 Hi, welcome to Think Tech. We are raising public awareness about technology, energy, diversity, and globalism. This show is center stage. I'm your host, Donna Blanchard, proud managing director of Kumakuhua Theatre. And we are coming to you live from Pioneer Plaza in the heart of downtown Honolulu, very near Kumakuhua Theatre. I am excited. I'm pretty thrilled actually to introduce you to my guest today because I'm very anxious for this conversation. I have a lot of questions for this woman. Her name is Tali Ariyav. She is an instructor at HPU. She has also most recently been teaching a playwriting class at Kumakuhua Theatre and she has an amazing theatrical background. We are going to discuss now. Welcome, Tali. Hi. Hi. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for being here, truly. We met when we had a playwriting class at Kumakuhua Theatre and you had just arrived on the island a few days before. Yeah, that was I think the very end of August. Yeah, and you jumped in with both feet and took that class. It was a very intensive weekend. And then approached me later and said that you would like to teach with us and that is a thrilling prospect for us, especially when we have someone who has an international voice as you do. I'm so glad that you did that. Can we talk a little bit about what it is that has brought you here to Hawaii in this capacity? Of course. Initially, my husband brought me here. He had to change locations and open an office. He's an architect. So he's working for an architecture engineering firm and they opened a new office here in Honolulu to better serve their clients. So that was the first need. We moved from Guam where we lived for the last six years. And of course that also that's another reason for me to expand my teaching and writing experiences moving here. And you were in Guam because of his work as well? As well, yes. Well, that's wonderful. It's wonderful that you can be so flexible to go where he needs to go for his business, but also it's amazing for you. It is. We moved to Guam right after Iowa where I got my education. And it's big shocking moves, you know, those moves. Also, you know, to move from Guam to here to Honolulu is a big shocking move. Yes, I am very fortunate for sure. Yeah. What was the theater scene like in Guam? There is none. That's the thing that in order to be involved with theater in Guam you have to create that theater. And we worked very hard to create theater. We used the facility at the university. So that was the university theater. And I taught a playwriting class, playwriting workshop, where we created new work. And this new work was put on stage in this theater. And this is how actually we did theater. That was the way to do theater. Oh, wow. And how was that received? It was received very, very well. I mean, I think that there is a place for the old-fashioned theater, for the published theater, for Shakespeare, for Ipsen, for Strenberg. But what is theater is about for me is about new work. It's in about new voice, because this is the new voices that are going to bring us to the future. Interesting that you say that. I believe that a lot of people are suggesting that this time in our political lives here that Inesco's Rhinoceros is a good play to write. There are plays that can speak to any situation that we're currently in, because they not only speak with a clear voice on a given point of view, but also they can inherently, just because of the time when they're being reproduced, we bring that voice to the work. Yes, absolutely. You bring them to life again. And those life will always be different than they were before, because this is the beauty of theater. This is the magic of theater. One show is never like the other. One hour and a half is never like the other one, one hour and a half. And this is, so yeah, I definitely agree. And it's always about how the audience receives the work that you're putting out, a painting that has never changed over centuries. It's all about, art is about interpretation, the way I see it. So the way you interpret it, I mean, I always tell my student, you know, once you give away your draft, you give away your play for someone after you're done with it, at least with the first draft. It's not yours anymore. You have to let it go. Even though you're going to go back to it and revise it and so on, you put it on stage, you have to let the director to do his magic and so on and so forth. Same thing goes with any other type of art, I feel. I mean, who owns art? That's the biggest question. Well, and I know there are some, we work with a lot of playwrights at Kumakawa Theatre. And I mean, rarely are we producing a work when the playwright is not present. And they like to be involved at various levels. And I think that, especially for a newer playwright, it's very hard to let that go. And the first time I directed a play, I didn't want, I had a very irrational feeling that I did not want the audience to walk in on opening night. I felt like I had this precious little baby, and I had to give it to anyone who could afford 20 bucks, you know? Absolutely. It's difficult. It's difficult. My first experience with, it was with my first play and my first director, who put it on stage for the first time, and it was an awful experience. It was a bad experience because of authority, who owns the play. And I think that I was very willing to give it away because I didn't trust myself enough. And my director was willing to take away the power. And that was