 My name is Frank Henscher and believe it or not, we are through another week of Segal talks in the middle of June and it's another day on planet Earth. A very beautiful one here in New York City. It's nice and warm and sunny and it seems like the city is breathing a big site of relief. And so still people are wearing masks and the news from India and the news from UK. And now also from other countries but the new bar and they still in the back of people's mind but we try to ignore it even so the German health ministry said that people should put their masks back on because they do not really know how it will affect all those who are not fully vaccinated. Still, we are hoping that we will see more theater in this fall and theater will reopen and performance will be taking place. But big question and this is the one we examined over this entire year on this time of Corona is really what is of significance? What is urgent? What matters? What shall we do in a time where potentially our lives were at risk and in danger? And as we talked some time ago also with Gerald Thomas you know, quoted back at and to say, you know what is we all gonna die? This is clear but what is it worth to do in the time we are alive? And we of course think theater and the arts is the closest to also experience life and to share and to be in a community and also to ask questions and maybe have better questions afterwards. One of the artists in New York City who I feel has always asked those questions whether it's a pandemic or not or in a way there was always an urgency to her work as if there was a pandemic and she had to make a statement. Is Sibyl a campsan who is here with us? Sibyl, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for doing these. These have been so meaningful and helpful to all of us and you've just done it with so much passion and determination this whole time since the beginning and it's an amazing way to track through our whole experience globally as we go through this. Wow, so you're listening to some episodes? I didn't know. Yeah, and they're really great for students too. I think, you know, what is everybody thinking about how does everybody handle? I haven't listened to all of them but as many as nobody did. So that's a puzzle. We have over a hundred and fifteen hours. We are slowly, I think, coming to an end by the end of June of the Siegelthaus Focus on the time of Corona in this different way. We will continue, we discover this. All our programs were shut down at CUNY, our little small black or brown box theater. You know, we couldn't get into everything got canceled but I felt we didn't have to do something and this emerged and it seems to be working and also created and helped to create some meaning civil to let our audience know a little bit more as an artist who did something what a lot of people, a lot of artists also talked about, go perhaps out that the metropolis as being in a different community, being in contact with nature, being outside of the traditional hunting grounds and gathering grounds for artists which are in US also, you know, big cities like New York or Los Angeles or many, many other towns that are now emerging like Austin or Chicago or Detroit and Philadelphia. She moved upstate New York but let me tell you all a little bit about her. Sybil began making performance at the Little Theater and at the Great Dixon Place at the turn of the millennium. Yes, that's true. It's some time ago already but also not so long. She launched a company, The Seven Daughters of Eve, theater performance company in 2015, actually also we were a bit involved and with this and the name of the new religion, they are starting a spiritual movement and to me it will tell us a little bit more is called Fem Animism. Their latest work made touring the 2020-21 global pandemic will premiere at Abrams Art Center and the Chocolate Factory and actually Brian will be with us next week also with Alex from the Jack Arts Center to get an interview also about what's going on in New York. Other artists will be the Pina Bausch company from Wuppertal will tell how they got through the pandemic also not so long after the Great Pina Bausch left us and how did they deal with this absence and death and change and preparing for time that come later and then we're gonna hear from the Great Festival in Barcelona next week. But she is simple to get back to her. She creates radio plays, video installations, video class, theoretical mini series, project installations, live concert performance and at the NYU Scorbal will come up in the fall. So you can visit her work at The Seven Daughters of Eve.com. She has been also at the Seedle. She did the most beautiful work also with the big dance at the ones I saw and also she did work at the Whitney. She created performance ritual, celebrating the change of seasons and time. So she has already been working very much in what truly can be called an experimental theater a theater that tries to extend boundaries, to examine what we can do, what is not be done but should be done. And we are lucky that issues with us. Simple as that Frank, I'm not sure if this is the right time. I'm in the middle of my fights. I'm in the trenches, call me someone said and I said, no, this is more interesting to hear from you or as interesting but maybe more urgent now while you are in a way if I say the right word struggling or trying to make sense. So normally I say, where are you and what time is it? But still, where are you in time? Someone must be the same. Well, I'm in New Bird, New York. That's where I've been living mostly since I don't know, 2017. I fled the city. I just couldn't afford to live there and have like a human life anymore. And so I came up here and I've been here on and off. So I'm in the home of a friend who is working overseas who's been over in Sweden for quite a ways since the pandemic started and all my stuff is in storage. But we're both, if you're in New York City or New Jersey we're both in Lenape Hulking, the Lenape land where I also grew up. I've spent most of my life on this land. So I'm always, I think it's a magical place and really important and special. So I'm here. So is it close to the Hudson or where is it located? Yeah, it's the Hudson River Valley and it's right across the river from Beacon, New York so if anybody goes to the Dia Beacon where the town over the bridge. Over the big bridge, yeah. It's a great place. So how was that time for you, that time of Corona? Well, it's funny when you were talking at the beginning it was like, I felt like I'd been getting ready for it for a while, I didn't know how far it was gonna go. I remember also when September 11th happened thinking, okay, is this gonna go on all day or what all is going to happen? And so I sort of went into like prepper mode a little bit and I fled Newberg, I had an apartment here at the time and I had a friend who was another friend, just living in friends' houses who another lady artist friend who was stuck in Marfa and so she has an old farmhouse that she's renovating in the