 Welcome everybody back here to the HowlRound 12-hour session, New York Theatre Artist for Ukraine. We have our first six hours behind us and we had remarkable contributions, I think throughout the day. We started out with Pan America, with translators. We had here ArtCenter, who worked with us on their new work play. They are working on with 15 actors, some of them from shelters. In the Ukraine, PS21 shared us readings and music. Bam, the Brooklyn Academy of Music was here. Watermill Center, Robert Wilson read for us, Sanctons Warehouse, the Public Theatre Tone Page, the Park Avenue Armory with Bill T. Jones. The Ibrons ArtCenter, who was just before us with Aaron Lenzman. And now we come to our next session, which is the HowlRound Theatre Commons and the Alimita Theatre Company. HowlRound is actually our host, our digital host here. It's a significant and very important institution here in America. So we would like to welcome Thea Rogers with us, who is working for HowlRound, but also an artist, which we like when theater artists are involved in running institutions and also making decisions. What will be shown and also we have with us members of the Alimita Collective and Offshoot of the Living Theatre. And it is Cyprus Atlas and Philip Santas, and they will join us and read hopefully a bit of the work of the great Judith Melina. I think her, was it her birthday or two days ago? We can hear you. It was the anniversary of when she passed. When she passed away. So we feel very strongly connected to her. She came so often to our programs. But maybe let's start first with HowlRound. Thea, thank you. Thank you for joining us. I know you're in Los Angeles and you helped us out so very, very often also in our Segal talks. It's good to see you also as part of our programs. Tell us a little bit about HowlRound. Not everybody knows who you are and what you do. Yeah, it's good to see you again, Frank. Good to be back. HowlRound is a center for theater commons is created with the idea of decentralizing the theater conversation. So anyone with access to the internet can share what they're working on conversations that are happening in their community and have access to conversations happening outside of their community. We can get very, you know, wrapped up in our own local things, which is really wonderful. But if you don't, for example, live in the heart of New York City, you want to be able to have the same access to conversations that are happening there, or maybe people in New York get access to conversations happening outside of New York. We have an idea. We have a journal and a blog. People can write about what's happening and what kind of conversations they're having about art and politics and everything in the theater community. We also have a live stream channel, which many of you are watching this on our live stream channel now. Hopefully you've been able to refresh and stay with us today. So anyone can reach out and just say, Hey, like we are going to have a conversation. We think it would be useful to the greater theater community. We think people should be able to see it and how around can walk you through how to how to share that with the world. Click over to our participate page after this event to learn more. Yeah, it is quite stunning every day their discussions, readings, forum symposia nationally, internationally. And I think it has brought us all closer together and it proved so valuable, especially in the time of Corona when we couldn't leave our houses and we also joined today by Anachtkritik, which is a very important German site for online engagement with theater, a fantastic curated pitch. It also serves kind of as a American theater magazine, kind of the German online theater magazine and how around helped us also to connect to them. And so this is carried over to Germany, so we'll say thank you for Anachtkritik for a successful to make that happen. And, and we welcome all our listeners there so in a way this brought the New York theater community together I don't know if there ever was an event where in one day or 24 New York theater organizations joined in an effort to stand up for something to show a flag in this race kind of the Ukrainian flag that we do care and that we are outraged of what happened again the initial idea was going to be learned about the bombing of a theater in Mariupol 300 people who sought refuge in a space that is died and so many others were wounded. And we think about them our heart goes out to them. It's on our mind Ukraine is our mind and we care we feel deep sadness helpless in a way, but we wanted to voice our outrage and you don't have lots of arguments for everything against and before but you do not bomb theaters with people inside for shutters it's a barbaric act. And today is the day where we all come together to voice that so see you have prepared a reading for us. I have and thank you so much for sharing. I'll be reading from a play called my dad inferno, which Frank shared with me by a Ukrainian playwright. And there was a passage in it that really captivated me. It is currently being translated Frank please correct me if I'm wrong, or translated into English by Sam book. Yes. Cherry Arts project upstate New York. Yes. Great space. A play originally by made on this done centered in the 2013 uprisings in the Ukraine and this this passage really caught me in terms of what we're talking about right now and just the internationality of any kind of diaspora and cultures. sequence 11 on logs for in play a character named on Mia