 esteemed co-curators, Mugenie Michali, Mwenya Kabwe, and Jehan Manek Shah. Two in Cape Town, one in Mumbai, one in Hobart Tasmania, and we're sure that you're all over the world, very exciting to have you here. This is a wonderful opportunity for me to introduce Mugenie, whose first session this is as curator, and without further ado, Mugenie, I'm going to hand it over to you. It's a great pleasure. Thank you so much, Amy, and hello everyone. I'd love you to see so many familiar faces in the room and people who've come back in from previous conversations. Yeah, and this is my first curated session, and I'm very excited to be joined by my co-curator, Mwenya Kabwe, with whom I work in Cape Town, who is going to be riding shotgun with me on this particular session. But more importantly, our interlocutors for today, Tony Miambo and Pala O'Pala. I'm going to hand over to Tony and Pala to introduce themselves before I get the conversation going with our first question. Tony, if you want to tell us a little about yourself, please. Hi, my name is Tony Miambo. I am an actor, producer, semi-director when I get the opportunity, and quite recently, more of a writer. I'm the performer and co-producer of the play Kafka's Ape, alongside Pala O'Pala, and I am based in trying to speak. Thank you, Tony. Pala? Good morning, good evening. I don't know, you know, where in the world other people are. It could be, you know, different times. My name is Pala O'Pala, and I'm a storyteller, and I'm the animator at the Center for the Less Good Idea. And what do I also do, you know, everything in between, you know, storing and, you know, and I've directed and adapted the play, which is the subject matter of today, Kafka's Ape. Yeah, I think that's, that's, you know, about it. Yeah, if there's anything more you want to know, please, in the chat, I can answer. I have to mention this, I'm sorry, I'm also an artist in residence at the University of the Western Cape. I just need to protect my funding. Great, thank you to both of you. So I'm assuming that if you are in this room already, you have a pretty good idea of what today's discussion is going to be about. But just in case you don't, we're going to be talking about the production and circulation of live performance under the structures of COVID-19, and we'll be using the adaptation of Franz Kafka's of what's a report in Academy produced by Pala and Tony as our kind of linchpin to think about this question of what it means to produce live performance digitally or to adapt it digitally for for presentation during the pandemic. And I guess the key questions we want to kind of think about is what effects this might have on a form whose rhetorical effects often rely on the transparency of the body's performance labor, its materiality, its context, and its liveness. Because this show in particular is so much about the physical presence of the performer on stage giving body to what is ultimately a literary text. And I think this raises interesting questions there about about the kind of effects on on the performance itself when we suddenly don't have that immediacy of a live encounter. And that's where our question is going to be circling around is thinking about theater making, the opportunities and perhaps limitations of re-imagining a live form for kind of a digitally distanced presentation. So I guess a good place to begin Tony, and I'm going to throw it back to you here, is to begin by thinking a little more about what it is you perceive that people took from Kafka's 8th and why this particular play at this time. I mean, just to forget an adaptation of a very old literary text, you know, an emphatically European one at that. But this adaptation has been taken up globally in really exciting ways and really diverse phases. So I'm interested first in thinking a little more about what it is that you think drew people to Kafka's 8th and what kind of maintained, you know, kind of global fascination with this particular adaptive performance. Well, I mean, in order to answer that question, I think we need to be quite open about the fact that for the first few years of the play's life, people didn't take to it. It was in all intensive purposes, you know, a failure. We mounted the work first towards Pala's master's at Witt's University. Obviously, there was a motivated audience to come see the show in that the show was free and the show was basically a student work that was open to other students. And so we had an audience at that point. And then we were, our next opportunity, we were chosen to be part of the Schools Festival at the National Arts Festival. And even then there's a measure of a kind of a guaranteed audience in the fact that there'll be people that come to, from other universities that come to see the work and, you know, people that come to grade the work in particular way because the student fest is in competition, you know, at which point we decided to take the project on in our personal capacity. And that's when the real world reality kind of hit us in that in Joe Berg, there was not a good following in terms of the audiences that we were able to generate, partly because at around the same time there was another version produced at the State Theatre, which didn't really do so well. So, and with a prominent actor, and I felt like people at that point felt like, if this prominent actor can't do this text justice, then who is this little thin scrawny boy that's attempting to do this text? We then took the work to Graham Sound for a number of years. And again, very difficult to get audiences in. A lot of canceled shows, a lot of disappointment. And Paula and I to come back and go and really ask ourselves a difficult question around, is this a project we feel needs to carry on? Do we have the capacity between us to keep trying to make the project work? This was in 2014 that we had a difficult conversation. And our agreement at that point was that we would give it one more year, one more try to see if we could do anything. And then we went, we changed the name of the play. Because at that point, when you go to Graham's Town, if you are, if your play goes to Graham's Town for a number of years, then it stops being in competition in terms of the fringe, what the fringe can award, because then it's kind of seen as a legacy project that never worked out in Graham's Town. So we changed the name, we changed a few of the things in the play. And then we went back in 2015. And again, audiences went great. But for some reason that you're, somebody recognized the play and we won a Silvervation Award, we won a prize to go perform in Amsterdam. And I think that's really kind of when the swing for the life of the play took another turn. Because at that point, opportunities then opened up in ways that we'd never imagined before. So I think it's at that point that Pala and I also realized that part of the problem is was in our limited, in the limited ways in which we thought of staging the work and where it was possible to stage the work. And so the, the economics of it came into play when one started to realize that the amount of money we spent trying to get to Graham's Town, trying to mount the performance in Norbert is comparably almost the same in terms of other opportunities that we could pursue outside in the world. So we then put a list together, what we call our hit list of festivals, of spaces, of places that we thought we need to go. All of a sudden we had, we found, we built relationships in Cape Town that allowed us to go stage a performance there. There the show was very well received. It sold out. It got other opportunities, like the opportunity to go perform in Chicago. So the model of the show has been partly what we're able to produce in our personal capacities and partly been invited into, into spaces that have the kind of resources that we don't. But what we also do when we are invited into a space for example, when we were