 Welcome everybody back here on HowlRound to our fourth week of Segal Talks here at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at the Graduate Center CUNY in New York City as far as we know is the only theater institution in the United States that does daily new, created programming, not going back to archives and not that there's anything wrong with it, but we truly think it's a time where we have to think and listen and be in contact and also perhaps understand a little bit of that new world, that globally connected world that is so close to us, so small the world has gotten, but on the other hand our private lives also have gotten so small and sometimes even close to far big we can really go out and we heard from around the world from Hong Kong, from Italy, from Burkina Faso, from Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Italy as I already said, and India, Pakistan and we had very, very significant, I think, things to listen to from artists, artists are the one who are on the right side of social injustice, on the right side of the progress of history and their evaluations over centuries have been the right ones most of the time and I think the current crisis we live on in the tragic time as Milo Rao said, we hear our Richard Schectner yesterday says actually it's a farcical time, I wish we had leaders like in the great tragedies and the times we live in we need to hear voices from leaders in our field and today we have a great honor to have a master of theater and performance with us in an art form I highly appreciated so many others who has dedicated his work and energy towards the West Puppets and objects moving objects on stage, he's a grand master on that field, the great Basil Jones from the Hensman Company in South Africa, in Cape Town and not only you might know him from the work on War Horse but also his great role in the Truce Commission, the Wojtsek that it and many, many other things working on traditions of puppet theater in Africa and Ghana that comes from by working with Kendritch and contemporary dramaturgy in European and American theater, they created something I think is unique and we had Basil with us at the Cedars Center and I still remember his talks and what he said so I can't wait to hear what he has to say so it's time for me to shut up and actually say hi to Basil. Hi Frank and I'm really honored to be one of your guests on this on the show it's a fantastic thing that you're doing and I'm going to be enjoying watching it as you go forward with all your really really interesting guests so yeah lovely to be with you. Thank you Basil and where are you now and what time is it? It's 6 p.m. in Cape Town. I live in Cork Bay which is about half an hour drive from the center of Cape Town. It's a little fishing village, it's a pretty special place in that it was one of the few places where apartheid kind of failed in the apartheid period in South Africa. We have a fishing community here and they tried to relocate them during the apartheid period and failed because really fishermen go out at four o'clock in the morning if they had to travel two hours to get here they'd have to get up at two o'clock in the morning so it was really ridiculous to more than ridiculous to relocate the local fishing population so they stayed and so unlike many many other towns around South Africa we don't have the kind of separation that is a spatial separation legacy of apartheid which happens everywhere else in South Africa, well not everywhere else but in many other places in South Africa black and white or colored and white are separated because of the apartheid period and haven't yet to reintegrate it. Not to say that this is a completely reintegrated village but it is true to say that many of the people who have been here for five or six generations are still around and that's a really special part of why we live here. That sounds like truly a unique place and most probably you say bay close to the ocean and yeah yeah so how is it how is the mood in the in your fishing village but also Cape Town from your friends what's going on in South Africa? Well it's very quiet we started lockdown early we've been very successful with lockdown actually we don't have many we don't have many cases we don't have many deaths I think the last I heard we had had about 50 deaths in the in the whole country obviously that's got to do with testing as well but generally we really locked on early Ramaphosa our president has been very presidential, Sharn's a really good leadership and our health minister Zoelyam Kizhe has also been really really good so we've we're giving the hospitals a time to acclimatize to emergency and and get used to the whole treatment regime but what is difficult is that if you're in a township you quite often living four in the room maybe even six in a room it's really hard to practice social distancing and a lot of people many thousands of people in South Africa rely on going out every day to work and to earn a living just what we call spasashop earners people who who sell vegetables or cigarettes or whatever all that all that is closed down the only thing that's open at the moment is pharmacies and supermarkets and you're not allowed to go to a supermarket that's further than the closest one to you so and and then really really major which is unusual I think I haven't heard it happening anywhere else in the world all our all our liquor outlets and our cigarette outlets are closed so for three weeks now it's not been possible to buy any alcohol or any cigarettes so even if you go to a supermarket you cannot buy cigarettes there's no outlets for that and it's obviously because of things like domestic violence in in small you know if everyone's living together and and people are drinking