 under the Radar Festival, and thank you so much for being here. So for those of you who don't know, there's a festival going on, and it's the Queen's Theater at the Public Theater, and also at Obama and the Earth by Heart. Under the Radar is a theater festival that's been happening for 10, it's now 11th year, and my partnership, or the festival's partnership with Andy and Cuckaboo, we started a couple of years ago. Because what we were really thinking was, while we were having all of these great artists, and this great work that was happening, it was also important to open up the conversation about how the work is made, what the artists are thinking about from their make-up, all of the things that are putting the work that we're seeing in context, and this is what these Scanning the Landscape conversations actually are about, and I'm thrilled that's why we have come back to San Diego. Andy is the founder of Cultural Arts and Media, and he gives more information on the website, the formslaw.org and the new program. And thank you so much, all of you, for being here, and another thing is that we're streaming this live on HowlRound, so go HowlRound, so if you don't want to have your words recorded, it is. It is. It is. So, just have that in mind. So, we can code. We can code, and we mark. So, I'm gonna have Jamie. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, I'm just gonna stand up for this part a little bit, or I'm gonna stand up for this part, can't stop. So, first thanks, May Ann, and also, it's Mark, I don't know if Mark's here, but Mark. Okay, so, yeah, just, you know, cultural art would not be possible if Mark, when I worked at PS1 by 2 with Mark, back in 2002, three, four, and so I always like, it wouldn't be possible without Mark, so I'm always grateful to be here, and glad to be here. And this is kind of a, so thanks, all of you for being here. This is scary if a bomb drops on this room. New York Theater is over. The whole cultural capital shifts to like, from there, San Francisco or something. Maybe it's good. I don't know if you like it, but it's good. You might get some attention. Maybe it's good. Maybe that. This is awesome, I'm not, I'm done. Oh, no, I'm sorry. You guys go. No, no, I mean, I just. I saw you thinking, me? Yeah. No, well, I mean, I'm just really glad to be here, because my, it's very, I'm very selfish, because I get to get a bunch of people together that I have great admiration for, and just talk to them in front of you. So what I like to do is, you have everybody's bios. I want to take too long, but in just interviews. So we just sort of go down and say, hi, I am, and this is what I do. We'll go there, and then I have a sort of problem for questions, and we'll just start. And yeah, so we'll start at the end. There's a new face. But hopefully, some people come to watch this. Hi, I'm Lomato, I'm presenting here under great perception, regardless. Hi, I'm Paul Sibet, I'm an artist and director of The Walking Band, and we're celebrating our 40th season this year, 40th anniversary of the show coming up in a month. And before that, I was in the open theater for seven years, so I've been working with God himself up here for about three years. Okay, great. Juliana Frances Kelly, I'm an actor, a writer, and a doll maker. I almost exclusively work for experimental theater directors, but I've actually met and trained and studied my scenario. Might be relevant to this discussion. Hi, I'm Kate Balk, I've been working with the group for, and mainly a performer, but also just directed, early shaker spiritual. Oh, I know that. And you also had a method training, didn't you, before that? Well, yes, I'm not really, but I did go to NYU in his studio program, so I did take two years of classes as the Stella Adler, but we didn't talk about that, because she was kind of anti-message. I'm Tony Torn, I'm an actor and a director. I've also done a lot of experimental work over the years, some of it in companies that work more with Juliana, a lot, as Adler and Richard Forman. I also basically work with whoever will have me. And in terms of experimental versus traditional acting, both my parents were at Charlie Page, were very involved in the studio, but my mother used to say in acting class, the method is, whatever method works, we do it. Shhh! Shhh! Shhh! Shhh! Shhh! And you also did that. So, I mean, I sort of framed the question about method because it seemed like an entry point to a discussion, but it certainly doesn't have to be the focus of the discussion. I think more personally, as I've been watching work over the past few years, but I started thinking more and more about how kind of amazing acting is as a thing, and that I learned this work, I can't believe I'm really old, I learned this work, Phenomenology, which is our experience of being in the world. And I started thinking how amazing it is that talented people can stand up for other people, and with nothing create these sort of conditions where we're experiencing the world through view and with view in these sort of crazy ways, not crazy, like crazy, but like deep, profound ways. And so I just wanted to sort of talk to a bunch of people who are really good at it about sort of their experiences, whether it's coming from like sort of methodology training and then sort of how, what your experience is of working live on stage, how like working with the Worcester group or with Reza Addo or with Richard Forman or different directors influences the way you think about what you do. And we actually have both, and now that I realize it, I can realize it before later, Addo was a director who was formerly an actor, who had been an actor, he has an ensemble that they've got there, working out with O'Jaim playing over at the Mama, Paul is the director as well, but you've directed, you've got, I'm not sure what the situation is with you, who's they do with. Well, I co-directed with Dan Safer, right? I've also directed Shakespeare and John Gunn and the Sing, and I've actually directed pieces of Juliana's as well. So yeah, I'm fully at both camps. So I think there was more just about for the, these questions were really clear in my mind. That's a more, you have a good question. This morning was all clear in my mind. Well, one thing, I mean, I know that a number of people on the panel have looked at areas outside of theater as a source of training that they then brought into their theater practice, and that's something that always interests me, because often it's quite submerged, and it's not anything that unless you talk to the person at length, you would know. And I'm always curious about that, how non-theatrical training and practice intersects with the world of theater, whether it's yogic training or eastern disciplines, some of which have kind of martial roots, and have filtered down into theater in other cultures, but not ours. Back when I was in music, I used to do art before with performing arts, now work of the talking band and in the olden theater, and it's often kind of a starting point for the actors as much as the form you know, thinking about a character's past and a background, sometimes the music might be the inspiration for the action. So I used to have a discipline that I've had all my life, and so I've been practicing IT over 40 years, and I teach at the New York acting class. That's just a kind of, I mean, I don't, you know, I think any discipline, somebody can be the discipline that feeds, and it's not like there's one discipline, but for me, that's something that has a lot of connections to the acting that actually a lot of artists are doing, but where is the spot? So speaking of awareness of being present, what's the, like you guys at the Worcester Group build together, you don't have to start as sort of a playwright? Actually, every piece since I came with the company had a play somewhere that might have been co-mingled or with the lodged with other material, so it was a play. I was thinking that at the Worcester Group, when I started working with the company, Liz had already, the director of the list of the comps had already made three pieces, three places in New England. Robert Ireland. Robert Ireland, thank you, that's right, thank you. But it was with Spaulding's autobiography, and the first piece, the kind of point, was very