in, when we, when we went to Prague, which was a partly funded a trip, Paula and I then said, you know, in order to get to Prague, the flight connects through Dubai. What is, what is in Dubai? And so we reached out to over 40 performance spaces in Dubai. And one happened to us and that was the junction theater. I think I'm gonna shift because I think I'm listening people. Okay. Hello. We can hear you. Is it me? Tony, you're fine. Okay. And I think Paula was fine too, but we'll, we'll get him back. Yeah. But also a bit long winded more, but it's, it's been a mixed model. And I think what people, I'm, I'm, I'm still to find, I know people appreciate the quality of the performance. They appreciate the simplicity and the messaging behind the performance. I'm not quite sure why it's kept on having the kind of life that it has. But I think part of it has to do with kind of this mixed model and the resilience that we've built into the show. And also the simplicity of, of in the way that we've packaged the show that's allowed it to be an easy show to pack up and move around the show quite literally fits into two bags and can go anywhere in the world. And I've also had to learn the skill set of the director of the technician. So I travel alone everywhere I go in the world, I move the show in, I plot it, I perform it. That's been one of the things that's made the, made it possible for us to fund the show in a way that's simple to take around the world. And I think the more eyes that, that, that are, that the more, the more people see the show, the more opportunities the show gets. And, and, and not relying on mainstream funding is freed us from chasing the conventional tour circuits or the conventional tour headspace that could be limited and cause the death of the show a long time ago, if that was the case. Great. Thank you, Tony. Oh, Palace back with us. Great. So it seems that there's, there's something vital in terms of what you learned from the initial, I guess, lack of success of the show with a couple of years that you kind of twisted in the wind with it, that you've managed to take forward in order to make this work successful and to kind of circulate globally right among global audience. And that seems to be related to how you, and part of both position, position yourselves as independent producers or freelancers who aren't quite sitting within the kind of traditional frameworks of either the receiving houses where you would have gotten space or are fighting for space, competing for space for here, or the festival circuit. And I think that there's, there's, there's a lot of kind of potential insights there that will help us think through a little more carefully how to respond to this moment when receiving houses and festivals and so forth have had to completely radically reimagine what the, the practice of, of staging theater looks like. So I wondered if we could lean a little more into that idea of, of what the, the independent space allows us to be getting imagining. That's different to these histories that we've come from of, of relying on formal theater spaces and of relying on the kind of normal, often gatecapped, right, points of access to these spaces that, that in other instances would have given this work a kind of life that you had to achieve for yourself, right. Paula, do you want to take this or should I go? Is he there? Yes, I'm here. I seem to be experiencing a little bit of, you know, internet issue. So I had to move from the office to the theater. So I'm standing behind the tree. I mean, the tree's behind me here. Yeah. In the theater. So I missed, you know, part of, you know, what Tony was, was saying while, while I was switching. But I mean, for me, the thing that, that was important to know and understand is the, the kind of paradigm shift that we needed to engage in. And that paradigm shift was, was also based on the fact that, you know, the realization that we are dealing with an adaptation and, and dealing with this adaptation forces us also to adapt. You know, we need to, to also understand that, you know, there's an adaptation that we need to do. One of the reasons why, and, you know, we changed the title outside of, you know, the reasons that Tony gave. We realized that, you know, naming it the way that we named was long, was not catchy, you know, marketing wise. It wasn't revealing that it's, you know, Kafka related work. There was all those kinds of things that we were losing in, you know, Kafka enthusiasts and stuff. So we decided, you know, to, to find a way in which we can recapture that audience, you know, and, and find a new imagination to it. So the thought process of the model that we, we're talking about was, you know, what I would, I would refer to, you know, as the collapse of, you know, the, the mainstream thought or the mainstream fallacy that we had as students, you know, that, you know, the only way to make work is when the theaters call on you and to stage, you know, the work. That's when you have arrived. That's when, you know, you can be known and all those, you know, stuff. So we needed to, to, you know, I think the harsh realities of what we thought the, the so-called industry is, is like, you know, we, we thought about it in a very, you know, formal transactional way in the sense that there's somebody who needs to call you, you know, to do something. And, and the moment we realized that we needed the call is upon ourselves and that the industry is not elsewhere, but within ourselves that we are part of the industry and that the agency of industrialization anyway is the people and their needs and the demands and, and that, and that's when the shift started, you know, happening. Of course, the, you know, we can't, you know, lie and say there hasn't been opportunities that have been, you know, presented by, you know, for example, the Gramstown Festival in that kind of way, but it came also at a cost, you know, of us, you know, you pay to be in the, in the festival, you pay your own accommodation, you do that. So we realized that we are actually, you know, independently producing this show without, you know, even us having a budget for it. So now we started to say, no, no, no, no, we need to think about it. You know, so we are producers here. Oh, okay. So we're not just the director, the actor, we are now, you know, the producers of the work. So we needed to think like producers. So what do producers do? They look for opportunities. What do producers do? They look for money, they look for budget, you know, they spend, you know, a time cracking their heads around what this thing is. And because we believed in the, in the product and those who have watched it also believed in it, we are like, okay, we've got a good product to sell. How do we sell this product, you know, product? And the moment we started traveling, a show would normally require, you know, a properly funded show will require that, you know, an actor, a stage manager, and director sometimes to travel with the show. But from early on, we knew that it would be difficult to, to do, you know, all that full travel on, you know, self-producing budget. So one of the things that we started doing was, how do we cut down costs? Paralyze is not going to travel with the show. But what do I do as the director? Because what happened is that we knew that stage management was going to be an issue as well. So I was the lighting designer for the show. I was the director for the show. I was a stage manager for the show, you know, and the designer for the show. So I took on all these roles. And then after, you know, doing it, I used to say to Tony, there's a cost advert that Tony didn't do, you know, he didn't pay his due diligence in crewing. Because he was staying in Tambisa, he didn't crew. So a lot of things I had to now do them myself. No, Tony, this is not how you hold a paintbrush. This is what you do. This is, you know, so there was a lot of teaching that