 So, gentlemen, please turn around and yell for me. And those of you who don't know what you're doing, please turn around and yell for me. You're always in the way. So, shall we help each other out? Hopefully. It's academic, and it's theater. It's a place where they both meet. We've got the audience, and the process, and employees out there. You mentioned that this is a start-up. That this is culture-like. I mean, are you going to do some... Samples of women. Sharing ways that you can show how you do that. There's no way to ignore that. There you are. You can come and see me talk about it. Please, gentlemen, turn around and yell for me. We've got the new program here for everybody. Yes, everybody. But truly that. And if you do understand your life, relationships, that I've already been. Samples of women, as we call it, depends on that. This room for it all. This room for it all. So, welcome. At the CEO of the Theater Center here, the great director of the CUNY, my name is Frank Henschka, the director of programs. And I would like to thank everybody for coming out tonight. The Segal team, everybody's Salma, Michael, Brian, everybody involved. You, Chen, and of course, Karen Melpete, who we're celebrating today. So, we also have a publication line on Martin Segal Center Publications. And we know how much work really goes into making the book. But this is just making the book. But thinking about writing and doing the plays and creating them and then putting them again together, choosing them. And this is what she did. It's a great, great achievement, I think, as was once said. Jackie, you're an actress, or a Kennedy, who said if you just do one book in your life, your life is full of meaning. And you did so much more already. So, we really have the highest respect for your work also, for the context, what you put in, what you think about theater, what theater should do, how disconnected, what impact it can have. So, we are honored to have you here tonight. And Karen didn't come along. Tonight she came with all her friends and her family, as we said today. Our collaborators over many years. We have a great panel who will come here together. The format of the evening will be excerpts of three plays, once also a short video after each of the plays. Four plays will be a short, back and forth with one correspondence here on the chair. Then we will all sit together, everybody who talked about individual play for a little panel discussion. And then we open it up very soon and fast to everybody here in the audience, because we have a great audience and we take pride of it. And so there will be really a back and forth followed by a little reception here. And then we go to the archive bar. We also have the book out here. It took really a long time to put this together. Just came out instead of 30 or $35, just 20 tonight. So, please do support also the book, but also Karen with the work. I think it is really worth it. And there are four books, four plays that take on a whole year tonight from our all in here. The Segers and the Bridges Academia and Professional Theater, International and American Theater. And many of you also have been here. George has been here. Catherine has been here. And so many of you, Cindy, Marvin and everybody involved. So it is a reacting part of your community of a family investing. So it's a really good reason to come together and celebrate life, work and as Buddhists say, joyful participation in the sorrows of life. And I think this is also what Karen's plays are about. So, Karen, maybe a few words before we start. Very few really to thank. There are seven essays in this book that accompany each play. Kristen Clifford wrote one. Cindy Rosenthal wrote the afterward. Marmin Carlson wrote the forward. Alexander Schluths wrote the essay about extreme weather. Nigel Said, who's not here tonight, wrote the essay about prophecy. Rebecca Gorton, the wonderful political writer, wrote the essay about the anti-Torgia play, Another Life. And then I wrote a preface. So it really is a collective effort. The photographs by Beatrice Schiller, who has taken all our plays except prophecy. Unfortunately, she's out of town for 22 years. Sally Ann Parsons, who's designed all the costumes. Tony Giubinetti, who's designed the lights. All of their work is in the book. And in the photos, Alex Tavis, who's in two of the productions. Lula Lakova has done all of our posters for 22 years, which you see on the screen. So this is an amazing effort of a tiny little theater that keeps chugging along, partly mainly because of George Bartena, who keeps pushing me up the hill. So, thank you all. And thank you for coming. And thank you, Frank, for having us. Thank you. Thank you for your question. Maybe do take out your cell phones. I'll do the same. Bring us off. Yes. You go with the camera on the stage. Just to set up, daughter George, George and Kristen, we're in the original production, 25 years ago, in Lee Nagrin's studio. And he saw it. She was very pregnant with a now grown daughter. And then we revived the play last year in 2016. They're going to do a speech of Robert, who's the poet. He encounters Ed Mira, who is a woman from Bosnia, who has been raped and pregnant, and brought to his house by his daughter Rachel. She's up in the middle of the night, wandering, very pregnant, and Robert, who's going outside to take photos of his lover, runs into her. And this is the speech. Forgive me, I'm just very sorry. I promise you, I won't come near you. It was a very beautiful picture. I'll give it to you. You, with the window in the moonlight, can you understand what I say? I saw a luminous light in your eyes as if you were looking far away into some other time or place. That's why I snapped the shutter without thinking. I'm sorry, I won't do such a thing again. You are safe here. Will hurt you. It was the moon, but I don't think so. I'll talk to you for a moment. It's odd, isn't it? In western art, we have no we have no picture or depiction of pregnant women. Until we come to the 15th century, pregnant Madonna of Pyrrhodell of Andresca, and she was the victim of a macular conception. She seemed completely perplexed by her situation. Of course, we assume that in her case the whole process was fairly gentle, but we have to think that. My point is, even the mother of Christ didn't choose her own fate. How few women actually do. Maybe that's the difference between men and women. Men think they're free. Women don't even bother to pretend. I'm sure Mary didn't ask to become the mother of a god. I say, a god. Not god, you know the sign. And, you might call, a baby. I really am a believer in multiple gods. How can you not be after all, look at the violence unleashed by the endless fights over which God is the best. We really have to learn to accept that the divine spirit is born all the time to mortal women, and we never know in classical mythology most gods were born to mortal women by an act of rape. In that case in that sense I suppose a macular conception is a forward step. Indeed, the phrase is not merely a cover-up. Perhaps there is no way that a divine spirit could enter our present world except as a result of incredible force. Oh, does that sound to much like justification? I don't intend that. No, it's just that for every extreme action there is also an extreme reaction and for all of us in the end the same question remains how much do we let outside events create us and how much do we hold ourselves responsible for what we become? In your case the question poses itself at the very