much more like performance art. It was a really effective, a lot of sound. And Liz doesn't come from the theater background. She's not trained in the theater. She's a studio artist, a visual artist, who got involved with theater because she had a relationship with Spaulding Gray, and they came, she was actually a stage manager for Richard Scheppner, but her work started very formally, very visually, with Spaulding's need and impulse to perform, so she was interested in real life, in behavior, in what you just said about responding, and so they had already started working. I even asked her this, because I said, don't you want to do this panel? Because you kind of made it, you know, about all this stuff, and I've been working with her a long time, but it was that impulse to use Spaulding's autobiography and the actual tapes that he made with his father and the doctor around his mother's suicide, where that seminal piece from the road came from. And I said, and she said, because I said, oh, do you work with tapes and recordings and TVs because then, you know, you can get rid of the actor trying to control and shape everything, because, oh, she can't stand that, you know, and she wants to see somebody really present so that the impulse and the action are as close together as possible. And by actually literally using tapes, a whole aesthetic started to develop around that, so there's a lot of Spaulding's pre-recorded material and seeing it with not pre-recorded, live, recorded, amplified, non-amplified, so there's lots of just positions and it's been a long road of the aesthetic involvement of that, but because she was kind of liberated from any sort of knowledge of how somebody should direct or how what actors do, it was, she came at it like visually, orally, and she always takes the impulse from the performers of what they want to do in terms of who somebody brings a cap stand, but there's always been a play that's inside of this company. The first piece I did was Rewind of Nine and it was our town, even though it was mixed with everything. But Kate, can I ask, it seems that many of the shows have at their core of the research process some kind of physical discipline, either a martial art, the stick training, or a sport, the badminton, or another theater form, the kabuki training, and so there seems to be a kind of physical training that. I wouldn't even call it training, we're all doing it for us, we're not, I mean how you can. But you do it together. There are video tapes of kabuki theater, I never hoped you were gonna do it, but as Americans, we have relationships, we have a relationship, I mean with the television. Of course now, screens are multifarious, but in my development with the company, it's always through the box, the TV, and that is acknowledged in the pieces and incorporated aesthetically. But yes, there's always some way of animating the room so that there can be a kinetic life against which the text can vibrate. So there's always like, oh you know what we ought to do, badminton, and I've started with ping pong actually. And just to like, pass the time almost like, okay we read the play, it was Paul Schmidt's adaptation, Baydra, in which he dispensed with the rhyming couplets, and the language was very much like surf opera, but the proportion of the story was so huge, it was hard to reconcile the sort of surf opera language and the story of Greek proportions where a woman seducing her stepson doesn't really seem like such a big deal. But so it was the table tennis and then the badminton, and then the notion of the court, a court and the court of DeLui the 14th when he wrote it and it just started to evolve from there, but there's always something we do just to animate the room, something kinetic. Something, there are a bunch of stuff that you said sort of set the balls apart, but the question that is what actors do? Like that, when you said she was interested in what actors do, and I think it's interesting, it's like it's not like where this method of question comes from, it's not what actors feel, it's what they do, and sort of the doing and presence in the moment, and I was just thinking about particularly the sort of women I'm surrounded by right here, I think sort of like proportion and size like of presence, and like what's the experience of like Birgit, when you were in Telephone, there was like that 10 minute monologue, right? 40 minute monologue? That's 25. Yeah, 25 minute monologue that kind of was almost, if I had encountered that text on the page, I would have been mystified, I wouldn't have known what to do, and as an actor or as a reader, it was a, is Melanie here, or Ken? Anyway, it's a, who was the playwright of Tariana, right? Tariana, yeah. And it was this incredibly dense, difficult text, and like all of a sudden you build the room for this enormous amount of time, taking us on this sort of really sort of intense journey, and you know, and I've seen you do it too, like I do, like I'm just curious, like what is, but how does that work? Is there anybody you could talk about it? Yeah, like the finding of it, or the, maybe the finding of it first. Yeah, it's sort of like, I guess partially, it feels like maybe just trying to be open to whatever it brings up for me. So there was a certain amount of, like there was a certain amount of prior, like actual knowledge about, about that style of the patient that the monologue was based on. And I, so I did research about that, because Ariane used some of her actual text and sort of went from there. So that felt useful and important to have the exposure to. And then Ariane also used Abital Ronel's the telephone book as a source for telephone. And so I not get to read all of that, but definitely with that to that as a source to sort of feel like, where does her mind go? And even though I focused, the monologue was separate from Act One and Act Three, but they also resonated with each other. So anyway, like, so trying to be as informed as I could be looking. And then I really like going, visual is one of my entry points where I just love, I'll go to this strand to the outdoor $1 stand and get gallery books and just whatever, like something from the time period or going on the internet and being like, I wanna look at silence from that period. Which were, I think, fairly new then as well. So I get features there and then whatever piece of art resonated with me like contemporary. So something that took me back to the time period as well as now, and that's where I am, that's where, and so for that I actually made this huge collage for myself. And then it became a lot of trial and error and a lot of failure, a lot of talking to, I mean, because then ultimately after gathering all, I felt like stimulus in whatever worked poetry. I like going to poetry a lot. Then obviously then it comes back to dealing with the actual text that I've been given. And so it was a lot of finding out from Ariana what was going on in her, for her. And then Ken, the director. I am definitely one who needs a director. I love, I will try to source whatever comes up for me, but then in the funneling and focusing, that's very useful. But during that process, I'm not elaborate, but during that process we just went through, like do this section like Marilyn Monroe, do this section like, and we would just, we had to just keep a lot of physicalizing of the text. But a lot of like. How do you know, I mean, I think there is, it's hard to articulate, so don't feel like, like how do you know when like, when the piece is falling in places or like it's just like a, I think you often know, because suddenly you just, you just sink in and I mean, one cue for me often is, if I remember the lines, that means I understand it. You know, even though sometimes you work for people who ask you to memorize things beforehand, so that kind of blows that, but I mean, it's kind of like, listening to you speak, it sort of makes me think, have you ever seen that like video of a bower bird that you can find on YouTube? Sir Richard Attenborough talking about birds. There's this little bird that lives somewhere in a rainforest and it constructs, like over a period of years, it constructs this like amazing nest that's like sort of like an arch and then it decorates it and it's very, very specific, like the one