you need to go in there. And then that meant me designing, you know, the lighting and the lighting plan so that it is easier to send, you know, to the theaters that we are performing in. You know, I have a little bit of graphic design. It is not the lighting plan that, you know, that is quite elaborate, made on AutoCAD and other things that, you know, lighting designers do. No, it is a basic, you know, plan. The light goes here, you know, and then the other ones we need special here. It's a basic drawing, you know, but it's understood, you know, our lighting technician here at the center was showing me how best to improve that because I always use it. I said, this is the master plan. You can't beat this. It has worked everywhere in the world, you know. So now what we started doing is that it was also a transference of responsibility. The things that I, so Tony had to be an actor and a lighting plotter of the show at the same time. He had to be his own stage manager when it is required. Why? Because we're saving on travel costs. We're saving on accommodation on food in order for us to make this thing happen. So there are a number of things that we need to think like business people, you know, think about what this product is and how we want, you know, and what kind of profiteering, you know, making profit can we do. So we created a little bit of our stock exchange, you know, between Tony and I and say this is how, you know, the dividends are going. Tony becomes the financial manager of the show. I was the financial manager at the beginning. Now Tony is the financial manager. Why is he the financial manager? He's the one traveling with the show. I don't, he doesn't need to call me and say this is the money that we need to do. He needs to make decisions on the spot about the kind of costs that are related to the show. So I can't be in South Africa and be a holder of finances, you know, and create a bureaucratic system within this value system. And that's how it goes about, you know. So, and some of the negotiations of the, and how we go about it is that we don't have a hierarchy because we also learned that hierarchy kills things, you know, you have to take decisions, you have to sit and take decisions. So if Tony meets somebody who wants the production, Tony negotiates. If Paula meets somebody who wants the, Paula negotiates. It's as simple as that. So to kill that hierarchy also was a way of, you know, thinking about this model that works for us. And at the core of this model is trusting. It's trusting that, you know, the other person is equally invested as you, you are equal partners in this thing. And that's how it has then, you know, moved. And that's how we had, you know, adapted. I mean, one of the things that I like about adaptation and I've learned from this production is that, you know, adaptation is simply if one was to define it in their own words, a process of making, you know, something for a new use or for, you know, a new purpose or modifying something. Yeah. So that kind of modification. Sorry. So I just wanted to lean into that idea a little more if you, if I may. Because that's exactly to exactly the next question I wanted to ask. And I said that Alex Sutton has picked it up in the chat as well. Is this question of the adaptation and the shift, right, that you're pointing out is making this thing fit for a different kind of use, a different kind of audience. So much of what makes this particular production work. And I'm hearing this echoed in Alex's question as well, are the questions of form, right? It's the aesthetic choices that you made, which you've explained, you know, grounded in very pragmatic questions about around finance and about around the ease of travel. But the happy consequence of that in some ways is that it produced something very, very particular that I think had not been experienced in relation to this kind of text in many of the spaces to which you went. So my question, I'm wondering if both you and Tony as the director and as the performer could speak a little more about the form of the work. And as you know, as Alex said, how do you think these specific choices contribute to the initial audience response and how that response then grew? Yeah. Okay. Just in the in the trail of thought that that was in, you know, speaking about, you know, the adaptation and coming to answer, you know, the question is that the kind of adaptation that we had adopted, which was also just in the production itself was about specificity. And, you know, specificity for me is the quality of the belonging or relating, you know, uniquely to a particular subject, you know, so and localizing, you know, the knowledge. So what had happened was that we find ourselves, you know, struggling the economics of the production and the economy of the production. And the reason why I say economics, you know, and the economy, economics is the money, the economy of the production is the minimalistic way in which we needed to do stuff. You know, so we took all the clutter away. You know, as a director, I had to think about, you know, the work, the relationship of the work, where we want the work to go, and the relationship of my directing and how the work influenced my directing, and how my directing influenced the work into the economics of the work. So simply put, what we, we only used what was necessary in the production, all right, a prop, like a head will become four things. Right. It's a fact. Firstly, it's functional, you know, thing. You know, he wears it. That's a functional thing. You know, he holds it to show a symbol of, you know, respect. He throws it to show the emotional value of it. A stick will become a gun, a gunshot. It will become the, you know, the cage. The podium is collapsible. It became, we came from a big podium to a small podium, you know, that is packable in Tony's luggage bag. Hmm. So now we had to think about how is this thing collapsible and buildable in order for, you know, to allow traveling, but also how is it still, you know, relevant to the production without taking away from the production. So a number of props, like even the backdrop itself, we use it, you know, as a backdrop, but we also use the structure and the frame of it, you know, as a way of showing, you know, the kind of the, you know, the violence of institutionalization and all that. So things have been, you know, the triple, four-pole meaning, if we can say. So that's how, you know, the economy of, you know, the work then comes into the adaptation aspect of it. So it requires that Tony and I think differently about the production. We strip it down. We make it simpler. It's travelable. And then from there, on the other side, on the economic side of it is that only what is needed should go, not what is wanted. We may want, I may want to travel, but I cannot travel because of ABCD. So that model became, you know, a thing that is a hybrid, you know, between the product and the application of the product in the market, if one was to use those kind of words. So there was an influence, you know, cross-influence around, you know, how we approach the work. That's why for me it was such a paradigm shift, you know, it was such a collapse of the things that I knew, but it was also a very positive collapse. It wasn't a negative collapse in any way. You know, we paid our dues in terms, I wouldn't have had it any different. The way in which it happened, you know, has shaped, you know, the direction that I am and the the story that I am today. And when it comes to, you know, and those are the things, and then also understanding that your performer is not a somebody who you have cast in a play, they are more than just, you know, a performer. They are a custodian of the performance itself. And that, you know, they've got, you know, a say in how, you know, the performance develops. There's an approximation that is needed there. You know, there's a kind of a thing that is