 Which, you know, is a complicated thing to do. It is complicated. Hey, y'all. Welcome back. Welcome back. Or welcome for the front. Hello. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. I'm Mark. I'm Todd. And we're here in this two-person theater conference. Where we've been all day. Talking about art and aesthetics and practice. And just kind of the reminder, just like Todd and I, kind of hoping that we could make an invitation to you all to join us in having these conversations about art and the field of theater and this work that we do. And part of that is a challenge. The May Day Challenge. So there's so many stories, so much history, that we can't possibly get to not even a fraction of it. But perhaps collectively we can. And if we can all just join this conversation to just talk about art, maybe we can kind of center that more and more in the field and in our work. So we'd like to invite you to take part in the May Day art, the May Day Challenge that's got a name. The Art Part May Day Challenge. The Art Part May Day Challenge. Or the May Day Art Part Challenge. I don't remember what we called it. But it's an invitation, perhaps more than a challenge. And basically, if you'd like to sign up to have similar private conversations in public, you can do them. You can stream them here via HowlRound. Or you can just go to your neighborhood bar and just have them or wherever you want to go. And just either in pairs or in groups, however you'd like to structure them. But continue some of these conversations around art and aesthetics and practice. And something that occurred to me, I haven't told you, just now is I think part of our just skittishness about doing this is not wanting to pretend to be more knowledgeable or expert than we are or comprehensive than we are. But I also think there might be great joy in if you know that there are certain things you want to talk about about the art in seeking out people in your own community or colleagues circles who do know about them. And bringing them in and asking them to speak with you too so that to reach out to the people who, there are so many. I think part of what, if you've been tuning in today, you can see is how much we're struggling with sticking with the art part and letting go of some of the complaint part or some of the field angst part and all of that stuff. And especially maybe in this last segment about civic engagement, because to a certain extent we are, at least I will say I am, talking to the people that I want to convert or to see what I see. So I think it's really great to go to the people who actually know about the stuff that you don't and open up that conversation. So that would be my encouragement. And also if we're taking questions and comments, you can email us at theartpartathalround.com via Twitter, hashtaghalround, or via the Facebook video stream. And we'll read your comments and questions here in this conversation. So what we're going to talk about now is what we're calling lineage and legacy. And I don't know about you, but I've had the impulse today that we could simply sit here and say names all day. All day. And that they would mean things to us that they might not mean to you or mine wouldn't mean to you. But that part of the impulse behind this has been simply to name the people who have brought this love into our lives, who have trained us, who have helped us, guided us, served as examples. And to give a valentine in a way to them. It's like if we could, who would we give these flowers to if we could just leave here and anyone we wanted would be waiting. But really more for me, I was thinking about this during the break. It's like I just kind of wish we'd sat here for six hours and named people. Yeah. That'd be beautiful. Yeah. That'd be beautiful. Maybe that's the next part, the name part. The two person. The two person naming. But I think to this point, as we struggle and find our way through this conversation around art and practice and aesthetics, it's what you said about playwrights. Kind of during the playwright session, I'm like, we never do this alone. And I personally am just aware that how much has just been handed down. And I think sometimes it comes across a little glib because it borders on the cliche. But I think about the soldiers of the giants that we stand on. And I think in this context, I kind of especially just mean it. There are some incredible people that opened up a way of working, opened a path for a career, just did so much before I even entered the space that is always present in the room when I make. And so I'm really excited about this last session. Why do you feel it's important, though, for us to name those people or be public about it? What drives you to that? I mean, I think part of it is just respect and honoring of contributions that I worry sometimes that we just forget, that we have very, very short attention spans and even shorter memories. And that they'll just be forgotten to history. And even though our contributions are built on somebody else's work, I just kind of want to hold. And I think that's one of the things that really, just to kind of start some of that, is something from alternate roots that's kind of some of those values about naming ancestors and naming those who come before us whose