 So we're going to be talking about drama tergene today. Drama tergene across platforms, disciplines. We've seen so much multidisciplinary work in the last two days and we'll continue to do it. Before I introduce the Celestia's panel, I just want to bring up a few things that stayed with me that I think will help contextualize this discussion. By the way, I'm here with Carlo. So some things that stayed with me that made me keep re-questioning what I think of as drama, as theater, as drama tergene, drama tergene meaning literally the making of drama. Basil Twist saying he's interested in creating an experience rather than telling a story. Marlene Shulton creating an immersive multi-year experience for both her performers and her audience. Mariano Consulti blurring the line between fiction and reality, audience and performer. We're talking about less pudding proposing, but isn't it time for artists to propose change, give and create proposals for changing the pattern about our daily lives, wanting art to be useful. And in the performances themselves that I've seen, that's so far, unfortunately I haven't seen both of yours sing later tonight, I'm struck by a few things that also pertain to this topic of conversation. I don't know how many of you saw El Gallo yesterday afternoon, but knowing that the dramaturge of piece is inextricably linked to the impulses of each of the performers and also to the instincts of the composer, Paul Parker. And last night watching Stones in her mouth, I could help to think that in addition to the astonishing performers, I mean lighting designer Helen Todd was in my mind a major driving dramaturge in this beautiful piece. I rushed down after the last discussion to invite her to be on this panel, but she had to go to another talk, unfortunately. So it's clear that ways of making drama for dramaturgy are expanding in incredibly imaginative and collaborative ways. And yet also I want to bring up something, I'm not in suspicion that if any of us were to go out on the streets upstairs and as the average passerby, hey, what do you think is drama? Most people would say it's a story and it's about characters. And so I think one of the things we'll also talk about is I think the disconnect between what an audience expects theater to be and what we hear makers bring to our audiences. What we dramaturges do is act as kind of a proxy for the audience during the creation of the play. So to help me wrestle with this question and others I'd like to introduce the panel. To my right is Tina Gronis. And this is Tobias, pronounce the last name, Tobias Bocomans. It's a wonder bomb. And Jose Luis Valenzuela, a Latino theater company working in his house. So thank you for having us in this house. Thank you for joining us. I think to start, we should, are there any drama, self-described dramaturges in the audience other than me? You will know that when you, somebody asks you what you do for a living, you say you're a dramaturge. It's nobody knows what a world like that is. Nobody understands. So it is still a misunderstood term and people have a very different idea about what it is. I was wondering if each of you could describe in your approach to your work and all the work that you do is all very different and you also just told me you work in Odred as well as theater. If you could talk about how you approach the dramaturgy of the work that you do and even if the term dramaturgy is at all important or relevant to you. So in the work that myself and Richard Alge would do of theater movement bizarre, we create original works that are oftentimes adaptations of play, existing play, or myth, sometimes exploring a playwright or a novelist. And so we, I guess we act as the dramaturges of the piece by doing all of the research and lots of research and then taking those pieces and going on to different directions and then coming together and writing a text and then us coming back. We do a lot, a lot of work for a month, sometimes a year or more before we ever see actors or any of that. So we don't say we're having a dramaturgical meaning but I guess that's what we're doing a lot of times. That sort of thing. And we do do an awful lot of research on the wayside and then sometimes resurfaces again in another project. And a lot of times, you know, we're doing multi-tasking in the work because there's a lot of music in the work. There's also dancing in the work and there's a highly physical style that we've been developing for the past 17 years and we've been working together and we have a bit of a shorthand of speaking about creating the work. And nonetheless, all of that goes into... So the shorthand of the physical language is as important as the text? Well, I'd say that the physical language and the text have equal footing in the production but I always... I like having the text as the leading author and always for us. Even though when we started working together we did silent work. So there was no text, but we did have the texts in my Hofstein poetry that we were working with at the time and that was sort of inside movement, inside ideas and themes that we would go into and then we never spoke about it because that comes from a mind background and a dance background as well as a theater background and a clown background. There we've got it all. And so I like to approach these things physically rather than verbally at first although I had a great fascination with words when I started working with Richard because I'd never really been speaking them on stage for a long, long time. I'd been silent on stage. And so getting back to working with words, I took each word as this really important thing and it became as interesting as a clown can get about finding an object. I was like, oh my God, goodness. What is it? How does it work? And so for me it was like discovering a new language even though we were using English. For me it was each word became very important and then we kind of branched out from there and started to create work that didn't necessarily have a narrative but it would use bits that we would work and create and then by putting them together which I was proposing different scenes and things like that we started to look for a story so we didn't have a story to begin with. We were looking for a story. You mean in the course of Peter who was ours to grow the story became more important. Now it has. Now we are even starting with a story and then letting that liberate us to do whatever. Before I think we were working in more of a Donna kind of... So why the shift? You know, we kind of went around, this viral and coming around like this and I think I'm even coming to the point where I try to drop the words again but still have them in there in the planning and in the research and then see if we can take away some of this. Also thinking of reaching a wider audience too is part of that. Sometimes working silently you can reach wider audiences too. So that's part of the