needed. There's a given take that is, you know, one is to understand. And for me, that was key in understanding and it was easier, you know, and perhaps this is a model that cannot be replicated because Tony and I were friends, you know, so maybe it works with friends or maybe it kills friendships we don't know, you know, so, you know, so I'll tell you why he shakes his head is because he has the best of funds. This is what we call friendship texts. And also that's the other thing that I want to speak about, you know, because the other thing is that bureaucracy teaches you that you need to account for every cent as in, in terms of this is where the cent is spent. But what bureaucracy doesn't teach you is that there's also, you know, a kind of this, there's a gain in a looseness of, you know, a budget when there's trust in the fact that the money is being used for the right papers. And also, and also the thing that I wanted to put in there is that which is key is that we have also needed to at times budget for Tony's or allow for Tony's health to be part of this, you know, budget so that it does not set outside of the performance. When it's not feeling well, the production and he's doing the production, the production must be able to pay for Tony's because Tony's not on medical aid, you know, that's what artists are like, we need to find, you know, funds within this, not as part of taking away from his payment, you know, but to say here we are, this is the problem that we are so we are facing. This is how we need to do. And I needed to get out, you know, I mean, I just, you know, a certain point and I needed to get out, you know, to speak about, you know, the model and, you know, the kind of things that adaptation here has taught us, you know, it has taught us to adapt. Tony. Thank you. And again, we'll circle back to the kind of lessons that we learn from adaptation as a form itself. But Tony, I wonder if you could reflect for a little, a little for us on what it was like to be on the inside of this process as a performer, and how, you know, this way of working perhaps challenged you to write a part of spoken beautifully about this relationship between the economics and the aesthetic economy of performance. I'm wondering whether you had to kind of make similar adjustments as a performer imagining how to embody this role, and whether it was a similar case of stripping down or finding different ways of manifesting that layering without the kind of bells and whistles of the, you know, conventional theater theatrical apparatus to kind of carry you through the process. I mean, the very early days when Paula first approached me to do the work, he gave me the text and he said, go read it. I came back. He said, do you think you could do that? I said, not in a million years. There's not a chance I'd be able to do that. And he cast me there on the spot. He says, and that's exactly why I've cast you to do the play. And then rehearsal started the following day when I was sitting at lunch and he gave me an orange. I tried to open it and he said, no, but open it like an ape. So I'll gain then became around food and how to consume food like the animal. At that point, I was going through really tough time at Vitz because I really didn't have the money to be at Vitz. And Paula understood this and he understood how food was important for me at that point, because it's something that I didn't have. And so the early relationship was around nurturing and taking care of me and my body in order to prepare it to the place where it was able to do what it needed to do for the show. So I was very spoiled early up. I was coddled in the early years. I didn't touch a nail or a hammer or anything that could you know, that could damage my hands. I did not touch. And then when we moved into the kind of private producing space, things became progressively more and more difficult because now one not only had to think about the performance and really at that point is when I think I started to understand that just the performance as a professional production, just knowing that the performance is good, isn't good enough. It's also about opportunities that you can create and find and leverage to make sure that what it is that you are building in the performance can be seen by the people who will allow the work to continue to have a further life. And so what became interesting is in this process of adaption, Paula's talked about the things that he took away when he realized that we had to take away the things that we didn't, the things that we wanted in order to preserve the things that we needed. For me, as a performer inside of the piece, that was perpetual loss because I come from a show that had more than I had in this moment now when I'm looking for the thing that used to be around my neck that's no longer there because we no longer, Paula says we no longer needed. It was perpetual loss and perpetual mourning for me because those things are things that as a performer you start to depend on, you start to trust that this is what it is. But Paula on the other hand then started to nourish the emotional aspect of it, which was to say that everything that you do, everything, the capacity that you've been building up as a performer is enough. This thing that you crave that you're constantly reaching for is not what you need to sustain the performance. And so the switch for me as a performer was to then trust the things that I had naturally in me and the things that we had cultivated within our process. But also to understand that the performance doesn't only start when the show starts and the audience is in the auditorium. For me the performance starts from the moment I pack up that 45 kilogram bag and I strap it across my shoulder and I put my toes alongside my set and other weird set pieces that could get me arrested at the airport because people think I'm trying to smuggle some sort of gun or bomb into the country. For me the performance is throughout. I remember the surreal feeling of when we went to perform in New York, people think Broadway, they think lights, they think this is it, you've made it in a particular way. My experience of New York was arriving in a very cold and harsh city and lugging across a 40 kilogram set piece and my own 20 kilogram bag through the New York subway and getting lost for two hours before having to get to the venue, having to put my toes down and quickly head to the Broadway venue that wanted to charge me $300 in order to have me build my set inside the set which I need for the performance on stage and so I had to build my set on the sidewalk of the New York theater and then I had to be reprimanded by police because they didn't understand what I was doing. So by the time you get on stage you're carrying all of that with you and Red Peter is a character that's speaking about how to locate oneself within adversity, within perpetual struggle, how it is that even though when you know that the change that I'm making is not necessarily for the betterment of me, I need to make it because I need to survive. Then when you think about all of these other things that you experience alongside the show, you understand why the show becomes palpable. People, to me, I say to people all the time, you know, I meet young, particularly young, young students that want to do the work and they ask me, what do I need to think about? I said, I can't, I really can't help you think about how you want to make the show because my experience of the show has been a rehearsal that's taken, that's spanned 10 years and that's ebbed and flowed in particular ways. In terms of rehearsal time in a show, you can't beat that, but you need to chart your own way and your own understanding to make it work for you because what Paula and I have done, we've just simply found a way to make it work for us. It wasn't always easy, it wasn't always ideal, but it was necessary. Thank you, Tony. I love this