. Six minutes. No, there's no six minutes. Why? Because there's no six minutes. The sun didn't burn out two minutes ago. I, I like my life. I like my life too. But I don't want. She thinks she has a choice. You don't have a choice. Things happen. Not the sun burning out. Not in six minutes. Five minutes. Four minutes. Three minutes. Stop it. Worried you'll die. Worried you'll decompose. Worried you'll come back as a slug. I'm not coming back as anything. This, this is it. Three minutes. Maybe. No. Maybe. No. You don't know. No, I don't. But maybe, but probably. I think when you die, you get to live your life again. A second try to see if you can do better. What will you do better next time? This is my next time. How are you doing so far? Okay. It's different knowing that every time you do anything, it's your last possible chance to do that thing in that moment. Shut up. Shut the hell up. Both of you. I hate this. You always do this and I hate this. I don't like thinking about this kind of stuff. Okay. I don't like thinking about how I'm going to die or the world's going to end or everything that I know and love could be taken away. I, I like what I have. I like how things are and I feel like when I think about it, like really start to think about it. Think about how fucking temporary it all is. I just, I, how do you not go crazy? How are our brains even made to be able to handle that? They're not. They're not. Okay. And the only way to survive is to be in denial. So I choose denial because I choose survival. I choose survival. One minute. Confidence. Let the dice whisper to you. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. You're all in those dice. Okay. If you run into any issues, let me know and you can just think of a number between one and 27. We do that. 21. 21. Oh, Hannah is sick. I shouldn't sound so excited about that title. My idea was to choose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness, to find a point of indifference in my looking at it. Hannah is sick. Hey. Hey. Where's Hannah? She's sick. Oh. Was it her fault? Yes. Oh. Ready to go? Yep. Cabaret Goers. Who is next? Who will roll the dice? Uh, wait. Hello. Hi. Hi. Welcome. Welcome. Uh, are you ready to roll the dice? Yes. Let's roll the dice. All right. Let's do it. Okay. I got 26. 26. Hannah is sick again. Art is either plagiarism or revolution. Hannah is sick again. Hey. Where's Hannah? She's sick again. Oh. Was it her fault? Not this time. Oh. That's awful. Poor Hannah. Yeah. Probably used up all her luck by now. Yeah. Poor Hannah. Will she be okay? Uh, statistically yes, except she's probably used up all her luck by now. Right. That's awful. Yeah. Ready to go? Yep. Who is next? Come up. Come up. Roll the dice. Hello. Hi. Hello. What's in your readymade drink? It's a zero calorie ginger ale, apple juice, raspberries, and blueberries. Oh, excellent. And I like the flower pot on your hat. Now, if you would do me the favor of rolling the dice, we will head to the next scene. 22. 22. Other conclusions. It may be that everything we do is determined by some grand unified theory. But you would have to be awfully sure that you were destined for the gallows to put to sea in a small boat during a storm. My parents owned a knife sharpening company. We'll come to your house and sharpen your knives. I was never going to be anything but a knife sharpener. And who is next to roll the dice? Well, hello. Hi. Hi. I rolled 15. 15. Last fight. Okay. Last fight. I guess I never really thought about it. Okay. Well, that's not on me. It really doesn't make you uncomfortable. No. None of it. No. Not even the no, no, no. Peter, you know I'm a vegetarian, right? Oh, there's no such thing. Excuse me? There's no such thing as a vegetarian. Right. What? Do I do I really have to do this? Okay. Your vitamin D contains sheep's wool. Conventional micro-encapsulation of your organic fish oil uses bovine derived gelatin. Do you know how many field mice and rodents are killed by the machinery that harvest your Bob's red mill? You have a dog, Peter. You keep a dog as a pet. And also you ate that burger that one time. When? When did I eat a burger? And for the record, you do know that those cosmetic companies that claim that they don't test on animals can only do that because they wait for another company to test that chemical on animals. And then once it's deemed to be safe, they use it for themselves. Seriously, when did I eat a burger? If you're talking about that 4th of July thing at Maisie's last year, that was a black bean burger, okay? Peter, it really doesn't bother me. Really? Really? Really? And also for the record, you do know that the universe tests on us. Someone's up there running a massive trial on all of us. Cancer, autoimmune, viral, every outbreak and epidemic. People like to say the grand experiment, like life is this beautiful, wonderful mystery, but I just hear, yeah, grand experiment because we're all subjects and the cruelest, most severe double blind you could ever imagine. And no one's life gets run past an IRB beforehand. Here we go. Everyone's out to get Amy. Right, Peter. You wouldn't know anything about that. You just sharpen the knives. You don't use them. Oh, nice. Great. Great, Flex. I'm sorry. I'm not a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. We all have to die eventually, Peter. Even greater, Flex. We all have to die eventually and I don't want to have to die of the measles if I don't have to, which I don't thanks in part to animal testing. I'd rather die in my sleep, old and unaware rather than slow amputation of all my limbs followed by blindness followed by progressive renal failure. Sorry if that makes me some kind of monster. Wait, what? Because of my diabetes. Oh. Yeah, autoimmune diabetes, remember? I thought you said it wasn't a big deal. And you believed me because you're stupid. Trusting. Stupid by another name. Shame on me. How did you get it anyway? You never told me. Random? Not because of random. I'm not sure I believe in randomness. You don't? Is that for real? There's more to it than that, I think. But Peter, the randomness is the more to it. The act of imposing meaning is what creates meaning. It's our, are you on your phone? Amy. Get off your phone. Amy, my mom texted me. Get off your phone. Do you know what she wrote? When are you and Amy going to get married? Tell me you don't believe in fate. When are you and Amy going to get married? See? I think we should get married. No, no. I think we should break up. Okay. Cabaret goers, come and roll the dice. I think you know the drill. Yes. Give us a number. Thirteen. Thirteen. Ah, that is data poem. To be a data means to oppose all sedimentation. Data represents the complete absenteeism of what is known as intellect. Data poem. How to make a data poem. Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article and next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag and the poem will resemble you. And there you are an infinitely original author of charming sensibility even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd. We have a computer program that has created a randomized data poem from a section of Tristan Zara's manifesto. Click on the button that says data poem and watch your poem dance across your screen. Is the dance action of the determined enthusiastic to the faith out disagreeable of parallel lines of memory. Data intensity the vigorous abolition the pure of insects word to one's church opposite harmony of disagreeable enthusiastic sex of comfortable every god. Them with all word means rejected up of profits, engaged, valid, pure with the fists, freedom bodies, clash of parallel future, accessory to spit, create the data every object the same up tossed folly and two and tossed individuals. Roaring tense moment like a harmony in every a valid data of those impotent a harmony to create those impotent to the thicket. Aluminus that is from knowledge of dance means the future. Faith in every inconsistencies satisfaction, unquestionable faith is the dance of values of those impotent and coddle them. Coddle them abolition their folly same intensity of securities apparitions for blood fists the church of every arc. Cabaret goers come roll the dice hello Judy welcome Erin can you hear me okay yes absolutely I am loving your change of hands thank you thank you uh please click on the little lozenge that says roll the dice okay and I'm rolling 18 18 oh why the Greeks had it so easy I know that all life is a series of infinite chances which sometimes result one way and sometimes another why the Greeks had it so easy no one had it as easy as the Greeks I know what you're thinking bullshit right they lived thousands of years ago they didn't have any plumbing or vaccines most of them were born into abject poverty and died in childhood childbirth war or some terrible disease their lives were objectively speaking miserable cesspools of suffering and yet those sons of bitches had it pretty damn easy for three reasons the morai the fates cloto lechesis and atropos thanks to these three ladies every life event of every Greek person was predetermined from the moment of his or her birth after little Agapethas was born the morai spun out the thread of his future life followed his steps and directed the consequences of his actions according to the councils of the gods if he lived very very very well he could hope that perhaps some major future catastrophe could be averted by a god intervening on his behalf but