edge of tolerance. Still, I would hesitate to say you don't bear some responsibility for what you could become not for what has happened to you, which obviously you are very completely innocent, but for what despite everything you might still imagine yourself to be. So I wrote Prophecy for Kathleen Shull and had the great pleasure of having her do the part and the greater pleasure of becoming her friend for all these many years and so here she is. She's going to do a speech from Prophecy and then Caitlin Cassidy will join her to do a scene from Prophecy. I think they're self-explanatory, yes? Go. I'll stay here on the front. Stewed in corruption in the steamy stench of your love. I picked it out so we could start fresh. Wife, the other rug, the red one where Lucas and I slept I rolled up and stored in the basement because I cannot bear to throw it out. The night we protested the secret invasion of Cambodia the night we felt the war wouldn't ever end. I pulled Lucas off the street. I was forever pulling Lucas away from Cambodia. He was always taking for a fight. I brought him up here. It was a collective apartment then. Below on the street there was tear gas. Lucas told me he'd flung all of his classes that kept one in English composition. I gave him an A. He would go to Canada except he would avoid the draft or join the weathermen and become a real revolutionary. Go to Canada. I told him please. I'll come to you there. I leaned down to taste him again. When finally we finished when he lay beside me on the red rug and I cradled him in my arms he smiled and said he figured out what he should do. He would leave school and get himself drafted. He would join the GI resistance and organize for me inside. He sat up. He saw his destiny playing. When the army refuses to fight the war will end. Don't be an asshole I said. Kiss me. He said I want your child Lucas but I couldn't say that to him. Don't be a hero I said. You know how long those guys live in the jungle. I'm working glassy says. Those are my men. Stay here. You can make up your failing grades. I'll talk to the dean. We lived in our grief. Legs looped. Sex linked. It's okay Lucas said. Whatever happens to me it'll be fine. There's no time for personal happiness now. He learned to talk that way at Columbia. Little kids would be in napalm. The shit has to stop. I'll give up Alan for you. I'll call him in Cambridge right now. I reach for the phone. Lucas was only 19. He was more frightened of me than of Vietnam. Julie. Please talk to the bathroom. Oh sure. Hala? Hala I guess. It's Sara. Sara? You know. You're well? Yeah as usual and you? I'm fine. I'm glad you're alright. Maureen's in New York. Oh I sent her out of England. I've sent her out of here, too, and I had no idea that she... She's a wonderful young woman. Amazing, really. I'm glad you think so. I do. She's ballsy, if you know what I mean. I do. Want to speak to Alan? Alan's asleep. Holla? Yes, Sam? Something's happened. Not tomorrow. She's fine. Really. Lovely. Has she taken off the headscarf in New York? Tell me yes. She started that at boarding school in England, not in Beirut. Here she was disco dancing. Here I worried about sex, drinking usual things. Now who knows what to fear. The young were putting on the scarves. Oh, my God. My mother alive. She would have... Something's happened. Holla, there's someone else. To me, too, I think. I couldn't sleep. I haven't been sleeping. I know. You do. I don't sleep. Oh, my God. Of course not. I'm... What can I say? Well, the bombing has stopped. The troops might hold. I hope so. We are relieved. Holla, I have something in my head. A woman. I had to tell someone. You, I thought. Holla, I could tell you've been to a room. That was there, yes. At the start. Afterwards, there was no room for the UN. How can such things happen? This war, I mean... We let it, not you. We here, and now... Well, I teach. You remember, do you? A talented young man in my class. She was pregnant, Holla. I don't know what I'm asking. He can't forget. That's good. I think he shouldn't. But now, I mean... I know. I see. It's an indelible image, really. I don't know. What do you do? Do. With such things. With the things you've heard. Things you've seen, I mean... How do you? Go on. I suppose. I don't know. You go on, obviously, you do. But it's in my mind, like a scene, in a play. I didn't see it firsthand, like you, like I suppose you've seen. And worst thing... Still, I can't forget. I cannot stop looking. Sometimes, I feel I'm her. I see. You do. Because I'm afraid I'm completely unhinged. There's a concept that therapists have, secondary traumatization. It happens from the things you hear. Things that people tell you, they tell you, and you see it. All in front of you. You take their story into your body. It happens to everyone. Everyone who listens, that is. Is that what you wanted to hear? What do you do? Yes, Hala, please. You weep with them. You hold them if you can, if they let you. If they are not so stiff, they can't be touched. You try to hold them until, you hold them until they can start to shake. You want to know this. I know this, yes. Sometimes they bury their head in your lap. Even if they are men, sometimes often, if a wife has been killed, they cry. Or if they're children, grown men, they tremble in your arms. They are not home. They were not home when the house was bombed. They come home. Everyone they love is gone. They dig. They find a hand, maybe. I can't tell you, Sarah, I will not do it. Not over the phone, not in your west side apartment from those white bosses. But I know. I mean, I read, I watch the news. We do see, but please, it's this boy I had. He was a soldier. A boy. Innocent, really. Then all of a sudden, he shot a pregnant woman, Hala, many times. Hala? Tell you about the ones who survive. The ones who remain alive after soldiers like yours. Let me tell you about their eyes. Their eyes have a look that you do not see in anyone else. They are looking, trying to look far away. They cannot believe themselves what they tell you, what they've seen. They do not anymore know how to believe. Sometimes I think we are all held here by threads. Each one of us. By threads, slim as the web of a spider's. To the people that we love, to our children. But how easy it is for someone to walk through our web without us noticing. Without them seeing. To wipe it away with the move of one hand, without ever knowing what they've done. If you cut a person's threads, they go spinning all by themselves. They are whirled out to the other side of the divide, to a place where there is no one they can touch. There is nothing to hold on to them. They are long distance from us. Here, in my part of the world, family is so important. Now they have no one. I am no more a man. I am no more a woman. They do not anymore know how to be. They are now two separate races. This frightens me. It should frighten us all. They look at us with dead eyes from very far. Sarah, I am sorry that I took your husband. That from him I had my child, Mariam, with her headscarf and her rage. I didn't want this life. I wanted, yes, of course I wanted my child. I wanted her and Alan. I wanted him. I did. We wanted he and I. We forgot the moment, the present that we lived in. I forgot the thread connecting me to you. We had no idea then what would come. We wanted to weave. I wanted strings, Sarah. I'm glad that you called, Sarah. I've been wanting to tell you this for a very long time. Yes. I am to be thanked. Not for taking Alan. Not for that. For making Mariam. For making