Catskills. And so I went up there and stayed for three months while she was trapped in the museum at Marfa and it was really kind of in the middle of nowhere. And I felt, it was like an immediate adjustment. It was very strange feeling, like I mentally and emotionally, I adjusted kind of immediately to the situation and it was really stressful and painful and kind of heart wrenching because the reality of species extinction that we were facing and I think still are facing was very real. And at the same time, it was really, really meaningful. Like any work that I make now is gonna be real mark making if it wasn't already, it really is now. And so I went up there and I was able to continue teaching and making and finding new ways of making which I already was sort of searching for because I moved out of the city and it was becoming increasingly difficult to sort of do the commute even though it's possible but it was really exhausting. So I just started doing everything on Zoom and on video and I'm still working that way. And I had a project in the works for eight years now this project about Mary Shelley that I started working on in Austin and Minneapolis during a couple of different residencies in 2013. And it's with Graham Reynolds, a composer from Austin. And so I finally finished it and I was supposed to put it on at Abrams Arts Center at the Playhouse with Chocolate Factory Theater also with Brian. And I just figured, well, that's all off. Everything's crashing and burning, that's all off. But then they got in touch with me and said, do you want to still do something? We have a little bit, we don't have the budget that we had planned to have, but we have something. I said, yes. And so we came together with a reduced cast and worked remotely with Chris Giormo who's in New Orleans and Dee Beesnell who's in Brooklyn and Brian Mendez who's across the river in Beacon. And we just sort of came together and also with a few collaborators, Ava Van Schveinitz who is in Brooklyn. And we just started working on it on Zoom. We recorded everything and Chris edited it together into an audio play. And now the whole time I've been working on visuals. So we've all been doing our green screening shots and collaging and sort of putting everything together with my rudimentary skills on iMovie. And it's been really meaningful and sort of a game changer for me. And another observation that I made during the lockdown was like this is about as much solitude as I need. I always feel like a lot of my struggle is, you know theater is very communal and community oriented and group oriented and I'm also a writer. So I'm always kind of fighting for this alone time. And it was this very eerie feeling of realizing this is about how much I need. And so really diving all the way into that and I felt a real determination to not waste the time and doing a lot of thinking about my company when the Black Lives Matter uprising began in May. It completely changed the way I am looking at my own position as an artist and as a person in the world. And so trying to figure out how to go forward as a white artist in this time and how much space do I have the right to take up with my work. And so to that end, I sort of started to move toward just occupying like a small corner on Patreon. And so folks who are interested can subscribe and we've been doing performing. Patreon is, sorry, I don't know. Patreon is, it's a website, it's almost like it's almost like a crowdfunding website but where people contribute on a regular basis. And so they become like subscribers and then you sort of post any content. So I started an astrology podcast. I'm not an astrologer but I work with one very closely in my work and a lot of my work, Omi Johnson. And we work with another astrologer, Satori, out in Seattle. And so we have a bi-weekly podcast about the astrological influences at work at any given time. And then there's another, it's like these levels of subscribership where I post about our process of making. And then I started making little episodes of a new play on video called The Percipients. It's another play about Sasquatch who I seem to write about a lot. And then Omi, the astrologer that I work with had alerted me to a particular influence or a particular aspect of transit that happened. It started in 2011 and it's this very distant slow moving star called Regulus. And it governs world religions and worship styles. And it moved in 2011 from the sign of Leo to the sign of Virgo. And so it's been in Leo for about 2000 years about the length of time that we've had Christianity. And before that it was in cancer for 2000 years which was, it's like the mother, all of those matriarchal kind of moon honoring religions. And now it's moved into Virgo which we won't see it's full expression in our time, in our lifetime because it's so slow moving. It takes really 2000 years to express itself but it's the planet. Oh, you're a Virgo, aren't you Frank? True, how did you know that? Service and study and cleaning up the mess and being devoted to something and sort of a selflessness and it's also more of a feminine sign. So I thought, God, I'm so excited about that. Why not start a little religion ourselves to sort of get the ball rolling even though it's just starting. So we started having these sort of religious services on Zoom last spring. And I had to put all of this on hold so that I could finish this Mary S project which is all consuming but at least we got it started and we can go back to it when Mary S is finished if not before, hopefully. So it sounds like a lot happened for you inside your mind, but also your outside world. As a question, you worked with companies we would consider the heavy weights in the field which is close to us, ERS, Big Dance with the Root Max that beautiful player I also saw at an Austin. And then you said, I also have to create my own company to take ownership of my work. And now, you move in that field, you did work at the Whitney. Tell us a bit, why did you kind of move the wave in collaboration, why did you have your own company and then ultimately you went away from the city? Tell us a little bit about all these. Well, at that time, of these collaborations were super, super valuable. Like that was kind of like another school degree is working and writing for specific performers or specific groups and having sort of a call and response process. I learned so much and I feel like as a person I wasn't behaving very well. And I think I did a lot of thinking about that like being in the rehearsal room and just being kind of a control freak. And I talked to a lot of close friends about it and was encouraged like you should start your own company so that you don't have to feel like that. And so that you can set up the collaborations however you need them to be. And also as a way of growing up a little bit and bolstering the creative process with practical skills and practical concerns and making the budget myself, raising the money. I mean, honestly it was like the last thing I felt like doing. I knew it was gonna