for the most part the events of his life were locked in place the moment that thread was spun it was done there was nothing he could do about it his best bet was to sit back and resign himself to enjoying as much of the ride as possible until starvation or combat or a kick to the head by his goat brought it all to a bloody end relief i know what you're thinking because the Greeks believed so whole heartedly in fate it roared to life for them more intricate and psychotically harmonious than you'd ever see it in our day these things tend to swell to be as big as we'll allow them to be would you explain to the shindig audience exactly what happened to you oh um gods it was awful it was prophesied from birth that i would kill my father and marry my mother and my parents fearing this terrible fate vowed to send me away as far as they could so that i might never associate with them never carry out this horrible curse however such things are not inescapable would you believe that he killed his father and married his mother i was getting there that's why he gouged out his eyes could you look like really look at the world at yourself after such an act i know you're not going to believe what i'm about to say but hear it anyway this man edipus had it better than you or i what oh yes or can i object depression anxiety stress uh existential crisis uh these are what we call my friends post-halenic phenomena once you add a free will to the mix really add it add it so fully and completely that it threatens any higher order that would preach fate or predestination human beings have a tendency to well follow pieces question everything spend their lives agonizing obsessing living in a kind of existential uncertainty the likes of which this lucky bastard has never seen killing your father and having sex with your mother feels pretty bad oh i don't doubt that but for him it is contained within the safe and secure paddock of fate why did you kill your father it was my fate right did you know there are people real people since you who have done the same thing the gods are cruel the gods had nothing to do with it and those father killers know it they kill out of fear or anger or desperation not knowing if what they did was right or wrong or even why they did it or if they were justified there have also been people real people since you who have no with their mothers and not because the gods faded them to suffer but because they chose to do it well who would knowingly choose such a thing well that's what they wonder to themselves every day even after having made the choice to do it that's what life is like without the gods um i i don't um i gotta go yeah like um i got uh i got stuff to do he'll never have to look at himself in the mirror and agonize about why lucky bastard huh great goers join me join me roll the dice hello hello excellent hat may i say thank you now will you roll the dice and tell me what number you come up with i got 20 20 aleatory composition number two now cabaret goers to compose this aleatory composition first choose your instrument click on the question mark at the bottom of your screen into the text box type either cheese grater or coffee percolator what instrument will you choose will it be the cheese grater or the coffee percolator don't forget to press submit cheese grater coffee percolator percolator and now that you've chosen the instrument please type an action strike bow pluck strum shake or tap and equality loudly or softly press submit and await your coffee caffeinated composition even though you're full of caffeine remnants who will join me to roll the dice up we seem to be having some connectivity issues uh no there you are welcome welcome give me a number between one and 27 uh we are having connectivity issues in which case i will think of a number between one and 27 eight lab rats data is the truth the sole practice of a realistic human such a person as we see him or her today is in continuous motion brought about by simultaneity of events advertisements the marketplace sexuality common possessions poetics the economy without superfluous thoughts that lead nowhere lab rats something in the yam drink oh they're definitely putting something in the yam drink doesn't make me feel good doesn't make me feel good i'm not me it's in the yam drink that's not yam drink do you like drinking the yam drink it's the yam drink yes who would like to roll the dice hey how are you very well thank you if you will just roll the dice tell me the number i shall do so let's see nine nine ah that is why you shouldn't study the brain data is a state of mind data is a force of nothingness data is nothing why you shouldn't study the brain hello hi i'm here to learn about the brain uh you've come to the wrong place i'm afraid i thought you were the brain expert sadly you're about a day late i've decided to change my course of study to something better something else um so you're not studying the brain anymore it's too disheartening why the more i study the brain the more i come up against its limitations the deeper i dive the more i see shortcuts our brains are the masters of shortcuts no one takes shortcuts more easily more effortlessly more remorselessly than the brain what do you mean how many triangles can you count in this image everyone count the number of triangles click on the question mark type your answer into the text box and press submit um like eight actually there are no triangles there at all okay what you are seeing is a shortcut in perception a shortcut in perception instead of allowing ourselves to see what's really there a collection of lines and blobs our brain fills in information based on past experiences so that we can perceive familiar shapes i challenge you to see the strange interesting shape that's actually there you can't even when you tell yourself to do it you can't and then there's memory hmm memory my god i'd like you all to think of your very best memory the very best most important memory you have close your eyes really do it the best memory of your entire life mm tell me what's your very best memory mm i went on a hike with my mom when i was a child it was like a perfect day what day was it oh i'm in the summer so probably june what did you wear oh i'm probably my favorite hiking boots yeah yeah that's right okay uh how was your mother's hair styled um she wore it short by them i think and what if i were to tell you that this favorite hike of yours wasn't actually a single hike but a combination of a dozen different hikes you took with your mother seven in june july and august of 2004 four between august and september of 2006 and a final one on september first 2007 and that you didn't wear those favorite hiking boots because you didn't buy those until 2010 but that your brain has added them to the memory because you've created this memory and short-cutted it to stand in as a complication of a series of positive occurrences your mother's hair was different on most of those hikes by the way did you know that if your brain were a bit more robust it actually could be hosting 12 wonderful memories for you instead it's inflated them down to one a single travel-sized memory if you will okay i don't think we hiked in 2004 it couldn't have you did you hadn't moved out the Berkshires yet oh real life is infinitely more intricate than our brains allow it to be i mean maybe that's for the best maybe it's too important to us to make sense of things make them neat but think of all the shapes we'll never see because of the few that we know and think of all the days that are lost to the past who will join me to roll the dice for our penultimate scene welcome back welcome back okay sip and then 24 24 ah dr. Burton's mad science experiment there's no such thing as an empty space or an empty time there's always something to see something to hear in fact try as we may to make a silence we cannot dr. Burton's mad science experiment i'm thinking of getting a tattoo it's going to say what good did the theories of the philosophers do us did they help us take a single step forward or backward what is forward what is backward did they alter our forms of contentment we are we argue we dispute we get excited the rest is sauce sometimes pleasant sometimes mixed with a limitless boredom a swamp dotted with tufts of dying shrubs that's going to be a very big tattoo oh that's going to have to take up a lot of space to fit that much well they can write it small oh they can't they can't make it as small as you think they can perhaps tristan zahra demands to be written in large letters all the way down my back then spreading as low as my ass perhaps our search for meaning is killing us dr. pearl there is no why there is none i must free myself from the prison of why that's not possible my rats have begun exhibiting strange behaviors the latest formula seems to be working hey you can't say that you don't even know what working should look like i look in their eyes and i see something there something that i've never seen before they're rats you're seeing nothing more than rats that are on drugs no dr. Burton what if i told you that you could drink this just drink this down and you'd be able to know what it feels like um what is that where do you drink it dr. Burton what what what feels like i what is that it's what i've been giving to the rats hey you can't take that yourself it's never been tested exciting isn't it dr. Burton this is your humanity you're talking about here everything that