thought. It sort of makes a story easier. Yeah, that's true. I mean we saw the little guy, right? He was made up in my career, he could tour anywhere in the world. What about you having input from Georgie in a different field which is a different performance art that you do? That's obviously a very good question and it's also not very easy to answer. But I remember trying to explain my grandmother what my job is. And this is a couple of years ago and it's not really true anymore but it's a nice thing to do. So I came up with this metaphor that if a performance, if a piece is a ship on the ocean and the port where you, the destination is the prime show itself and the port where you leave is the ship idea and if the maker or the director or the actress are the captain or the ship. Then the dramaturge is the navigator. He's having the charts and if there's a storm on the sea the captain knocks on the door of the navigator and says, let's float another course. I mean it's a very easy anecdote and when you dive deeper into it not into the ocean but into the ocean then you see that what a dramaturge does really depends not only on the discipline the method but also on the people you work with and then even if you work with them over a longer period of time even then what a dramaturge is is changing all the time. So I guess you all work in the theatre and you know that the same constellation of people but different productions never get the same result it's always the same. So in the end I think that dramaturge is I would summarize it as a involved distance and I mean as a dramaturge dramaturge is indeed as you say the making of theatre everybody in this sense is a dramaturge who is involved in making food. So what is the dramaturge the guy who has this job title bringing to the floor and I think it's an involved distance that you are there every step of the line and try to see where the niches or the loopholes are or what is needed at this point without the nerves that a director has or the nerves that a performer has. So the dramaturge can create a distance and it's very important to have this distance to get the conversation going or to change the conversation or to perhaps point out where the conversation has to be about. So basically in general I think that dramaturge is really about time you can say you can have a good idea but it really depends on when you sing so yeah I would summarize it. And let's say Luis dramaturge for you we're about to work together. I know, it's going to be fascinating because we've been together for almost 20 years the same group but your wife and my wife have always been here because I'm moving a friend of yours who is the writer and we've all from not having a writer or an individual writer to now she is the president of the company it's fine, we never talk about dramaturges meaning we never say we are dramaturges but it takes around maybe 2 years sometimes 3 years to create a play for us from the idea and a lot a lot she kind of makes up the story and what the story is going to be and we have a process of image creating which is so important for us and the actors who propose the image for the scene for a specific moment you know, so we work in that way because a lot of times a moment after a first draft sometimes after a first draft we get the idea of documents depends what they are creating so it depends on the idea the process are different and every process there are ones who do an adaptation of The Labyrinth to Solitude which is an essay really, you know how do you arrive about what we think that book is about you know, without the actors so when she shows the chapters that she wanted to work on and then as a company we begin the process of so your entire cast began to dramaturge and then she goes home and she writes and brings it back and then we put it on the street and then people work on it you know what I mean it's a very kind of organic process the way pieces happen I'm just in the outside trying to figure out if it connects the dots you know and whatever journey the characters are taking so we haven't worked with dramaturge in a long time so this is a very interesting process for us but that's the way we built for the last 30 years I haven't worked with dramaturges because we don't I believe Venetra, don't fix it I'm here to break it That's right No, no, no, no I believe that you have to allow the piece to speak by itself before we start messing with it you know so it's quite, you know we're not very hard all the story goes this way you're not even at this point I guess after we do it I was thinking about melancholia if you've never seen it that has taken us 10 years to make it where we wanted to in that game it takes a long time for the work to really come up the way we wanted it to finish that's a good idea so you can still enter after the piece that needs it because you can publish them but in a way you have to publish all the rest you know what I mean? all the tiny little images of this thing and how that works and I know the others just see a lot of these different stories but in our process we're not trying to think that we're creating all these sort of things that are in the normal I think a lot I love when it's really your metaphor of the future I think a lot of what I do here is ask good questions and to be the proxy for the audience to be just come into a project hold each time and receive it on its own playing field and then ask any questions about the experience with it what's interesting is to see as we're seeing in this festival a lot of theater that is completely non-traditional and that many people might not even think it's theater so I'm curious if you can talk about we're talking about dramaturgy so perhaps talk about drama and whether you're conscious of creating drama on stage and what drawing means to each of you so what is important for you? what's important? usually for us the ideas of creating a new play come we do have a mission to create work for our communities that's really how we started what we do we have a very clear mission how to create work for our people in such a way so they usually come from political ideas even like the trilogy that when we work here we are discussing immigration heavily in this country and now in our discussion we have to talk about how to do that in this respect and we do popular theater you know, our theater is popular our audience is a popular audience they come to the theater with the popular forms that exist we want to have a battle for our audience so there is drama very clearly very clearly you know there is conflict there is character there is emotional there is character for our audience to have a relationship to us especially we have an audience who don't work in the theater so we have to find a way to get them to do it so yeah it's very clearly you know how we always have to have a story we always have to have a story and we always have to have conflict even with the world