the conflict right there, you know? Oh, yeah. So that was an interesting conflict. Yeah. Well, and I always tell actors, I just spoke to a class at UH last week and said, if I'm directing Hamlet, you are not auditioning for Hamlet. You are auditioning for Donovan Transversion of Hamlet, which could be very different than how you felt the last time you sat down and read it. Absolutely. So, let's talk about how you got into theater to begin with. You have some military background, yeah? Yeah. I was born and raised in Israel, and as an Israeli female, as every Israeli female, I went enjoying the forces when I was 18. Not as every Israeli female, I volunteered to be an officer. I felt that I could contribute more to my country and feel connected to the land and was healthy enough, fortunately. So you have to actually volunteer to do extra service. So that's what I did. And I served a total of four years in the military, in the army, artillery force. Oh. And that was, I mean, I was involved in theater in high school before, and I was involved in theater as a kid. But during this time, those four years of military, there was no theater involved, at least not officially. And right after that, I backpacked a little bit around the world, Brazil, where my father is from, and I came back to Israel, and I started my college. So in Israel, it's very typical that you start your college when you're 22, rather than, you know, 22 or 23, rather than 18, since you have to be in the military from 18. I think it's wonderful, not that it's perfunctory for everyone to go into the military, but I think it's really wonderful for people to start college at an age where they have some life experience. I feel like a lot of us here who go in, you know, I was 17 when I started college, I think there's a lot that I missed out on because I was just, you know, an idiot. I wasn't fully formed, you know. That's really young when we normally start school around here. Okay, so did you come from a family that went to theater regularly? No. Now, ordinary, very ordinary family. Nobody's at the theater. Nobody's even a writer back then. But my mother and father really supported me on my way. And the beginning, it was as an actor. I was trained as an actor in college. And before college, I was in a street theater troupe in Israel. We were very politically active. And we won, we also won first prize in a very prestigious theater, a street theater festival. And then that sent us to France, to Chalon. So I was involved in theater in and outside college. And also, I've been translating theater for a while. Since I speak the languages I speak, I was able to translate a few plays from Hebrew to English. And that's another fascinating process itself, the process of translation. You don't just translate a word by word, but you think about the whole concept of a culture moving under the wings of a different culture. And it's just fascinating to me. That must be, and you speak Hebrew, Arabic, Portuguese, and English. Yes. That is a whole amazing study to be able to look at, to have to look at a script from that angle. It must make you something of a historian as well. You do a lot of research and you learn, and I went to school. One of my master's degrees is in literary translation. Oh. So you do a lot of studying and workshopping until you get to the draft. And then one of the plays I translated, it was in Iowa. We put it on stage in the main theater in Iowa. And there were still issues, you know, even though I worked on this for over like a year. So because it's theater, you know, because you don't translate a novel from English to Hebrew. Not that I'm underestimating the difficulties of doing so, but when you translate to theater, you have to take into account your actors and the direction of the actors and the way you set the stage even though the writer in Hebrew, for example, explains one thing. It will never be translated the same in English. So you have to work knowing the culture here. You have to fill the blanks, so-called, to make it alive and to make it good, to make it... A disorbable, the way it's supposed to meant. Exactly, exactly. And I just want to say, Tali said, work shopping, not worshiping. Yeah, sorry. Let's go ahead and go to our break, just because I thank you very much for giving me that background. Of course, thank you for having me. Yeah, no, you're staying. We're going to come back and talk some more. I would like to talk more about what you bring from your background into the classes that you teach. The zones that you create for your students. Sounds good. We are going to be right back on center stage. Please stay put. Aloha, I'm Richard Emory. I'm the host of Condo Insider. You know, associations are really prominent here in the state of Hawaii, and they have a lot of complex issues with elected boards of directors repairing and maintaining the building, how to make it a quiet enjoyment to live there. So our show tackles the issues of living with an association by bringing in experts on various topics, from owners' rights to association living, to reserve studies, to pipe repair, to the new law regarding overtime. Aloha. I'm Kawe Lucas, host of Hawaii Is My Mainland, here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 3 p.m. We address issues and importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated land mass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3 p.m. Mahalo. Aloha, everyone. I hope you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii, but