truthfully I can't really say what my country is. My last names are a big messy mix Ukrainian Russian German. It seems even Roma, but I was born in Ukraine. This is my land. And it seems to me that language isn't just an accident. The language is the code of a land of a people, once at an exhibition of triptilian culture, I saw a jug with a pattern on it, exactly like on the one my grandmother had the jug was 5000 years old. I don't even know what the symbols meant, but it's important that we hang on to the things that hold us together. Same thing with language. Yeah, it's, it's like being able to hear what your ancestors are saying to you it's like a, like a radio station from God in Ukraine, the broadcast is in Ukrainian. The Russian station is further away it's not our station the signal isn't clear it's full of static and noise. There's a fashionable word now, bilinguals, but almost all of us are that on the one hand it's great, like consciousness is a dialogue capable of understanding otherness, but there's another side to it. The languages go to war for how you think for your soul for your heart your children. You have to choose which language to speak to your child. About God. Did he make a choice to which language to speak to us. Do we choose on our own inside this war there's an unfinished battle that's lasted for centuries. I cried when I learned the history. I've been arrested, tortured, killed in order to keep this land Ukrainian. 400 years our language has been banned 134 times. If you choose to speak Russian does it mean those sacrifices worth or not worth for nothing. And the conquerors one. Fantastic thank you what a what a what a what a beautiful attacks. That's quite something a band 134 times. Yeah, I had to go look that up to find the history but That's incredible. Yeah, we also had today with us. Natalia Kulyada from the free theater of Belarus and the free freedom freedom of Belarus also says you know they are if they perform in Belarusian language they are risking in going into jail. Well because performing in their own language in their own country and they are very own president is the one who puts such laws into into place it's an outrage to shocking about it what they do also is an incredible incredible fight and it also does show what theater can do the she said today, more theater artists are in jail than even journalists or political activists it just shows that theater seems to be something that drives so authoritarian leaders mad so it means it's does have an effect of it don't know let's switch over to I'll leave me to and I would like to welcome again Cyprus and Philip Philip tell us a little bit about your company are I can start Cyprus you can jump in. We've been working together for forever and we perhaps will continue to. We're all over the world at this point. We, during the past couple of years have been doing a project that has had multiple iterations has engaged artists. Truly everywhere and bringing people together to interpret each other's interpretations of each other each other's interpretations of a set of guiding questions. We did a live performance inspired by that text over the summer, as well as doing workshops. We also do. Oh, I'm not sure what else, but a whole lot and. Yeah, we are guided by Judith Bellina I would say still in a very large way and also by a lot of other practices that are emerging that don't exist yet that exist only in our dreams, and that's part of what it's exciting about it to. Cyprus. Yeah, many of us met as part of the Living Theater in the last years of Judith's life. And we just have not been able to stop working together. We just keep doing it like no matter if there's a pandemic, or, or what we worked through the pandemic on on digital performances as well which has been in person performance recently. So we're very happy to be here today. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you so much. So let us, let's hear what you have prepared for us and then we can talk perhaps a little bit more. Or should I start fill out. Okay, comfortable doing so. Sure. Great. So thank you everyone. I'm going to read the letter on revolution that Judith Molina wrote to Carl Einhorn dated Saturday, March 28, 1970. My dear Carl, just returning this minute from London. And really, the first minute I've had to write to you. I'm going to get all the chores out of the way and start the real work. I have not yet read the mimeograph track to you said was important though I've looked at it. I will study it carefully but till then I know that while this is the direction our people are taking. We cannot rest. We cannot stop. We cannot speak of anything but changing the situation. We must bring hope and concrete plans and useful proposals for feeding the people that do not entail the enslavement of the people by small clicks with guns and bombs. Draw up now your most practical proposals and order them into a readable form. We must get together our most constructive ideas. And if we have none, then we must begin with the reality that we have none. It's not enough to set up communications between revolutionaries who have no revolutionary proposals except the road to the same old authoritarian world. We have to bring sensible alternatives to people. Of course we will work with what there is and we will also create what there isn't yet. There has never been. The old formulas are dead and stale and what is relevant. But it's only relevant if it leads to something more human for the people and the proletariat than to dream