idea that your experience of your own life, of working to stage this show, you talk about this 10-year rehearsal, I would add that perhaps that rehearsal has been a rehearsal you've been in since birth, given the context of the work and what you're bringing to it. And I think Amy asked a really interesting question here or makes an observation and she says that it seems that you're practicing a kind of relational aesthetics in the making of this show where your form and the process of what you're making is also its expression and its effects on the world. And I love this example that you're giving about what happens before you arrive on stage in New York because in such palpable ways, it's almost like a kind of metaphorization as you pointed out of what Red Peter experiences in this sense of both being at the center of the very thing but always held at the peripheries as well. I guess the question that I'm coming to from there is wondering, did you feel that Red Peter was experienced distinctly differently in a place like New York or a Chicago as opposed to Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, global south versus global north? I'm interested in how the different locations perhaps shaped that experience as well. Of course, most definitely. I mean, Red Peter in Chicago as you'd known, Bongani was very confused because here I was on a trip that was fully paid for, the university put me up in a hotel. For all of a sudden unlike them, the usual way in which we produce our own tours is I would arrive the day before then the following day I'm already on stage plotting doing something towards the show. In Chicago, I had three days just to rest and sleep. I was confused. That's the cold. I remember even reaching out to you guys and saying, guys, I'm here. The hotel is nice. It's got a nice bed. Is there anything I should be doing? Because I'm looking at the schedule and there's nothing that I should be doing. That experience is but it's also important because for the first time I sat back and I went and actually it's the moment when Mamella was also there at the same time. She reached out to me. She said, I'm here. I hear you here. I'm going to go to the gym. Do you want to come gym with me? Here I was in a gym in a hotel in Chicago. I'm running alongside Mamella Nyamsa who I've never spoken to in my life. I know this woman is prolific in very particular ways and it just hit me with, yeah, man. I'm important. Yeah. I'm worthy of I can rest. I can be in a nice bed and order room service because I'm worthy. That experience in itself is the other polar opposite of the struggle but still also important. Whereas a trip to Rwanda, for example, which wasn't about money. The tour to Rwanda, there was no money to be had. But Pala and I said, if there's anywhere where it's important for us to go perform the show. It's a festival that's located inside the Rwandan genocide memorial. A festival that's about tolerance and about understanding otherness in very particular ways, which has always been our struggle chasing. So Rwanda for us was a very spiritual journey and going there, sitting in an amphitheater with 400 people and right behind you are the remains of 500,000 people that were slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide. It's a completely different sense and sensibility. In South Africa, Pala and I have worked more and more to make my experience of doing the show comfortable. The older I get, the more he's insisted that we can't. So in places where costs are an issue, we always cost everything. Everything has a cost variation. So even if I, if I'm going to Australia and there's a benefactor that will provide for my meals, those meals, yes, are given to us at no cost, but we still factor in that cost and we're clear around what the saving was at this point, what the sacrifices we have to make at this point. For example, my Australian tour last year was over a six-week period in Perth and in Adelaide. Perth was a different experience because I was living with a very wealthy family that supported me in incredible ways, but I also credited them as part producers of that tour leg, you know, in all of the kind of the media and conversations that I was having, because people also, I want people to understand the value of what they've given to the work. And that doesn't always have to be in money. That can be a meal, that can be a bed to sleep on, that can be a myriad of things. And because of that, because of the way in which we're able to understand and accept value across the world wherever we go, you know, that's produced a model that has become sustainable, but has also provided the seed money to carry on in the work that we need to do, you know. For example, now what's happening at the centre of the less good idea is we had received a standing over invitation in Canada and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Canadians said, look, we wanted to have you, yeah, anyways, we had budgeted for you. Would you mind exploring your show in an online format? Paula and I said, we haven't really been thinking about online digital theatre, but you know, for you, we'd be willing to experiment. So I was laughing yesterday when we're having our talk with them, I said, this performance now at the centre for the less good idea for the University of Toronto is one very expensive experiment. Nobody knew how it would turn out, nobody knew if it would work. But we've built the kind of relationships where people believe in us and makers and they're willing to put in the money to say, we're willing to find out and see where it goes. And from then, at that point, the centre for the less good idea said, well, you're already here. You already moved in the show and set up in very particular ways. Ours is to leverage, you know, the opportunities that we have to create other opportunities. The centre said, stay on for two more performances. Let's open up the opportunity for people to see the show in South Africa here in Joburg, where people have been calling for the show to return. And then at that point, the moment of Kafka season was arranged alongside other smaller works that the centre has been involved in making that are inspired from Kafka's writings. And that's really been, it's been a joy to see how a small idea can flower and create other opportunities in ways that one had never imagined before. And our whole touring cycle has been around that. And in fact, we've just realised that the only continent which we haven't touched with the show is Asia. And there are conversations that are ongoing there because we feel that this is the work that its impulse has always been to be to take it to the people who haven't seen it yet. Somebody asked me yesterday, are you bored of the show? I said, well, how can you be bored when there are seven billion people in the world and you've only had a couple of thousand see the show? The work is not done. We need to take the work elsewhere. And that's kind of my impulse and my energy and drive around what it is that's required to push the work forward. Lovely. Thank you. Paola and Tonya, I mean, so I guess that's as good a place as any to kind of segue to my next question, which is around this current moment that that red Peter and you know, Kafka's eight play itself is going through, which is this transition and experiment, I guess, with the digital format or digital presentation of the show. Could you tell us a little about how that's going, what you're discovering, what you are loving and or hating about that? And how that's that's also maybe shaping how you're thinking about future iterations of the work and its capacity to travel? I mean, the thing about my relationship with the thing called online theater is that there's nothing like online theater as a genre. You can't take a vehicle for the form and, you know, name it as, you know, the thing that makes the theater is that theater has always embraced