too much it can be really dangerous and we've got a lot of spousal abuse in South Africa unfortunately and also obviously cigarettes and smoking not a good thing when you've got a major lung lung disease on the go but it's really hard for for everyone and for Adrian and I it was we decided that we needed to be really healthy if we were going to get sick so best not to have any alcohol so we stopped drinking for the first week of the lockdown and then decided actually that's rather hard and so and but we hadn't stocked up and the result is that we have four bottles of wine lift for the rest of the lockdown which is probably at the earliest stop at the beginning of May so that's that's a bit tough but we've we we the the main problem that we have is feeding feeding people who who have run out of money and last night's president drama Borsa announced a massive 500 billion rand program to do food packages to support the unemployment insurance program and many many other things to try to grapple with the problem of feeding our country but the bottom line is we started early and we feel at the moment that the president is leading us pretty well that's such a contrast to if I remember right to the eighth crisis where South Africa for a while was known for ignoring or openly denying yeah is that a result of that we are we are so grateful that Zuma is no longer president of the country and drama Borsa he was he was a billionaire business person before he became president he was kind of originally the person earmarked by Nelson Mandela to take over from him I think but that didn't happen but he's you know he's run big businesses and that's a fairly useful thing I think for running countries and he's very he's very measured you know he's got a massive task on his hands but so far he's doing he's doing extremely well well these are truly encouraging news to hear compared to many also devastating reports we hear from India Pakistan from America especially a country one would expect to hear the good news you are just reporting it seems to be that we live in opposite world at the moment for so many of us and Richard Schechner yesterday did say at the moment it sounds like and he quoted a friend there's a nuclear fusion and a reactor the roof is blown open and we all watch with on live on the internet before we might not have known fully about outbreaks but now everything is so connected and we look a bit with horror and sorrow and it your work in theater as part of a social justice justice has been significant in South Africa you have seen your country change do you feel the moment is some kind of a watermark too is something changing in the country again you know it's it's hard to see beyond now we we we kind of living in the new abnormal um it's it's uh i'm i'm actually i kind of uh i i i have been saying to adrian um that adrian is my partner since 1971 we've been together for 49 years um work together congratulations and uh and live together so we've had a lot of lockdown in our lives and we're very very happy with it um i i've been saying to adrian that in terms of the ecological crisis in in the world and today is uh world earth day yeah um in terms of the ecological crisis we we need something absolutely catastrophic um in order to accept uh that we need to change radically um and and only something absolutely catastrophic will will create that change and i think that the the coronavirus catastrophe is that catastrophe um and i think that we're gonna we're gonna come out of this um really ready to uh to make the massive ecological changes that we have to make in in the world i think that um um we we we've we're seeing how animals are beginning to come out um in in cities um how how you know the canals of venice clarified and suddenly the fish uh swimming in the canals of venice we we kind of seeing very encouragingly how how quickly uh things can change and and revert to what they used to be we loving the the silence one of the things that is fantastic about the lockdown is silent so from our house uh uh above cork bay for the first time we can hear the waves breaking which we can't hear when there's traffic going by um we can also smell the the air coming from the sea as sort of beautiful fresh air which we don't normally smell again because of of traffic it's not serious but it's so it's bad enough to actually for us not to smell the sea even though we're really close to the sea so i i'm very optimistic that we we've we've kind of really seen what's uh what um we we've come together with a crisis that this is a completely global crisis and we're going to come out of it um in a in a much more comrades we're going to come out of it as comrades global comrades um and to me that's that's very exciting i think i i think we'll be impoverished um for sure um it's uh the crisis has humbled us um because for the first time middle-class people um can't predict a future ahead um no one really knows what's uh what's going to happen next and that that puts us on the same level as as people who don't have work that puts us on the same level as people who don't have houses uh that puts us on the same level as old people who don't have medical insurance it humbles us and uh all of us could could die um we're all in the same boat and i think that um coming coming out of this what what's really going to we what we really going to focus on is uh the environment and what we've been doing to the environment and a desperate need to um to make changes we i'll just give you one example um we were in shanghai we were in china for warhorse some years ago and we took a uh that sort of bullet train from shanghai to beijing it's uh 1500 kilometers um i'm not sure what that is in in uh miles but 1200 miles 1200 miles thousand miles maybe yeah