of becoming dictators as in the dictatorship of the proletariat. We must bring everyone and ask what they think can be done and everyone comes up against the same wall and draws a blank. A useful plan to which people can turn with hope which will bring energy. I am convinced that this is the only valid work. We must raise a standard that can show the way. It must be economically sound, humanly practical, taking into account human failings and human behavior. It cannot be a utopian dream, but must be explicable step by step. You said that in the old American and French revolutions, no one had a platform, but look what happened. The American revolution led to America and the French to Napoleon's coronation as emperor. And the Russian which planned for the interim socialist step that you have such faith in led to Stalin. Let us speak of Cuba and China, but let us speak of what will happen after Castro and Mao. Is there a system that can survive the death of the great philosopher King? That ideal platonic ruler which these two men and their wisdom and talent represent? We can make excuses for history or say things have changed, but we can't dismiss all its lessons. As Patrick Henry would say, Jesus had his Paul and Lenin had his Stalin and Mao and Castro can profit by their example. Make the best of it. We need a new form. There are better people than me to find it, but they are not doing the job and it must be done. Hello. And if not I, who? And if not now, when? And if I am not for myself, who shall be for me? I will follow anyone who makes the destination clear, but if no one does it, I will ask them to listen to me and I will make it clear. Or else I will expose the weaknesses of every ideology now going. We'll destroy the illusions and leave only what is real, human, meaningful, practical, and beautiful. And to those who say it can't be done, I'll say bullshit and prove otherwise. What side are you on? I'm on the side of those who believe when you say one plus two or two plus one. One, stop all the killing. Two, feed all the people. The Maoists have the second part right, but are very fucked up in part one. The pacifists are right on the first part, but don't know how to accomplish either part effectively. And if you switch causes or the order of the causes as you want to, my dear Carl, you don't really solve, you put off. And maybe that's the best you think you can do. But I'm on the side that can do better. Find a way to make it work. A comradely embraced and sisterly love, all power to the people. To arm is to harm. There are stronger forces than guns to make a new world. Find them. Love, Judah. Hercetia's brilliant yellow behind the house, a cherry tree blossoms across the road, but Brecht said, we live in an age when to speak of trees is almost a crime. Love. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so, so powerful and true. Philip. And thank you. It really is beautiful to hear those words for context for the folks at home. The Living Theater's Passover was historically for years, I'd say, sort of a hot event. I think internally was also an important one. And so, at this time of year, close to when Judith passed and also around Passover. It's really moving to hear that. I'm going to read from Julian Beck's diaries. He was Judith's partner and an art and life and co creator of the Living Theater. And this is a series of questions that are written in Julian's diaries. I love questions and I think that they are a good foundation for an artistic practice. And so I'm going to read these out and if there's anything that you think I'm going to keep thinking about that then I think that's good. This was written in 1963. I end with questions, because I have no answers. Of three broadcasts on the life of the theater delivered over station WBA I New York City. This was the third. What is the difference between questions and answers. Is Hamlet questioning his glory, or his tragedy. Why do you go to the theater. Is it important to go to the theater. Is it important to read. Do people who go to the theater differ from people who don't go to the theater. What happens to you, if you go to the theater. When you leave the theater, have you changed that is of course you are changed by each moment of experience so three hours later, you are naturally different but I mean, have you changed actively. Do you want to change actively. Are you content. Is it good to change. Is anything sufficient unchanged. What am I talking about. Do you go to the theater for answers. Do you have any questions. How long is a lifetime. Does it matter what happens. Does it matter how long we live. Does it matter how we live. Why do I ask these simple questions that everyone must be asking all the time is it because I think you don't ask these questions. What is happening to us. What happens in the theater. Do you go to the theater to find out about life. Is it easier to observe life in the theater, or in the street. Have you experienced joy in the theater. Have you experienced joy in the street. What do you enjoy. Do you go to the theater for intellectual exercises. Do you go to the theater to find out if it has figured out what is going on. Do you go to the theater because it might be telling the truth. Is anything that is the truth. Do you go to the theater to see how well an actor can disguise himself as somebody else. Do you think that actors should try to personify excellent being. What is excellent being. Can an actor show you excellent being. Can an actor show excellent being. Can an actor show