you want it's a part of you it's what makes you human well haven't you ever wanted to be anything else besides a human you can't escape that not in my body but we are often told that we are incoherent but into this word people try to put an insult that i find it is rather hard for me to fathom everything is incoherent the gentleman who decides to take a bath but goes to the movies instead the one who wants to be quiet but says things that haven't even entered his head yet there is no logic the acts of life have no beginning or end everything happens in a completely idiotic way quoting zahra doesn't make you some kind of genius dr. Burton well i don't want to be a genius i don't want to think about genius to respect it or disrespect it i don't want to value it i don't want to value i don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what happens to me when i die wonder where my mother went after she died miss her i don't want to be famous i don't want to make a contribution good or bad you don't want to be a human being it's exhausting playing a game we can't win because there are no winners because after all of that it's not really a game okay there are people uh happy people content people they would say that they that they have won well would you say that i am not among them those people don't exist they're just like us they've just resigned they're confusing the relief of resignation with happiness i won't resign dr pearl okay it's not going to work because you don't even know what it would mean if it did work bottoms up hey and now we have our final scene cabaret goers it's time for you to choose the ending we have an end and we have another end would you prefer an end or another end we have an end or another end type into the text box at the bottom of your shindig screen an end another end an end excellent i am firmly convinced that all art will become more dataistic in the course of time because from data precedes the perpetual urge for its renovation an end i got fired what i let the rats go why i wanted to i wanted to watch them scurry around it was nice for a moment but i messed up i let them go in the lab i thought they would be free but they were in the lab so they ran but they were stuck because there's no the lab is very sterile you see there are no old nooks or crannies that they could escape into it's very sleek and modern and minimalistic and everything is chrome and marble so they ran until they reached one wall and then they turned around and ran until they reached the other wall and then they just kept going back and forth then back and forth and then they just stopped gave up they just got slower and slower until they stopped in the middle of the room like they knew and it was no trouble at all for me to just round them back up and put them back in their cages but dr burton said they'd been compromised so we had to kill them then what then i was fired that's it that's the end it's an end our play is done and many of you may be wondering what it all meant in principle we're against meaning as i'm also against principles we leave it to you to decide what this ready-made cabaret a collage of scenes dances music and film means to you a work of art should not be beauty in itself for beauty is dead a work of art is never beautiful by decree objectively and for all i oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices art in their own way hello everyone thank you so much for coming to the show and please stay for a post-show discussion moderated by esra brain who is this is not a theater company's dramaturg as results of a playwright and he will be leading us in the talk back i know we actually already have a question or two submitted into the uh text box that goes underneath the question mark there on your shindig uh panel but as we're going to start us off and we will cycle through some questions for actors who will talk about what it's like to do digital performance how that's different from live performance etc etc but as i hand it over to you and to start us off absolutely thank you so much and first off i want to thank everybody in the shindig room for coming and also all of our friends who are joining us via the howl round live stream um so this is a really exciting piece i think to talk about especially within the context of the brave new world of digital theater that we are all through through want of nothing else embarking on and erin i was wondering if you could talk about um sort of this is not a theater company's history with digital theater and how you came to sort of resurrect this piece which was a piece that was done irl a couple years ago right i know you are l so yeah this is not a theater company creates site-specific multi-sensory theater um dance theater actually i would argue in this case musical dance theater um and we have actually done i mean as you know as run as many of you in the audience know digital theater did not begin with the pandemic i think the the pandemic has invited everyone to try their hand at online performance but for many years there has been multimedia theater uh there have been what um uh pod plays which are site-specific audio plays and this is not a theater company has done a number of those so that is where you get you download an audio clip you take it to a specific site and while the recording stays the same the site is always changing and so you kind of mix this fixed recording with the live ever-changing uh irl stuff um and so we've done a number of those and we did one for the bathtub actually during the pandemic um we have them uh for those of you in new york we also have fairy play for the statin island fairy and we have a trilogy of pieces uh collectively called subway plays uh that you download from the app and take onto the new york city subway system which i'm not sure i recommend at the moment um but play in your bathtub you can take into your own bathtub so it works for social distancing and um you play there are dances for your fingertips on the surface of the water etc etc and we came to that in fact marisa jonathan uh you and i along with a couple of others who were not with us today um uh came to that really because we were thinking in march what are we going to do what do we what kinds of theater do we need what are we going to make and i just desperately wanted a long relaxing bath and i thought okay well let's make a play for the tub so really in a sense i would argue that i made that for myself um as we did that then um jenny lin beter who's another uh company member wrote a site specific piece for zoom called guru of touch which the pika and cara were both in uh and we sent that to the enboro festival fringe online and what is interesting about those pieces is that they have played to thousands of people in over 30 countries and so there's something fascinating about this moment that it allows us to connect url with um people all around the world and uh we also did a piece on discord which is a gaming platform um that was a participatory adaptation of a of an irl play um that just was people sharing moments of what it felt like to be uh in the middle of a global pandemic so we had people from argentina china nipal turkey india canada the united states um italy and i can't remember and so again we were able to kind of do an international thing because we didn't have to pay for plane fairs to have everybody in the same room the room was online so i think it has invited us to rethink our ways of working with each other this specific piece to sort of answer the other part of your question sorry i'm being very long-winded i'm going to be uh shorter-winded um this particular piece has always been an investigation of fate chance and free will which is to say are our lives governed by fate chance or free will and to me i don't know about everybody else but i'm every day all day thinking if i get COVID is that am i is that fate is that because i didn't wear my mask properly is that because i should have made a decision to stay inside is that because or is it just chance i happened to walk past somebody on the street who had COVID and i happened to inhale in that moment you know so again i think some of the themes that are happening in readymade cabaret that always were there even when we did it in 2015 felt particularly resonant in this moment um and jesse maybe you would come up and i'll be going to hand the baton over to jesse bear the playwright because she wrote four additional scenes for this version um having to do with illness um and uh ezra if you want i'll come back and talk about the choice of shindig as a platform but yeah why don't you talk about the changes that you made between irl and url yeah i mean i think we were both i well i was surprised when considering adapting this or i guess restaging this now online um how much what we had worked the only thing i updated really from the text was ipod it's like oh yeah that doesn't work anymore we don't use it um so i added a line explaining it but i feel like otherwise as it stood the the scenes held um and they held in this very crazy world that we have the new scenes that i wrote i think all of which played tonight or this afternoon um just about yeah i think they did yeah uh first last fight hannah is sick and hannah is sick again yeah um so so those were all prompted obviously by this sort of overarching issue of sickness that's happening right now i think personally i'm really interested in sort of like the hierarchy