we as we spared um from uh through the landscape from through villages past villages through towns through cities um i can't remember how long it took but i think it was about five hours um we never left heavy pollution through all parts of of that 1500 kilometers we were in pollution right throughout um i mean very tangible pollution and uh you know that's that's really what we what we're dealing with and um i i believe that coming through this we'll we'll we'll be ready to tackle it um and and the i think that the people the voters are going to be insisting that their governments tackle it well then the south africa in a way has been such a remarkable example of things that can change and i think angela merkel in germany who says you know things do change or el gore with his initiative he said i have seen things change so don't just look at the moment look ahead but be part of the change do something for it what role did did your work play in the apartheid and the change did this did you work theatrically involved what did you do and what contribution did your your specific theater and tell us a little bit about what did it make um we we we um we were very engaged uh we uh we we um when adrian and i left the country um in the late 70s we um we we were trying to escape the army we had both been in the army and in non-combative roles um and we of course we hated it was they were very clever uh the south african government was very clever because they would come to your high school um and uh the high school would give the army all the addresses of all the all the boys and then you would get a um a they they would have your address and you would then get a letter calling you up to the army as you came to your matric to the end of your school period it was very very difficult to avoid there was in those days there was no organization of uh uh anti-conscription campaign uh that came later but there wasn't any such thing then so one kind of um it you couldn't get away from it um and we both did basic training in the army and and i won't go through all the details but eventually we uh we left the country and we uh we went to botswana which was uh which is right next door to south africa and we both got jobs there and while we were there uh we became involved with the ANC's cultural group the ANC cultural group um and um and it was quite interesting for us because we were two fairly out gay guys um with a lot of really angry political guys who just come over from this was 1978 79 and 80 as 1976 the school uprisings uh had just happened and a lot of people from those uprisings had gone to botswana um the all the arts people were there um and um it was a real learning curve for us um we we you know because of apartheid we didn't really know very many black south africans um and to be in an african country uh where uh we were foreigners and uh in a in a in a political group where we were uh from the whites um in the ANC it it was it was difficult and and very very challenging for us because we were um we were very naive politically um but during those three years we certainly uh we certainly learned a lot about politics and uh so when we been went back to south africa um we were um we were kind of different people um however in the first five years of the country we had to of of of our puppet company which we started in 1981 um we were uh doing children shows and touring to schools um and you can't be very political with we were thinking politically but we we couldn't um most of our children shows would have some kind of nasty oppressor and uh people rebelling against the oppressor um but they were they were lighthearted they were musicals in a way and we toured them to schools around south africa and to Botswana and Namibia uh Swazi land um uh but in 1985 um president Buerta uh announced um the emergency and at that time you couldn't go from then onwards we weren't allowed into schools during school time um and uh that meant that we had to find a different way of earning a living um they said you can go to school after uh you can perform at schools after school but not during school but after school the learners all leave school and go to sport or extra lessons or ballet or whatever it was not um we would never have got an audience after school unfortunately um so we moved from Cape Town then to Johannesburg and uh we got involved in children's television uh which we did not love but had no other option at that time but during that period we became involved with um with the Junction Avenue Theatre Company and William Kentridge was part of that company um and we started to the market theatre at that time which was the uh second non-racial theatre company in South Africa became um uh it it became a really important focus for a lot of political thinking a lot of political expression and at that time in 1985 during the year of our move we also did a very important for us play called Episodes of an Easter Rising it was our first adult play we were very scared of doing an adult play because we knew we'd have no audience for puppets for adults um and this play was a play about two women um on a on an isolated farm in the eastern Transvaal who are visited by an activist who arrives on the farm unannounced um they give him water um and he chats with them and then he leaves and then he comes back some days later wounded and they uh badly wounded and they take him in and uh while he's um kind of in their spare room in the guest room the police arrive and say that they're looking for this man and they don't mention anything about the man um and I won't go into the rest of the play but what what struck us about it was there actually a radio play that we turn into a um puppet play what we loved about it Adrian and I um was the fact