or by themselves but it's always we have to have that idea of the traditional drama type we try to find all the forms and usually they come from the popular form you know we look for those things in order to create a dialogue that we need to create and Tobias what does drama in different circumstances do you create a dialogue? well yeah I have a question actually what does drama really mean I mean in the old Greek word what is the literal translation do you know oh god I forgot does anybody know I don't so if anybody does it's funny that oh we don't have such a mechanic oh should we go up without wanting to find out without being great action action action thank you so drama drama means action and it's interesting if you think about action I don't know if I'm going to answer you no thank you straight away but how you know it's interesting that it's action but at the same time you're sitting on your chair but you're involved in a mind action right so the body is not acting at this well the actives are acting but the audience is acting in its mind so I think that drama and good drama has really about a heightened involvement and about identification with a heightened state of being good drama is and it doesn't matter what kind of you know if it's music or if it's theater in its narrowest sense I think the heightened involvement that you know gets you to this other place where you are in total on the same level as the character in the story that makes a good drama that you imagine imagine yourself being in this heightened state of existence and the interesting part that you know catharsis is always about loss or death or grief or but also about the new one I would say it's also about acceptance it's grief and acceptance these are the moments that define our life that's birth and death or love and death and I think if you can reenact or not even reenact but enact this feeling on stage then everybody in the audience gets you know in touch with the basic question of life so I think it's interesting that drama needs action while you're not doing anything except for looking at this movie it is easier sorry I think it's easier in popular theater to check in with your audience about the way in which the piece is moving when the conflict of the characters in the story are clear when that relationship with the audience is a little bit clearer how do you do it how do you check in with your audience to see if this heightened state of being is occurring with them when the piece is much less traditional and when it might move a much smaller portion of your audience when it is not often well I had an interview with Peter Green when he was a filmmaker I don't know if you know him and he said and you know it's very experimental right and he said well whatever you do 90% has to be known the 10% is the experiment of what you are telling so how do you check in you try to I don't know it's different in any kind of situation of the story you're telling or the piece you're making I think when we're talking about experimental productions I think the experiment is just a small portion so for instance let me give an example right so Wunderbaum is I think and on the one hand doing different stuff with forms but on the other hand it's really making sure that it pleases its audience in a good way and so it has quite a young audience in the Netherlands but still it's not I mean it's theater for one right and having a young audience in the Netherlands for theater that's that's difficult oh it was only us obviously not and I think second of all they work together with a lot of amateur actors and they do this very out of space kind of form sometimes but they really try to make sure in the way they work and they approach the people that they level with them so yeah it's actually I'm just yada yada yada saying something but I'm trying to think it out loud what it is that you're asking but how can you level with the people to get them to a heightened state of sensation I think you have to take your audience really seriously and listen to them I don't know actually I don't but this is our method try to be I think that well this is what I can say about it that right now we're performing this piece in hospital and actually it's still in the making process and this is just the next phase where the audience is really coming in and is telling us what is working and what's not so we're now in this phase where the audience is actually participating what the show will become and so eventually push it up to 90% become a 90% no let me re perhaps yes that's right and Tina how do you level with your audience that's the conversation you want to have it's interesting because I feel like we have much more conversation with our audiences than we used to because of the internet people write after they see a show sometimes and you end up having a dialogue with them via email and it's it was something that never happened in the past and now people write in this conversation you almost become friends it's very interesting and you start to hear what their interests are what their concerns are what the work you're doing they ask questions they post interesting questions sometimes so that's been different and interesting a way of finding out information that they are just offering we're not even putting out questionnaires and that's the best way people on their own esteem ask the question when you put your work in front of an audience that's when you get your life immediately you know when it's working you just do and a lot of times when Richard comes to us and we're watching and we try to be as objective as possible it's impossible because you're still in it and I can understand the distance that you're talking about just to go in and go now calm down it's like you need to that's what we do I imagine you're a therapist just to chill out calm down so anyway trying to look at things maybe one track at a time of the information we're putting out we have the text we have the dialogue we have the lighting we have the interaction we have the mise en scene what's happening with the actors and between them all those things that we take apart and try to look at them separately that sometimes bring a little objectivity as well as what everyone goes but really for me it's when the audience comes in and then for us recently being able to tour to different places and bring our shows to various audiences has been very important to us because you go to different locations but then a county event and you get different audience base that are giving you different feedback responding to certain parts of the piece in different ways so that's all it's interesting because you've been taught the drama as universal is it do you have to adjust your drama to different cultures into different settings are there different expectations of the experience of what conversation a piece of art should have with you well in the past I was in work in the movie called More