of illness um and that's kind of what's explored in the hannah is sick scenes like there are certain illnesses that if you get it's because you're a tragic victim and then there's others that if you get society sort of blames you and has decided that certain illnesses are worthy of our pity and love and consideration and care and others really aren't um and i guess for me personally that comes from i guess after this play was written but before this play was restaged um i got sick i got what amy has i got diabetes and um was quite struck by the way that people dealt with me and um you know when people learned that i had type one diabetes i was often given a lot more consideration because there's an understanding that i didn't have a choice it was an autoimmune disease whereas when people thought i maybe got type two diabetes there was less care because there's this understanding that if you got type two diabetes it's because you did it to yourself so anyway there's a lot um that i think plays nicely with ideas of fate free will um just in terms of of how we care for each other um and personally i think we don't really know as a society how to feel about COVID right now it's like well if someone gets COVID do do we feel bad for them do we not like if somebody goes to you know a certain political rally and doesn't wear a mask and then gets COVID do we feel not as bad as the person who had an a medical appointment that they couldn't cancel and that's where they got COVID and um i think for me it's difficult but critical to remind myself constantly from my own experience that illness is not hierarchical nor is it uh nor should we pass value on illness illness it just is so that was kind of the new exploration or one of the new explorations for me it's amazing and jesse just while we have you up here can you talk a little bit about like the dramaturgical structure of this play because i think even before it was all online it was kind of wild and now being online it's even more sort of experimental so if i'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that definitely i was i was thinking about this um with regards to an article i read many years ago about disneyworld um it really has stuck with me um i read this article about disneyworld where the writer was saying the reason that people love disneyworld so much is that it gives you everything you need and more so your imagination when you go to disneyworld almost has to do no work everything is presented for you it's like so lush all you just sit back and it happens to you there's like not much more you can imagine in disneyworld except the sort of fantasy that you're living with and that idea has really stuck with me um and i think when i was thinking about this play it's like i i considered the question of well what if we actually give you a little less than you need so disneyworld is over here let's give you sort of this much on the other end of the spectrum and see what you do with it let's work out your imagination as opposed to sort of massage it and coddle it and relax it not that that's not a valid experience i think sounds like lovely but um so i think of the scenes in this play almost as sort of skeleton keys that you as an audience member can decide what doors you want to open them with or not and depending on the role of the night it's going to be maybe a little bit easier or harder for you to do that this show was extremely narrative the one that we got this afternoon i mean it was like almost the disneyworld of red but i think what i really wanted to do in making these scenes is i wanted to make scenes that challenged the viewer to decide what they meant by deciding how hard they wanted to work to make them work together and i think my challenge as a writer um that was helped immensely by sort of the structure of this i mean there's there's many scenes in this that i don't participate like i didn't write obviously i didn't write the chance dances you know so those things helped me a lot like really sort of helped out the play but i wanted something where you could work really hard and you would be rewarded you would find connections you know somebody mentions rats in one scene and then the rats come back later and there's something gratifying in that and so if you if you put in that work i wanted to make scenes that would reward you for it but i also wanted it to be a valid experience even if you wanted to watch it really passively and you didn't really want to do any work um and maybe just appreciate it from a visual perspective or from an oral perspective or from you know so so that was sort of the challenge with these scenes and i think i got lucky because the cast is so fabulous so it's been satisfying to watch no matter what amazing thank you so much erin just to go back to you um i think that like there's a two conversations here is that we've been talking a lot about the sort of theoretical uh pieces of this but i was wondering if you talked a little bit more about the sort of nuts and bolts of like what went into choosing shouldn't they go over zoom or whatever else absolutely i am again as you know like most of us uh in march my classes at nyu were canceled everything went on to zoom um and i think i you know people started there was then also a lot of work being put out on the internet sort of live or films of formerly live performances which i loved i you know i got to see some stuff at the national theater the shaobuna the you know electro theater in moscow um and that was wonderful but those were films of live performances right and then i would go to these zoom performances and i'll be honest they didn't really do it for me so i was trying to figure out what is a way that we can keep doing live performance and specifically in the case of our theater company something interactive um uh something where the audience it's can't approach it like a capitalist sort of i paid my money now tell me what to think that the audience really has to do the work to figure out what it's about and what's going on um and uh so i happened actually i went to a college reunion and most of that was on zoom but one or two events were on shindig and i thought oh this is actually a really great platform and if a bunch of you know middle age non-tech people can make this work then maybe there's hope that we can get you know a quote unquote average audience member whatever an average audience whatever that means i don't know what that means but anyway yeah but now that i've said it i'm like there is no such thing um you know but in other words somebody can just click a link and get on the platform and it's not that complicated um what shindig allows us to do as you can all see is um i then went to itp camp uh which is at nyu it's a creative coding group of creative coders and i met some really brilliant wonderful people and i thought ha ha this is where creative coding is going to meet theater and so um i actually the guy who did the computer program for the dada poem had uh already done that actually and i said rent can i you know borrow your dada program and he said sure and um b who you saw in eight minutes and lab rats and i can't remember what else today um uh was also in itp camp she did three movies that you didn't get to see today um because she does a combination speaking of multimedia of live performance with video overlay and vice versa um that's really really interesting and another of our collaborators um created this set i would say or this background and that's another thing that i think shindig offers that zoom doesn't now i will say because i think it's important to say that shindig um uh it's been frustrating at times um and i mean all online platforms are frustrating and i said to someone oh but everything's in beta and he said oh yeah well our entire lives are in beta right now um which fair enough and i think you also said um this is really experimental theater in other words we're not just rehashing the experimental theater that was done by mabu mines or richard foreman in 1972 covid has invited us or forced us to really experiment and to think you know to read like what is theater these days um and to rethink our definitions and re think about the ways we work and you'll hear more about that in a couple minutes i would say that you know we've had um shindig has crashed we've all been kicked out we've all i would say that um it's a platform that needs a lot of bandwidth um and some patience uh i do think that once we've gotten over that it's created a great experience for the audience but i will say publicly that i think there's an aspect of this kind of work that is classist um i'm not going to claim that theater by rl is not classist because anyone who's ever tried to pay for a ticket to a Broadway show knows how expensive those tickets are right but again so although our ticket prices are low to get on to shindig and have a good experience you have to have lots of bandwidth and a really good recent computer um so that makes it not available to certain people um and so i think it's different the access points are different but um they are um equally complicated definitely like i said yeah to kind of build off this uh i think very interesting discussion of the like the way we're having to reimagine things i wonder if chris could come join us uh on the podium to talk a little bit about from an actor's perspective what the transition to shindig is and like what did you learn i guess oh geez well and