that um the two women the audience gradually becomes aware of the fact that the two women are lovers um and that their their political their politics comes out of their macro politics comes out of the sexual politics of their lives they've been ostracised from town because of their relationship that's why they were living on an isolated farm and um and it kind of spoke to to Adrian and I these two lesbian women uh their politics we we kind of understood very much because we were in the same boat um so um that was that was the first piece we did and it it was different from a lot of the theater that was happening at the time and that there was a lot of protest theater then um uh very um strident uh work and uh somewhat accusatory to the white audiences that it was playing to mainly and our piece was very um it was very political but in a very muted way um when we took this work to the the work by the way did really really well um first at the market theater and then at the national arts festival in grandstown where it was such a hit that people uh who couldn't get to get sat in the corridor outside the theater just listening to the dialogue um and when when we took it to uh Friends of Ours helped us um uh take the show to France to um an international theater festival there uh puppet theater festival and when we played it we had only one performance because they felt we were um being a South African show um there was a cultural boycott at that time and in fact we were part of the ANC cultural group should have been supporting the cultural boycott but we didn't actually believe in the cultural boycott for for left-wing uh people we didn't believe in isolating uh the left international think we we have lost basal can you hear me um well i say basal we just can you hear me yeah i think we just lost you um yeah yeah but just after you said that you were only had one spot that also the video is a bit stops once in a while but maybe one moment you try to reconnect or something but i think we can hear you so say again so you you were um that you only had one spot um we we did one one performance um but um people said well obviously you can't go back to South Africa with a play like this and we said that we've already performed it in South Africa and part of the strangeness of uh that period was some people involved in theater doing political work were persecuted quite badly and others weren't um and we were fortunate in that we were not um not really uh persecuted uh by the government and then after that piece we we did a number of pieces all of them were not stridently political but were were political nevertheless so it was slightly um i don't know how to describe it really we we we we tried to be really nuanced and not to we didn't want uh to um come to the our audience with an answer uh we wanted the audience to walk away in argument rather than um than knowing what we were yeah so that was that was that and that was a long period and then when we came to the end of um when when democracy came to South Africa we had a big problem for all theater had a big problem because we didn't really know what to make plays about any longer um and um and and we uh and also we were involved we had been involved very much with William Kentridge we'd had 10 amazing years doing uh first uh Floyd second high felt then uh fastest in Africa who and the truth commission uh we did an opera with him um uh um Zeno at four a.m. um and uh and and another opera uh The Return of Ulysses based on the Monteverdi work um we had a fantastic time very um good for us we were at all the big festivals in Europe um and uh but we began began to I think unconsciously our excuse for moving from Johannesburg to Cape Town was that we were always touring abroad and whenever we came back to Johannesburg we came back to this really ugly dangerous urban city and not to the beautiful landscape that we knew of in South Africa and so we said we wanted to go back to South to Cape Town which is where I was born um and and to the landscape and to the seascape of the Cape but I think subconsciously what was also happening was we we were um we were becoming less collaborators and more servitors of of Williams great genius um in the beginning when he um when he was quite uncertain about theater um he was more collaborative um with us then then as time went on he became more and more um in control of what he wanted to do and um and I think that we we felt we were serving his vision um that's a slightly unfortunate way of putting it but we love to work together and and still we are extremely good friends but we felt we needed to um find our own vision um and so the first piece we did when we moved to Cape Town was um a piece about a chimpanzee um that um had been brought up in America and uh was attained chimpanzee and um who had come originally from Africa owned obviously by by a woman who um took him to performing commercials and various other things and as happens with chimpanzees when they become adolescent um they become very um uncontrollable and sexually demanding um and the decision was made to bring this chimpanzee back to to Africa to re-wild it um and um uh the play begins with the arrival of the chimpanzee in um a a chimpanzee preserve in um uh in in Africa um and in Tanzania and the whole play happens in this this reserve it was it was a play that was centered on an animal um and this animal actually was a a an animal who had been taught human sign language um so we had a signing chimpanzee which was quite a big challenge for Adrian to make um and after that we did another play um about a giraffe um and then after that we did another play about horses um and now we've got plays about um elephants and um wolves in the pipeline and we kind of realized that that