be a total nightmare and it definitely is, but it definitely it's been necessary for me to kind of put my money where my mouth is. And I'm still thrilled if somebody wants to do one of my plays but it's better if they just do it. Call me with questions and I'll see you on opening night and or I'll come and read it if people need to hear how I'm thinking about it but to just be able to let go and at the same time to figure out ways of doing leadership that aren't based on the Roman Empire sort of command and control model that hierarchy that I think theater borrows from a lot of the time when you're in the professional sphere. And that oftentimes just felt like restrictive for me and unfair in a lot of ways. And so I'm trying to and I don't have it figured out but it's working on the pig pile piece that you mentioned in Austin and sort of having a more amoebic form was really enlightening where the, it's more confusing, it's more chaotic but those are also natural patterns like the patterns of chaos are out of nature. And so how can we work in a way where there's more room for roles to change as those needs come up or as someone becomes inspired or as someone's energy sort of leaves them and someone else needs to come in and pick up the slack. And so we really had a chance to practice that during that Whitney project which was we were doing basically four full productions a year one at every solstice and every equinox for four years and doing other shows. Tell us a bit what you did at the Whitney what was your intervention? Oh, well, it was about time and it was about cycles and as I was getting older I was noticing the way that time seemed to move in a coil as opposed to a line the way that we think about it and it had less to do with numbers or dates and more to do with the passing of the seasons and how my memory would hang on to experience and the sort of tone of experience would take on the qualities of a season and thinking about that building because when I first conceived that project they were just building the building wasn't open yet. The new downtown Whitney. Yeah, and so talking with Jay Sanders who was the performance curator when it first started about how to sort of bring that consciousness into a place that's in the middle of like an urban environment and what can we observe about the universe from that place and the interactions of beauty that are natural and if you're like in the city like you said in the opening it's a beautiful day in the city right now and it's like, oh, well, what is beautiful about it? I know here there's a beautiful breeze right now and the way that the trees are blowing it's making this beautiful sound it's like kind of a whispering and there's like a dappled sunlight and it's not too hot, it's not too cold it's like just like the perfect temperature and how all of those qualities sort of blend together and make a very, if we're paying attention a really meaningful moment and then looking at the calendar if I am gonna look at the calendar on Sunday I think it's Sunday we have the summer solstice so it's the season is about to change and how many seasons and where is the moon? What are the movements of the moon? And like how deeply can we observe these natural patterns and with how much attention and effort can we observe and honor them? Like what are the ways of honoring them? Cause normally we don't even pay attention so it was really like a tuning in and we would look at the calendar and so sometimes like the solstice or the equinox would happen at five o'clock in the morning and so the museum agreed to open up and open its doors and get security staff there and we blessed them, we did like a whole ceremony for them at the end cause they were showing up at four o'clock if we were doing it at four o'clock and people would set their alarm and show up if they managed to wake up for a ceremony at five 30 in the morning and we would end it at sunrise or we would start it at sunset and end it at midnight or however they just took all of these different forms according to the research, according to all the different astrological aspects that's when I really started working with only. And you were kind of dressed like on a shamanic way and part of your company you had that special clothes on you had a big following, more and more people would come after each event and it became a ritual, yeah. I should say that it was really goofy also what we did and sort of like, you know, it's a really fancy building it's a fancy part of town now, you know like if you, like I would go into that building and just feel like I don't like, I'm gonna get everything dirty if I walk in here like why are that I can't even believe I'm being allowed in this like beautiful shining building and so part of our, part of our goal was to change the energy up, you know and to make it less serious and less imposing and make it a little more like redneck a little bit like that's what I kept saying and so I worked with Suzanne Bochenegra who's an incredible visual artist who also makes performance and I'd worked with her for our inaugural production of Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag and also for each Curbis Geist which was the piece that Big Dance did and also Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis did that piece I'm so happy that they did it as well and so she made these costumes that were really not thinking in a costume in like a theatrical way at all it was like how much can we pile on this and she thinks very associatively and she, talk about a mad scientist I think Suzanne is definitely a mad scientist and she would just bring whatever she had and her huge pile in her studio you know and she would have these miraculous like oh I have five wetsuits, you know these neoprene wetsuits I have these weird coral uniforms that I got at a garage sale from an opera company or you know something and then she would make little decorations and so little emblematic elements that seemed to stand for something but we didn't know what and so we really practiced that where there was a working and very specific symbology that was ridiculous and very stupid and it's what kind of what Philip Glass said once about music, he said I don't know what it means but it's meaningful, you know so and I think that was also the case there and you're also in a way in your playful way but also serious way, you know questions we do wrestle with you know with climate change that our connection to nature really and to our lives, you know the cycles we go through something has been lost and this is something we everybody talked also about in this time of the artist they are very much concerned it's also Bruno Latour and Frédéric Aetui in different ways, you know who say we have to find a way for ourselves as artists but also for audiences and for theatre as a symbolic, imaginary but real space to point to what's missing and I think so many people experience now cooking or gardening plan so this is a moment of change I think you were in the way of the avant-garde pointing