threads. To keep you. To keep us. You and me. Attack. For telling me what you have. Somehow it helps. It does. Good morning then, Sarah. Must be very early. It is. Good afternoon, Alan. Take care. Your country has caused a great shame with this war. I believe that too, Holly. I don't know what to do. Shame drives people mad. Should take a seat also, please. Thank you for that beautiful reading. Thank you, sir. Yeah, very nice. Very nice. Oh, that was so lovely. So lovely. Wow. So I love that scene. One of the reasons why I love Karen's plays is because the women are so powerful, so poetical, and often so raw to the bone. But there's a quality of sisterness that often comes through that surprises. It's sort of like, oh, oh, you don't expect it. And then it's there and it's very, it's both painful and incredibly beautiful. And it's what I've always responded to. I'm feeling very, as I think we all are. It was very, very moving. So I always have questions and I love Karen's words, so I always have questions about her work. But one of the things I wanted to ask you about today was addressed in some of the reading of Prophecy We Heard. And it has to do with a soldier, Jeremy, who is suffering horribly from PTSD. He's also an acting student, which is kind of amazing. And he comes into Sarah's life. And some not very good things happen, I'm afraid. But it's the ways in which these worlds and these humans come together and intertwine and feels hopeful. It does feel hopeful for a bit. But I was struck by the fact that when Karen was writing this play, which was in 2006 or that was when it was first produced, we were in a terrible moment, you know. But hello, we're there, we're still there. We're exactly, it feels so similar, maybe worse. I was really thinking about how little we've learned and moved in terms of PTSD, in terms of what's happening with veterans and other people who have suffered trauma. And sometimes it's just so completely overwhelming. But I actually wanted to ask is whether you feel, Karen, that there's any kind of awakening now. If there's any kind of an opening up of something new, I mean, obviously in the news, there's so much. I mean, I'm also feeling when I was listening to Beekeeper a moment or so ago and what I was remembering so much was Rachel's rage, rage against men. And what we're of course hearing now in all the revelations every day, we're feeling the rage, we're also feeling the power, right. But what I was wondering about is whether there's some kind of feeling of an opening of some sort of atonement or healing now that seems possible or different than there was then. Do you have a sense of that at all? Maybe not. I think with the individual moment and there are a lot of us who teach and there are a number of us who teach at John Jay, where we have lots of veterans and I've had veterans in my classes at John Jay. And so I just thought of one story because I edited a book called Iraq, what was it called, Acts of War. Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays and Prophecy is also in that book and it's in The Anthology. But I taught that book and there was a veteran in the class who could not come to class. He was so traumatized that he could not sit in a group of people. But his therapist who he was working with got wind of the class and she wrote me a letter explaining this and I said of course if he does his work, you know, he doesn't have to come to class. So the last day we do projects the last day and he came in and he stood by the door and he handed me his paper. And his paper was the story of what had happened to him in Iraq. And it was the first time he had been able to tell that story and to put it down on paper. And I have been trained in trauma as well. So I knew that that is one step to moving beyond the story that you knew. So I have that paper in my drawer as a precious possession and it's not exactly an answer to your question but I think that in individual moments there is a tremendous grace that can happen and that collectively I fear for the country and the world perhaps I don't know more than ever before but certainly a lot. So I think we go on those moments of human connection and human transcendence. And they so often happen in a classroom actually. So I'm feeling grateful to my students. There are three generations of students in this room. So yeah. And that's really wonderful. I also wanted to say a little bit about one of the things that I wrote about in this book, this beautiful book which you must buy and read. It is the epilogue I wrote has something to do with my sense of Karen as a feminist playwright. And very much in my mind in the mode of what Jill Dolan talks about which is a utopian spirit in terms of a feminist project. And some people feel that's somewhat controversial especially right now but I don't. And I feel very challenged and also energized by it. And I also wanted to say one of the things that I love about your plays that has been there in many of the works that I admire so much is the Cassandra like figure, the oracle, the oracular of that work. So and what I'm sad about is that I did not come earlier today to the reading and I wonder whether in the new play there's an oracular figure and if you could speak of that if there is, is there? They're all oracular but you bring to mind something quite different which is I adopted Krista Wolf's great feminist novella Cassandra for the stage at NYU a number of years ago. And I had the pleasure of meeting Krista who was a friend of my friend Grace Paley. So we went out to tea to discuss whether or not she would give me the rights to adopt her book which she did great graciously. And she, we were talking about the wall coming down and the third way which she and other German feminists and others were trying to find, not capitalism, not communism but something new, something new and they called it a third way. And I said to her the fall of communism was nothing, wait till the fall of capitalism. She said to me, I don't want to be alive for that. Well she's not alive for that. But many of us feel that if we're going to be alive much longer that we need something other than capitalism and the more we sort of investigate the connections between climate change and nuclear war and money, power, corporate power, the more we feel we need another way of organizing and actually the new play is a lot about that, and I think all the characters in the new play are irracular in their moments actually. Well, I can't wait to hear it. Two more minutes. All right, all right. Well one thing I wanted to say and it's so delightful to have seen you once again, George, do Robert. I love that part. And one of the things I discovered when I was reading the book which I did not know is that Julian Beck was in fact someone of an inspiration for that role, that character. So I want to, do you want to say a little bit more about that? So the first time I met Julian Beck, Judith took me back to the house. They were living in, what is Fort Greene now, in a crumbling brownstone that Harvey Lichtenstein had given the company to live in. And Julian was in the kitchen stirring a great big pot of vegetarian stew wearing a little Indian like little mini dress and thong underwear. And I had just published my first book which is why Judith had come to meet me which had a chapter about their work in it. And so I walked in and he said, oh, I like your book very much. And I said, oh, I like your book too very much. And Judith laughed and we were, you know, we were in love with three