without really knowing what we were doing uh we were making theater where an animal uh as an animal was in the center of a piece of theater um and and we realized looking around that no one else had ever done that before um we realized that puppetry is actually the ideal medium for doing that because you can't you can't really perform an animal as as people although obviously that does happen but generally in in theater what's happened at the moment uh up to now is that animals do appear in theater but never in the center of the piece of theater the chimp in in uh in the chimp piece uh which was called the chimp project uh the chimpanzee was the central character um and in uh uh in the tall horse which was the next project we did with uh with the giraffe the giraffe was the central character it was was given um by the Pasha of Egypt to the king of France in 1827 um as a bribe to try to get France to not interfere with um the um the attack on Greece but because Greece was a Christian country France uh didn't go along with that but the uh the giraffe was used as as the bribe in the center of this piece and um so what began happening was we we we kind of realized that what we could do was was bring animals back into the theatrical canon um or bring animals into the the theatrical canon that had um never had animals as central um and that that was an entirely um appropriate thing to be doing in in this time in our time where we are in such danger of uh eradicating so many animals um so it seems to be the right kind of theater to be making and if our theater has any politics uh it's it's a kind of an animal politics um where um reflecting on on what we're looking at today we would maybe provocatively be saying well the real virus uh on this planet is humanity um and humanity's insistence that they are at the top of the pyramid um uh and and we're kind of sort of saying um that we need to think of animals as part of who we are and part of um uh our theatrical lives um so that's kind of um that's kind of an important part of of what we're doing and how we see ourselves yeah I do remember and if I remember right here slight disappointment that the warhorse story actually did not look like in the original novel through the eyes of the horse at the war but then once again through a little boy who grows up and but that was for you was important to kept that um on your mind in the time of corona in the time we live now the uncertainty um artists sitting like you in their home producing or not producing it you said maybe you share us a little bit later on with my studio workshop which would be fascinating to see um from what you learned in your experience of as a master in your field um is there something in what you found that you feel that can work and will work to change uh or contribute to the change we all want to see that we have to be part of Edouard Lisand the great writer actually was teaching us at the Graduate Center Cune and he said so much is a failure of imagination the fear of the foreigner the fear of that maybe you're not having a Mercedes will make you a not successful person in Germany it's slowly changing the young people say we don't really need that I have a bike or whatever but it's a real the imagination that we have to change is there something in your work where you say to fellow artists and young in the time of corona afterwards where we have to find new ways to tell stories and to have to acknowledge is there something we say think about this this is something we found that might have an answer and already what you said you know focusing on the animal or puppets instead of actors or puppet is there something where you say please please listen to that from our experience in South Africa um I think it's too early to answer that question um already we are we are engaged in something that is um that is very um new theatrically uh and not about animals um which is uh the walk um and and migrancy um you know you mentioned Al Gore um a few minutes ago and Al Gore is a person who who says that um in 10 years time there will be a billion people on the march and the reason why is that we are destroying our places where we can grow things people are us can't grow crops and so they have to move away from um places where there's no water and that's a very serious problem here in South Africa by the way um we've got serious droughts um in many of our towns where the water the groundwater is gone um and uh those people are all going to be moving moving to other places they're going to be ecological migrants rather than war migrants um so one of the projects that we are involved in um is a giant of a little migrant girl um who is um uh three three and a half meters tall um um who will be walking across Europe um next year um from from Turkey um through Greece and um Germany and and France um um visiting places that are friendly to to migrants um and this is a it's it's suddenly become really problematic because migrancy is going to be even more difficult um in the time after corona um but it's not going to go away unfortunately um so we are we are um the the company that is is behind this called Good Chance who did that wonderful um piece of theatre that started in the um in in Calais but also played in London and since um gone called the jungle gone to New York and and that's where I saw that yeah good good chance is the name of the company and um and uh they they are at the moment visiting many sites throughout Europe where where migrants are or migrants are welcome or will be welcomed um and uh we are seeing how how this will work with the arrival of a giant um little little girl migrant um um they they are finding ways to welcome her um and um and seeing what what she might do we've done quite a few