you excellent being. Can an actor show excellent being only when playing foust. What is insight. Do you use your insight. Is it easy to ask questions. What did Aristotle say about catharsis. Do you go to the theater for a purge. Do you ever remember being purged in the theater. Do you go to the theater with expectancy and hope is the theater a way of learning things you do not know. What is learning for are you certain of any answers are all things equal. Does anything have value. What is the difference between an elephant and a handkerchief. Should you put people in jail. Do you lie. Does it matter if you lie. How many times a day do you lie. Do you find that you have to lie to get along in this world. Are you content I ask again. Are you content with anything. Do you know how to love. Do you love. Are you loved. Do you know how to hate. And do you. Why do I prefer a disturbing theater to a pleasing theater though I like to please. Who are we where have we come from where we go and go gone. Who are the kings with diamonds in their eyes moping and mowing among our private shows. Barker must we love one another or die odd and what is the question Shakespeare Stein. Do you know that I have reached into my entrails and strewn them about the stage in the form of a question. Do you know that I do not know what else to do. Do you know that I need you. That I am dying and will die without you. What is useful. What is a good question. What is a way to find answers. What will knock down the prison walls. What is the way. What is the relationship between the actor and the spectator. What is speech. What is the important inquiry. Do we have time to ask all the questions which ones do you want to ask. Will you ask them now. What do we need. How can we get it. How can we touch one another. How can we make it happen. How can we make a theater which makes love love now. How can we make a theater which is worthy of the life of its spectators. How can we make a theater when we do not know any answers but only have vague hints about how to ask questions. I end with questions because I have no answers but what I want is answers. And in 1968. How do we feed all the people. How do we stop all the wars. How do we open the doors of all the jails. How do we disintegrate the violence. How do we obliterate racism. How do we get rid of money. How do we undo early death. How do we end militarism. How do we put an end to authoritarian systems. How do we end the class system thing. How do we find the answers to these questions. How do we do it now. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. These are a lot of questions and if theater is good for something it is actually good to ask questions and. Yes, I think someone said I think it was Bob Wilson who said he once was a substitute teacher and he wrote questions. The blackboard in his school but then he realized he wrote the answers and not the questions everybody laughed, you know, so it's cool. That's what you do. And that's also hopefully what we do is thank you all for participating. This is so kind and generous of you. Thank you all for jumping on Philip and see if I'm around and really, really thanks to how around for supporting this very long 12 hour event as you have suggested always supported us for our seagull talks and the 24 hour howl round event for India so this is so meaningful and important to us and we move over now to a very important. New York theater company part of the fabric of New York theater what makes New York theater New York theater it's the my theater company Ralph Pena is with us and his group, and I hope they are all with us can you all hear me. Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic fantastic so welcome and we are already in the second half of our event the New York actors for Ukraine, expressing that your crisis in Ukraine the war is in our mind. And I would like to really thank you for helping us right away Ralph was the first who answered actually when I sent out the inquiry said of course and I think he wrote how can anyone say no to to participate so Ralph tell us a little bit about your company for all those who do not know about it and why is that so close to your heart. Well, my theater company is now in its 33rd season in New York were New York based but our mission has been to develop promote and produce new new plays and performance works written by Asian American playwrights. So we have centered Asian American lives in our company for since we began and now in the pandemic we've sort of reorganized and reassessed what who we are and what we need to do and in the midst of anti Asian violence that is on the rise in New York. One of the realizations we've had, we're talking to our communities that's been facilitated by Nancy this past year. Theater is not what our community needs at the moment, which they're very concerned about safety. And I think our role as artists is to respond to that and maybe not through theater, but to direct service. And that for us resonates with what's needed in Ukraine. Theater serves one thing, but it doesn't have to be just that we can become other things for our communities in times of crises. And I think that's what's happening now and we want to talk about that with Ken Leung and Jacob and Jesse and Nancy of how a cultural organization can change when the needs of the communities change and how you reprioritize your mission where artists still there but right now what's needed from us is to make sure that our people aren't getting hurt. And what's happening