also what does an actor have to do in addition to just acting yeah i'm gonna get off the podium now as recall me if you need me amazing totally but i'm gonna pika maybe you would come up also so um i'm not gonna pull the camera down and like show you my whole setup because i don't want to get anybody like motion sickness but uh suffice to say my i have a uh i've basically had to create like a small soundstage in our like office room um i have a ring light here i have a backdrop on a tripod uh there's a microphone right here there's another computer so i can watch my scene partner um and there's just you know you have to we as actors are are i've learned somewhat spoiled in in that we just get to you know we show up we put on our costume we you know when it's performance ready time we just walk in and all all the things are there for us because of the like various wonderful creative teams that are like managing all the props and making sure all the things move and making sure all the lights are and we have to do all those things ourselves um i have a like a soundboard program in here that i you know send my sound into the headphone jack of my microphone so that i don't have to wire like a five foot long plug to my computer itself i'm you know you have to make sure that your lighting balances in in you know in you have to learn very very basic i'm not going to claim that i'm any sort of expert on like film production but you have to learn the basics of like you have to get your white balance right you have to make sure that you're not overexposed and uh and we've had various uh issues throughout this process um in terms of like some people have you know apple computers for instance they don't really have any sort of software that allows you to manipulate those variables right so like you don't you don't get to change that stuff it has the software built in and it decides how it's gonna light you um and for myself and lapica who's who will speak to some of these things herself uh when you are a darker skinned person uh it decides that it needs to make things really bright and yeah and all of a sudden you're like completely washed out and you're you know blinding white light coming from you in in your your camera and it's it and there's nothing you can do about it there's nothing you can do to change that unless you really dig in you find out all the stuff so basically uh we as as the performers have had to learn how to wear all these different hats obviously the like most basic entry level version of these things um but a lot of stuff that happens in other people's jobs behind the scenes for us has been put on us um and I think it's it's very helpful it it gives us perspective to see what what all the things that go into our performances uh both you know filmed and and on stage uh how much work and effort goes into making those things work just right um and how hard that is to do by yourself yeah uh and to kind of build off what you were saying I think what's been so fascinating about this process to kind of watch from the outside is that how as you're saying it's both partially like film production but then also like deeply theater and then also its own sort of unique thing where like we have mic issues when then like we have to like do a different singing or like on Friday it crashed yeah right I was wondering LaPique if you could jump up here I was wondering if you could talk a little bit uh to this question um I'll talk about I think hey because I think one of the big limitations about digital theater versus IRL theater or film is how limited your movement is is that LaPique you're literally in a box I am in I'm in my sound booth so the walls end here and there's a ceiling I'm in a box in a box and so I was wondering like how do you because you have to play a bunch of different characters how do you like differentiate how do you do that process when you can't like you know change your movement that much yeah so I mean like Chris was talking about we have to um take on all of these other roles I really relied on our costume designer um and uh and um figuring out uh sort of what movement um physically was inspired by each of the pieces that she chose and I'm terrible because I just remembered her name and now I've forgotten it um Ezra do you remember I want to give her kudos um uh I will look it up and then I will come back um thank you Erin I just and then I forgot it. Who did an amazing job and the way costume design happened on Shindig over and then people were sent things from Amazon so in other words that's the other thing is costumes arrived in the mail prop pieces ring lights and things arrive in the mail I mean it's a whole new way of uh getting stuff okay I'm out of here so yeah so it was one part like okay costumes that that'll give a visual cue but um for someone uh like me I am an actor who builds character from physicality and I have done several shows where I play multiple characters but I always use center of gravity and like literal physical changes which you can't quite convey and you only see this much of my body so um we did this workshop with Shelley Wyant who um uh work teaches with mask drama to sort of learn about the different ways we can position ourselves and different angles we can use and how this can be like more intimidating than being all the way here um to try to give us more vocabulary to use um and then I sort of realized that if I have my center of gravity change like Oedipus lives down here um it informs my voice and it informs my energy so even if it's not visual I think it still conveys something different and then I had a lot of fun with accents because why not and I think what you were saying about um that workshop with Shelley was really fascinating because what was really fascinating to watch about is like the things about like how close you are to the camera and I think you were talking about how you have to do that with different characters but even for you Chris in our tech check today you got on with Marisa to make sure you were equidistant away from the camera so that like if the reality wasn't broken which was really fascinating yeah that was that was an interesting thing uh uh before I forget uh one of the the major things that I took away from that that workshop that Lipeka mentioned was uh not sitting because I had been we'd been rehearsing for like already I think a week or two by the time we had that uh and I had been sitting at my desk the whole time and the difference between trying to like perform while you're sitting down versus standing up even just standing in this little you know framed space is huge like it changed everything about what I was doing and I think made it a lot better so I really appreciated that work that we did um and I know Bea is going to speak to this too like with the chance instances where we like remembered that even if you can't see it like it helps for us to remember that we have bodies it's you know beyond our our little boxes so the the thing that I will leave with uh in regards to like suddenly having this stuff um the the we had been rehearsing the lab rat scene just as people and then we got the masks and it was I cannot explain to you the first time we all put the masks on and did the scene together just those high pitched voices just popped out of all of us and we had not rehearsed it like that we hadn't talked about it it just happened like okay I guess that's what they sound like now it was delightful to watch that discovery yeah I popped up just to give a compliment to the cast um uh and to thank Shelly Wyant for coming in because one of the things that drives me crazy as a director is just watching everybody act in these boxes and it's one of the reasons I'm a little done with most zoom theater productions and as LaPica said Shelly was talking to us about you know different entrances and things and right and different um positions and directionalities and all of that and it I mean that became the blocking yeah and it it is for me a much more interesting show to watch because of what all of you have done to sort of challenge yourselves to go beyond what many people are doing with these boxes which is just sort of going like okay this is a limitation I'm going to accept it and all of you have just said well this is a little limitation let's see how we can push past it um and so and it was hard work I think for the actors right and yeah well did an amazing job yeah to speak to what Chris was talking about before very briefly and then I will leave and let someone else talk um that so much of our rehearsal process was technical learning platform and figuring out our own tech that it was almost like the character development part had to get left to the end because we needed to understand what we were doing before we could really like get specific and hone in so like yeah we didn't work with Shelly until like the second or maybe even almost the beginning of the rehearsal um and as soon as that happened it was like oh right I remember how to act now like oh yeah that's what my job is I'm not just saying words yeah I'm clicking the button and making sure I click the correct podium like it it became remembered the like creative artistry of it um as well so yeah there's a lot of challenges absolutely thank you guys so much I was wondering if Tara and Marisa could jump up here and talk a little bit more about from the actress point of view I'll wait for hi there's one thing you guys could talk