workshops we've been making these giant puppets here in in South Africa and um and that's that's a project for for the future for us but how we as South Africans will will come out of this I I don't know at the moment I think um we we I I'm pretty sure that's what's going to come out immediately after um the the lockdown ends and we become slightly more normal uh they're probably going to be humorous um stories of of people living through lockdown um satirical uh stories of of the lockdown experience and then after that when people can bear it um there'll be there'll be probably tragedies um of theatrical tragedies about the of the coronavirus period and way beyond that I you know I I don't know I think we've still got to get through those two theatrical periods before um we start to look beyond it it's you know it's a little bit like um South Africa during the apartheid period at that time all we could think of was um getting rid of apartheid and we did that through a Petersburg ace for instance was the great satirist um he did fantastic satires the apartheid period um and then there were other people uh who did um tragedies of that that apartheid had created so I think theatrically we we're going to go through those two um those two periods before we can start thinking beyond that and I think that uh I predict that that beyond that we'll be thinking about the environment and and making plays about the global um the global environment and and how we come to terms with with stopping anything like uh coronavirus happening again although of course we can't but it's interesting that that series work uh it all work of course the series was puppets but that's you know the karagas play or the punj and judy or Italian puppet plays or marionettes but the series work which you pioneered that came out of uh South Africa during the apartheid we're perhaps looking at an animated piece of material of wood where it's not really a woman not a man it's it doesn't have a religion so people it created an opening in the mind for people and it's something um that I think is a something for everybody to think about in that new form of of theater we are looking for that this is something that is also in a way good way a popular theater a theater that um and appeals to to to the people and as we say entertains the drunk but looks back and at the moment where we are in and forward so I think you really um found something um serious there that we all should look at in the even more as a way of integrating what often people think at the margins which is not really is I think Frank you know one of the things that uh is true to sales uh about handspring we we are a company that we're ending the uh we're coming to the end of our our kind of theatrical careers um and we we're very happy that uh that there are other people that have come out from us that are now uh taking the stage so to speak and here in South Africa uh there's a company called Uqanda um puppetry and design collective um they they started making uh theater puppetry during the time when two of them were working at handspring um in the in the big horse project making making horse puppets and and quietly on their own uh to um give um kids something to do in the evenings um they started making puppets and and dance and sort of pageants with puppets and they have subsequently formed a company um and they are starting to produce plays so they um they um they wrote a play um Luyanda who uh whose son was very very ill he used to go and visit his son in hospital every weekend and sit with him for hours and hours and he during that time wrote uh a play called Kawe um which they did as a company of four and took it to the national arts festival got it got a a silver ovation award there for their first play they've now done another play um and they are currently doing a coronavirus sort of series in their in lockdown in their in their apartment or not apartment in their house um and um uh so they are you know that in fact they were in Germany when um this whole um coronavirus thing uh struck they were about to start rehearsing a play about water in in Germany in Augsburg um you probably know Augsburg is very famous as a as a as an ancient place of of invention with when it comes to water reticulation um and first place of brecht oh really i didn't know that um so they were in Augsburg when this all happened and they had to come back from Augsburg go into quarantine and in quarantine and now in lockdown um they've been 38 days in in lockdown um this this company uh living in in a house that we bought for them after a tragedy that happened one of their company was murdered in the townships um so um they're doing stuff and um there there are lots of of upcoming uh puppet companies not only in South Africa but abroad that are that are carrying on from where we in a way we haven't left off yet we've got uh four uh quite big productions still upcoming before we um say Sayonara but um we're we're kind of I think um we're hoping that that um that the new young puppet companies um come up with with stuff that we couldn't do because I'm sure a lot of it will involve um new technologies and new ways of making theater but um that are kind of a little bit beyond us as we hit uh 70 years of age next year yeah I mean you of course have all our respect above your political work your theater work but also the aesthetics I mean war halls only became such a big hit and in London the national theater and then ultimately in New York and the Tony award you get in all of it because of that exceptional work you contributed um can you show us a little bit around uh what how your uh inner exile uh looks like and uh you know we heard from your colleague Anna Rupa Roy in India I think I mentioned it to you know who's