practice we build on. And so the John O'Neill's, the Dudley Cox, the Roadside's, the Free Southern Theater, before we even get to Junebug. And so I think for me it's just important just to honor that because I'm aware that it's not me. Like I'm inheriting a lot. Yeah. I feel that much the same. And I've been aware that as we've been talking today, we've both felt the impulse to sort of name companies, name writers, name people. And they may not be the same as our own personal ancestral lines. But again, somebody we've talked about earlier today and who I know is having a new record release right around the corner from us at Joe's Pub at the Public tonight is Daniel Alexander Jones who's releasing the new Joe Mama Jones album. And Daniel does something that I find really moving on Facebook, which is almost every day he puts up a picture and something about an artist, a thinker, often women, often singers, but sometimes writers, performers, other people who have meant a lot to him and somehow led him to this place. Or I think about that beautiful Adrienne Kennedy book called People Who Led to My Plays, which is basically a scrapbook of everything from family to snapshots and polaroids and bits of writing about the people who led to specific plays of hers. And I've always just thought that was the most beautiful way to spend part of your life. I love that. I love that idea. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that, what's it called? People Who Led to My Plays. I think Theater Communications Group published it maybe 30 years ago, 25 years ago. Do you wanna talk about some of the people on your list? So a homework assignment that we gave each other is to create a list of our lineage, the legacy that we've inherited who helped get us, who've kind of brought us here. And so, yeah, I'll start. I mean, I think for me, and I feel like I've been talking about them a lot, but it starts with Cornerstone. Like for me, Bill Roush, Alison Carey in a group of their friends founded this theater company, went and created work in with, for by different communities around the country. And that's just a place where I grew up. It's a place where I just kind of sharpened my artistic skills, learned some values, kind of just picked up my practice. And highly kind of like that's the beginning for me. The beginning for me. What about you? Well, that is, I wish that were my beginning in a way because I feel a little sheepish talking about my beginning because it is childhood and specifically summer camp. I went to a musical theater camp that was led by these two women who are both amazing performers. They were sisters. They were born Sully and Pearl Hurrand. And they were also great lefties and built this whole camp around, well, the sharing of roles, but the idea that anyone could play anything. The Liturgy was really the American song book. It was the Bernstein and Gershwin and Berlin and Rogers and the Hammerstein. And definitely a sort of Jewish cultural sensibility. But the basic tenets of the place were based on John Dunn's No Man is an Island. Everyone is part of the continent. And so this rich theatrical musical experience welled up out of a sense of connectedness and not being an island. I love that. Everything, every day. Yeah. Pearl on Sully. Another one for me is the Tatro Campesino. That for me was that, that I'm not, I wasn't alone. Like I grew up in Texas and I was I think 21, thereabouts, 2021 before I saw Latino on stage in Texas. And I had heard of and kind of studied and learned about Tatro Campesino. And it was in a moment where there were so little, so few examples of how a person of color, a Latino can have a career in this field. Like it was something to hold on to that just said, like it's possible and you're not alone. And here's, you know, we're here and we're doing it in this way, you know, which was. What was the first thing you saw? Do you remember? I've got the Tatro Campesino's. Zut Zut. Started at the top. Yeah. And then, you know, and then I saw like I'm videotaped like just archival things of some of the actors and vendidos and, you know, various, you know. Oh, there was one Linda Ronstadt, Corridos. Uh-huh. Wow. You came to it so much later in life. An adult. Yes. Fully formed adult with adults companies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that comes later for me. I'm looking at my list here. I guess before I get to the adult part maybe, I just, I'm aware that every time I turn to a question like this about who has been important, who has led me to my life and notably my life in the theater, it's teachers. And they weren't all, you know, it's not necessarily the greatest of the teachers, but the most important of the teachers. So certainly the women that I mentioned before, Suley and Pearl, and then there are like all those teachers who saw that I had some desire. And then there really was a turning point when I got to college and I mentioned before, Sandy Moffett at Grinnell College in Iowa. And that was simply like he opened a door and the door was to the then burgeoning experimental theater and, you know, the ensemble theater and said, why don't you look at this? And you know, and that was the performance group. It was the Iowa Theater Lab. It was the festivals that happened at