in Ukraine resonates with us. I also come from the Philippines and we'll talk about this later where militarization has been in place since the Marcos's regime in the 1980s and today that's still very much in place and there are indigenous tribes that have been subject to militarization and bombings and salvageings meaning people are killed. So what we've done we have a poem written by a student from one of these tribes, an open letter to students in Ukraine. And yes, so that's what that's what we're going to start with, Martin. Okay. Thank you. Should we, to everybody want to please introduce themselves first Nancy. Yeah. Hi, I'm Nancy below lock how and I am the community outreach liaison for my theater. And I worked with them on their plus this this past show at the public theater, the Chinese lady. Jesse. Hi there my name is Jesse Jay who and I'm an associate with my theater company it's so great to be with you here today. Jacob. Hi my name is Jacob Carter they then pronouns and I am very excited to be on this panel to discuss this today. Associate producer with my theater company and I'll pass this along to Ken. I'm a young and I'm an actor I've known I've been associated with my East since the mid 90s. So I'm a longtime friend of the theater company. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for taking time on this holiday weekend actually so really thank you. We're going to start with this poem and this poem again was written by a poet in the Philippines from the Philippines. It is a letter. I'm going to read it first in Filipino and then Ken will read it later in English. Okay, I'm going to read it first in Filipino and then Ken will read it later in English. I'm going to read it first in Filipino and then Ken will read it later in English. My dear fellow students, I see your picture. One is opening a book. Another is clipping paper. Someone else is using crayons. I see you putting stickers on paper. We are students in the midst of war. I am very impressed by how prepared you are for anything that might happen at any minute. Three short bursts of sirens means there is a fire. The long continuous peeling of church bells means a bomb is on its way. These are worthy lessons to memorize. They are reminders of imminent danger. They also mean the difference between life and death. These are the lessons my tribe learned when they burned our homes and killed our teachers. We understood that violence is the favorite language of governments, especially against native peoples protesting against the mining operations of foreign corporations. In the wars of the world's most powerful, we are the small, dispensable cons trapped in the middle. So don't wonder why the lessons carved into our hearts are those of rising up and defending our rights. It might spell death, but we will fight until it equals freedom. Thank you, Ken. And thank you, Joy, for that poem. As we were preparing for this, we wanted to take a conversation that is sort of pressing for our communities here, because I think that's what we can talk about. I think one of the things that we immediately said to ourselves that there's no way for us to sort of try to imagine what it's like for the people in Ukraine at the moment. I mean, we're in our living rooms and safe. So what we thought we would do was to talk about what's happening here and maybe find a way to relate to what's happening there. They're not equal, but it does involve sort of artists responding to what's happening in their communities and the crisis. We're not at war here like they are over there. No bombs are falling on us, but our people are in danger. Our communities are in danger. So we wanted to talk about that. And the jumping off point, I think, first of all, that poem was written based on that photograph that appeared, I think in a newspaper from Ukraine showing school children trying to study in the middle of all the bombs falling on them. And that's the response of another student from another country. But we had just finished production of The Chinese Lady at the public, which is sort of an account of the first woman, don't hold, go back. There's a first woman Chinese first female to land in the United States in 1834. And then the subsequent things that she saw and experienced all the way to the end of the century. And a lot of that included the Anti-Chinese Exclusion Act and violence against the Chinese community. And so part of what we did was we convened public forums and invited the Asian American communities to come and attend these things to talk about how they're feeling given the current moment. As you know, in the United States, even in New York, the violence against Asians has been on the rise, specifically unleashed by our great President Donald Trump when he attributed the virus to the Chinese and to Asian peoples. That unleashed a torrent of violence against Asians in the United States. And it has just grown exponentially, actually. And recently, another communities of color in Sunset Park were attacked. All of this is sort of compounded, but I think Nancy, for example, was key in organizing these community forums and bringing consultants and experts to help our audiences sort of react to that. But yeah, I'm going to ask Nancy to talk about those forums and what they, what they've meant. Yeah, Ralph brought me on to the Chinese lady to help reach out to our community. And as he said, right now, you know, specifically in New York City, there's like a 300% increase in violence against Asian Americans, Asian American Pacific