Chance which was a my mask dance theater company and we traveled everywhere and we did the same show most of the time but the audiences were always different and vastly different reactions and we worked very much as the show wasn't happening unless we had an audience we had to have that feedback we had to start timing and often times people would walk out of the show saying I love the music in that show there was no music there was no sound whatsoever the music was the interaction between the performers the mask, the audience and the fantasy and imagination that everybody had and if we could create it so some audiences you could feel that connection immediately and others there was this distance and it would be like oh down we have a connection and it was surprising you just never knew and so that was an incredible educational experience traveling to all these different countries and just sensing the different responses to how they take a simple story for stories but very simple and how they responded to simple stories in almost poetic ways so that too was a good honing sensing what the audience responses and I do think that it's different but I do think as well that there is a universal soul amongst all of that response to certain human interactions and that's what we're trying to find on stage in humorous ways as well I think humor too is a beautiful phrase in Chinese I don't know the exact translation but when you have someone laughing you reach in to the throat around the heart so that's how you reach on the heart by getting them to open up the lab and so I find that to be a universal experience that we don't have that was interesting because in the previous discussion there was someone in the front who asked me about humor and I don't know if she's here the subtext was why there wasn't any humor in the piece is what I took for it meaning I think she was implying that it certainly helps bring you to any experience no matter how shocking or visceral it is and you're saying that it's crucial to your process and the crosses humor can cross and let's say you said that your primary mission is reading to write and create one community to what extent do you broaden that and tighten that does it specific to come universal in your case I think we have a different idea it's like this you open the window of the bedroom in your case so that's the source of the situation we've come too much we took one plane around the country and it's been extraordinary we think we're so alive and you know we think we're not going to get this play at all you know because it's totally a whole our own intellectual exercise and not an idea but we understand our audience and the subject and the response was amazing we were surprised how much they got and we took my colleague and he was like amazing and it was that's very specific very specific about you know what what we want to talk about to all of you you know it's always what's happening but when the other audience have come in it's been very amazing amazing when we have taken the work out but anyway it seems as if I just didn't turn in anyway and my concern is I don't know this I'm working with a company and I'm trying to put into the same process and you know Mexican images are coming in and I have to put it in there you know just because I am in the process and then I'm so nervous about seeing up your gear in all the way they know every line of the racing and it was so fantastic because they connected to this idea but because it's a certain purity that happens with you when you're doing the work and trying to find what I think as a true image of that woman that serves me I'm sure they didn't even get this but you know solving at the end of the play I read it as the virtue in her you know and they totally connected to it they said to me it was about you know how he had created this incredible virgin mother everything on his mind and it was like and that just came out of what I think and that is to say it was not an idea that I had I should do this it's interesting how when you go from that place it's all I know you know what I mean I'm not going to do a long so many you know what I mean I can't I don't even know what that means and in my brain so it's interesting how when you take it out it becomes much more beautiful when you work that particular and it's because it's the only time that it's true and what work has been in this data for 30 years so we know what I mean so we know how we can push them a little bit to learn more about the data you know accept more and to be as you collaborate I wonder about your collaborate and what was that experience like of working with a company that has its own aesthetic its own number but from the 30 years it's an audience well it's interesting it's interesting because the piece itself is about it's about healthcare but it's about two different systems of healthcare or that was the starting point and then of course also the differences between the Netherlands and the US that artistic research became also a research of methods really and we experienced that sometimes we have an assumption as Dutch people that theatrical methods or medical methods no no sorry, theatrical methods really the making of the piece itself it was really it was really quite an advantage and we're still doing this actually to find a method that includes taste, aesthetics world views it's funny because we Dutch think that we have become Americans in the past 65 years but you know that's just that's just only the facade right we only got the facade and it's like and if you go to America you're just so surprised by the sheer difference that makes up this country and not just the one facade you get on TV so I think that sometimes we Dutch people assume that we understand Americans and the other way around possibly too find a method to come together and talk about this and we still do and it's an advantage it's also the first collaboration right so you're getting to know each other I mean it's like a marriage but but you didn't have you know this quarter well it's not exactly true because we knew Joe Malbide and in L.A. before and many people in Skid Row but still there was Joe Malbide as an actor and now we're working with what L.A. created and it's an adventure but it's also really interesting because they have different ways of looking towards involving actors telling stories different ideas about how plays can become political and that's a really worthwhile experience it's not always easy but it's really worthwhile so in a way the topic of the piece you know The Netherlands and America has become the method of work yeah to an extent I don't know if you will see the play perhaps you will also see that every scene has a totally different approach or different try at taking the subject so the whole play goes like this it's a workshop no no I think it's a workshop yeah so you're inside this workshop and hopefully you also get the story in