the time which I was able to see El Teatro Campesino and San Francisco Mime Troopin, all of those companies, Herb Blouse Kraken Company and the Reality Theater from Boston and just like all of these companies, but it was basically one man in a small school saying, you know, I've been thinking about this and I've worked with the Manhattan Projects. You should know about them. I'm going to bring them here and I'm going to bring Theater of the Open Eye here and I'm going to, and you should know and my life was never the same. I have one of those on my list. I have two of them. One was just kind of undergrad. I went to this Catholic undergrad from a small liberal arts college. Was it called? It's called the University of Dallas. Like 500 students, you know, total. Wow, at a university? Yeah, it's called the tiny, tiny, tiny school. But it's Patrick Kelly and Judy Kelly his wife, his husband and wife who kind of ran this department. And it just, I learned about this field. Like I, things that I just had no idea and it's like this theater history that I got to pick up and just like, and it just set off everything, like every kind of synapse in my brain was just like on fire because it was new and it was exciting and nevermind that, you know, it was like Greek through the 1940s, but it was, I didn't know anything about it and it was incredible. And then in grad school, gentlemen by the name of Cliff Faulkner who's just kind of one of those key, key people who expose like world theater. Like really just like what this looks like in a non-Euro kind of tradition and just blown away by spectacle and ritual and everything, you know, that I just had no knew nothing about and was just wildly excited by. Wow. I'm imagining, hopefully imagining that the, those of you who are watching us or listening to us are jotting down the names of your own teachers and things, I, you know, I feel this more and more as I think more and more about aging to what extent, you know, I feel somewhat responsible for remembering. You know, you talked about before about we don't remember well in our field and I think it's really true and that part of it is simply the naming and the keeping alive the names and let it, because, you know, and I think about this as a father too, it's like you never know who you're going to meet. That just seems like one of the 12 teachers you have in freshman year of high school who is going to change your life. Sometimes simply by a book they hand you and they need to be honored. That's how we're built. Let's see, what else? So yeah, I guess my entry to this field as a field and thinking about it, I can't separate from Peter Zeisler and Lindy Zesh. So Peter was a founder of the Guthrie Theater. He ran TCG for 24 years, I think, 23 or 24 years. Lindy Zesh was his associate there, ultimately called the deputy director, I think, and I was introduced to them by someone else who was an associate there, who I had met before, Arthur Bartow, who sort of led me to them and they led me to the world in a way on a project that was basically traveling the country and meeting with artistic directors and documenting the conversations and I didn't even know that I was entering a field. I didn't know there were that regional, I'd grown up in Chicago, but the Goodman, which was the one standing theater wasn't really professionalized when I was growing up. I'm the same age as the Steppenwolf gang so that hadn't found it yet. There was the body politic, there were some theaters, but there wasn't a sense of a field and it was as if they bought the tickets, rode the planes with me, and introduced me to the field and I actually feel like I am responsible to the field that they gave me introduction to, so I'll stop there and come back to it. What's next for you? Oh, I guess this is a good story. Who do I have here? So next up for me is Luis Alfaro. Who, it was, again, it was a Latino queer, so smart, so funny and just was just writing this work that was not like anything I had seen and that was just opened up all sorts of doors for me in terms of just thinking about the role of solo performer, the role of how we tell our stories. And I think part of it is, I think, I was so aware of just kind of, there's a part of me that just thought we need to look at identity politics in a certain way and Luis just kind of blew that up. I'm like, no, you really don't. Like, and it's irreverent and funny and familiar and just kind of opened up ways of thinking about that and I'll kind of add on because it's similar is, and I won't talk too much about it because I've already talked about it, but Eric and seeing that show, that the Play Beginner, all those years ago that just showed me a different form, a different way, that was unlike anything I had seen and just took me out of what I thought plays and performance was supposed to be and showed me, kind of opened up imagination and said it can be so much more. Yeah, it's so interesting. So this is a little bit off the, it's not on my list, but when you mention Luis, who is a very important person to me too, but not in a kind of ancestral way, I'm aware it feels like such an honor to work in a field, profession, art that has such people in it, do you know? And I've been, Lucky doesn't even begin to describe it. I feel amazed