I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you. Mahalo. Hi, we're back, and we are live. This is center stage on the Think Tech Hawaii digital network. If you would ever like to join us in our downtown studio on Pioneer Plaza, you may do so. Just email J, that's J-A-Y, at ThinkTechHawaii.com, and he will hook you up. If you have ideas for people that you would really like to see in this show, you'd like to hear them talk about their artistic process, please let me know. You can tweet me at It's All About Donna, or you can find me on Facebook, Donna.Blanchard. We're back with Tali Ariyav, and for just a moment longer, I'd like to ask you mentioned on the break we were talking about the richness of the theater scene in Israel, which I didn't know anything about, and are there, you know, Kumakuhua theater, all of our works are theater of place, the place-based, they have to do with the cultures and the people in this geographic region. Is that a common thing in Israel? I know in some countries it is, but others, it's not around. I don't, I think that most, most of the places that I'm familiar with right now in Israel are place-based, but it's not because they tend to be just because, or because, you know, they need to belong to this criteria. It's because Israel is a country at war. That's what I'm trying to say. And when you are an artist who lives in a country at war, you have to respond to the war, or you will respond to the war no matter what. So the work, it splits between work that is more like entertain, so it's more like to escape from the pain and the war and the death, and a work that is more political work that actually aimed towards a change. To inform? Yes. Okay. Thank you for telling us about that. So when you, what was the first time you remember feeling, I want to write a play. I don't just want to do someone else's play. Wow. That's a good question. I think somewhere around college I had a crisis as an actor. I felt that I'm not enjoying my classes, and I felt that I don't want to do what I'm doing, that it's just like standing there. Again, this is the experience I went through. Nothing relates to being an actor at all. And I felt that, and I was always writing my whole life. I was always known to be the writer in the family. I always wrote like poetry and diaries. I always had a diary I was writing in. So I knew that I can express myself through writing before. So it wasn't the first time. But that was the first time that I wrote down and there was a dialogue, or I wrote down and there was a monologue of a woman. I remember the first dialogue, the first monologue I wrote was in college. I was studying, it was my maybe senior year, and I was writing about what does it mean to be a battered woman, to be beaten by society. And it was a long monologue, but I think it was related to one of the courses I took in Israeli theater. And I asked the professor if I can read it out loud. It was a huge class and I read it out loud. For me, that was the moment where I was like, okay, there's something here that is powerful that needs to be observed. And I kind of shied away from acting at this point. I will do an acting work, an acting job if it's really interesting or intriguing or it's a really great opportunity that I will never have again, but I will never do it if I don't have to. Yeah, I agree with you. I feel the same way. I'm very, very choosy about what I will select just because I'm going to put my mind and my heart and soul and body into something for six weeks to three months, some four months. It better be worth it for me. It better be something I really want to explore. Yeah, so you taught, you are wrapping up a class through Kumakuhua Theater and we'd like to thank Red Lotus, Red Lotus Dojo for hosting us, Branko Home. It's been wonderful to be able to use those classrooms while our theater has been busy. You're wrapping up a class and you were talking about one thing that is most important to you is creating a safe space for the playwrights. Why do you, that is not a word that I think is used probably often enough by artists and people teaching artists. Why do you feel that there has to be safety? Let me put it this way. What happens if there isn't safety when you're working with new playwrights? There's no work. No good work can come along if there's no safety in the classroom. And I keep my classes safe even when I teach English, composition. I taught classes before in Guam. I taught classes in Iowa. I'm teaching here now. It is important to create a safe space for the students to feel that they can share their work, that they can receive the feedback, that they can give feedback, that the feedback is not something that is meant to be taken as an insult or anything like that. It's something that's supposed to contribute to the work and take the work to the next level. And this is why they learn how to give feedback the right way. I teach them that the first few times. And if they are making a mistake, then we are correcting it together. I mean, there is a lot to it. There is no recipe for how to create safety. I mean, I wish I had it. Then I'll create safety right here if I could, or in my homeland. But I think that's one of the main things about playwriting workshop and acting workshop. We're doing a ritual at the end where we're ending and we know that the things that were left that we're leaving behind us are going to be left behind us. They're not going to leave the room. Yeah, I absolutely