getting more I don't see any questions from you guys who are panelists about the way they make art or can see the drama yes I think that's actually what you just said what is your inspiration what inspires what inspires to create it's kind of like a breathing you know everything around what inspires me in some way to want to express it artistically and through the idea of theater and movement and dance is how I express myself since I'm not a writer or a composer I compose with people and images and I'm always reading stories seeing things that are happening in the world also going back into historical plays that I find interesting and they they're very inspiring it's an interesting question I'm having this discussion with my Wunderbaum colleagues about whether I'm an artist or not and I would say I'm not and I'm really saying that because I want to have this distance right and it's not playing my role down it's not because I'm not vain or whatever but I think that the truth of my inspiration is getting inspired by the other people's inspiration I don't like to come up with an idea myself I like to be inspired by an idea and hopefully can make a contribution to you so I see myself as a contributing factor and not the other way around and for me that's crucial to what I do and it's also crucial to how I want to be in life a really life approach to me so you know my spark is when I see somebody else getting really furious and thinks he has to talk about it okay great let's go for it how should we do and that places me in a great situation because I can work with opera artists or musicians or great people in skate row or whatever I mean that doesn't really matter what does matter is people are inspired so I'm a second hand man right second hand inspiration I don't know and I for us or for me but I come for us to visit always in the company there are usually things that happen in the country that I want to discuss there is America such a conflicted country for us but we have a lot of questions so when those questions come up or something happens that inspire us or inspire me to say this is an important question that I look at in the answer and I would not look at the answer but it is David can talk about it because you certainly use technology in your work to what extent technology has expanded the notion of what theater is whether it might have limited it we usually think this technology is distracting it's so easy for people to be entertained and not go to the theater but technology as you said in your example how groups closer to your audience can actually create many more points of connection and actually expand the confidence on stage but I've also seen for instance video use not only as use literally an anti-theatrical so I wonder if you can talk about how technology has expanded what's happening what's happening in the world right now with mixed media on stage is quite amazing and some groups use it to a beautiful effect and as you said others are making a bad name for video but I think our company theater movement Luzar has used multimedia in the past and it's it really you go down this technology group and it's all consuming and it really does kind of directly show because you have to be that kind of work so far in advance unless you have a really really long period which you go back and forth and workshop it again and again so in a sense it was restraints but then their strength can be liberating as well and the past few shows to go technology free so that we could get back to working with just what's at hand the simplest means the simplest things we have the act with spectator and maybe a couple chairs in the table so let's see what we can do with that just to sort of get back to the basics and see how we can reintegrate those basics and get those to be the best they can be before we add all those missiles of technology probably not to say that we wouldn't do pieces with technology again but anyway this is a period that we're kind of refreshing ourselves and rethinking getting back to this yes we use technology no it's not a real it's not a real agenda throughout different performances I think it's there you can use it if it works great if it doesn't work you don't use it in the hospital piece we use a camera that's the technology right and we use microphones and we get the camera and we picture the screen because it actually enabled us to get the really up close close shots and well why have we left it in I think it's well in a way it's about sometimes about the distance that has come up with this whole health care it's actually about close somebody taking care of someone else but there's a lot actually when you tell the health care history of the states or the Netherlands you see there's only distancing right corporatism take coming in and actually trying to say well if you need care you have to pay me I mean that's of course very simple remark but there's a lot of distancing in the whole health care system so we wanted to have also these very up close images so why do we use it it's there does it work what do you think it adds something to it but it's different every time so we don't have a real agenda don't know if that is yours well we we use it sometimes and hope and that one actually we did it as a workshop we're very interested in using technology because it happens to be the television time the television is very powerful for the first time that play but it's interesting because we did a workshop I went into a group where cameras were inside the room so when the scene was going out the actors will be the characters will be inside the rooms and we'll still be aligned to see them and we did we did like a whole experiment the interesting part we should add to an audience and it was just like to see but when they were arguments inside the room and the characters just fill out on the outside the audience the screen was more real than when they saw the audience and it was really dangerous for us to do that then do you know what I mean? because I was just because of that I was going to see you but the audience reacted like I love the scene on the screen but the actors came out and I was I freaked out you know what I mean? because I said you know what I mean what's happening we're so used to thinking that the image on the screen is more real now than we realize because we had so much I thought and we didn't have enough time to really work it out when that did not happen but because it was only to give us the idea that we can see the fear or the joy of having out of the car it still has to fit the journey of the play I didn't want to use that yes it's a I think it's a good thing to have so we pulled it out to the point that some of the ones that we used they were just sharps and that weren't better so we used it at the end because it's part of the story that television is a very intelligent prime so it has for us it has to serve the purpose of the play and then what we