technology one way or the other. Lighting is technology. The sound, you know, we have always embraced technology. So it's not like, you know, theater abhors technology of used projectors or used all sorts of things in the theater, you know, as an embrace of technology. We have even, you know, the first people to complain about LED lightings were theater people. It's like these things are not working, they're not giving us the quality we want, make it better. And that has improved LED quality. Because the theater people were complaining, this thing is buffering too much, can you give me something cleaner? And now the conversation between that, you see theater influencing technology, you know, in that kind of way, because they get the feedback. The other people in this collage, they don't care about how the lighting, how long it takes, you know, and how it changes color, we are very specific about what we want. And that has helped, you know, those who make, you know, the LEDs to be, you know, to do that. So for me, my approach has always been that the form itself theater can live in any space. We've seen theater going into the gallery. You know, theater can, you know, for me, it is an animate exhibit. If one was to, you know, it's an exhibition that is animated. That's, you know, how I approach, you know, theater is, you know, that's why, you know, you find, you know, it can happen anyway. We have proposed to display in the planetarium, we have proposed to do it in museums, you know, because we don't think of the theater as in the space alone, you know, that it's, you know, this vehicle that we are carrying, you know, needs to adapt. I'll go back to the adaptation, you know, in that kind of way. And then if it fails to adapt in spaces, then it can, it is, then it's meant for one thing. It's not meant for, you know, any other thing, you know, and things that are meant for themselves, they die quite quickly. So now when we are given a space to say experiment with this online thing, we know that the thing that is important there is what the, the opportunity that the internet offers us, the opportunity that, you know, the camera offers us. But the thing that is, that I found quite important in, in this online thing was sound, was very critical because we always think of sound as amplification of things, but sound as a collection of things. It was important for me to breathe, you know, this, the sound designer and say to him, you know, saying I want to hear every breath that Tony breaks, because that is the thing that is going to connect him to the audience. I don't want to hear him in an ambient way. I want people to feel like when he is breathing, they are breathing with him. If you can do that for me, collect sound in that kind of a way, then I am, I'll be, you know, very interested in, because I know how I connect with, you know, performance is that breath for me is one of the key things that, you know, gives you access to emotion, gives you access to the character itself. And for me, I said, well done, when one person in our Tuesday performance said, you know, all the breathing techniques of the actor are so brilliant. I said, yes, you got what I wanted. That's exactly, you know, the thing that I wanted. And then also what we do is to also bring the skills. Tony is a, is also a television actor, you know, he does adverts, he does other things, and he's also done television himself. So he knows how to deal with the camera. He knows where the camera is, you know, so connecting with the camera and making sure that you're looking right into the camera so that the person who's experiencing on the other side, you know, knows that you're looking at them, just like you're looking at the audience or some of these, you know, the skills that we are playing with. And for me, it is an opportunity. I don't think, you know, the digital form collapses the theater. What it does is that we can still find, you know, a relatable connection. Of course, it's not a physical connection. You know, we are not under the pretense that we are creating a physical connection in that kind of way. You know, we know the limitation of what we are dealing with. And if a limitation presented as it would be by a space when you think, you know, you're going to the back study is different kind of stages, you know, the market theater or ever, you know, sometimes the, you know, the Alexandra Bowers always a small space, you know, intimating that kind of where you use it, you know, with what it comes with. You know, so I always say in the, in the words, you know, a space, there's pace, you know, it's space and there's ace. So you need to find the ace of that, you know, space. So whenever we're given, you know, opportunities, that's what we do. What is the gem? What is the thing that we need to learn from this thing? And how can we maximize it? And that is why, you know, as Tony was speaking about also the aspect of core producing and people contributing to the, to the show. That's the kind of specificity that we speak about. It's not only in the, in the aesthetic form, but it's also in knowing that at particular point, you know, in time, there's a localization of things. These are, there are people who are contributing particular ways, you know, to what you were doing. And it's important. It's very important to do that, you know. And also the thing for me is that we, when we, when you think about work in a holistic way, you're using everything that is available to you. You are, you're ever looking for what opportunities are there. For us, it was a, it was a blessing. I mean, Tony kept on saying, dammit, how many, yo, this is scary. We've got so many people. There's a lighting person. There's a sound person. There's, you know, camera people, you know, qualified cinematographers, you know, doing this, all those kinds of things. It's like, what have we done? You know, this is overwhelming. You know, this, this is a one-man show that has got eight, 10 people, you know, attending to it, you know. And the other thing that we have, the opportunity that I think everybody needs to harness is that the online and the distancing that has created, you know, because people crave human connection so much. It has unlocked some money as well. And it has unlocked some money because some people wants to, to be found, to be doing something, or they really are genuinely craving a connection. And also the model that we are seeing now is that here we are, we are supposed to be in Canada. That meant flights, accommodation and food, right? All of a sudden, that travel is not there outside of our fees and that. So now this money can be turned into the money to do an online producing. And what online gives you then is the record. You can record it. It is there. It lives there as a record that you can then begin to see how best do I use this record, you know, as a case study to send to people, sell it as a product, all those kind of things are there. So there's now money that is sitting that was planned for travels that can now be, you know, appropriated for something else. That is ever, you know, the kind of the shifting of the economics that is happening there. So there's an opportunity. The money is being freed. You know, now the, you know, the, the airlines are crying, but we are benefiting, you know, and that's, that's what it is. So, and the hotels are crying, we are benefiting. And that's the, that's the thing that we need to, you know, to, to find and, and influence and really speak about because for me is that all the time, if you're looking for at things from, you know, a point of sameness and not just the point of difference, you'll, you'll reach a common ground. There's a line in, in, in, in the play that says experience is not what happens to someone, but what someone does with what has happened to them. And this has been the kind of the driving force of the production in the sense that all the experiences we