you see in YouTube that like collects this pile of dung and arranges it and then it gets upset, it looks like it's upset, I mean, we went into that little sprout and started growing out, so I was like picking them off and it's all to attract the female bird, this is the male bird that does this incredible structure, so it's like, I feel like when, in approaching most roles, it's like you're kind of always making these constructs and these places in which like the spirit can live in which the meaning of whatever you're reaching for can live and then on the other hand, you're also, you know, tasked to create actions that cohere to the director's vision and to the playwright's vision and so that those two activities, one which is kind of prosaic and just is like, okay, right here I am doing this very specific action, which is actually a visor thing but I find it helpful in a lot of contexts, but also simultaneously creating this kind of space in which things can happen and things can surprise you and things can remain new, you know? Well, surprise feels like a really important word. I feel like years and years ago, I got to sit in the back of a book about the Joe Tayton teaching and surprise seems to be like how do you surprise yourself? How do we cultivate the possibility of surprise at any given moment happening on stage? So something's actually happening in front of us that is not. So, you know, in some sense, are you guys talking about building kind of like, I don't know, structures to perform in with there's enough room for like, if the play, the audience, you know, for something to happen. I mean, I think that's what you're always talking about. Well, it's curious because I mean, even about repetition, I mean, some repetition is dead end and some repetition is like, if you're a structure that then, then a structure you can find that you knew all the time and find that right structure. It's related to most of my training, as a young actor with the Joe Tayton and it was very physical to me. I remember a very strong kind of moment of revelation for me to be doing this piece called Terminal and it was about people being possessed by the dead. And as soon as the arguments had written this text based on this voodoo queen and veritable natural voodoo queen from the Northeans and herestored rhythm and Joe decided to bring an actual Brazilian voodoo priestess to be kind of a, well, actually get us all drunk. I mean, I'll only do this kind of trance dance for hours, you know, at night and that people were actually more champion. No. That was a small piece, you know. But there was this kind of, so anyway, I took this text home and there was this very strong with the component. I started to dance with it and then I came in the next day and I started to do this thing with this kind of crazy dance and just something started coming through me, you know, and I was sort of blown away by it and I could tell everybody else was blown away by it and I got really scared because I felt like, you know, was this me doing it? Was it something else? Was it repeatable? And then I realized that, you know, if I, what I had found was I could do it again because it was destruction, it was this dance and I had found that gave me this rhythm that was in my body that when I hit this other voice of this moving queen of New Orleans came through me but it was finding the right physical structure and the right rhythm for it that allowed that to happen. But I want to throw a quick comment. Good old Dave Ralph Lemon had a show a couple of years ago he was a choreographer at BAM, called Why You Sit Around the House All Day at Virgo Anywhere and there was like 20 minutes once again on these massive, crazy like sections that looked like it was entirely improbable and that was generated. Unfortunately, Oakley couldn't be here but she could tell us about it. There was like 20 minutes long of like crazy what looked like improbable net and he got that, like getting them all wasted and making them dance for like five hours in a rehearsal room. So the good old days are still there, you can make them happen. Like get your actors drunk, I hear your whole show is drunk. Well, you think who has heard that we can't actually sell the absent to the slipper room because of their bar lard so we're just going to have a bottle on stage. Homemade absent, but you can come see me. Tonight and tomorrow. Yes, only. You can come see me, I will have a plastic absent on me. Well, it's a very different one. I want to come back to that because of you and your Cold War 3 radio hole and but this show in Julie, like it's about access and a lot of ways. Yeah, for sure. And sort of what does that do physically and sort of like why is that a place that you find the power to go? Well, I mean with my, the history that I've had with performance, something I was raised with parents who are like, I'm sorry, traditional theater. My dad did a production of Richard III as Richard Nixon. Jeff's an aeroplane background, so I was exposed to that tradition. And working with Reza Abdo, we were going through that sort of stuff a lot. So in many ways doing the Yubu was sort of like trying to create a space for myself where I can react to this stuff because I knew I felt comfortable there. And it wasn't really that common for me to be invited back into that kind of space. So I said, fuck it, I'm gonna try to create a circle for myself to step into and find people who want to step in with me there. But it's all the same work. You know, I think it really goes down to identifying with character in the end. And that's just the basic acting thing. I think people need to be attracted to the work but they can really identify with what they're doing. And I love naturalistic work. One of my favorite naturalistic experiences right here that the public of the day had with him who was yellow-faced. And that was a beautiful experience where we could do a very realistic character in some ways. But I think a lot of us here are just like little weirder. So, you know, that attracts me to them just so it also attracted to things that are just not as commonly available. So I really like that. So, and when I'm in that space, you know, I use all the same indications to make everything super specific. But it just doesn't seem weird to me to make it specific that, you know, I'm farting on stage for 90 seconds with that in the middle of being coordinated as the king of the polka. For that, for me, I ended up with that very much. So, yeah, it's just about using the same tools but just being the sort of person who chooses to identify with a wider range of what's possible to identify with. I think that's awesome, too. I want to, if you see anything about the structure, I'm sorry, but yeah, no, there's one thing that you'll see, who was an actor with Peter Brook, said in one of his books that he had studied with some Kofi master that he said, you know, you learn from the Japanese tradition, you learn like a kata, you learn a form that goes down, you know, from generations, but how you fill that form is what the task of the actor is. So, I can show a student, you know, how to point to the moon, but from the tip, from his finger, the moon is his responsibility. Ooh. So, you can get the gesture, but how you fill that gesture with one person, you might see somebody making this elegant gesture of looking at the moon, and the girl thinking about it is that act of making an elegant gesture and with another person, you're looking at the moon. I want to use that as a transition to Leonardo, because we learned yesterday that O'Jardine was with the actors, actually their real life stories, and it deals with issues of memory and something I was thinking about when Paul just said, well, two things. One was when you were talking about that early process with Liz and bringing stuff out of Spalding's life and the questions of working with the recorded material and then turning it into performing. And then, not you, but her. And then what Paul said about, are you looking at the act of making the gesture, you're looking at the moon, and how do you work with your ensemble and what you have to get, what you're looking for out of them, and then how do you sort of transition it from mere autobiography or mere biography into this other thing so