of us forever for his life and the rest of her life. Julian was, you know, like no one else. I mean, he was his own creature that crossed boundaries of some people in this room knew Julian perhaps. And he was a great, great, great spirit person. So he and Robert Graves are the two impulses behind Robert and the beekeeper's daughter. Well, I'd love to be in an island with both of those. We're going to stop now, but this was fun. Let me show you a videotape about the... I think it gets set up. It was that, in any way, a piece of literature which is Mary Shelley's Grandson's son, in a very interesting way. One of the things that Karen has done is she has taken all these social and political relationships. It was really interesting watching her play and, you know, watching all these things between six people. I want to move my girl, this guy in the house, here I come. And just six slides and show how that interaction happened among the things that are timeless in this, where it's own story. And never likes to hear people speak to it. I want you at the helm of deep water, a bus. Principles, you have your hands as squeaky clean. The private sector is the place to be. I want you on the deep water table. I think you all do. That was a very, very powerful performance. I know that I work on these issues. Every witness, the actual performance, it really brought back a lot of memories for me. Experiencing that. Watch them scramble, watch them fail. Hey, guys, get lost. You have bosses' characters, and differences in them, and different people, and expectations that led to torture. For example, things that we don't sort of factor into what happens to people who engage in, or are expected to participate in coercive interrogation. My God, I was against all the issues. I promised myself I never would. You think I wanted to beat it to a pulp? You think I don't know what a man could become? This play is a kind of amazing catharsis, much more of the public space. We need theater. Part of what we're going to want to hear in this play is to feel, and to feel enormously, and to feel about it, and to think, oh my God, that really is what's going on. That really is what we're doing. I love close friends at the Pentagon. We are tainted, you and I. Sometimes, yeah, I think it's more difficult to survive. I would love it if everyone in the country could see a place like this instead of shows like 24. I think it would do more than a million marches of a million people. I think it would end a course of torture. This play is so important because it's simply giving a forum for the truth to be told about what's happened in these 10 years. It is possible to run a humane facility, my park, where I call shops. Here at Baghdad, the Novgenstein. You saw me at my work. You were to explain me. Can you tell me a bit about what I do? Is it really informs how I saw the play tonight? So since 2005, my students and I represented prisoners at Montanamal, at Bahram Air Base in Afghanistan, which was one of the prisons where part of the play was set. I think that's why perhaps this play is particularly powerful because the dimensions of the play that are less concrete and more fused with fantasy are the ones that really still speak powerfully and are able to most effectively convey what's extreme and what's radical about this historical experience and what's almost trustable. It's my blood mandatory now for all race into all white blood. These are the kinds of artistic efforts that hit people in the gut. I'm being now brought into the experience almost as if it is happening to me and that it is happening to me aspect is so, so important, especially when the people that it is in fact happening to are other than us. The hair and lips were covered of their shady noses and white eyes were available to view. And the physio could see that this late woman came from all of this. The play ends with the story of whistleblowers and it's important to recognize how important the whistleblowers were in the course of the last decade. But it's also important to realize how persecuted the whistleblowers continue to be. Yes, I released to the press the confidential Red Cross report detailing the systematic and rampant torture and cruel and inhumane treatment of innocent prisoners that are in grave. An amazing moment at the beginning of the play when Tess describes describes a feeling shortly after an hour. We all remember this feeling, this moment of sort of strange openness. Maybe now we can open ourselves to the suffering in the world. If this could happen then the terrible thing would be undone. Thank you for that remarkable and really wrenching play. I just want to congratulate you. Their pain, their care come to this. Don't you think so? I watched. I saw the mother's cries in me. Strange what thoughts come. I am not the only one. All around me where I stand on the street people are full of feelings they have never felt. Who knows why they think what they think? Quiet. It is on the city streets. People are busy expanding their hearts. Feelings come. They dare not say. No noise. But the whoosh, the whoosh of each one opening up. The city so still like being held in a large hand. Each one is a newborn time. Such sweetness. We stand quiet together mourning our death. There is no more terror on the streets of New York. I first of all say that you must read the play because there's so much more in this play than is suggested. And I want to make a couple of comments and then ask Karen a couple of questions about the play. One comment is I was delighted that that two of your favorite playwrights are two of my favorite playwrights, Euripides and Ibsen. You couldn't do better. And it seems to me that in connection with this play but really with all the Karen's plays one of the things that they share with Ebsen is that and I want to make this point because I think it doesn't contradict but it supplements much of what we've been saying this evening and that is we've been talking about when I was particularly struck in the video just now of how relevant to the time and to the questions of the time Karen's plays are. And of course that was absolutely true of Ebsen also but here's the supplement. People like Shaw were confused by that and said, oh well in 20 or 30 years when these poems are solved nobody will read Ebsen any longer. And I want to make the same point about Karen. They're not just about torture or whatever. And I think that though they're very deeply situated in particular historical periods and cut very deeply as Ebsen's plays do I think that they're also talking about as both Ebsen and Euripides did human tensions the abuse of power and so on that alas are going to be with us I think for a long time in the future. And I think this particular play focusing on the torture which certainly is central to the play and as the video does I was astonished that Handel was not even mentioned in the video. To me he's one of Karen's great creations. I can't say I love it but I'm fascinated by it. And it seems to me that this is already in a very brief period of time this shows how the plays evolve. That is to say the play is much more to me about Handel now than it was when it came out because now we're living in Handel's world. And I find the indeed Karen is a real Cassandra about Handel. That is it's all there. The narcissism, it's all about me the emotional two-year-old tantrums even the corruption of language. I mean it's really kind of precious it seems to me. And of course Karen is looking to a complex of situations but I do