agree that's important. And I've worked with teachers who have had contracts. They've had something printed out to let people know this is how we help keep a safe space. How do you go about doing that? It's funny. In this case, I haven't had any printed copies. I do syllabi for the university because it's a request. And I think it's a very tiring document. Very, very much so. It's helpful. It can be helpful. In these specific classes we had, I just went through all the aspects. I don't want to say rules. They're not really rules. But all the things that we will do and we should do every single class, I said them out loud. And the students took some notes. So if it was like 10 minutes of free writing at the beginning of every session, no matter what, it starts exactly on time. And how we do those free, what does it mean to do free writing? So I'm explaining what does it mean. You follow an immediate experience, something that's going through your mind right very now. And I'm explaining that. And then we go through to some morning pages, which is something I told them to do for the rest of their life every day. So there's no way for me to track it down, but hopefully they will do it. But it's like three written pages every morning when you wake up. One, three? Three, yeah. I know, I know. It's good for you. They have to be written or can they be typed? I prefer handwritten. There's a difference. Yes. And the point of it is to really kind of empty your head like a trash can. Empty all the stuff that don't need to be there. So you have enough room for the real writing that you're going to produce that day. So wake up 15 minutes before time. So these techniques are ways to go around it. So we do that. And there is more of those. There's plenty of things that we do in our classes, in my classes. And that structures some discipline, that some structure practice for students to start their writing, to continue their writing from a week to a week and so on, and create safety. Yeah. It is amazing what comes out when you write. And I do believe there's a difference between typing and writing, how things come out of you. I've been in writing workshops and I have been, frankly, shocked by what I have put on the page that I don't know why, but it's a different mechanism. Do you know the science behind it? It's a different mechanism in our brain. Yeah. Yeah. I think that long writing has, you make the effort, the physical effort of writing. So therefore there will be more, you put more effort into it. Yeah. Also typing is related to your everyday activities, email, messaging, da, da, da, da. So if you do the writing by hand, then I think it's very unique activity. And you have to keep it unique too. That's true. Yeah. It's wonderful how that will tap different recesses of the brain. So we just have a few minutes left. I'd like to, if we could, talk about the structure of your class itself, because you're working with some of the people in your class had not written a play before? Yes. We have some veterans in there. I think all of them are veterans, but I start from fresh. I start from, you know, I start like this class is designed for people who never wrote before. Okay. So we go through all the stages, but this class, it went faster because they think there were a lot of writers that had an idea about what they want to write about, or they had a play that they started that they want to go back to, or they just were exploring the whole workshop, exploring scene, and then another scene, and then another scene, and then another scene, where eventually it's going to become to be one act. So this is how we came along. How you work through it? Yeah. Okay. And where do you want to go? What is, you're teaching at HPU. We should talk about that. What are you teaching at HPU? I teach English, analyzing argument classes. Interesting. Yeah. Writing and analyzing argument, I think is the official name of the course, and I'm teaching two courses of that. Okay. We have about a minute left. Where do you want to go next? Not necessarily geographically. Well, I would like to thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very flattered. I was very nervous before. I know you were. Are you feeling better now? I'm a nervous speaker in English. I feel better. And I want to also thank you for the work that you do in Kuma Kahua and for letting me teach the playwriting class. I hope to teach more in the future. You got it. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you for being a part of Kuma Kahua and what you're doing. And I really appreciate your energy. I appreciate the fact that you stepped foot on this island and you not only, you signed up for class right away, which is something that a lot of people feel like they don't need to keep learning. You're a teacher, but you signed up for the class. Yeah. That's beautiful. That's inspiring. And that you said, I want to teach a class. And yep, you get to teach a class. Thank you. I'm really looking forward to the work that comes out of it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, me too. Thank you for being here. Thank you very much for being here. There are a few people in the studio I would like to thank also. I would like to thank Rich Pravis, our floor manager who's right over there. Thank you, Rich. I would like to thank our studio overlord, Zuri Bender, who is in my ear, and J. Feidele, who somehow manages to put all of this together. We hope to see you next week here on Center State. Bye.