want to do I think that's very important to me I'm a professor at UCLA I work with directors I teach directors and they came up with the idea and we did an adaptation of the artist for example with the play begins on the intro and all the first dialogue is all in the intro and when they come in they sit with the computer and they make the dialogue and that's not what we do I think younger directors are going to work much more because they're more savvy on technology they have grown up with it they're 21 year olds who have so I think it's going to be very important in the theater but it's a mindset do you worry do you think a lot about a younger, how to approach a younger generation that we all assume expects different things from their surroundings do you think they expect a different experience from their entertainment from their art and if so, is that something that reining into your art there's all this buzz about the internet generation and stuff do you think their needs and wants are going to change what we present on our stage it's different work all audiences from 20 to 45 you know it's different as a community they don't have as much access just for economic reasons so we're not concerned about that you know we have the best artists in the world 20 year olds who come to the theater sit down and take a look and you know these simple stories which I think that's what we got everybody's in a different time if you have an A an A to what we need to know it's a different thing to raise your question does it make sense what I'm asking at all I wonder if somebody else can be crazy I think there's a sense that we're always told that younger generations have shorter attention spans that they're they're they like quick images that stand out a different expectation of what will engage them emotionally I have no idea if that's true or if you've experienced it what I tried to do as much as possible is not make a separation between them or me so that's the first thing right I think times change and attention spans change also needs change um I don't know I hope I won't ask myself this question for a long time because when I do then I think we're starting to get old that's why I'm asking because I feel old no don't talk about questions it's very I think you just have to be in touch with whatever you are doing and what feels right for you and audiences come or not I think that it's as simple as that but as you try to cater for something you don't really feel you don't really understand and it won't work yeah so yeah well I teach and I'm close they're age 17 into their 30s which I still consider young and they and I've seen them change over the years that I've been teaching but there are some things that don't change there are constants what moves people what touches them and makes them laugh even though people may put on a facade of hip and all this other stuff underneath everyone they still have the same emotions and feelings technology may have made things faster and everything but we understand and we feel I think I'm not a scientist or an expert on this but I think that we feel and understand at the same rate in a lot of ways trying to understand people and stay in contact with them is important when you work in the theater and no matter what age the people are so that all of humanity is an interest to you and as you're saying it's good not to have a separation and I feel very fortunate to work with young people so closely on a regular basis sometimes I feel I may be out of touch for people's minds but anyway and I think it's also interesting that young people see stuff that they don't I mean if they see something they already do right? I mean if it's compelling it's compelling but if you see something that they already do know isn't that compelling I mean it's interesting also that a theater can be a place where gaps between generations are being bridged or something I think it's it has to be ages, right? I think this conversation because I've been theater for theater you know what I mean because we have this conversation sitting on their way and when I do the work I really want to make theater for regular people the theater people are really small crowd and you're doing a cast of a hundred people and you want a thousand people to come you know what I mean who may not have the same dialogue that we can have about the art form you know and so a lot of this conversation about age and about technology is a theater conversation more than a dialogue at large with you know so I think theater has different groups we all are in different spaces and time and a different power I was just wondering whether you feel that non-montergy and the kind of work that's presented at this festival what kind of work do you do has the same relationship to the audience's experience as non-montergy is to more traditional more traditional theater you know when you're talking about non-montergy you have keeping that distance you talk about asking good questions it's a lot of times it's about like clarity until the audience understands this point of communication by this point of the play to be able to get them ready for the next point of the play so on and so forth it's very connected to the audience's experience drama-charging for this type of work for your work that we presented here has that same relationship with the audience of the experience so I think it didn't understand the question but it's just because I'm Dutch no no I think I asked the question in a very busy way it wasn't getting these questions no the way I've heard it was it's some I think I'll tell you most of my career has been spent drama-charging plays script, director, cast and you ask questions that have to do with clarity or if there's something's ambiguous did you, the player, I intended to be ambiguous in recent years I've had the luck to work with companies I just got back from Berlin where I work with GovSwan a piece that we co-commissioned and I worked on a piece called The Royal Fibrino we produced at the Kirk Douglas Theatre years ago and that is I have had to flex a very different kind of muscle in that my openness to the experience of the piece which may not be narrative is different and I have it's going to sound so lame but I have to open up my heart a little bit more and really there's a level of trust like Princess GovSwan is premiering in 10 days and we have a note session in Berlin this past Friday where basically we're talking and I was giving them my experience of it and they said and they're basically going to redo half of it in 10 days and if they were playing with a script you would be freaking out but they can do it they're human they listen to each other they're kind of an organism and so my my consolier kind of thing that I do which is what I think I am is that for me? you should wear a ring it is it is it's different there's a greater level of trust it is a much scarier journey you and you also I'm also very