want to tend them and, and there's another line that says, you know, you know, the progress is taking the difficult parts past and turning them into glorious moments in the present. And for us, that has been the kind of opportunities that we're embracing. We are living, you know, Kafka in a way because the other thing that I realized quite early is that here, the paradox of this, this production is that here are human beings in academia who have asked this ape to come and present, you know, to them about, you know, the life of apes when it has lived among human beings, you know, for a long time. And the ape then tells them, no, I no longer remember how the life of an ape is because, you know, evolution, it has changed. It is no longer, you know, it doesn't understand how apes live anymore. It understands how human beings live. And for me, I was like, dammit, this Kafka making us realize that knowledge is ever, you know, changing. Knowledge comes from within. Knowledge is shaping itself all the time. Knowledge is not one static thing. And even for us, it cannot be. We need to find a way that all these types of experiences, you know, provides new knowledge for us, just like the ape does. Just like the ape tells its moment of truth, even for us, that's what it should be. And that's the kind of the model, you know, and the collapse, you know, of the mainstream thought and fallacy that has become, you know, the adaptation, the specificity, the approximation, the limitations of what Kafka's ape has become. And Bongani, I think also just to add to what Pahle is saying, I think also there's, you know, there's two things when it comes to embracing kind of the digital and technological opportunities that are present in the way people are making. The one, the one is the reality is that the kind of resources that are required for that kind of inquiry are vast. And so, you know, for people who are trying to create theater in very small and manageable ways, it becomes difficult to, first of all, have the resources to explore in ways that can enable and enhance your work in meaningful ways, you know. But secondly, I experienced, you know, something fantastic at the last National Arts Festival I went to. I went to go watch a program of works under the name Arcade that was staged in Graemstad. And it was incredible to me to see people, the way in which people were interacting and also creating meaning from you know, the use of technology in a way that I identified as a huge gap and as a curiosity in my own making. And so from that experiment coming back into a process now where Pahle and I had an opportunity to make a new work, I said to Pahle, I want to embrace the use of technology in some way. And we started to explore certain things. And at that point, it was nothing just but a desire, you know. But also, you know, I do think that there is a space where we need to sit down and think around how is it that we can find simple and manageable ways to create access to resources that can allow people to explore fully, whether or not the idea works or that inquiry works is another story altogether, you know. And so now coming into a process where there are all of these things at hand, it becomes easier to play in that realm, to play in that world and to embrace the new things that come. For example, the ape has never been miked before, you know. But it's also a weird sensation because the show in itself, the structure of the show doesn't try to conceal anything. Everything is out in the open, you know. And whether, you know, it matters not where the academy is located. Right now, this is a form of an academy that we are engaging in, you know. And so when you understand that, that frees you up to understand how it is that you can play with the separate mediums, with the bodies in space and with the bodies that are out of space, you know. And so that's been a very interesting journey for me as well. And I don't try to, and I think the beautiful thing about working with institutions and people that don't put the pressure on you for kind of the commercial gains is that you're able to explore in ways that are not pressured. Ways that don't attempt to present themselves as perfection. Ways that don't limit you because or cause anxiety because you're trying to make the ultimate perfect thing. You're quite open about the fact that you're exploring and you're somewhere on the spectrum of exploration. Some things may work, some things may not. But that that doesn't become something that's debilitating, that will destroy the basis of that whole inquiry. Yeah. I mean, just to add, lastly, you know, just adding on Tony's just quick, quick and Bongani, is that all the time in whatever that you do, you're trying to create meaning. But the keyword in meaning is mean. And in mathematics, mean means average. Yeah. You know, which means you will never attain perfection as a human being. You'll always, you know, at least, you know, reach the average. And that's that's enough. I really understand. I really enjoy your playful terms of phrase. I think what I find really interesting about what you've both pointed out here is that in many ways, the way I've I've been conceptually approaching this turn towards the digital, right, is that we're attempting to approximate the live experience or attempted to approximate being in an actual theater. And I think the crucial insight here is that actually, it's not so much about approximating an experience that you no longer have access to. It's about leveraging the resources that are in front of you, right, what's within reach to try and experiment and engender new kinds of experiences that may refer back to that other experience, but that are in and of themselves something completely different. And that's super exciting for me to think about, especially when, you know, our tendency has been to throw our hands into the air and panic about what are we going to do about the liveness of theater. The theater, as you say, continues as a vehicle, it finds spaces that adapt, right. I'm looking at the time we have approximately 10 minutes left in the formal discussion. There was a question earlier on that I seem to have skipped past. Jenny Lovell at Melbourne Polytechnic had made a comment about this being a wonderful case study that theater students would hear about, read about and talk about. And I 100% agree, Jenny. I wonder if you have anything to offer. I'm assuming that you're an educator as well, about how you're seeing this particular conversation being leveraged in an educational space and these kinds of lessons and how they might inform a teaching practice. And that's by way of opening this conversation up to the room. Thank you. I made that comment because I teach a one-year course in theater arts, mostly with young people that have just come from a high school environment and wanting to go to a major drama school. Some of them and some of them are just wanting to go out into the world. And my course is designed as a course where they get experience in understanding a bit more about producing, marketing and those sorts of things to become an independent theater maker. But it's just becoming more and more, I'm more and more conscious now and also great conversation last week from Clara about undoing this idea of perfection and allowing ourselves to start to try to really work students' minds about what is success as a performer, what it's not necessarily monetary, it's not I go to Los Angeles and I become a film star. It's what that work, that the work that you do, the way you create, the way you learn, the way you adapt, that you've been talking is what we need to be teaching because the spaces are so vast now. So it's about that kind of plasticity, right? Is that capacity to take the skills and tools that we are already teaching and engaging with within the theater and if I understand you correctly, Jenny, is being able to leverage those in spaces