about both of you have done a lot of digital theater and I know Marisa you've done at least one audio play for this is another theater company I was going to give you guys to talk about how is this different from the other you know doing a play on zoom or doing an audio play or the all the other digital theater work kind of experimenting with um yeah so you know Shindig is definitely a more complex platform but there are elements of it that I really enjoy learning and working with I think it really allows the artists and the audience member to decide for themselves different levels of connectivity that they want to engage in you know we have the pods we have the feature in which you can mute you can put the mute on or mute off and speaking from my perspective as a performer using the Shindig platform there were moments when you know I needed a second of a minute of solace so I would you know press mute and that allowed me to be kind of like in my own space to be able to breathe to collect my thoughts and when I wanted to be more connected then I could take off the mute um it using the Shindig platform did make me feel um closer to being in the theater than working with zoom did because you know when you're getting ready to go on stage or you have a couple of scenes before you and you're kind of like behind you know you're in the wings you can see everything that's going on you can hear everything that's going on and there's that adrenaline and today um today we chose or a couple of us chose to you know actively watch be an audience member and watch every scene that was going on that we weren't part of and it felt that same way that adrenaline of okay I'm watching them I'm listening to them I'm seeing the energy that they're exchanging amongst each other and it's it's it's feeding me it's making me more excited to you know go up and um that was very fun um I think the the way in which this the unique construction of this play um it really causes the artists to sharpen their skills and adapt and you know raise themselves to the next level because I think that you know as people um we I think our brains like routine and with this play you can never get used to a chronological order because there is no chronological order so um from my perspective there was always that there was always like a little bit of anxiety the butterflies in the stomach thinking okay what scene is going to be next um mentally uh mentally transitioning myself to to scan in my head you know okay I could be possibly doing this scene so I need to put on this outfit or I need to put on these pair of glasses and then along with that um being aware that of the well first learning the the shindig learning the platform seeing how quickly it takes to get onto the platform and off of the platform so you all always want to make sure that when you get on you have your costume on and you're not like on screen fixing your costume or or or being in the scene and not knowing exactly when you're going to be taken down so you don't want to be changing costumes when the scene has ended because that's going to shift the audience you know it's going to take the audience out of the imaginary world so it's very complex and it's working with this play and working with this new platform is very complex but I find that it has helped me gain a new skill as an artist and I feel like I'm ready to tackle something new yeah I I totally agree and I think in terms of your question of like audio play zoom play shindig play I think that in an audio play I mean the person who puts the show together unless it's a live performance which I haven't experienced in terms of like an audio play um you just I recorded it in a closet like I wrote a monologue I recorded it in my closet and I sent it to Erin and she put it you know so there's that um and you know she sends direction over email and then you rerecord it and then you send it again so you kind of have that collaboration but it's not as much yeah and then with the zoom play there isn't um a lot of control in terms of tech and the actors because like you can turn off your video you can add a virtual background you can you know unmute yourself mute yourself but you can't in terms of blocking it's very limited because you don't know where you're going to end up in terms of the boxes uh the zoom decides that for you so like you really can only pretend depending on we know whatever the director you want but if you want to have like seem like you're speaking to somebody you really can just like look into the camera and pretend that the camera is your scene partner so that maybe they can experience it that way um whereas with shindig there's really a lot of freedom for blocking um and in terms of like movement because we discovered that if we look like right over here I have a screen up here my ipad I can actually look at my scene partner and react to their physicality instead of just their voice whereas with like zoom you can't really look at the screen I'm just reacting purely on vocal cues um so that's the difference and yeah I think that's it okay let me say uh Kara what you said was really interesting to me of that this feels more like theater because I totally agree is that I think maybe I since we did this too but I found the sort of three months of zoom plays that we all did to be really like disorienting because it's like you're kind of with people but kind of not with people versus here like with the pods like I see a couple people pot it up right now that you can go and like Marisa you and I often were like key key before the beginning of the show while other people are like tech checking or whatever and it feels like a rehearsal room where it's like you got that energy in the same ways that you come in as an audience member and you can go up and talk to somebody or or stay by yourself which I think is this is the closest I think digital theaters come to replicating the life of your experience at least for me yeah I definitely agree with you um I I saw a few I I did perform in a few zoom plays but I also saw a few uh prior to performing and it was very difficult for me to get into it because yeah it it was very difficult and I think what Marisa was speaking about in terms of being able to set up a screen and being able to react off of you know your scene partners movements and things like that I think that that really definitely helped bring this piece alive with the addition of shindig allowing you know there to be podiums to be able to to select you know select direction and everything like that and I think that definitely has elevated virtual theater to another level and I think it will possibly force zoom maybe to put the game up a little bit yeah step their game up definitely and I look forward to seeing more plays on shindig on this platform yeah I think the only thing left to figure out in terms of live performance is like you know with Jonathan with the aleatory compositions which he'll get into and I'm sure we're going to speak about is like syncing up music and like singing maybe or like instrumental like playing together I think that that is not I have no idea where that when that will come and I look forward to see if somebody can figure it out because that's something that like I think no online platform has figured out yet and I'm really excited to see what will happen there absolutely um on that note thank you guys so much I wonder if Jonathan and B could come join us to talk about what I think is the sort of craziest part of this whole show which is the aleatory compositions and the uh chance dances which are things that when I first when Aaron first approached me about this gig I was like there's no way we'll be able to do this online and so it's only if you guys talk about like how like what goes into doing improvised dance and music on a digital platform sure um I guess I can go first I'm actually I brought my hat as proof I'm actually the second dancer in the show um and uh didn't perform for the show chance chance the range things differently um but yeah I I want to just go back to LaPica mentioned the workshop that we did with Shelley which was so helpful in determining how to relate to this box and to find the edges to play with distance and of course you know like we Jonathan and I get extra distance you know to play around and and enter and exit um our respective squares and so um that is something that's very interesting to me also because I am a filmmaker as Aaron mentioned um I also made some ready-made films for the show and um I've done some dance film um as well um not for the show but separately um and I find that this this platform is some it's somewhere between like the live performance experience and the creating a dance film experience because in and so far the live experience there's the improvisation there's the making the choices in the moment there's engaging with an active audience it's giving us prompts it's very in the moment it's very live it's very exciting um and we get to see each other you know when we in our duet dance that we have chance dance number three um but it's also like dance for film because we're relating to a camera and we're determining what body part gets visible at what time what's different to um dance for camera where you have the camera and you're making choices of where the camera gets to go and what it gets to emphasize and here we have to physically move our bodies to relate to a stationary camera which is a different