by my own life that I have met the people I have met and so there are people like Luis Alfaro, you know, we've talked about Daniel Jones, we've, I think about Taylor Mack while we're on the subject of sort of individuals who are, they're actually younger than, you know, they're actually not my contemporaries, Susan Laurie Parks, there are people that are, that feel to me gigantic in the scope of their humanity and that make me just feel amazed and excited to be alive, do you know? And so I guess the person on my lineage list or ancestral list who is like that is someone I didn't know at all, you know, except to have Matt, is Ellen Stewart, La Mama, because from her I just, I think it's like a three part thing, it's like this was someone who built a world from nothing welcomed everyone into that world. So the sense of hospitality, which I feel is central to this work comes from her ring, her little bell and also the sense that she, this goes back to our earlier discussion about playwrights, she always led with love for the person, not the project. She didn't even read the project. It's like you honey, you come here, you need to meet this person over there in Spain, I'm gonna fly you over there, come back with something, make something and that to me, I don't know of any example from my lifetime of a more hospitable, spacious, you know, maker of happening or things, do you know, so La Mama, I love that, I love that. It's kind of like that, you know, it's a fee, well, I never got to meet, but I feel kind of definitely whose shoulders I stand on is the group theater. They're on my list too, in Clermont. Just like in Clermont and just like the whole bunch, you know, that kind of, we're looking at kind of their world and just decided to just grab it by the collar and just kind of, even now it just feels, it feels like it has a danger to it, it feels like an urgency and that it can live across time, it can be political and it can be poetic and it can be made by this collective, like this odd assortment of the big personalities that somehow decide to kind of stick together and just kind of transform and just like make us rethink of a way of working and what the work itself can be. You know, just for me, I hold constantly as a reminder that, you know, like how do I make with that kind of urgency? How to make with that kind of commitment? How do you make with that kind of ambition? And they just, you know, yeah, love that. And to marry aesthetic values and social values. Yes, it's such a great extent. So I'm always torn about Clermann and the group because absolutely, I mean, everything begins there in a way in this country in terms of the art of the ensemble and for me personally, I've been truly more than any writer, thinker inspired by Clermann as the person who talked this into being with these, you know, 10 months of Friday night talks that then became the group theater in the hotel room at 1130 till 2.30 in the morning, you know. And every time I think I want to dedicate something to his memory, like to write a biography of Clermann and there isn't a good one, I think I don't wanna read the criticism. So the part of him that was the critic, it's like, I don't wanna live in that part. And that's so monumental and important. I just am not interested anymore. But that's interesting. So another person that I met and barely knew through this Peter and Lindy tour was, and we've talked about her before, is Zelda Fitch Handler, she's a true founder of the field, but even more, and she wasn't a writer like her Clermann or Robert Brewstein in that sense, a critic as well. But she was an amazing writer and amazing speaker and leading up to her death two and a half years ago, I think, and since then and now in full gear, I've been editing her collected writings or now they're selected writings and living with her mind and living with the fact that over 40 years as an artistic director and something like 25 years as also the head of the acting, graduate acting program at NYU and the founder, one of the founding mothers of this field, she never ever for a second lost track of what the theatrical event is in terms of shaping and amplifying our humanity and crossing the gulf from one heart to another. And I go back to her writing every day when I'm working on it and it's like I'm massaging my heart and soul. It's incredible. Along those lines, somebody that I did not know, I mean, I shook his hand, said hello once or twice, but Gordon Davidson, part of my practice is producer and there's, again, just a similar kind of individual with just audacity who just kind of was investing in people was just kind of doing giant projects who's taking risks, who was showing us what we knew before we knew that we needed it. It was just kind of talking to, it was really interesting talking to a city, talking to the nation and producing this work and just his instincts as an artistic director, his vision as a producer. Just, there's something for me that it's the Gordon's, the Zeldas, the Margo Jones, the Nine Advances, those pioneers of our field who, there was something kind of that, I just see audacity of, it just feels like the right word. It's like big vision. Yeah. And that's the thing is like, God, please give me something that maybe resembles something