that we can see not just the artifacts, but this other thing. And how do you think about communicating with your actors in the moon, that process? Yeah, I have no knowledge to talk about this, because actors are still, and even I think an actor or a tourist, they are a mystery to me. I imagine that's beautiful. They are, I can understand it, then fully, and that's wonderful. I think in our work, what each actor has a very different background. We have stood together, but each actor has a different background. So I left the idea of how we do this not theatrical work as they wish. I have one of the actors, for instance, that work with this voodoo thing, almost. That's the president thing, that's the exhausting thing. The actor is dancing all the time, and we have another actor that's working with Kung Fu and another actor that's working with another technique. And we have these different layers, but together, when we are rehearsing together, we work with just basically breathing. We have an exercise that we do that we have seven layers of breathing. It's a very internal thing, I can't explain it later. But we work with this breathing that's just to make this connection. We have two moments in the rehearsal. One moment that's not just about acting, but it's about creating, because it's their memories. They are working with their material, so it's very important that they put that everything they have in their memories and work on this and how to fictionalize this. And it's not about composing something because they are called by their own name, they are not acting. Of course, they are acting on stage. But the idea is just how to deal with time and with presence, I think. Because it's a very mathematical play. You have a very mathematical connection. It's very mind, it's very cerebral, it's very cerebral. Because you have this time here and I have this cue here and I have this box here. So when she says that, I have to say this and to take the box B12, for instance. They are always connected in action. They have to know mathematically what's going on. And also, they have, we allow some islands of silence. Then my request to the actress is that they don't have to act during this moment. They have just to wait and to deal with this presence. So in the last talk we had after the talk we had in the show, one of the actress said that, and it was funny to hear that, that's funny because she creates something about her memories and then she thinks that she's creating another thing than another character. And at some point during doing it she realizes that she's doing herself. And it's very interesting to realize what is the actor trying to express an idea and what's the actor really present there here is. Because it's very tricky to use this alphabetical thing. In some point it seems very narcissistic to do it. But it also can be seen as a sacrifice. I tell this to the actors, it sounds a little kitschy but we use this as a sacrifice that I'm here and we are sharing this moment and dealing with this time. Only this present I think it's enough. Because that's our question there. I don't know if I'm answering your question I'm talking about our process. I have no desire to answer. May I ask you a question? The breathing practice, where did that come from? The breathing practice. Where did that come from? Who brought it? How did it learn? We have this notion. We are always thinking about fiction and reality. So I was thinking about how we can find patterns of fiction and reality. So I was looking to here now and seeing that in fact nobody's acting but everybody's acting. And what makes the difference between one body and another body is the body tension you have. And that comes from the speed or the tension or the, I don't know the English word for it, the tonus. Do you know what it is? No, not tonus. The quality of the muscle. The tension. And that comes from your breathing somehow. So my breathing determines somehow the speed I speak, how I speak. And we've created, it's a very arbitraried, it's experimenting. We have this breathing that we can call it that breathing for instance. We call it that breathing. That's when someone exiles the molds and holds and then inhales the molds and holds the longer. Then we have this desert and we don't have the hold but we have. You develop this yourselves. Yes. And then we have this pitch. We call it pitch. That's soap opera. We know this is soap opera. And now I work cool and I'm here. And we have this suspense. That's bimou. We call it bimou. It's very, we work with this. You can't see this on stage but that's an island to the actor. So they, he doesn't have to, they don't have to be psychological all the time. Oh no, I'm feeling this. They can be breathing. And that's an action. And I'm not visual action but a very action. And that allows the silent moment that you can project yourself in this and oh, you can imagine the actors are doing something but they are in fact breathing. You know? I think that's it. Yeah. So I was thinking, so I'd like to ask everybody to, this is a question for everybody. You know, it doesn't, and I'm not asking anybody to pick a favorite show or, but like to share with us like a moment where you're like, you're like my fucking nail dad or like this was the worst night. Like something that like, probably the story that like all of your friends have heard but we haven't heard about like something that was like, this is what it's about. It's a very like actor studio type question. But I honestly don't get to, we don't get to like hang out with you guys on regular basis and your experiences and you know, I hope that's not too personal. Can I piggyback on that? Just because having seen a number of these actors over the years. I have the impression that some people, and Juliana, I remember this from the early years of seeing you on stage, that there are some people who really go away somewhere during a performance. And when I see them after the show, it takes time for them to come back. And then there are other performers that I feel are never go. They're completely on the stage in a very kind of choreographic mechanical sense. So you can talk to them two seconds after the curtain comes down and they're right where they, right back on stage, right back where they were before the curtain went up. And I wonder how that affects your experience during the performance itself. If you go where you go, and if you're not gone, if you're one of those people who's really completely at the center of the action along with everyone else, then what constitutes an extraordinary performance other than something going wrong? For them, like when they, when you guys finish a performance, you're like, that was an extraordinary one versus, it was just, I kind of, something else. Yeah. That kind of makes me think, well, about two things really, but one is that like, if you really like do the kind of work and build the structures of a lot of the folks we're talking about, is like an actor in that sense is sort of like an electrician. Like I felt like when I've created a successful role, then I've grounded all the wires and I can then receive a very strong of something evidently or something that I believe in like some degree of emotion or remembered trauma or something that I feel very strongly needs. I mean, there is a kind of channeling energy to your performance in particular. I guess so. I mean, in, oh, but that only works really if you do the sort of like nuts and bolts stuff. Yeah. And really ground all that stuff. Then something like enormous can happen and you can really be shaken during the performance but then recover pretty quickly because there are no loose wires that are like afterwars that are messed up. So you can be like, hey, how are you? Pretty much. But I mean, that also kind of makes me think about what you were asking earlier about outside influences. Like for me a big one is I grew up in a very, very religious family, like one generation back theater was basically the devil's pastime. But it's always been contradictory to me because I'm like, oh, you all were preachers. Like that's kind of theater even though you know, thought that like even like my great-grandfather got in this fight with my grandfather outside of the rectory once because my grandfather said that the book of Job was a great drama and so they started to actually physically beating each other up. But to me like just that degree of meaning and that the fact that they both cared so much about the book of Job is a big influence for me as an actor even though they would probably wish I was dead and all that. But that would make sense to me. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it makes sense to me having seen your performances over the years because I think a lot of people, a lot of audience members view you as a kind of priestess. As someone who's channeling you know, a sacred energy through your performances or at least with Dara Luz. Tony knows this too. I mean like Reza, who was the artistic director of Dara Luz he literally defined himself as a warrior healer. So we were like charged, we were entrusted with that that kind of war and that kind of healing. Yes, but Tony got to be the clown and you got to be... Reza's mother. Reza's mother. The priestess. You know, whatever that Madonna picture gives. Well, you know, just to talk about that it's interesting because I always sort of consider myself a person because there's so much channel but sort of like reach into myself to find identification within myself for the role. So I'm parading different aspects of myself. There's another thing that Reza also did charges with this holy goal. And we also talked about the art of definition of the act of being an athlete of the heart which also sounds very holy and all that stuff is also very practical. It's like you think of yourself as an athlete doing tasks and performing physical actions with a certain kind of commitment and grace but you're doing it with eternal stuff as well but also kind of bringing it down. But to go back to, you know, I really think that boo boo... Well, first of all, I think that this last year the first time I really felt like I've arrived as an athlete for myself. I think I've been very, very lucky of the people I've worked with. I think I do have a sort of... I remember when I was 10 years old I sort of looked at myself in the air and said, yeah, this is okay. This is material that can be used. And so I've always felt like I have something that other correctors can use. I wish I had done that 10-year-old. Yeah. And so, well, 20 hours. And I'm drunk. I really feel that I've kind of... I really now feel like I've come into my own and I think there's a difference now in my work just recently. Because what it is, I went away to... Austria and I worked with a good friend of mine, USC Wanuni, for about... I did all these different roles with a company called Totsic Dreams. I sort of like took myself out of New York for a while and I just wanted to reboot. And I went on to work and did these incredible things in Vienna. I came back and I just feel different. And I think Ugu... even though Ugu really expresses stuff that's deep in me, he's just like a total opportunity to express every ball in my head, all my sort of like baby polymorphous perverseness in a way that's really ecstatic. But for the first time I really feel that I've become somebody else. I really feel that... I mean, I do this for the first time. I have people come up to me and I'm like, you should see my show. It's coming back, you know, there's a sliver room. It's like, I saw the show. We drink absent together and you try optimally. And I don't remember. I've gone to a place with Ugu where I really become somebody else for 90 minutes and that's thrilling to me because that's really not a really usual way of working. So, I guess I have to point to that. One of the things that... I mean, you sort of proposed a dichotomy with like a more... Let me just make this simple. I think there's all the spiritual channel-y stuff but I think there's also, you know, just practical stuff and I think one of the things that I feel like sometimes when I watch people, it's like you're talking about putting all the... grounding all the wires, you know, and it's like you can't have like the Hermes imaginative out there energy without the sort of Apollonian structure, you know, like, you know, and... So, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to categorize people but I feel like when I watch Emperor films, like... I mean, everyone's stage here is a rigorous craft, so I'm not saying that, but I felt like you're not... you're pretty pretty. And you were massive and I felt like you were almost like, you know, like a big giant thing and it felt very structural. I'm not saying it did well, but it felt very structural in a way. If that makes sense, like it felt like you could construct difference. Does that... Does that... This is my experience of it. Can you... Well, it was a giant mass, you know. Yeah. We're a theater basically. There's a stance of posture and we have really worked with televisions for physical walking and it was taken from me, me, and no. So, yeah. But that's... that's something that's described along the description in this one notebook that we read with the double negative where you negate yourself as a performer by putting on the mass and then you negate the mass stepping outside and seeing yourself in it and then you become that third thing which is you, but something that is a vehicle for... I mean, I saw a really great debate at how all between August Wilson and... Bruce Dean. Robert Bruce Dean. Yeah, we were together. And they were debating sort of timidly moderated by Jennifer Smith. I thought she kind of... She's a friendly one, but I thought she didn't really push too hard one way or the other and Wilson was saying that people need to play, like that black people need to make black theater from a black place and a black writer in it. There shouldn't be any... He was totally against colorblind practice and then Bruce Dean was for it and somebody yelled out in the audience, you know, like somebody just... some voice from theater history. For anyone who's interested, the transcript of that kind of synthesized form is online at the TCG American Theater, American Theater Magazine, sponsored at TCG. And you'll share it on Facebook after the show. It's there somewhere in their archive, yeah. This is actually a good example. So I'm going to want to... mask the most well a lot. I just... Richard couldn't be here today but I'm going to pass this around. Richard Maxwell just wrote a book called Theater for Beginners and this is the program I'm running for. Because he talks about even super, super duper rudimentary, like do this, pick up a charity disc. And this is the program from... I'm not going to remember the show. Which one? Was it the most recent show? No, it's like three shows ago. Neutral Hero. And in there there's a... there's a section called Theater for Beginners and it's an excerpt in the book. I think it's coming out next week. I actually have a copy of the book. Theater, he's a friend of mine. And I just keep it with me all the time. It's a beautiful little book and it's organized in chapters but a series of aphorisms that are just beautiful and very basic and can be meditated on in any given situation. I use it every day. He has something that he talks about which I find really interesting that as a performer, you are somebody before you walk in the door. You are somebody who's a deposit of all your experiences and vices and shames and guilt and passions and everything and then you come in the door to get in front of a group of people and of course there's this text that you're embodying for the audience and that you... what you walk in the door with is what you bring to it and that he has this really funny exception talking about when he was in acting school and they're working on some scene like the first kits and he felt like he played a part he remembered his first kits and he really felt it and then the next day he couldn't do it again and then he realized that the audience isn't interested in your first kits they're interested in their first kits and that all you need to do is something recognizable so that they can do their... the audience can do their job I mean I always... I always see performances and I always sort of... a friend of mine and I would sort of say relaxing or not relaxing you know about... and if somebody is breathing and somebody is present but whatever means necessary