kind of interaction and so I know as a performer I have so many things going in my head while I'm performing where I'm trying to read the prompt of you know what did the audience member just ask me to do what does that mean to me how do I do it and then I'm also thinking about where am I in relation to the camera um have I done a lot of things in the background do I need to start doing things more in the camera have they seen a lot of my face even if they're asking for a different body part you know how can I experiment and give a little bit more variety um in my performance and so there's a lot of things that I'm negotiating and thinking about in in choreographing you know in really time um in collaboration with the audience um as a dancer um and then just one more thing I wanted to talk about which is um I have a lot of fun in the show because I get to feel the full range of chance the the continuum between chance and ready-made um because as a chance dancer that's like a completely chance experience you know like I honestly have my own physical biases and I make choices a certain way as me but the choreography or you know the choreography improvisation is determined by chance by the audience so that's a total chance experience and improvisation experience and then on the very other end of the spectrum I created three ready-made films which are completely finished and complete packages that are done and they just get popped up as a scene or not depending on of the role of the dice um and so that's the like completely predetermined part and then kind of living in the middle ground is the performing as an actress or actor um because I play Hannah and one of the rats um in the show and that is while it is a predetermined script and we've run it and we have kind of ideas of like how we're going to play off of each other and what the meaning is and all of that um with all-life performance every performance is a little bit different and it has a little bit different tone to it and the way that we interact and also depending on what scenes it's couched between might have a different kind of narrative meaning so I've I've had a lot of fun kind of straddling these different worlds in one one experience um and I think um yeah dramaturgically it's like really fun to do this theatrical experience and Shindig is holding space for it so well um and in such a new and interesting way and I'm excited to as Marisa was saying excited to see what new technologies and new virtual theater possibilities come out of this time because we've all as artists had to innovate in a new way um so I'll leave it there and pass it to Jonathan to talk about that yeah yeah yeah I think that this flow of conversation has been so wonderful because you sort of hear from the perspective of all the different jobs you might have in this I think we really does encapsulate that full spectrum and whereas I am now going to speak from only dealing with the random greatness and um so in regards to the composition specifically which we we got one today um oh no I'm just joining you I'm just joining you okay you know as a time keeper I would say Ezra let's let Jonathan talk and then move on to the yeah okay gladly um yeah what what I'm most thinking about today is in terms of the compositions and is about interactivity in general with this platform and online and how online you really do I hate to admit it you have so much heightened possibility to really work together more immediately um and and it also brings up you know how our behavior changes both as performers and audience members when we sort of lose our body and then sort of become connected in this different way so something I do a lot of participatory stuff this is not a theater company does a lot of participatory stuff and something that I've noticed is that you know online we are physically farther apart but we're so much closer in terms of communication and when we're in person I I love I really love the the court justice thing was is really great for me because I often feel like that and I love to take requests as a performer but I find that in person if I approach a group and I say give me a note and let me run with it there's a lot more like what okay let me go to the bathroom break and think about that you know there's something about here that and I think we experienced this in our like Facebook rants and in how we use social media and everything that that we feel a bit more empowered and emboldened to um to give information a bit more immediately and um and and it really I thinking about like the zoom versus the shindig I really have come to feel like a shindig body in terms of what positioning and orientation of myself makes most sense for this and the little gadgets that are possible and and I you know I would knock things down if I showed you my array of on the counter but I really do try to lay them out like it and add an arms reach at any moment because of this immediacy that um you wouldn't otherwise get in person um and so as a performer who I identify is a bit more analog by preference you really I've I've been fascinated by what does and doesn't work on here and so for instance one of the biggest things from John Cage's ideology is is the silence and the impossibility of silence but using silence as an invitation to notice the sound that is always there and and I think because there is we are together but there is the gap between us when we are together online that silence and stillness doesn't really work unfortunately on here and um so because it can so often be construed as a mistake or that the internet is breaking and so so there actually is on here whereas in person I would actually be a lot more comfortable with like people take taking their time to give me a request there's actually this sense of like let's move it along let's move it along let's keep it going let's see and um and so because of that because I'm getting discrete requests and I really love the question feature on here because it just puts it right up there so you can respond pretty immediately but if you're not getting anything right away that's sort of the fun place for me because I can't be still or silent so I have to figure out how to keep something going or what I was doing before into the next thing which is sort of where I get the most artistic license and um and then we have to think about this in terms of how we structure it on here too where you know we went Aaron and I went through a lot of drafts of how to do these participatory rules and you know we started off with a lot of rules a lot of options because they're fun and again in person when you have time and space you can dwell on that but here again the dead space really feels dead so and and information becomes it's more in your face it's more immediate but it also becomes more overwhelming so we found that by really being okay with like okay it's just a b and c as the ingredients it's enough to really get people motivated to offer suggestions and really actually much more easy for me or b to take it and roll with it yeah originally we had a chance dance that also was going to bring in a whole array of props and there was a lot of things which is really fun to play with in rehearsal but we realized pretty quickly that it would be a lot for the audience and for ourselves to pull off in this platform yeah the last kind of point I want to make is um kind of ties back to our dramaturgical structure a bit something I like to think a lot about um you know I'm I consider myself folk fluxes because I really love this this madness but I also really love traditional um forms and what what is really interesting to me in any artistic form that is a bit more composed is that there's usually something that's left to chance whether it's in how you do a technique you focus on this and then something else will happen as a result of it or there's something in a performance practice where it's like we'll be strict here and then this is a little more open but I really become quite a nerd about like oh look there's a bit of cage in this or there's a bit of zen in that and um but then here you know we're doing this piece all about that and so the whole notion flips where we actually need this system this um software to work yeah right and um but still there's these wonderful middle moments where we're like today there was a bit of a delay in the video and like this is where we are and thankfully the whole internet didn't crash and burn we were able to get but it really reminds me how like this shindig none of them are made with theater in mind no they are lit we are using them as ready names right yes theater you know so shindig you know it's podiums it's conferences but we're using theater so we're we're just shopping the internet absolutely yeah we're hacking to use the computer term but yeah you're right in other words yeah the ready-made space the ready-made system and we've gone in and changed it Ezra I'm gonna get that down so you can bring the state managers up absolutely thank you guys so much um so I think uh to kind of go to transition from Jonathan's point about like dead space and like really needing to like be on the ball I wonder if we could grab our amazing stage management team up here who are first the absolute best in the business best I've ever worked with in my entire life hey Bradley oh stop okay but can you guys talk about like all the crazy madness hey Kelly that goes into like making this show happen