to that you were a step ahead avant-garde, you know one, the ones who get shot first in a way if you are that this is a military term so you are right even the avant-garde in theatre is a Roman Empire military term and yeah, but how do you think about writing now as many say now it was a time of writing Curbis Geist you invented that fantastic language you know I always felt your work was resisting the commercial theatre but also what's resisting the kind of downtown theatre was the kind of easy, you know frat company like you know let's all just do something and it will be great you had a resistance it was not easy you intentionally made it a complex mysterious so you wrote I remember that was so beautiful that great performance you know that new language that was used then by the actor so what happened it was about language in that time do you think about it next to all the visual and performance work you do now and the rituals yeah yeah I think I think it's changing a little bit I'm thinking about the written word as not taking like is it time for it to take less priority or connect it more to the body or to the land and landscape which I think that's what I was doing in Curbis Geist I was on tour a lot as a performer and we were going to all these different countries where they spoke other languages than English and so I really loved learning a little bit of each language and sort of tracing the way that it revealed like the structure of a language reveals the thought structures of the people who are speaking it also and even when we learn another language we go back and forth there's a different mode of thought that we take on and our thought structures are different and that happens for me also if I change landscape and I do really believe strongly that language is connected to landscape and ways of speaking, dialects even of English and the United States change as we move through the United States and as the land forms change and as relationship to land changes and so that piece was sort of an observation of that phenomenon I guess that I feel like is maybe also in danger of getting lost as things become more homogenized. I just drove from Newburgh down to Florida to the Atlantic Center for the Arts where I was with Suzanne actually Suzanne and I were doing it was sort of a combination of a residency and a mentoring gig and so first of all it was great to get out of the house and go on a road trip I hadn't been on one for a long time and I used to drive back and forth from Austin a lot too and observing the way the land is so different as we drive someplace else but it's also becoming so homogenized like there's always gonna be a BJs and a Sam's Club and a Senoko station and everything the architecture is starting to look all alike and all of these mazes of parking lots that are being put up and what is still here to distinguish this place from the other places and the ways and I find that it almost always connects to verbal expression the way that people are talking and using language and the way that people are thinking it's for me it's intimately connected and so what does that mean if we are foregoing diversity of language if we are foregoing the diversity of the expression of the land and if we're not honoring diversity of species or of ethnicity or of race anymore and now we as a human species we're in big trouble and how do we get out of this and I kind of feel like one of the ways for me because I'm like, I don't know what I can do but is to use my imagination and use my intuition as a way of learning and not just looking at human linear human logic and or the structures that we've inherited from just like one or two generations before like how can we go back even farther to people whose names we don't remember anymore to people before the Roman Empire and like how do I connect with those people and those languages and those modes of thinking and those ideas of the sacred in a way that can exist right now in this moment that we're in so I don't know it's like a constant questioning it's a constant state of not knowing and so even as a teacher I'm always saying like please don't listen to me because I don't know what I'm talking about but I'm exploring and so if you are interested in exploring then we'll just work from there but always we're trying to work from a place of not knowing and but associating and sort of trying to put things together in a way that doesn't always make sense at first and maybe the sense of it arrives makes itself known later. Tell me a bit more I mean I could sense when you said the time black life mattered in the time of Kona and then things have changed from me deeply talk a bit about that moment or what has changed what is different what will you do differently? Let's say everything will work out and they say what's different? Yeah I think questioning language or the question you've written word anyway is part of that and also questioning power like what you were saying before the first in the firing line or whatever and I do I'm always like playing this persecution card a little bit with myself and I love to like sometimes especially when I'm tired I feel sorry for myself that I'm not having commercial success like well you're not playing by the rules so you can or whatever I can get into the starving artist mode of thinking feeling powerless feeling like I'm always scrambling and always the underdog and so for me when the black lives matter uprising happen and I've talked to a lot of other white people that this happened to it was like suddenly more visible how much power I actually have that I haven't been even cognizant of and so that's a big change you know saying well I you know there's nothing I can do I have nothing to do that it's not my fault and yet I'm participating in these systems that yeah they were handed down to me but each generation has a chance to change it and so I think the shift was really internal and it was just about it is just about perspective that it's like oh I you know it's I don't always have money for the groceries that I want but I do manage to come up like I'm not starving and so there's a big difference between that and what a lot of people have been going through during this time and so really acknowledging that and letting go of this poverty mentality of like the starving artist which is I don't think it's true it became quite apparent to me that it's not true it's a story I've been telling myself and it has to do with like comparing myself for my situation to stuff that doesn't have anything that doesn't have anything to do with me and so I do have space to make room for others and to share I do have enough to share and before that I was really like in this place of like always clenching and clutching and fighting and I wasn't even like aware of it and actually and the only time where I feel like there's a flow is when I get into creative flow but I started to realize the flow the creative flow is through our whole lives it's through our whole existence it's like where do I get gas where do I