then there's room for me and you know if you see somebody and they're so busy showing you all their ideas about how good they did their job you know there's no room for me in it I feel like I'm shut out the world becomes smaller and it's like good but why do we go to the theater to see something good? I don't think so we go for transcendence and transcendence is possible and that's why you... theater people repeat things night after night because it is a ritual after all and there is that possibility every time you go to the theater but that book Theater for Beginners is great but the thing that I use every day going to the performing garage is a whole section called What Do You Are the whole book is for performance it's not for academics or directors or anything it's an actual handbook for performance and the whole section is about what do you want as a performer because he says when he works with performers and they say am I giving you what you want? and he gets mad and he says but what do you want? and then I realize that that's like hugely important for me what do I want? because a lot of times I think I can't stand this another minute I'm out of here I don't know why I've been here so long I can't bear this another second I'm out of here but then it's like well of course that's neurotic and of course I have some deep compulsion or need to be there but when I ask myself such a tangible question what do I want? and it's different every day it can change many times in the course of one day and he says you can break it down you have a sentence to fill in it's not like what does my character want? what do I want? what do I want? right now what do I want? and you can change it to I want to blank or which helps me I will blank I usually ask myself that before I open the door I will and then it just comes to me for a hard time or whatever it is whatever it is whatever it needs to be it's often a surprise to me but it's very useful about those books it's good to be a beginner all the time and it's a beautiful little book can I ask one last question and then I know you want to open it up but if as you work with younger actors people ask your advice where should I train you know how do I become you however they ask it where do you point them? like it sounds like Kate would hand someone this book well no I would tell somebody much more basic like just keep working find what interests you and volunteer keep working yeah I thought a lot we've done very good universities I find the problem with most young actors is they want them to you know tell me what's the formula and the first thing I tell them is the formula like Tony's mom you know what works for you but in order to do that you really have to try a lot of things explore just anything that interests you and steal, take, absorb all those things and then really find what works for you realize that there's not one training thing and I think a lot of times people they're really great things like viewpoints or you know this zoo key thing and it keeps that oh if I learn to viewpoints, if I learn to zoo key I'm going to be a great actor so I'll trample my feet around the ground and it's yeah it's great training as the thing I think one of the fundamental things I learned working with Terry Chase he was great at inventing exercises and he hated the idea that any of those exercises would ever be written down and learned by anybody else you know they should be like paper plates you could discard because the exercises were to try to reach some particular problem or question you were dealing with a particular piece so like you were inventing your reading exercise because you're trying to get at some specific thing you're thinking about and that's what you have to do you have to find what it is you want to get at, what's the question you're asking and then find the tools to do that and you might have to reach outside to a visual source to some cargo dancing to whatever you're going to help you reach that thing and then use that but don't forget some packages I just want to put in a plug I'm doing I'm starting a script analysis class not traditional analysis class at my organization's horn page we can chat at my house in Chelsea if anybody's interested in that just in my name Gmail is my name so I'll send them to me and I'm going to get to go on the show I want to turn it over to everybody I've asked questions but before I do I wanted to sort of pull together or sort of some strength together as I was listening and you actually surprised me and answered a lot of questions that I wanted to hear that I wasn't sure that I could and things that really pop were first of all this idea that of experimental experimental is a practice it's like you don't know the answer to or you're about to open the door I will and it comes in and you're willing to leave space for whatever happened I would say the experiment is really the method we use copying copying movies that's pretty unique I mean we don't really test technicians or impulses off of TVs so I think great I mean I think that yes I mean thank you that's the underlying thing that I'm actually hearing as I was actually saying is the way that most people talk about acting as a thing is not necessarily related to the things that people do as actors and the Woodford Group has one set of propositions around things that happen on a stage and the technicians and stuff like that I think it's really interesting alright so let's just open it up to everybody Joe I'm just curious about like you two of you worked with Reza and also Richard Forman a lot Kate worked with Forman as well the relationship between you and a director how did that affect your acting I mean like working with Elizabeth with the gear and everything we're buying in a specific direction but then all of you all went and worked with Richard on a project did you bring those devices and work with Richard that way or no I mean Richard was we did two collaborations with Richard it was the Woodford Group co-production Miss Universe Happiness and Symphony of Rats and Symphony of Rats Richard was like how can I get that slightly tacky high tech feel of the Woodford Group so he made like video robots you know there were these big robots that had him he recorded himself but no we didn't work Liz was actually in Miss Universe Happiness and she didn't work on Symphony of Rats at all but I would say it's interesting I think it's what Gratowski talks about even though our theater couldn't be more different than the theater even though in one of our pieces we imagined we were Gratowski's theater and did a re-creation of the section on the topics from the film it's he talks about that theater is is only one thing and it's the confrontation I mean it's not only one thing but it emanates from one simple equation which is the confrontation between the actor and the director the conflict, the confrontation this doesn't mean you're fighting all the time but the director is facing you down he can't lie you know what I mean you're there and so you know Liz and Richard couldn't be more different although I guess they're both experimented theater are probably far different than mother directors I don't know but he's very male to me, I mean you guys know better but it's happening in his virtual imagination that it's his playground and you're a big minute there and he's like seeing you taking from you but it's not open a room in Liz's room like anybody can shoot an arrow, the answer can come from anywhere although ultimately she did say pretty much but I think you have to, I think the best theater comes from a strong directorial position and then of course when the audience comes then that's that position manifold but it's about that confrontation I can remember being completely mystified by Richard Forman when he first started working for him because he hired a bunch of us former Dara Lewis actors almas to do a play called Hotel Buck or Paradise Hotel whatever it was called whatever city we were in so I assumed that it wasn't long after Reza had died too and I assumed he wanted us to be done for Reza in his play and it was not at all he wanted to do what he does to his actors with us I think because we've been touring a lot honestly but maybe I think it also felt that maybe he would guide the guys who