much aware that it is not that these are pieces that will not appeal to everyone and that's okay that not every audience member will go on the journey but I have to represent in workshop I have to represent the audience member who is willing to go on the journey and help try to track it but it is it's been a different muscle for me and I have to say that one muscle that I think it's making me a better dramaturg with playwrights as well does that answer your question? I'm very interested in that nuance of how do you help the artists how do you ask how do you find the right question to help them help them that next step to have that spark of inspiration right because with a more traditional piece you can say okay you want the audience to understand this in this moment I question whether or not they did it right so it's not clarity it's about but when that moment that you are creating you mean it to mean different things many different people do you mean what can you do to help an artist fully realize what it is what they're doing in that moment I think everybody is trying to do the same thing in different versions in different ways it's a different emotional and intellectual journey that they want us to have but it's still trying to end the same thing honestly now I haven't seen the piece that he was talking about but I see other pieces I think they're trying to end the same thing it's more difficult of course because you're talking about the work that is created from the inside and it takes more time but I believe I think they want to have the same relationship to the audience that we do in a higher level of expression and they question a bigger emotional investment and that's why it's more difficult because maybe that doesn't mean but I think they're trying to end the same thing very my performance arc came out of the rejection of the loss of theater we are going to reject all the loss of theater we're not even going to perform it in the theaters that was the idea when it started and it was it was a game of the mind if you remember the early performance arts that's what it was when it challenged you of all the loss of theater it went for a connect and I think what we see is performance arts transforming to performances for an audience so I think it's the accumulation of that what we see there for now and you learn a new each team has a new language you would probably have you say a short language here where you know you've got your own vocabulary as the conciliaries you have to learn a new language the way they talk about their aims and their techniques in a way that is new to someone who has really worked with players I'd like to answer the question also I've also worked a lot and I'm still working with regular playwrights and in this case you're so fast you're probably a very art playwright but normally this process will take us more than one year to really write a play itself with different versions and tapes it means that you have to invest a lot of energy to try to find out what it perhaps will look like in one year from now so you're working differently and the steps that you have to take have to be taking a long time in advance but with Wunderbaum it's very different they don't have the script already made the script is made during the production process and actually last week we changed it all and it's a whole beginning so I think my job as a dramaturgist for a version of Wunderbaum that is also really like bad, you can understand it as bad they have no direction but they've been working together for ten years and they really know their strengths and how they work they can say three words together and then they will do it the next day and it's a huge difference the difference with making or helping make the normal thing is that right now the time is so condensed and that you have to really think really fast and work really hard in very, very long days and that you really have to refrain yourself from seeing stuff all the time so hold your horses the mind is going crazy in that everybody said it now is the time time is right but so you just have to think really fast much faster than with the regular because it's so extremely beneficial and it's just 24 hours a day master I was wondering why you think that Peter Richard offers well sort of performance art has has developed this position of drama where other art forms don't have it I think like film for instance and you look at like ladies eight and a half and there's a character there's a kind of parody of the drama it's always been exciting to critic and he was just spouting out and challenging to make the right movie and it was interesting but it's interesting to me that Peter has this position that's come up where I'm a helpful director of the company make this piece and it was kind of what I was wondering about so the first drama was Lessie in the second half of the 18th century in Germany what happened was that German theater groups started to organize and get their own play out and they had a repertory system so it meant that they had to produce but they had to finance those buildings all of a sudden and you know there were the middle class that came to the fore and they had to make their own modern so they had to have a different show but you know you cannot have a different show if you're just a group of 20 people making theater so you need to have someone who's actually finding other people's plays that you didn't write yourself I mean that are from England or whatever named by this guy named Shakespeare nobody knows and then you think well it has to be translated and the last person was actually someone who was trying to find good plays translate them and present to the audience so what this means is that the dramaturg came when the theater was really at its height when the theater was very what's the word the word I mean the tasks were split up because the work the load of work workload was getting bigger and bigger so all of a sudden you had a director actors somebody who was a directing assistant I mean also the director was a position that started up in this hate incision really I mean Muyer was the director but the director he was the leader of the group made it happen so this is how it started and I think that the Dutch system for instance the theater system was just a copy of this German system so it was there the drama and I think the dramaturg is a very luxurious decision you don't need it but if you can afford it and you like it why not it's amazing it's like so I think also I work with the theater director who also makes films in the Netherlands I mean the people who help him editing the film the people who go to the first screenings the people who read the script I mean they don't call themselves dramaturgs but they actually are so it's just a very quirky you know, history scene but I mean the process is there it's interesting it's just kind of we know how to work as a company we have a process and