grocery shop what do I choose to get at the grocery store how do I choose to participate in the systems and so it's really just a change of perspective as far as what I'm gonna do I don't know I'm just continuing to make work and to keep that perspective in my consciousness as much as possible and to look for the ways where something is coming into my awareness that hasn't been in my awareness as of yet or hasn't been a part of my direct experience so that I'm actually whatever I'm doing is in response it just as long as I can keep it there and keep the open question and the quality of not really knowing or understanding what I'm doing or what's going on and yet continuing to be responsible in that I'm responding directly to it and donating like realizing hey I do have 25 extra bucks I could donate to this cause to these people who are out in the streets or to say what I can go to that protest I do have time to go there and so yeah for me it was just this new awareness and like a rejection of an old narrative that if it was ever true it's not true to me anymore. Yeah I know really thank you for sharing. Do you see yourself as a New York artist? Is that now you move there or how do you define yourself now and being out there? I don't know I'm trying to figure that out and I'm also not trying to figure it out I'm just like making with what I have and I'm noticing that a lot of the artists that I work with are also not in New York City. You know I just made a piece with people who are all I'm working with people who are all over the country who are overseas and the composer Paul Castles that I'm working with is in Sydney Australia. So we're you know we're we're just we're like a crisp a crepuscular collaboration. We speak early in the morning or late at night it's always one or the other for one of us and yeah I mean I I'm sorry that I left New York but I'm also not I couldn't keep it going I couldn't I the quality of life was getting to be I just felt too pinched like it was too much for my nervous system what I had to do to just get like basic stuff done to get from point A to point B became really harder and harder and to be in connection with nature. I think you still can in New York I don't think it's impossible but I have noticed like when I have a meeting and I say why don't you get on the Metro North and come up here and we'll have the meeting. It's like such a relief for people and so when I see that I know that the move I've made is the right move physically and that I do still that still is my community. I still really feel a part of that community and that community is spreading out more I think. And also I was like really in disaster mode at the beginning like last March I thought well it's all going down like next thing that's gonna go down is the internet and so which didn't it hasn't happened and we really have made the most of it I think in this last year of this internet thing that we have invented in our human wailiness but I was looking around like who are my neighbors? Like if it does go down I know that I'm still gonna be making theater like I've probably never I've been doing it since I was like a little kid I probably not ever stopped doing it but like who's gonna be my audience then it's gonna change, you know there's people with a Trump flag living down the road from me at the time when I'm sleeping on the Kezco and they're gonna be in my audience and those folks aren't gonna be in my audience most likely at the Segal Center and there's all different kinds of people all over the place if we're talking about localizing and so that could still happen that could still change and so then it's like how do we adjust our work to like include whoever is around in the community? So I don't know I'm really I do feel I've always been like really suspicious of the internet and I still feel that way but I feel like there's been a lot of opportunity this year through the internet through having that and also through teaching which has become really, really important to me this year I teach at Sarah Lawrence College and I also teach through my company I do mentoring and creative like consultation through my company and sort of helping if I can people to feel liberated creatively like this is a time where we can be making stuff nothing matters, all bets are off like what can we manage to accomplish in this time? What have we always long to do? And for me it's like visual stuff drawing and sewing and collaging I love to do that stuff and there's never any time or there hasn't been I thought well now's the time for me to explore that and try something that I'm not good at but to bring it into my work anyway even though I'm not good at it and because it seemed to become about something else other than being like a gladiator I'm sorry I keep bringing the Roman Empire on the train It's on your mind and certainly these are times of also an empire falling and what makes an empire and what about the destruction it's on all of our minds I remember you once said that when you were a kid you already forced people to your family sit down I'm gonna show you something you know that you did all that and you just said that too and so why do you instead of being a journalist or being a school teacher or whatever you could have done with your brilliant mind at work in science why do you do art? What do you believe in? Why is that important? I think that things are not as simple as like when I read the news I'm like it's not that simple any news story that I read it's rare for me to read a news story where I'm like oh I feel like all the perspectives are represented here you know so and like what's the perspective of the unknown what's the perspective of the inanimate like how do we get to that and how do we like what's the way that we can speak about reality that contains all the layers of reality even the ones that we don't know or understand and I feel like to be a journalist or an academician you've got to be able to wield a certain degree of expertise even to be a theater artist in a lot of places like you better know what you're talking about and I just don't feel qualified to like take that stance and and I think things are really complicated and there's so much more complicated and to wrestle with reality like what are the jobs where we get to acknowledge really how complicated things are and to continue to question and to not know what we're talking about and so this is the way that I found it and it's like for me I think it's that okay I'm gonna put on a show whatever that impulse was as a child it was for me about changing the changing the atmosphere in the room to a place where it just sort of opened things up because it always seemed like there was stuff going on that people weren't talking about like there was always stuff in the air that the adults weren't acknowledging at least to me and or they would beat around the bush they didn't want to say things directly and so it was just sort of a way to open up a like like set up a table for communication with like what's not being