would not be offended by his text all these guys did all this company we wouldn't be offended by anything because like we spent it was a 12 week rehearsal process 6 days a week everybody in the room whether you're working that day or not incredibly slow you generate about 40 plays within those 12 weeks and they get cut and chopped you get to the point where it's just this one highly reduced thing that is very different than like week 4 when you were actually kind of excited about it and now you're completely confused and you're kind of on this weird tightrope of like in Forman land it's not a comfortable place to be at all but it was really really interesting because I remember like I was so angry and mystified he would say things like we were always like just working to the point of physical exhaustion and envisioning this kind of radical generosity you're always trying to connect whether it was an angry generosity or a loving one and then suddenly we get into Richard's world and he's saying you should perform this as if you're performing it for the one smart person in the audience and I was so angry about that because I'm not performing it for me because I'm not the one smart person in the audience and that seems completely elitist but interestingly I ended up doing shows for him because like somewhere along the line it became clear that this was just like a very different way of being generous and I learned one thing I learned from him that was the value is like I always rely very heavily on emotion like I know if I'm crying I'd love to cry I know I understand something if I'm in tears and that's very comfortable for me and suddenly that wasn't what we were trying to do and it wasn't what he wanted me to do and suddenly like to learn how not to cry would still be present and generous kind of like like you're a star and it's taken a real long time a little star not like a star a really, really, really long time for that light to reach the earth to that one smart person or whoever you're trying to get at was amazing to try and it was an amazing thing to try to be in that world even though it wasn't natural to me personally and I'm very grateful for this portion of his life you know it's weird when I'm working with Richard Corman I found myself having dreams about him like he was in my dreams a lot I think it was because he was like he had a container of celery I was supposed to eat the celery self nauseous and then I was going to vomit and have spiritual enlightenment but like I woke up just with the feeling it was weird I dreamt about him briefly I think the difference between Raza and Richard was also very, very sort of a strong director really, really he made a decision, he was very adamant about it but he was also really purely collaborative as really sort of a tribal experience to be with him so if Raza asked you to contribute something he very, he don't always take it or change it but he basically had created pieces with us he sent us out for his shift back in and he would then take it and incorporate it and Richard would ask for suggestions only so then he could hear all of our suggestions and dismiss it and come up with his better idea and this is the whole thing but this is also underneath the terrifying experience of Richard Forman is a teddy bear what's available on archival? most all of it is there's a really amazing documentary Lincoln Center has the entire abdo archive on DVD you can see the Raza Abdo and Adam Soch who did all the video and the video documentation of Raza is right now cutting a documentary about a work with Darlu's which is going to include extensive performance footage so that's going to be coming out hopefully he's showing a little preview of it can I just make a plug at the end of this month I think it's the 29th and 30th of January of the CUNY sequel center there's a two day festival of theater and performance on film and video and they're showing a first I think it's like a 20 minute preview cut of the Raza Abdo video but also anyone interested in acting will be interested in this unfortunately it's a Thursday and Friday all day long this is something that CUNY has to do with CUNY scheduling but it's all on the sequel center website there's a lot of material being shown I have a question that came up particularly talking about does Kate talk about not filling up so much space so that there's room for the audience to be in it too why don't you say don't fill up you have to fill up the theater but do you have to be open and present and listening to the whole room so the question that so the question that so the question that made me think of particularly talking about Juliana and earlier it seems to me that's a very vulnerable thing to do and does that change when you work with different directors do you feel or is it role based or project based like do you feel more safe in a Richard Forman show where you're abstract than in another show where maybe has more immediate ways into what's happening and you can literally be behind glass behind a wall so I was just curious how do you preserve that vulnerable thing that helps us enter it but does it change from situation to situation or to me the question you asked before is about you know to me it's always a circuit you're talking about it's always with the audience those moments that are special because it's not just happening with you it's happening with the audience I think depending on what kind of performance it is you just play the other and the fourth wall is there or in the last couple of years I've done a couple of shows in Taylor Mack where people have come from a cabaret more adult tradition and there's this wonderful kind of openness just everything from the audience to giving it back to them is not they're part of the acting too and I've learned a lot from that so yeah I think it changes a lot with do you ever have stage fright you know yes and then I always have a good thing you know it's like I did get it back there's this Joe had a hard age pretty young age he always had a strong sense of you never could assume that you're going to have this next breath you can't just assume well I'm good and that went into performance too I have several other chances to do this you know this is the one moment you have to do this and I have a very strong consciousness of that going on from stage this is the only moment I have to get this right even though I know maybe there'll be some other times so that makes a very kind of anxiety produced in a certain way this is the moment to have this that happen with other people where well actually I don't have it so much right now but I kind of that's why I went and directed the show I can't do this anymore it actually fell off the back of the set and when we were in Sao Paulo because I was just didn't feel in my body we were working on a piece called Yucca Ray which was written by Tennessee Williams and I had a very difficult time because we were working with kind of performing that I'm just not good at naturally and Scott Shepard was very very good at this like a fish in water and I was having just the hell of a time and you know just getting put through the wringer and changing things and you know I remember like this changed before one show and I was like you know but it's going to be a big mess because I knew the tech guys wouldn't get the cues and she was like I hope so like at least you know I'd rather see an accident than somebody not present and and there you went off the back of the set well no no it was in Sao Paulo and I remember I was judging myself harshly after this first small scene and the whole next scene was going to be Scott Narri the writer and the painter the two the main sort of most beautiful scene at the U of R which is kind of a problem and I remember thinking like I was just like beating myself up and I'm like what are you doing? Don't beat yourself just go out there, go backstage and just listen to the guys just listen and I just walked right off the back of the set which is a big reminder to I wouldn't go anywhere in the dark that you haven't been in rehearsal that's a really good thing but then I seriously thought well you know I used to just when I was young I just felt so fearless I had so much enthusiasm just like energy and then I thought wow maybe I