think that she is intuited something that continues to speak in different ways as we move through time. And I'd like to ask Karen a kind of awkward question and that is how do you feel about being so precious about Handel? Are you happy? Are you gratified? I mean what's your feeling about that? One would like to write a play so that this creature would go away but in fact he came back full loan with Donald Trump and we all feel that way. I mean everybody who wrote in the book about another life mentions Trump because although Handel uses a blog he's constantly, he's taken over everybody's mind space his blogs, his languages distorted all the things you said Marvin he was once you start to torture and don't resist it and don't punish the people who started it you're on a road and nationally and we have walked that road so I think that the torture program the war, the whole thing it felt as though it had to be addressed now we never let the critics in to see this play so it lived a kind of underground life it had a later production we did it also with a wonderful cast at Theatre for the New City and then we took that cast to London but it really had an underground life so I'm very glad the play is published I'm very glad for your writing about it which I think is incredibly astute and wonderful and yeah and I'm sorry we're here One more just quick thing I realize we don't have a lot of time but I want to say something more positive now I think that's very negative well not negative about your work but negative about the world and that is I was delighted in the last in the last interchange when you brought up the utopian quality of theatre I do think that this is really something that cannot be overstressed the importance of the dynamic of the theatre experience and the potential theatre to work for a utopian community my only hesitation as a male would be I don't want the feminist to claim this entirely I do think my favorite book on this subject is in fact by Jill Dolan the utopian performative and this is a wonderful book so I give the feminist a regular credit for this but I do think that this is truly a point that cannot be over made the utopian potential of the theatre experience so Yes You're welcome in my utopia No I don't think I mean you know aren't we past excluding people please I mean let's get past it if we are not past it let's be inclusive and welcome all comers so yeah Thank you My wife actually it's you and me We're doing two scenes from another life It's extreme weather Do you want to set it up baby? No we don't need the mic Do you want to say it? Yeah well this is Okay so this is the play that was inspired by the life of James Hansen you'll see a short video of him when we're done with the scenes but it is a play about extreme weather W-H-E-T-H-E-R there you are whether or not we can get through this together and we're doing two short scenes none of them including Jim Hansen I see I'm sorry Annie next time I rescued Snidley just in time his life on earth was at risk perhaps the entire life of the pond therefore I embark alone on a rescue mission now it is atrazine and I have no doubt nor did for Snidley I suspect a poisonous pesticide already banned by the European Union but you cannot come you have more important work I'm sorry Annie your father needs every ounce of me Annie come here I've made lunch I shall eat tomatoes from the garden I made soup No thank you Rebecca I'm consuming only raw food vegetables, nuts and fruit which can be picked and the seeds shit or shat so that the sources replenish and the garden grows up again Snidley is a gender challenged frog as I am a gender challenged girl or as I prefer burl there may be a difference however Snidley born a male albeit so called deformed with a total of six uneven legs has also in the process of becoming an adult frog been feminized made into a hermaphrodite by the herbicide atrazine that got by the round bar into his pond and atrazine can do this to real men lower their testosterone level I am told by Uncle who still feels quite potent himself Uncle told you all this Uncle and I are engaged in serious research we are working to ban atrazine in the United States we believe that once American men understand that they are being debauled there will come an insurrection oh we are working locally we have made up how to take a frog pond flyers and we are going to distribute them in town this is all really quite impressive does your father know about this no papa is far too busy to know anything at all about me I am a burl by choice perhaps due to other forces we, Snidley and I have a profound crossed species of bald hmm these things work themselves out we are works in progress each of us you mustn't play with me Rebecca of course not I only meant to say that gender identity is fluid throughout our lives there's no need to label yourself Snidley had no choice you my girl must be whatever you wish I am 13 I am alternately too young and too old for my age I understand very well I am strange I think at 13 I felt exactly the same and I don't think you are the least bit strange I like you very much Rebecca I like you too Annie really very much I do oh well Snidley had better go for a swim George the Pond and our pond with Osmarie H.P. a picket or sassafras low shrub blueberry bushes the red flower called Cosmos Achilles of all this gruffy little wild flower Tories Mountain Mint Endangered the world why Peraled Yet amazement on my face here it is to see, to sniff Sometimes I do despair why not not with you my child not in front of you I tell myself here this land was passed to me by your grandfather and noble soul like your papa into meaner uncle he said they called me uncle even then though I had no one I was sublimely unattached had wandered by and stopped by the beauty of the view I had stopped to linger here I shall be the steward of my land as far as the eye can see we shall hold in perpetuity shall any of my progeny wish to dwell in this domain you uncle will see the land comes to no harm no one shall disrupt the mountain top the mountain street or the bubbling brook your grandfather spoke of that in those days nature intervened in all our words we painted with our tongues we looked and spoke and kept the land forever in our heads we walked with beauty inside and out and now we rescue snuffly in his leg from the pond which somehow has become contaminated with runoff from the source outside my watch invisible to my eye and we bend down and marvel at a spreek of Mount Torrey's mountain mint that is nearly all alone in all the world we have our miracles still small though they are once we walked the land and we were miniscule old growth forest above our head a cacophony of creatures we sensed our place in the grand design to marvel at the large and small the sky the mountain the honeybee the plant beneath our feet to step lightly not to leave a mark on me and what the grasses would rebound the forest would remain untouched we would harvest and replace we would exit as we'd come gently unremarked upon we can get this to a broader audience because it makes a lot of valid points and it does it in a more entertaining way than usually this subject the documentaries are just not very interesting and so it's hard to reach the buffly maybe this would be more interesting but what do you think was the most only part of the play as far as reaching people about how important this topic is I think it's actually the love of nature rather than the ice you know but it's a combination of all these different characters