beyond that, right? So it's taking the core fundamental kind of thing that makes the theater work and recognizing its value and taking it seriously. And that you can get excited and inspired with the digital or with a found space or to take theater to wherever you can create it and to start thinking more broadly and not widening the scope of what is possible rather than keeping it narrow. Just quickly in response to what Jenny has just shared and also thank you so much, Paula and Tony. Having seen their work, it's very cool to hear you reflect on its many journeys and it's making me think in relation to teaching that there's also something about the value of the iteration and the value of returning to it over and over again, which we don't necessarily do. We tend to bounce from one project to the next and you've made your production, you're going to move on to the next project and move on to the next project. But so much of the conversation so far has really made me revalue and rethink about returning to things, returning to projects and what it means to embed adaptation into teaching in a different way and the real value of being able to revisit something actually and work on it again in a different context. So I'm appreciating that very much. Thanks. It's not by chance that Paula and I have only made two original works over the last 10 years together. We look at each other all the time and we say, listen, dude, you're great and I'm great. There's some money somewhere. Let's make something, but we look at each other and go, no, let's keep finishing that other thing that we're doing. That's not by chance at all. Sometimes it's also about Paula and I, when we do get back into a room, we also play this game or how are we challenging in each other in this new thing that we're trying to explore. And I really, really appreciate the fact that we've been able to do that. It's a sign of massive respect and love for each other because, you know, we're not drawn to the idea of working together just because we have access to each other, but rather that is the thing that we want to do together, the thing that we need to be doing together. Is it worthwhile now? I remember, I made another one mentioned called the Senator of Danua Muriri and the first thing I did when I got money for that play is I got excited and I went to go talk to Paula and my other friend Dom about it and they both said outright without flinching, no, we will not make this play with you. We know the personal story of you and your father. We do not feel we have the capacity to tell the story with you. You've got money, go out into the world, find somebody that's going to help make this a play. And that's the kind of rapport that we have. And I really appreciate that. And so the return is a wonderful thing to hold on to, but also it's a thing that's negotiated between people who have mutual respect for each other. And the way in which we move forward is always about how is this the next thing that will get us to the next level of where we see ourselves as makers and as people. Thank you, Tony. Before I go to Lesercho, I think Alex Southern has made a really great point in those relations to iteration, right? And that it really is about thinking perhaps about rigor in performance or what rigor in performance practice means. That we need to think about this maybe as a methodology and about how to approach depth in work with students, to which I responded in the chat. It's an excellent question. And especially when we live in a moment where access to time seems to be at an increasing premium. Everything is accelerating and this kind of work seems to me to rely on ignoring the accelerated speed over the world and just being okay with sitting, with dwelling in a moment and kind of finding that space to kind of push against those walls. And it is about suspending that kind of rapid online flow of time in order to just sit with something. Sarko? Mwena stole the words right out of my mouth. Thanks, Mwena. I think what I'm really finding provocative is this idea of mining and idea is what is the exploration date of an idea, right? And I think particularly in a teaching space, which translates into the independent workspace as a young maker, is that you just go from project to project, right? Is that you're going to do an adaptation process in the first semester and then the next thing you're going to move on to directing a classic and then the next thing. But I'm just thinking about what it means for one project to carry through the entire year in different spaces. What if you're directing one show for the entire year but approaching it from the different kind of disciplinary spheres or streams? I think when you're mining, you don't find your first diamond and then move on to the next place. You mine and extract and extract and extract and extract until the land is barren and then you move on to the next spot. So what might that look like in teaching processes? I also think that this idea of extracting to the fullest, like taking everything out of a thing is quite evident in the approach to form in the making of the work, in the way the work is presented as well. The way the different elements of the work are used in so many different ways. I mean one of my students is in the room right now and they're currently doing an adaptation process as well and he has the single set piece. But that set piece does absolutely everything. It is a backpack in one moment, it is a bed in another, it is, you know, and he's extracted absolutely every ounce of use from the single set piece. Freddie, go watch Kafka's Ape Again inspiration. Yeah, I think it's about really extracting things to the fullest and I mean there are economic challenges because you must go forth and make the next work. But I think it's interesting to think about just iterations of the work and taking absolutely everything there is out of it. Like making Tony set designer, lighting designer, you know, because he has the capacity for all of that. And what does that mean for the future of the director-actor relationship in general? What does it mean for the actor to be more than the actor and the director to be less than everything? Yeah. Lester, thank you so much for that thought. Colleagues, friends, it is now a quarter past the hour, which is where the official program ends. But as is the habit with these sessions, we do continue having a lobby chat afterwards. So if you'd like to stay and continue training with FAT, please do. I also want to quickly, before I let you go, is direct you to Tony and Paola's current run of Kafka's Ape that is going on at the Center for the Less Good Idea. Do either of you want to tell us quickly about that before any people go? The performance. Yeah, I mean we have a performance tonight and at the Center for the Less Good Idea, it's accessible in our website under the bookings or upcoming events, bookings, something like that. That's the drop menu. We will also be live streaming it and we'll also live stream the conversation between myself, Tony, William Cantree, Jane Taylor after the performance tonight. And then tomorrow we've got the performance as well alongside other pieces of Kafka that is a common confusion, a hunger artist, just being our singer, the mouse folk. And I think that's Kafka's Ape again. So the website in our YouTube channel, there will be a link on our website where you can go and watch these festivities. Great, thank you so much. So please make your way to the Center for the Less Good Idea's website. We should find information about the live streaming of this and other works by our two excellent guests. I can't thank you enough for having joined us today. This was an enriching discussion as usual. It's lovely to see some of the same faces we've seen a couple of times in the room. Welcome back. As I had said, we're going to carry on hanging out. Please feel free to unmute yourself and mute your ca-