shouldn't maybe this is I wasn't going to leave because my life's working you know for me the imperative in my life right now is to keep the theater going keep the garage going keep the theater going and so I said Liz you know I need to retire from performing and so I assisted her when they made a collaboration and that was so happy for me because I felt like I was back to my original impulse working with the Worcester group was being like wowed by this company and ready to do anything that needs to do it and it was a valuable because I could understand what the performers needed having been there and also so it was like a really great time between Liz and I and then I she went in and I stepped out for a few years so that was good let me interject I'm curious because you've used the term being vulnerable making yourself vulnerable and I guess I was sort of thinking that that meant a fear of failure a fear that the performance would fall or that you would fall off the stage but I'm also hearing the possibility that you're vulnerable to sort of ego destruction that the Buddha would take over that the Buddha would take over in such a way or that you would be healed and as you mentioned when the performances over you were a different person no I wasn't from that I was just when I said the word vulnerable I was suggesting a number of things I was also thinking very specifically about the performances by Birgit and Juliana where they are embodying characters that or situations that are in precarious states and leaving both as a human being entering into those spaces but also even in twelfth night which is a very frivolous play not frivolous but it's a very funny play there are these moments where it's high comedy and yet we are having these emotions complicated emotions through the thing because there's space for us to enter we can both find Olivia hilarious and pathetic and all these things and it's not pathetic but whatever trouble the vulnerability that I was referring to was as much about the fear of failure as it was about these places that actors go where they are creating space for us to be with them in these difficult places that may be hilarious or tragic or this or that and sort of like what is the negotiation that you have like I don't know how to phrase the question really but it's always amazing I mean it does feel very specific from show to show I mean but tonight and also show to show in the sense of like I have to renegotiate with myself what do you think maybe it will help this time and depending on what the director is like like depending on the way the director works I might need to go in another direction in my spare time if it's not something in rehearsal so that I can feel safe enough to trust what we've created to that day and this you know in feeling literally like what is the theater space like and I yeah like yeah it comes down to that you know it comes down to yeah trusting what the work we've done and if there's some part that doesn't feel then investigating that what is that you know and it does it feels like it changes all the time but like with Pig Iron it was very physical and a lot of just making up the world which is not a safe place for me but I also love being entrusted to fail like just do it just try to try and then there was the text part and I was like I need more help with the text because I don't know Shakespeare well enough to feel that I know it well enough to then be able to be like this is what I've written to the table and so just I don't know it feels like a balancing act with every show and which is the part that I love about not nothing like I will continually not know every time but it also feels like the greatest entry way to be like well what do you need what do you need to make this happen and is there a conversation that you have with directors like as actors like you're just like what do I like Richard Maxwell what do I want like how do you negotiate those things alright alright we're going and we're we've got five minutes left so I guess let me I apologize let's open it back up so the week it's like even the week the week gets even deeper because it's not just the relationship to the text and it's not just the relationship to the director but it's also your relationships to the actors on stage as well and I'm wondering if you can speak about in terms of performance how that also filters into your process and the work I know with ensembles there's often a technique that is shared and so the difference between working in an ensemble or coming into pig iron that has an ensemble core of performers and then what it's like to bring yourself and the work and the craft that you do into that process I mean the question sorry so the question is like you're not just so you're creating a performance but you're creating also a performance with your fellow actors on the stage and so then how does your own personal technique and the ways that you're working how does that get influenced or built upon by the performers that you're working with it's great, you're working with a lot of people with different techniques and also to get a chance to work with them over a period of time like a lot of the companies that have core companies in New York almost even some that function like a rock band develop the work together play the work together but it's also great sometimes it's great to be a stranger and that could be a kind of freedom too, like you don't have to necessarily do that intimately connected with everybody's technique and that could be a very powerful thing I think secrets and theater are great generally to be an actor and director I think it's almost like a kind of whatever the dynamic is in any work environment you kind of learn how it works effectively the parts you might need to kind of ignore or serve or build your own psychic bridge over the circumstances picking up the impulses from the other performers I think is the number one thing that gets you through a performance because sometimes you have to do you know I think someone that's a solo piece and then you almost have to do that with the audience and leave them as the person you're in dialogue with but you know once you create these sort of character ideas and then you're like you're an atom bouncing around off another atom that's always really exciting I think that Julie MSP is my partner I don't think I can get through it without her just sending me so much energy on stage I think we have time for like one more question anybody just piggybacking on what Tony just said you talked about before the difference between sort of working inside a tribal structure and not and it feels as if with Julie you sort of reproduced a tribal structure with just a tiny number of people well it's different I mean it's like you know I work in the fan saver in Julie I mean that's not much tribal but it's just that Julie is I've known Julie for so long we've been friends for about 17 years and so we pull on that it's really great when you have other people you've known for a while or you work with on a regular basis you know or just people who are open in general I think that the one thing I've encountered in the so-called straight theater film world which is the most distressing to me is people who really are openly competitive with you and not sharing and you have to basically be in this sort of situation where they're trying to figure out how to like make themselves you know I'm a very trusting person it's taken me to a quite long time to actually acknowledge that there are people who would undermine it and I think it's not so much a case in our world because like people working in the experimental theater we're not really careerists I mean why and why so you know out there it's a little bit more dog-eat-dog everybody's trying to get those big roles and so it's a little distressing to me and so one of the reasons I keep coming back and back to this community and really it's a community thing for me to say just like in the sense of a shared set of values you know and that seems like a good yeah that seems like a A applause I think that's it was really been very generous with your hearts and minds thank you so much thank you guys for coming and it'll be on the internet if you want to watch it and pick up yeah thank you more applause