actually looked out of her window and saw 500,000 people uh on the street a biblical exodus with their children on their back and their belongings trying to the servants the poor people who wouldn't be allowed back in the homes they serve so peacefully yeah and some prepared for a thousand kilometers of my of marches and they came back she's taking care of a village of 1800 families of artists many of them puppeteers meanwhile in South Africa in a way is uh is a model that things can and will change and so it is just incredible to see all the differences and we would love to see and maybe it might also for our viewers wonderful to see your space Meredith Monk who did such a lovely session with I said say Frank I want to see where those people live what's going on I'm going to show my apartment so um so we are following Meredith's suggestion and uh hope the internet will be stable when um when I spoke to you a little bit earlier um it was uh it was light outside and now it's dark um but these are uh these these are four puppets from a midsummer nice dream that we did at the Bristol Old Vic um and what I'm doing with them is um they're kind of running around our our house and our studio um doing various things every day I do it's a kind of a stop stop frame animation um thing that I'm doing one one or two or three or four images a day they they are themselves a stop frame puppets so they can um whatever you do with them they will just stay in place um and um they I'm having a bit of fun with them nothing serious just um playing around with them so this is this is my offer that those are two of the of the warhorse heads that have just ended up here um and um and then down below is Adrian's um Adrian's studio this is one of the places where we work we also have a factory elsewhere um but this is where we where we started out working and um this is Frank hello Frank hey Adrian um time uh we can't fully hear you um uh we're doing a play um uh based on J.M. Kutsey's life and times of Michael K. Kutsey is a male prize winning um writer from South Africa and this is a um a puppet version um Michael K was um is is the main character uh he was born with a hair lift yeah we we lost them if you can hear me I think this is the goat uh this is a goat um uh that is very much part of part of the um the play beautiful um and this is um and his mother he has a teenager yeah and um this is an image of the person that we we believe Michael K was uh who was the first um farm murderer um in South Africa I don't know if Kutsey would would agree um this is a drawing a design Adrian is doing for he has a baby yeah K is a as a as a child this Michael K as an eight-year-old um and uh and this is uh this is Michael's mother um so um this is this is where we work um and Adrian Adrian is uh is our um designer and maker of all uh that is uh that is just uh amazing and instead of producing cars and and uh computers you create a object that really produce imagination and a part of a change or manifest symbolically and change um we we all um want to see and can you hear me still basil yes I can yeah you can and um and it's interesting that Meredith Monk showed us her room she sleeps in her rehearsal room you live uh where you create your work so like artists you know are so close at life in art is actually connected that you do home cooking Richard said yesterday you know I started out cooking in Provincetown and then I said my company is just home cooking I'm back to cooking also now but in a way that what many artists mention we will maybe go back to living rooms we will show the world where we are in this is our world and then share it and so it's kind of a kind of a return to um to um origins perhaps when you guys started out and Botswana um in in the work what is um and we always do say that what are you reading at the moment are you listening to music is there something that is inspiring for you and this time something you rediscovered um well I'm reading I'm reading a John could see novel um uh the um the life of the earlier life of Jesus um which is um uh it's a it's a strange thing because it's not really about uh Christ at all it's it's about a young child and I think the the thesis of the novel in a way um is uh that that all children are are a little um are are completely unspoiled and brilliant and um almost Jesus like um and that there is a Satan around us always um it's it's a it's a uh an unusually redemptive um uh novel with um with with a reasonably good narrative um it's not as dry as much of of could see his work um and I mean I'm enjoying it very much and I'm very eclectic in what I read so um I've just finished a a book on uh on Byron called um Lord Byron Accounts Rendered uh it's a book that I picked up from a friend um it it's about um all the all the accounting slips and account and basically financial documents that relate to to Byron um and what they show about who he really was um a lot of people have have um have talked about Byron as being very difficult with money um and in fact he was incredibly generous um and this book um through through for the first time dealing with the actual documents of um how the money was spent uh shows this um so um sorry unrelated to the the present day but that's great that's great that is fantastic and I know we see Sean Ogulu one of our colleagues a professor at the news course said I want entire class listened you know to the middle row talk and and people are listening um to um the conversation by the way um also me the row just finished a Jesus film you know he told Pasolini actors and from actors no Gibson used it because he felt they all got it wrong and in Matera I did a new film so there seems to be something also in up in the air but um what would you say to uh to to our