bringing it in there's quite a bit of realism in acting and everything that's brought in and competing against and you have to have nature or it's hard to be concerned about the problem on a short run because the biggest problems in this are things that will happen over the time scale of decades and centuries when ice sheets run out of control we can't say how rapid that's going to be looking more and more rapid as we see what's happening around the edge but we are I'm seeing with the system which is pretty significant that was great that was really good I've come for a meeting of this this is so good the the the week he resigned from NASA because the government under George Bush was censoring his research we did the first reading of the play Kathy was in it, George was in it and it was a huge audience because it was so newsworthy but the play was a little you know it came a little bit more into focus so when he saw it again he saw the difference I've been going back and forth I have some pre-written remarks but the way the evening is going I'm not sure if I make sense to you so I have now hearing everything today and seeing other than we earlier there are all kinds of things that go through my mind one thing that occurred to me speaking about pre-competitions one thing that in my remarks is the moment from Aeschylus those who have pre-competitions suffered terror beforehand and one of the things that's poignant about one of the many things that's poignant about extreme weather is that of course the scientists the embodiments of modern thought become the Cassandra's it's terrible it's horrible and nobody will listen and modern science has gone completely by the wayside and so I think that fusion of you as the play looking at what's happening and embodying the scientists on stage is one of the powerful threats in the play and sniffly is one of the other ones and I was I think to me still one of the really moving parts of this plays also something that's come up several times throughout is that deep moment of empathy and sniffly's funeral where there's not only a connection between most of the characters in the play framed the industry lobbyists they're sort of on the outside and can't only save himself and fun at what just happened but it's a really deep moment of connection and it's a deep moment of connection with not only another species but a mutated species that has become something else and to me sniffly is also some I thought today he's like Boudlaire's albatross is like a figure for the poet he sings the frog sings beautifully but he can't walk because he has six legs so in the regular world he has difficulty getting around but if you can just listen to this creature you will be moved and that sort of cross species human connection and moment of empathy is to me also what then opens things up in the play and connects uncle's conservative vision the scientists work to sort of communicate to us what we should create policy on what gives us actionable understanding as much as we can and so that moment of empathy also connects a lot of the things that I think you know run through your other places as well in that moment which is deeply human and it's deeply human about sniffly and that sort of feeling that the depth of humanity is actually something that is part of the whole ecological web that we are part of to me is very moving as we witness it in the theater together so I have two questions I guess for you and one is about I guess the political context of the play since this play was so specifically also part of a moment in 2014 when it was first staged as a run up to the people's climate march in New York City and there was a sense that this together with the festival of events connects to a really large outpouring of sort of public protests saying enough is enough in 2014 and the hundreds of thousands of people who came out were also very moving on the streets of course this being the Latin if you moved just two blocks away you wouldn't have known that all those people were there so being in the crowd it felt like why isn't everybody here what is wrong with the city and then in 2014 it was part of ArtCop very closely connected to the climate talks in Paris and I'm very glad to hear that it's going to be performed again in march in the spring so my first question would be how do you think of it now what's the context because this play particularly was to me at least always part of directly a moment of this also needs to be part of political action of people going out so how do you see that now so I think there are two things one is that when I wrote the play when it was first done it wasn't common knowledge that science is being censored now I think it's common knowledge and everybody knows then it was kind of news we're trying to say that they were being censored now they are being censored and they're reacting in different ways James Hanson has just written a paper called reticence in science where in effect he takes scientists to task who don't come out and speak but other scientists are removing the words climate change from their grant proposals because there's tremendous censorship I've never had more trouble raising money for a play than this play the city turned us down the federal government turned us down the state government Niska has funded us a little but I think it's anyway there's a lot of censorship I think people who sit on boards of theaters are heavily invested in fossil fuels to do a play that directly addresses that is dangerous two theaters we're doing it at Lamala I was told by a very important theater producer in New York that he already did a play about climate change once which is sort of like doing a play about fathers and sons once but I think there's tremendous fear and tremendous censorship financial censorship at the same time I think the topic of the play is common knowledge now so it's not a surprise and I think that's good because we are feeling some of that also after we did the play at theater for the new city Blanche Cook was in the audience and she came up to me and she said I'm glad that she's in the audience again next to Claire Koss another wonderful playwright two sisters from many years of marching other things and she said to me I'm glad you made the fossil fuel lobbyist the rapist and she got it then but going back to Alexander's comment about the funeral and Frank not being able to participate in the funeral for Sniffley which is this very moving moment for everyone actually all the adults get into it except Frank and then he goes off to Rebecca the climate scientist and then when Rebecca turns him down he goes after Annie and he puts the make on a little girl and I think that this says something about what we're witnessing that these men when they get moved their response is a predatory response and it's not one of the things we may be up against and maybe I've never thought it quite this way is how can people be moved and then go to an I and thou response and not need to conquer someone they see a beautiful young woman in an elevator and they whip out their dick I'm sorry that's not the response they were moved and then they need to own and this is perhaps you know two moments I'll skip the comment I was going to make and ask you I mean that was obviously one of the things that was on my mind in 2014 some of my students came up to me to saw the play that was that necessary and I think next year people might think that you put it in to be more talk about that kind of connection of ownership and the right to own