talked about what are we not paying attention to what's the stuff if we're looking at it we're not supposed to be looking at it and what are like where is the mind going what are we not acknowledging what are we thinking about but not acknowledging and I was always questioning reality there always seemed to be these sort of tears in reality when I was a kid that nobody was talking about the indiscrepancies and inconsistencies and that sort of made up the situation that I was always in and so there was something about performing that I don't know it sort of lightened things up or it made it possible for all of that to exist for there to be uncertainty for that to be celebrated and and yeah I guess just celebrate it so yeah I just never I never stopped doing it it's like a way for me to relate to the world that I can't find otherwise it's really hard for me to even talking like this is you know if you were a stranger if I didn't already know you and have a bunch of conversations in our history it would be really hard for me to talk like this you know but it's easy for me to like put on a wig and get a microphone and like watch this you know here's here's how I feel about whatever whatever the situation is like that's and it's irrational it's not rational it's not science you know there's no method to it it's not Stanislavski or at least not the early Stanislavski you know it doesn't it doesn't add up it's not a plus b equals c and for me like I was always really bad at the arithmetic of math because it just it's like that's it's not that simple you know I remember like reading I think Carl Jung saying like he had so much trouble with algebra because he would be like but yx like why are you choosing x to represent that number and they're like well it doesn't matter it could be any number but it's not it's x why is it x and I feel like I am totally stuck there still uh question yx ya why is it you know why is it and then you make yeah sync and then this idea of synchronicity all of a sudden you look at something and then things connect you know he says I'm writing about synchronicity and I'm writing about fish all of a sudden I see a dead fish someone is called Dr. Fish whatever you make connection create a universe and this was also his belief is since you are now looking at astrology is that mankind came up with belief systems whether they are the great gods in our head there's a Zeus and there's a palace Athena and we all have to honor them you don't honor one of them you open trouble also as a person you know and and he said you're in astrology or the tarot cards you know they offer the system to relate and and perhaps that's also in a way what you do and patterns you know what are the patterns what are the you know what are the patterns right now what could I be reading of reality like it doesn't have to be tarot cards it doesn't have to be the the constellations even though that's a great way to you know I mean animals I was met this biologist a couple years ago and he was he was studying dung beetles and he was like they migrate according to the constellations it's like what and I was also just reading an article earlier this morning about spiders and that they they don't just think in a brain they the their webs are their thoughts and it's like how are we not how are we just using like human linear logic when there's so much else available to us there's so many different patterns and yes synchronous I work with synchronicity all the time you know it makes it makes the world so much more meaningful and I feel like the arts are one of the only places in our culture where we have the opportunity to build a framework to contain all of that stuff and to express all that stuff and to work with the images that come into our minds for reasons that we don't you know we're so oh well that's just your imagination we dismiss the imagination but in my experience I've come to learn that the human imagination is really powerful and that one of the reasons why we're in so much trouble is that we don't acknowledge it's power enough and that we don't have a framework for the activities of our imagination of our consciousness to connect with the world around us that we have this like Cartesian separation and I if we don't let go of that soon I think it's going to be I really think it's going to be over for us so I'm just you know trying to stay true to that from whatever my position happens to be that I'm learning all anew over and over again each day to stay connected with what is my what is my imagination presenting to me today and how can I sort of pay homage to it yeah and in a way as you say to stay in between it's going to be over and but you say no I'm going to do something against against that what did you say about what you read this morning so what inspired you what were you listening to or seeing or reading in that time what what kept your motor running um it was really interesting it was a lot for me about relationship to other people which I think that was part of what I was talking about before about getting enough solitude allowed me to connect with the people in my life more and it was like this weird contradiction but like the people in my company and making work with them and just feeling the the sort of amoebic solidarity of that of that group and the amazing moment of like having a Zoom rehearsal and saying oh we got it you know the same old thing how are we going to get this then how are we going to get this then having everybody say oh I have time I have time to do that this is at the beginning because then there was a time where everybody got really busy and so yeah connecting with the people that I work with and love it's emotional but um yeah I felt like before this I didn't know what love was but it I know now and it's it's what's um motivating me and so that's that's a huge change I mean maybe that was true before but I wasn't um I wasn't paying attention enough and so um I remember having like a rehearsal and and we have all these habits where we're like I'm sorry I'm late or I'll get that to you as soon as I can you know there's always we're always like in this emergency mode making theater and I said you know what like everything's crumbling there's no more success to chase there's no more institutional approval to have to be competing for it's over at least you know for the moment this is for us so we have to make this piece we have to get out of it what we want and help one another you know to to achieve that and so if we have to let go of ideas of excellence or um you know whatever we're always striving for always seems to be out of reach it's very American very western probably you know this has to be about something else it has to be a healing experience to be making right now um and so whatever however that's going to manifest so we've got to take care of each other we've got to take care of ourselves and it's changed everything about the way that I'm working in the way that I'm communicating with people and even setting up schedules or making budgets or um