yeah thanks Ezra hi everyone I'm Evangeline I'm the stage manager uh to my screen right is Bradley who is one of the assistant stage managers and Kelly who is the other stage assistant stage manager but really for this show the the terminology of stage manager assistant stage manager um we are really challenging what that means in in this medium and um uh the way that that we really run this process is really with what I would what I would call uh two calling stage managers which are myself and Kelly uh and then one deck stage manager which is the role that Bradley takes on and yes it really does take three of us to run um to run this show it's it's interesting you you know when sort of virtual theater was developing back in March April May and people were trying to think about what the fall might look like in this world you know I remember being in a conversation with someone where we were like no actually I I think it's going to take more stage managers to do virtual work than fewer stage managers and um and it really does take off three of us to run and so essentially what we're doing is Kelly and I are are in control of getting actors on and off stage or the podiums uh getting Erin on and off stage or the podiums publishing the questions that come up as people are putting or not questions that the prompts that come up as people are inputting them for Jonathan and and B and the data poem um uh so we really control that flow and we have a system in place that on occasion we have to kind of be ready to do each other's roles based on how quickly we regain admin control and um all of that one of the the interesting features that is great for the corporate world but not so great for us is that only one admin can have control of the functions at one time so Kelly and I have to be in kind of constant communication about who has that control um and then Bradley is essentially backstage with all of the actors um checking in with them available to them as as any if there's any tech issues that come up and sort of very similar function to what an on-deck stage manager would do uh IRL as it were um and so we we do all of that um if you if you follow this is not a theater company on Instagram you can see all of these backstage setup photos and you'll see mine which uh sort of looks like a mission control center a movie I have my laptop I have an external monitor that I can pull things over where they're bigger I have a backup laptop just in case something happens I have my iPad where we have our cast chat running and then Kelly and Bradley and I are all on an app called Discord that we essentially use as our comm and so during the show we have one headphone that's plugged into our laptops on Shindig and then our earbuds that are on Discord um and so we're sort of in constant stream of communication that way so there's sort of three communication hubs going at all times there's the show itself there's the communication on Discord and then there's the communication on WhatsApp um with the cast and with Erin um so it's been a really interesting um just new way of working but also utilizing all of what we what we do in general as stage managers I also just have to point out that when you work at a university theater department and you say that you want to put up Christmas decorations in your office you end up with an entire set so behind me right now um I'm gonna turn things to Bradley for a moment this is going to address in a little more detail that communication system for sure um I know for me being being a stage manager especially being like a deck stage manager and assistant stage manager a lot of what I was used to when it comes to communication is oh if there's a problem let me walk right over to this other person that's just a physical distance away from me and rather than having to track them down or having to calm them down we'll have this conversation and have this discussion a lot of what goes on I know what I really struggled with at first was having all these conversations these important conversations and important moments happening in two-ear canals all at once so rather than having the luxury of like okay Evangeline's talking to me here Kelly's talking to me here Erin's talking to me here as we're talking to me here and being able to comprehend all the conversations at once it's one um what I found like really cool about kind of entering the virtual world that I never really thought that I would like come like face to face with is this idea of like all of these apps and all of these different ways and modems of communication and being able to take them and like because all like whenever you're like I know before the pandemic and everything happened there are all these things like oh download everything on onto an iPad and it's like yeah I can take 45 minutes to try and learn these things or I can just write it down on a piece of paper and go up there it really kind of faced and challenged us with this idea of like having these Google drives and having these documents that we can all work in and all be able to communicate with each other and then for the most part that's been kind of like the roadblock that's been very fun and like innovative to discover is all of these like potential things that we can use and utilize that can connect us all together so that rather than working individually we're still that unit I think that's been like what's like a super comforting comforting throughout most of this is that even though the only person I had worked with prior to this was Kelly who Kelly will pass us up to Kelly in a second and she'll talk much more in detail about it but Kelly was the only person I knew on these teams I had never met Evangeline before other than like in like a friendly like like like grab a drink get to know each other setting so to be able to kind of create these authentic connections through the virtual medium was something that I really had a great time doing and really discovering and falling into and then I'll pass it over to Kelly and Kelly will be able to go a little bit more depth yes I'll also publish Ellie's question here because it has to do with what we're talking about but um yeah so it's been fun trying to like you don't know how it's going to work online how you're gonna get that community feeling with your teams that's always like a big part of a show you're always like best friends by the end and so it's always so exciting and so it's been really fun on zoom to do our like little zoom dates or as you can see we're like tripleting here on Plano shirt like stuff like that just helps us all to be come together and like Bradley's in the city I'm on Long Island Evangeline's in St. Louis so like even they were so far apart all these technologies and this virtual world we're in is helping us become more of a team we'll have that family bonding and we talk during the shows and stuff so yeah yeah all like the just the discord chat is one of my favorite things in the whole world it's like it's really cool too because a lot of the times when you're working backstage the only person who has an open column is the calling stage manager that is like one of the only people that like you hear their comm at all times because usually typically when you're on deck your comm has to be quiet or else it'll it'll re-echo into theirs so to have a discord chat of all like having an open comm from all of us has been so nice we just have these like lovely conversations about like what's going on audience members we love audience members that make us laugh just like different things going on that we just are like oh this is my favorite scene this is my favorite scene and I will just close us by saying that in addition to what Kelly's saying about creating community here as stage managers all three of us are really it's really important to us to create that community within the company as well so you know we've tried to do fun things like playing music for Saturday night on Shindig and you know coming to a morning performance with our favorite coffee mug and things like that so it's been a really great experience all around also Kelly is one of my former students and so it's wonderful to be able to work with her on this process uh as well so yeah that's that's us and thanks Ezra for thank you so much for having us here amazing uh Erin I don't know if you want to say anything to kind of close this out um oh I guess I'm back but if Erin if you don't have anything I just want to say thank you so much to everyone for coming we have one more show tonight and then as Evangeline mentioned on our Instagram we're showing everyone's backstage and we'll be keeping you up to date about all the different fun digital and hopefully at some point IRL together we do in the future right and you can see some of our other digital work if you go to www.thisisnotathetercompany.com I just wanted to thank Hal Round one more time for hosting us on their street for their live streaming platform and to note that there will be other articles and other shows that Hal Round will do that will kind of archive um or examine this moment when artists are really having to pivot and reinvent what they're doing and the forms in which they're doing it and I think it's um wonderful of Hal Round to support all of this really interesting creative work and Ezra I just want to thank you for being an amazing moderator thank you so much thank you thank you very much okay Maya thank you so much bye everyone