and the right to do with what you own is obviously a deep-seated problem the other question I had was and I couldn't help but think that sort of Annie and sniffly who are sort of pushing the species boundaries in this play were sort of moments that moved you to other than we and questions about transcending current species boundaries in a very literal way yeah for sure I grew up luckily riding horses and I always say horses saved my life and I mean that truly and then I had to make a choice because horseback riding is an expensive hobby and so I dropped it and I went to college but in the last couple years since I wrote this play almost so in October I got to go riding in England on some beautiful thoroughbreds and what's happening to me is that my own love of nature is coming back so much and I think this is happening to a lot of people as we see what's vanishing or what might vanish and things are vanishing in front of our eyes we remember that for so many of us those moments in nature were the formative moments of our lives and that's what we carry with us and that's what we go back to when we need sustenance and need to find self and we find self in relationship to a much larger world natural world or 3000 pound horse or whatever and so we feel that connection and that connection is part of self and that came to me again through this play and yes, through other than we and I think it's a shared experience there's a word called what is the word, Alexander? Solestogia which is the grief for the loss of what we know like fall snowstorms yes this is also obviously this is what theater and R&O is powerfully in poetry remembering what is gone already as you still have it in your imagination and can bring it back so you can still can sit there we just want to ask the the panel the panel we just go over right away in Marvin and Cindy and George and the actors who all have been so wonderful so since we I think we stick very much to the time that I apologize for interrupting but I think maybe perhaps we go right away to the questions of the audience so if you have a comment a more question please maybe say before who you are and maybe what your work we use a microphone but we actually also do hear it better even so I saw the actors everybody could hear what this is so please do say perhaps one question and we just like good jazz musicians you know we react to it or not or speak something so let's open it up but maybe Cassie you want to start with your impressions a question okay do we have a microphone hi professor you know Nani I took two semesters with professor I really do enjoy a lot of the work that we go over I'm glad that you have me here but recently you spoke about a torture in one of the plays I think that John Jay recently went through some things with the gallery where we were sharing some of the pieces from the people that were actually at Guantanamo Bay so I just want to kind of get your take on that and how do you feel towards that incredible art show you've seen it then Nani have you gone up there you have to go up it's on the sixth floor it's in the president's gallery and it's paintings by Guantanamo inmates and it's called Ode to the Sea and these are absolutely heartbreaking beautiful works of art painted by people who are in cages in Cuba who can hear and smell the sea but cannot see the sea and once when there was a hurricane they took the blinds off their cages so they got a glimpse of the sea and these are just heartbreakingly beautiful artworks on display at John Jay because of one of our faculty members has curated the show and the government wants to destroy this art the US government saying that it owns this art because it was painted under their auspices so it's up through I think the end of the well through January anyway well Nani you know how I feel about torture because we talk a lot about these things in class so thank you for bringing that up it's a really important art show and you know we'll just you know we have human beings in cages without you know any chance and not just at Guantanamo in our own prisons here as well we all know thank you may we introduce shortly I'm a writer and I teach at Kingsborough the play that I know is the play that George did the one-man show that he did it in my classroom which my students were so moved by because again you took issues the two you wrote the play and you took issues we didn't write the play we did not write a word of the play it's a diary of Victor Climper I don't bear witness it's an 800 page diary that we edited we were very clear that we didn't want to change a word of someone who had such a unique voice and we just wanted to make it dramatic I mean give it a dramatic arc which is quite something to condense that material but what impressed my students in addition to the material of the play was George's commitment coming to you know to the classroom to the living rooms and doing this and actually what comes across to me getting to know your work a little better through this is taking on this extraordinary vocation of channeling all the issues of our time just channeling them I mean that's quite an undertaking on both of your parts and then you know artistically working with that material I think it's quite there are writers and plenty of playwrights about but there's something about the consistency over such a long period of time and all of the the hitting such major issues consistently the way you do that's just not me over Thank you, thank you My name is Judith Weiss I'm an environmental biologist and we saw extreme down I heard about it through some scientific group I can't remember exactly who or what but I probably wouldn't have known about it otherwise and I we just love the play but I want to take a comment about your comment about scientists censoring themselves and not putting the word climate in the grand proposals this is a repeat of what happened with the word evolution during the Reagan administration it wasn't that people couldn't get the funding it's that the political people would look at the titles and abstracts so you don't want to keep the word evolution or climate change in the title or in the abstract but within the text of a grand proposal it's there the politicals would never read that so the people are doing what they need to do in order to get the funds so it's not really censoring I'm not criticizing Jim Hanson does and Michael Mann it's kind of a split as I but I wasn't criticizing people doing what they need to do on the other hand I'm a writer and I do think that self-censorship is the easiest way for people to control us and if we censor ourselves then their job is done they don't have to police us anymore so I am against self-censorship yes Blanche Wiesenkirk and a great fan of your fabulous galvanizing work and what we need is political theater that galvanizes us and we need shoulder to shoulder hearts open fist high into the future and all of your work does that and your gang does that and we're just so grateful let me just say the John Jay show is online go to the John Jay website and O to the C it's an incredible show it's open on the sixth floor from the president's gallery to the 20th of January this is while nobody is raising their hands so please do in a second I was just purely anecdotally I was today looking again at the essay I wrote for your play which I wrote last summer in 2016 and I realized I had forgotten that there were a thousand year floods in Virginia last May because of everything that has happened since and as I come back to the question