this is how we create the work we don't have someone that can come in and say well if you want to get to this point if you want to clarify it here so the theater movement of Ozark is a lot about staff we don't have staff we do everything but I mean actually the question is giving the ideas from inspiration it would be great to have a dramaturg in the play get it it's about time I think that would be very fascinating and also just from my end for theater my size I'm also the literary manager if you get a thousand scripts a year my job is to find good plays and develop big programs I never I would I've never pushed myself on a project the last thing I want to do is to squelch any spark of inspiration and as soon as I feel I have I get my pull back so if I agree that it exists it is a luxury and the reason because because the dramaturg dramaturgo in Spanish and in French and in fact I went to a dramaturg conference in Mexico City and they entered a new term for us which was the dramaturquista so it doesn't exist it is your turf I guess and it seems to be I'm glad these conversations should have been more because you know for a long time because I worked at the bridge of theaters besides having the company and dramaturgs were so complicated because they became scriptwriters and I don't know the scriptwriters from Hollywood they hired scriptwriters to come and work in your movie they not called dramaturgs but they told scriptwriters and for some reason especially in the 80s when I was just a good doctor what dramaturgs were doing in the American theater they would come and tell you this is what doesn't work this is what you have to do and it was like all the plays began to look the same if you go back to the 1980s most of the playwrights ended up writing plays that are very similar in style and form it was like oh my god it's not dramaturgical because we need people we have collaborators if we can allow an actor to say let's do this intelligence research and knowledge to be part of the process of creation but not necessarily to be as a doctor you know what I mean which he gave very much from Hollywood I think this is what happened in Europe we had dramaturgs I mean every time we were in Europe I had two or three schools you know what I mean that gave you all the research because there wasn't they do what is already done you do new plays in my case so you have all these people giving these amazing research to tell you about the history and they do help a lot how to reconstruct your idea and clarify it for you especially if you keep working on different things you know so they're very very helpful and we do it with I think the reaction to the American dramatur especially in the 80s it was because it was a whole movement to be much more like they knew more than the writer himself in many ways and that became kind of like oh my god I want to you know that's really what happened in the dramaturgical process in the American theater in the American theater because the only one who got it is the writer of the theaters where the only one who can afford them in that way I think it's very important to talk about the dangers of dramatur I mean there's also a place I am from I'm actually really serious about it you know the danger is that you get this monumentalization that there's somebody who is already you know chewing out you know all the answers you know and getting all the freshness out expert and an expert who knows it all you know that's really my nightmare you know if I become that and I hope there's a great book by a very good writer who said how dramaturgy ruined theater oh I think it's on my list because not many books are written about dramaturgy in terms of what I know actually it's really he's a wonderful director he has a very small theater company who could never afford it but I would like to talk about it but I'm sorry I'd just like to go and try to make it short so I started working with Wienerbaum nine months ago in January and they have existed for 10 years already they made beautiful pieces without a dramaturgy so what the hell am I doing but they asked for a dramaturgy and the interesting part is that the dramaturgy can be changing and it's really about what can I do on the table what's not already there because if I go there I can't remember the first conversation I had with Walter Park one of the actors and writers and the director they do it all themselves so you actually had a job advertisement for a dramaturgy I mean it's really rare and I'm actually really interested I've seen your work for years now and then he got scared because I was this dramaturge from this play house in Rotterdam and the first thing he said was well actually it's just a word because we already I mean we are our own dramaturges right and then with that in mind we decided to write a letter and we had a very long job it took about 5 months of them about 5 months to find the right person that could fit this description and the thing that I'm doing right now so it's a long story but I'll have to tell it but in a short way they started a very big project in January which is called The New Forest basically what the idea is is trying to to create a new society this very new Tokyo if you will but it also plays with the idea of Tokyo so this project The New Forest this new society started in January and will go down in December 2016 during that time so we made about various topics this one is health care we did one about power so we had a Chinese 8 year old girl install this new society in May and we go on and on with all these topics these are the performances right but we want to do more with this society so for instance we have seminars where we have a Baywatcher and a journalist and very different people talking about their new ways of Baywatching and journalism and the interesting part is that this also makes up this whole New Forest project what I want to say is that what I like about it is trying to find the niche of presenting stuff that can help make it bigger than only just the performances itself so and that's much more interesting of course than the drama church who knows it all who has read it all I like the way the research is going beyond the performances itself as real production I'm afraid we've passed our time so we're going to have lunch we're going to have a twist and then we'll leave it at that and also an ensemble of designers that we've been working with and all of us together have figured out this shorthand or this special language that we speak amongst each other and so I think our dramaturgy is done by this whole team we all figure out how we want to tell this story including our line designer our choreographer our sound designer and even though we don't have a dramaturgy we all play the role together to figure out how we're going to tell this story and connect with the audience and that's how it's supposed to be I'm going to decide to join the team thank you guys thank you