kind of like that. Yeah, no, it's so as they create aspiration. They really do. You know, one of the things, just a footnote about Zelda that I've been thinking about is as I started working with her on her book when she was, I think 90 or 91 and I was looking at 60, or you know, it was a couple years out. And so for me, a lot of it was about her, certainly, and the writing, but also about how do you age gracefully in this field and stay alive as an artist, mind, human? And it's an extraordinary example because one of the reasons she couldn't finish the book is she never felt she knew enough about the field that she instigated and created and she wanted to know what people were doing now. And I want to be that. If you know what I want to be like. I had one conversation with her once in my life that I hold on to very, very dearly. And she wanted to know what was going on now. And I'd just gotten to net and I reached out and she was just like, that, like, I want to know what that is because that feels exciting and that feels like it's going to breathe new life in, but I don't know. Like I know what I know, but I feel so removed. And she just, and I mean, I just wanted to tell me stories, you know, but she would have none of it. She was like, no, like, I want to, you talk. And that's the example. It's the example of the curiosity that never is quelled or the hunger and the love of it. Yeah. Gosh, I feel like there, there's a lot of names. We're also running out of time. We've made a lot of names as we went. Yeah. Is there, I mean, anybody that we need to mention? I mean, it's interesting. It's like, there are also the people like we were talking about people who may not be our necessarily progenitors, if that's the word, but who should never be overlooked. We were talking about Bob Leonard, the amazing Bob Leonard, founder, a founder of The Road Company and now at Virginia Tech, who has just led so much thinking and work around community. John O'Neill, we talked about earlier, just Free Southern Theater. Free Southern in general. What an amazing. Completely. Completely. Amiri Baraka. Yeah. And then people who made music. So it's like, I keep thinking, well, somebody on my list is like, who is it? Is it like Leonard Bernstein? But in a strange way, I keep coming back to Liz Tweedos because there was something and maybe it's the Lamama connection, but Liz is, you know, I think the first thing I saw was Runaways, which was built with this community of young performers. And, you know, and it's kind of to me, the ur spring awakening, the ur once, you know, the ur of those kinds of things, but also her work with Sir Bonnet, the Lamama, her kind of global vision and yet the intimacy of that work. Just the fact that she was always in it and doing it and hungry. You know, I want that. Yeah. I love that. You know, one of the people on my list, I have a really long list that we're in there. No way we're gonna get to it. Do you want to just run through the names or no? No, I'm good. Okay. Yeah. But like, we have only five more minutes. We don't have questions or questions. And I wonder, like, if anybody's watching, if you wanted to give a shout out to like a name, like, like send us a name. We'll read the names. It's Valentine's Day and it's like, let's just spend love. Send love. You know, it's universes. Yeah. I released you and Seth, Ninja, Jamal. You know, like, you know, a newer ensemble, but like similar to some of the things that we're talking about, like such urgency and talk about virtuosity. Yeah, no, totally. Just like performers and so smart and just taking on like these big ideas. Like they're a Merrillville, like that opening of a Merrillville is just magic. Just beautiful. And, you know, and yeah, shout out to them. Right, no, yeah. No, once we get it, so now we're getting into also to the people whose work and beings we love and there are just so many. I think that's where I started crossing off before we sat down here today. I think one person that I, Liz Swaitos, Seth and Hamilton writes, yes, whenever I wondered why I was doing theater, sure enough, the Greek tragedy would come around, the Greek trilogy would come around today. Thank you, Sabrina Hamilton. You know, there are those people that you never meet too that have some example. Like for me, Joseph Chakin was that. Oh my goodness, yes. Like, I mean, I met on the street and I was, I couldn't speak. Because there was something so pure and essentialist and just unstoppable about his desire to know and to do more. Maria Irene Fornez. Fornez. Just like somebody that just art, like feels as much. Yeah, and it's just like, it's just same thing. Yeah. Pushing, constantly experimenting, distilling, just like to bring it down to essential. Yeah. The living theater, we were talking about them a little while ago that, you know, just another one that never met them, but it's interesting. I'll just tell a little anecdote. Judith Malinik, we did a reading of this collection of founding visions, an ideal theater at the Siegel Center here at the City University of New York, and we had artistic directors like Mia Yu, who took over La Mama from Ellen Stewart, read Ellen's work and Oscar used this, read Joe Papp's work and Kristen Martin, read Susan Glassbell of the Provincetown