of memory particularly related to the environmental moment that we're in and also of course the political moment they can't really be pulled apart anymore we are just barraged by one catastrophe after the other and we have trouble remembering them if we did live through them we won't forget Sandy but everything else that has happened since is kind of a blur right now California is on fire in December as it was last year as it was this summer it just passes us by until the house has burned down so for that reason too putting it on stage rather than on a blog or in a tweet is I think crucially important to give people a way of not only remembering things but also increasing their capacity to remember and contain what's happening part of the reason I totally agree with part of the reason that it passes us by is the calculated suppression of the concept of climate change by the media of course we have no way of technically and while I I really agree with you but alas the solution is not at this point the theater because the theater is even the theater being a product of the American capitalist system is even less welcoming to this kind of thing than the media is and as Karen's career clearly shows maybe Kathy what do you see cat's work fit in in the work of your theater and in American theater you just said there is no such thing there is an American theater it's just that it's not I think you it's a tricky subject the American theater from now from time to time it rises to the occasion and whenever it produces Karen's plays it's a time when it rises to the occasion the occasion and the power of all being together in a room all at the same time all the same size all listening to the same thing is unparalleled and the courage and kind of spiritual cussedness who just will do it no matter what the world does is what will save us and Karen is at the forefront of that group of brilliant spiritually cussed people who just keep at it my name is Joan Lipkin first of all Karen I just want to congratulate you on this tremendous achievement and I also want to thank the actors that were incredible thank you all for being here so Marvin I hate to take issue with you but I need to disagree because I do believe that more plays full-length plays need to be done but there was in fact Chantal Billidou has piloted a theater reaction about climate change for several years in a row and Commission 5 I think 50 short places past year that took place in my stats are going to be a little off in St. Louis but it was done in like 30 different countries and about 150 different events this is not the same thing as having a full-length full-bodied piece you know some of Karen's work but it is a grassroots movement and it is a kind of claiming of space in a different sort of way we rented the ethical society other people did it in classrooms and public spaces so I just I actually have another comment but I just wanted to share that because there is tremendous censorship in the theater I think probably most of the people in this room know that and certainly around this issue but there are ways that people are challenging formats and structures within the capitalist system of contemporary theater I agree it's just harder here than almost any other major advanced country that's all nothing is impossible although as soon as Karen is produced on Broadway I'll come back to you and say you were right let's see what could happen where's the money well I appreciate that but my point is I think one of the one of the points that I want to make and then I have a question or a really good comment just that we need to think in really imaginative ways about challenging structures my question is Karen it thrilled me my comment thrilled me in extreme weather to see this not traditionally abled frog and a young transgendered person because I rarely see those kinds of characters which are very dear to me on stage and I was wondering if you could comment a little bit about your pull to those voices and to that kind of representation I do think we're in agreement that boundaries have to be breached everywhere that we can't be locked into gender, race whatever we need to reach across boundaries at the same time who we are is very important in the struggle how to deal with identity politics which is not my thing by the way and how to deal with visionary politics I don't know where these things come from you hear a voice in your head and it's sniffly or Annie and there they are and I mean many writers say this the characters appear I do think a lot about back stories more and more as I write before I write the character what's their back story it occupied me a lot other than we actually a lot I think it's valuable it's something maybe I've learned late but I focus on that more and more and then otherwise you know one just I don't know I always say that the greatest I've made from my work I've supported myself as an adjunct teacher so try that but I've always said that the greatest rewards of my work are the people I've met and a number in this room a number everybody on this panel and I feel very lucky to have known the people I've known to have worked with the people I've worked with to have loved the people I have loved and there have been many different kinds of people in that mix who I've loved passionately sometimes not wisely but very well so I think the rewards have been human and that maybe that's what maybe that shows a bit hopefully maybe one last take the microphone just that cherishing cause there's a kind of cherishing of life that feels that embrace that holds all of these really difficult subjects that comes out and what I feel right now it was the performances and the panelists and the feeling in the room here is such a great gift for all of us to go out there and keep on keeping on and I just want to thank you the image of that starving polar bear that was in the times just kept coming to me tonight it was amazing how this love of life, respect for life is just so profound in your work through looking at all of the hard things we have to deal with thank you closing statement or you Karen I feel I've said so much I feel very grateful and to all of you and thank you so so much the people who contributed to the book in so many different ways and the people who are here contributing tonight just thank you an enormous amount to me and just as a post script since that feeling is in the room and has been created by this amazing display of playwriting playwriting which interests me personally for many years in developing new theater but when I read her when Karen came with Judith Molina to the theater and handed me a script and I went upstairs to my office and I opened it and I still remember as if it were yesterday I got goose pumps on the first page and I said wait what whoa whoa whoa wait a minute and I went to the next page and it was the same thing and then I went to the next page and I said this is a theater this play is a theater this is what I have always been trying to encourage you know artists, theater artists to realize visions and but this what's so great and fierce penetrating about Karen's work and why it's so important is that it achieves theater on the levels that theater is supposed to theater is there to create this thing that's now in this room and that's the reason we go and it's the reason that we keep doing it so you must come March 1st too long so a big applause to Karen please set up okay everybody that was all nice and philosophical and I represent the nexus of art and capitalization