assuming responsibility for and it's changing all the time it's it's growing and now you know things are starting to open back up and you know we're getting back to normal we're getting back to normal I'm like yeah but what is that now hasn't that changed like aren't we in a different place and you know when are we going to start talking about booster shots aren't we supposed to be getting booster shots soon so uh yeah trying to to go toward this opening back up and in a conscious in a conscious way and yeah we were really lucky like these vaccines came out and in the U.S. anyway like we're we're sitting pretty at the moment but that's a big at the moment for me and uh and what about the rest of the world and what about in the fall and winter and so uh how are we going to continue making work because for me it just is never going to be the same again I hope I hope it'll never be the same again I don't feel like the same person and I I've heard a lot of people saying that also yeah just that is um it is a real moment a time of change and you know one as painful as it is also then for you and what what what what great gift also then to realize something you know speaking about love and that's what ultimately is about something so simple and we know it about we as you said might not might not realize it don't really really thank you for um for um you know for being so honest and and sharing and and reminding us you know what this time can also do and what it could be good for and and that we still in the uncertainty and we do not know many say you know this is a stress rehearsal for catastrophic environmental catastrophes you know that are just around the corner we don't know we should not screw this up we have to take it serious we have to learn we have to change the way we are and artists if we don't do it who else well we as you say we have some power we can you know it was imagination so um that's quite quite very very powerful what what you shared who did you in your way of creating work and making work who did you look up to who influenced you who uh who made you who you are uh uh I really always have to thank Mac Wellman um I don't think that I would have continued uh I his his work always meant so much to me because he was so uh free and he didn't he didn't ask permission he sort of had this um interior permission I don't know where he got it from but he was able to extend that to so many other artists through his through his work and his teaching so he's like from me like number one inspiration uh and I also really always loved uh Jim straws who's no longer with us I always just loved his writing I I had the chance to encounter it pretty early on before I started writing myself I think and um and he just he was just so great so and um Tom Marin also who's also no longer with us um and he's like crazy I remember the first time seeing his performances and and being like what like and people were rolling laughing and I was like what this is crazy what is he he would just make he would make all of these props just to make one simple point like this really elaborate prop and it would all fold up in a sheet at the end and he would he would walk off the stage and um just so ridiculous and so committed um to ridiculousness um and I think also of Lucille Ball I was sort of raised a little bit by like Lucille Ball and Linda Carter as Wonder Woman like those were that sort of thing really I just spent a lot of time with both of them as a kid and just watching how they operated and um and so and then also like as a as a performer working with all the all the different groups over the years um and just being in that community and and being like let's go see what so and so is bringing to the table and and a lot of that was before before the internet I was watching a video of one of my first things that I ever did like not so long ago that I was on VHS that tableau thank god put on that he digitized it for me and I was listening to the audience and how they're really listening and so engaged do you have you noticed this Frank you're nodding and it's so there was a different kind of presence that the audience had before the internet and so just being really inspired by that and and little theater and Dix in place little theater when it's at it's at Dix in place now but it used to be at tonic and it was this great bar and I don't know there just was and everyone lived closer together like people weren't like all the way out on queen somewhere it was easier to sort of gather the people who were working in downtown theater lived downtown like that's why they called it down that's why they were doing stuff there and there were you know all these venues like that place nada the Aaron that guy Aaron had and he he like bought those places with on his credit card you know so it was on the lower east side these places were just so cheap and there's just so much going on and so that energy was always always always really inspiring to me and anytime somebody would get up and just throw down like oh watch this like Judy Elkin her performances were always so mystifying to me and and inspiring like oh you can really just do whatever you want and so that was always like getting getting to getting to the city as as a young person and you know it was like coming into a new frog pond and going around and seeing what was what was going on it was a new universe to explore and Kristin Cosmus is like always so super inspiring to me even just talking with her I used to I lived with her for a little while we were roommates and there were just some of the most inspiring conversations of my life are at that kitchen table and and I'm really inspired by Suzanne Bokenegra's work and a lot of the choreographers and visual artists too I just I find Sarah Mitchelson's work to be really really inspiring and and Kate Volk watching Kate Volk work is just always like such a gift I feel like if I ever have grandchildren I'll tell them I saw Kate Volk perform as many times as I did and and I worked with Mike Iveson a bunch and he just really really always always always inspires me with the way that he looks at the world and I love when he was there there was a period of time it was like a two year or one year span of time maybe six or seven years ago where people started giving him awards like and now you got to make your own shows and he made these two shows and they were wonderful and I hope that he'll he'll start doing that again and and I just I love I love the way he sees things and and how he expresses and what a great appreciator he is and his his formal thought and I have to say Frank I always am inspired at the Siegel Center and anytime I come and see something there I'm always and talking with you and hearing you talk and watching the way that you observe and and and how you're sort of curating and and even like visiting your office and and seeing all the energy there and the way that you work I miss coming over there for you know this reason or that and seeing you know the way things are working over there that really