Players, who's another one, the Provincetown Players, the beloved community of life givers as the goal. And Judith Malina was there with her attendance and she was in a wheelchair, she died soon after. And she, you know, she stood up. She said, this is great, all great. I don't think she stood up. She sat up and all great, but you left out my teacher, Irwin Piscotta. I've written a book about Irwin Piscotta and you can buy it, you know. And he wasn't even a founder of a theater in that world, but that thing about our teachers, and literally she was 90 when she was like talking about the impact of her teacher. I love that, that's such a great story. It was a great moment. We did a conference here in New York and she was there, it was one of her last appearances. And it was just packed. But it was like, she was saying, like, why are we sitting here talking? Like, the world's on fire, we should be out in the street right now, we don't need to be sitting here talking to ourselves, let's get out there and let's be making our on the street for the people we need to be seeing. Just, it was amazing. It is incredible. I mean, I'm loving this, just sitting here, you know, talking because it feels like this is what keeps us lubricated and aspiring and to remember, which feels more and more important. There's a story, I don't know if I think of an institute, we did its net conference and there's a guy who was sitting on the bus, kind of there by himself, and Ashley Sparks goes to talk to him and says, hey, like, how was your day? And he's like, oh, it was really good. She's like, yeah, well, what are you thinking about? And he said, well, like, it was really amazing because like, I kind of feel alone, like our company doing this. And like, now I realize that we're not the only ones doing this and how amazing that is. And she's like, yeah, that's really great. And I said, yeah, but at the same time, it's like, well, we're not the only ones doing this. And there's something, if you're thinking about lineage and legacy and how we passed this down, that just kind of gets to that there's something amazing in those moments of finding out that we're not alone. And there's also something like sometimes we like to think that we're inventing something that's never been done and then you realize, oh, well, well, I do, I wonder, because I've maybe, because from my own experience, I wonder if as we get older, we're more aware when you're young, there's a way in which you have to be believing that you're making everything up for the first time, although some people are always connected, so there's, I guess there's no way to generalize. Okay, we have a comment. Do you want to do this? Todd and Mark, this is from Vivis Colomberte. Hi, Vivis. Todd and Mark have incredible insights. I'm loving this conversation. The comments and observations are as varied as they are humans with our aesthetics, our culture, our so-called taste, exposure, and acceptance of performances and writings. At the end of the day, we are all talented and bring to the table our uniqueness, which create each performance unique. Whoa, thank you. Yeah. That's wonderful. And Ruth Malachek. Ruth Malachek calls out Ruth Malachek. Yay. Thank you. So, I guess we need to wrap. Do we want to announce that, we want to announce these few things like the people who've made, we've only got two commitments for the May Day art part discussions, but it's never too late and you can, You have to do it. You can do it. You can write to the art part at howround.com anytime and say, we're gonna do an art conversation. It can be anything, it doesn't have to be like this. So shout out to a host of people in Detroit and Bloomsburg Theater Ensemble in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Please let us know how it goes. Please. And then there will be archive, video archive of these conversations and they'll be separate so anybody can watch whichever ones were missed or all of them at howround.tv or just search HowlRound for the art part. And I have one more Valentine. A Valentine. Can I show it to you? Please. Those of you who weren't here at the beginning, we began by reading Valentine's to the theater and I wrote this long ass poem. But then, and Mark brought in one that he had found and I brought in one that I found. I couldn't decide between the two of them. So I brought it in for the end. It has a little hummingbird on the back. I don't know if you can see this in the thing. And this says here theater ever after is the, I'm gonna try and show this. I don't know if you can see it. Can you close in a little? So there's two buildings, two little fancy houses. This says you, this says me. And this one is the theater. And it says in my imaginary neighborhood, you live right next door. And inside it says don't even get me started on the imaginary universe we could create. Thanks for making my real life sparkle. Yeah, thanks. I love you theater, Todd. I love you theater. I love you, Todd. I love you, Mark. Happy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, it is Thanksgiving. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you, Vijay, Matthew. Thank you, HowlRound. Thank you, Archangeus, for hosting us and Roberto Uno and gang. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.