listeners what to do how to use that time and also to young artists like think about yourself in Botswana in these formative years where everything can happen your career could have taken a completely different way um is there something you uh you can you would you would not you like you would have known at that time so it's someone had told you yeah I mean I think I think that one one really has to um to listen to your to your inner voice um and and try to follow um your true uh desire it's a it's a it's it's a hard thing to do because for instance I I spent two years at university trying to become a lawyer because that's what my family wanted me to do and no one believed in my um my becoming a theater person or an art person and and yet um I kind of eventually did um and and thank goodness I did because I wouldn't have been a very good lawyer at all um and so you've you've got it you've got to try to hear yourself and I we're we're doing a bit of yoga at the moment and at the end of the yoga we have a wonderful relaxation moment when you can really um just feel your um your body and your breath um breath is always extremely important for all our um our work with puppetry because um that is how you give life to an object through through breath um and it's that um that listening to uh to yourself um uh that I think is the most important thing to lead you into um areas uncharted areas that you wouldn't um you wouldn't society wouldn't imagine for you it's only from you that can those things can come but quite often uh you know with with the animal um focus of our work for instance these things are only really um apparent in retrospect we we didn't plan to make animal centered puppetry but looking back over three productions we were able to say oh um actually all three of those productions were focused on animals um maybe that's what we're doing so it's um I think um it's it's important to know who you are but sometimes um what happens uh you you don't really know what motivates you I spoke also about our our move to Cape Town from Johannesburg I think that there was an ostensible reason um but there were other subconscious reasons for that move um it's it's it's difficult to sometimes to know what what um consciously what you should do but I think if you're listening um if you have um an ear for your inner ear um that's that's always going to help in terms of what you do um going forward yes thank you really really thank you so much for sharing and surprising to hear from uh South Africa that things somehow seem to be in some way working out a country that went through tremendous change and in a way symbolically says if it's possible there it should be possible um for the world and theater has played a role in your your great contribution the discoveries you made because of the place you were in the kind of locally working but globally thinking the dramaturgy of it and the puppets went away you're like the early robots you know what you say the people are now discovering new things but it's a very old um old a craft going back as you also mentioned at the sea look to the Kleist and the marionette theater the old ideas so that was fascinating and hopefully we will hear more from South Africa maybe we go back to the company that is producing the corona puppetry work in the house and um thank you so so much and again thanks also to our listeners for taking the time and know it's a very busy time strangely enough uh many calls and emails and things we keep ourselves a busy Lucia Calamari said the playwright from Italy all day she's just moving objects and has a hard time writing maybe two or three hours she can do her work and so listening to us um is important we need great theater great performances we need great audiences and in a way the same way as artists work through things and change things of course it's important for you um to to to take that up and and apply it for your own life and for the communities you are in tomorrow we will hear uh from France also knows this yeah and Karen uh Anne will talk to us from rance they have in France they have an idea of how to deal or what they do at the moment they have a great Guillermo Calderon who comes from Chile who also as a young adolescent was on the brisk of seeing the big change that happened there and does a very political theater but also very significant theater as a writer and a director next year next week we will have the great remedy protocol from Germany Peter Sellers will be with us the regime junior from Haiti Jalila Bakar um from um from Tunisia and so I think it will be again the kaleidoscope of of of puzzle pieces we try to put together in our mind to form something that actually is unknown we all don't know what will happen and we ask questions and hopefully better questions that come out of it again thank you so much and you and Michael and for sharing your your work it means a lot to all of us and I hope you will all come and I still haven't seen Ubu in the truce commission as one of my great regrets I heard once it was done in Los Angeles anybody heard it too late and I could have flown there to see it um so I hope um our path will meet again and to all our listeners and thank you um so very much again also next week Oscar Eustis from the great public theater will be part of the series and talking to Tony Torn who runs a 20 person theater 30 for his tiny home uh which he inherited from his father so uh then we have two theater makers so he also a bit about it is what's going on in the new york and theater scene so thank you again thanks for hall around thea vj and the seagull team may sun young and great jackie so thank you all and good luck basil and uh we really I hope to see your work and see you again bye bye thank you thank you thank you