that means a lot to me yeah because it comes from you and I know you you mean that if you could I mean be coming closer to the end you know I tell us a bit what are upcoming projects but also if someone would say let's give that starving artist what she wants what would you do Oh I really yeah I really want to do more site specific stuff like going to the places and like spending time there and making a piece that's based on the place and then performing it at the place like doing a whole process and and being allowed to have it take years for all of the patterns to reveal themselves and all the connections to be made because I'm realizing like it does take years and I've made pieces in the past where they don't mean anything until until later and then I look back and I'm like oh oh of course that's you know and and that's the risk I guess of of like working in an intuitive way and like you know trying to tune in with natural like the natural patterns in our surroundings and in our minds I just I think that would be that would be ideal I love to travel but I'd like to stay in a place or return to a place several times and really get the feel of it and and and say well what's what's here what are all the layers here and sort of responding to that in an irrational way which is a creative way and to make in response to whatever I find there and to you know gather new collaborators and bring in other collaborators and sort of just making like an alchemical creation based on based on all the different places all like the really charged magical places that there are in this world and and going back to add layers into narratives that are ancient narratives but like I always think about Wagner's ring cycle and and I love it and I love those stories and I feel like there's so much more there that he didn't tell I'd love to go back and like get under the hood of that thing and and and bring out some of the more animist world views hidden in that stuff and you know have an opportunity for new collaboration and old collaboration to inform that amazing yeah so if anybody is listening civil comes would do the ring cycle you know Julie came or she was asked as a you know downtown Papati a theater maker and she came up with the Lion King and and so I would be interesting to see you know how how you would wrestle with that and I think it would be interesting and significant and important so yeah so that's a big thing to to look forward to but maybe you will also find a simple campsan way of staging the cycle it certainly would you know get the attention it deserves listen it was a fantastic thanks to have you and thank you really for taking this so serious and for really sharing you know and what you felt and what you experienced you know it I think it was it came through with as as as real and true and you really went through something I wish we all can could say that what do you say you know that we discovered what love is do you said you know that the company you work with comes first that is about exploring that there's no longer about success in institutions and and and that the community matters and the places we haven't visited and also to stay in places and not do the kind of ghetto tourism visits of theater companies you play go away and right so or to return yeah we turn to that so it's a lot of what you have done always before you know already what's what people talking about now what should be done and so you really are guiding light also in this fog in a way which we are thrilled still going through so really really really thank you for sharing and I know that they had to do a little I'm twisting you didn't want to do it but I said you know it is important I think it proved that it really is and it was a so the signaling a bit through the flames from the trenches where you are in and I think this is quite quite and important and significant you know statements you made and very very meaningful as you said also for students of people who who are starting in that sphere to say this is something you know that's then that's real and I was a great privilege to have you with us well you think I'll come up and visit you soon and come up friend yeah so I can also see the movements of the leaves and maybe watch one leaf coming to the ground okay one get on that train good and all new yorkers who know said we'll go up and visit her so next week we're going to continue it will be the last week you know off seat or talks focusing on corona in some way I think we will rethink it but we are coming a tour close we're going to have Bettina Wagner Birgelt from the great peanut bouch company she runs the company and she will tell what it means you know to go on after also the passing of a peanut it's peanut bouch you know it was a big absence a big loss reinventing and then the forced stop and where's the company going and also connected to a foundation it's the peanut bone foundation so where are they going what does that all mean she was such a great artist who inspired them all of us then we have the great Alec Duffy and Brian Rogers will come and talk about jack and about the chocolate factory and chocolate factory is moving Alex moved and will be moving so lots of things are happening I do not know enough about so it will be great to hear from those two great leaders in in our field what we watch at the theater in New York and then we have Francesca Casa de Zeus Calvo from Barcelona from the festival Greg and he will tell us one of the great festivals in Europe it's about to open you know how this situation is in Spain but to his mind how he sees what is of importance and what's necessary and what is the change and what does change mean so thank you all listeners for staying with us and another week and it's important to hear from artists but ultimately it's also you know for your life and in a way what Sebel says you know the connection to nature to moments in time to engage with locations you are in collaborating with the people who are really close to you it's all can be transferred in a symbolic way to our own lives and our lives will be better if we listen to our artists and what she says it's also to be taken serious that she says I as an artist feel it might be the end of things are coming if we don't really change and this is not just something she says casually I think something she really means and many many people do think that and so we cannot just go back to do some entertainment it would be not truthful and would be a treason to the mission of art itself so but the big question is what do we do and I think you have found some answers so thanks you all for listening taking the time thanks for howl around to stick with us again Ciya and Vijay Andy Lerner from the Seel Center and Sebel good luck with everything and you can go back to your med scientists lab where we see some glances there and we can't wait to hear what comes out of there and the ring cycle would be a great thing next to many others okay so you heard it here first okay bye bye bye bye say release thank you thank you