Islanders. And our community feels very scared and very unheard and alone. And there is a sense of hopelessness for the AAPI community in New York City right now. And when Ralph brought me on, he said that he really wanted to create, not a talk back for the shows, but a space and a forum. And he was very clear several times that he didn't want hosts or moderators to come in and tell people how they should feel. He didn't want it to be prescriptive. He wanted us to create a space that was safe for people to share how they're feeling. And so, you know, we did that and we brought great hosts in who are on the ground doing the work, doing trainings and de-escalation and situational awareness and who are working directly with communities impacted. And so we were able to do four forums and we were very moved by the fact that we were actually able to make that space where the audience was talking to us and the audience was using the opportunity to say how scared they were and how alone they felt and saying things that maybe they weren't saying to their friends and family. And it was really an honor for us to be able to create that. And, you know, I've said to Ralph that, so Ralph has, Maiyee has created a standalone series separate from the shows to do these forums in other spaces across the city to help other theaters serve their AAPI constituents. And we also want to try to help other fields reach out and make safe spaces. And, you know, we were kind of debriefing and talking about the future. And I, you know, it's kind of obvious, but I felt that the reason that the forums were successful was not even because of how we formatted it, but because of the Chinese lady, because of the work, because of the way the work made people feel. And it, you know, it was really the perfect segue for people to understand their connection to history and how that connects to the moment that we're in now. And it was really, you know, a confluence of factors that that helped us touch the community and for the community to touch us as well. I'm going to ask you a little bit to tell me what happened with Dash, your son and what he said, arts function. Yes. So my son is six. And because I wear it because of how things are, he has had to come with me to the forums in the evening, he's attended all the forums. He's seen the Chinese lady, and he's also here so he might say something when he hears me saying this. But, you know, there was, there was a shooting as Ralph mentioned on the subway recently in Sunset Park, and the shooter he shot 33 bullets he injured 10 people. And so Dash will school is close to the stuff in proximity to the stop and so his school was in a soft lockdown. And, and we had to talk to the kids later about it, because we knew they were going to hear it from older kids. And, you know, I told Dash, and he said, Okay, well, what happens if we see him on the street and I said, Well, we'll have to call the police and he said, Well, what if he sees us call the police and I said, Well, we're going to move and then call the police and so he had practical, very pragmatic questions, despite the violence that we were discussing. And, you know, we went to bed and we woke up the next morning, and I was making him breakfast getting him ready for school, and he was laying down on the couch and I could hear him crying. And I asked him, you know what, what was wrong, what happened. And he told me that he was just thinking about. He was just thinking about an episode of his favorite show larva, and I asked him to describe the show to me that what he would the scene that he was talking about. And he said that all the friends, please. All the friends got into boats, and they were on the water. And no, but can I tell it the way I heard it. All the friends got into separate boats. Yes, all of the friends got into separate boats, and they fell asleep. And they drifted apart. And when they woke up, they drifted apart. And when they looked behind them, they saw this beautiful son. And Dash said that in his recollection that, you know, it made him, you know, it made him cry because of how beautiful that scene was. And I told him, you know, that's what art is. That is what art is for. Art helps us access feelings that we don't have the ability to really directly connect to. And I thought that, you know, it was, we've taken him to museums and shows and galleries his whole life and I've always wondered, you know, how to make him understand what art is for. And, and, you know, it was a Netflix show about maggots. But really, I'm going to mute myself. Frank, can you have anything to say? Yeah, well, to piggyback off that, I think not only the receivers of art, but we as artists, you know, we often, we make art to express what we can't by other means. And I think at a time like this, when, you know, even make it making it to the theater safe and sound is uncertain, that it, it takes real bravery to keep doing that to keep making our art. And as far as the question of what our role is, I think we, we stay in it, while not knowing stuff, you know, not knowing how to help, how to respond just because in making our art we're saying, okay, we're here, we're still here. We don't know what we're doing. We can't assume we know how you feel, but we're here. And I think that's when art is, you know, serves, serves its highest purpose. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jacob. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, when we are looking to create art as artists, and when we find any sort of external stimulus that is maybe blocking us from giving our art to the people that we want. The people that we want to reach out to, we do have other options. And, and that as artists is reaching out to the community. That as artists is reaching out to our neighbors and saying, you know, checking in on our neighbors for whatever purpose or reaching out with our art to our other neighbors and really cultivating that community. And as, as we have done with our community but universally to check in and say, are you okay? Do you need water? Do you need food? What is it that you needed? How can I help to provide that? And I think that, like what Ken was saying, we have our art to create based on our experiences at a given time. And there is a time, there will be a time when sometimes you're not going to have the availability to profess that art or showcase that art and showcase the universal experience that we're feeling. And then that time that's when community driven experiences or community outreach is the next step to make sure that we as a community are being heard and being seen and being universally attributed to what is going on in the world. No, really, really, thank you. And I, and I would like to point out again how, how what a radical statement in the way it is what Ralph said and he really means it, you know, said our community, the first thing they need now is not theater. And this has come from a theater company that works together for 30 years, but they to think what is our meaning, what is our purpose, how can we help best. And I just recently also meant to talk of Claire Bishop, a great art historian who looks at the history of us with theater who said yes once bright showed the conflict on stage of mother courage and you learn something but just not doing what she did. And people did activism on the street and said let's organize communities as artists, but Black Lives Matter taught us people can organize they don't need artists. And she said what perhaps is the most significant things people can do now also in the visual art was is to give care. What you said to take care to check in how are you, you know, and, and to provide and to create safe spaces and yes, also do the art but perhaps go back to a side of what art can provide that has been not neglected but was not in the center of it and practically has shifted and actually your work is in it. A question to Ralph, Ralph, you said, I'm going to talk about the Philippines later. Tell us a little bit what parallels do you see between what's happening in Ukraine and your experience. Well, during the martial law years, Mark was really cracked down on any on all the dissidents in tandem with US forces who were visiting. He was basically propped up by the United States so he had military support, and they were bombing villages in the south, because they wanted them to submit to government rule there was a succession movement in the south saying we didn't want to be part of the Philippines. They were Muslim and Philippines is a predominantly Catholic country, and they went to war and they basically bomb those Muslim cities and they, they did the very same thing around the country if you were suspected of being a communist for the first communist sympathizer, you went to jail or you died. And at the time I was a young student in theater. And again the question was, what kind of theater do we do when all of this is happening in the country. At the university we were they wanted to do Shakespeare and check off but that didn't make sense to me and to my colleague so what we did was we went to the streets and to the villages and we performed plays and skits that we wrote specifically about their conditions. And you know we use the Bawal technique meaning they could intervene they could they could shape how the story went. And it was in tandem with getting them supplies and all of that stuff but that to me, that to me underscored the theater and art has to be useful. We have to be of use to people and sometimes just performing doesn't cut it, especially when they're running away from bullets or hiding from bombs which is what's happening in Ukraine. Clearly there are people there but there are also artists there that affected by this and you know in times of calamity and in times of crisis and adversity artists somehow rise to the occasion that this feeds the artist's imagination they always come up with something that's relevant and I know that's going to happen in Ukraine. It's probably already happening if it wasn't happening maybe even before all of this started. But it's something that we want to support in any way we can obviously coming from here, and if anyone is listening there and want to want to reach out to us we're absolutely open to finding ways of helping with what we can. I think that's what we want to say with the art 30 minutes is that we want to be useful. That's quite quite quite quite a big big statement so really thank you for that and really also to remind us you know that wars and things like bombing of the, you know, villages and the house, you know, of the Philippines with, you know, you as support as you pointed out or the military support, you know, given the weapons you know there is it nothing is black and white in this world that was right. I think everybody who tells you this is right and this is wrong that these black and white people are lying to you the world is complex and one of the big things we are asked for is to live with contradictions to you know keep balance of things like in a dance, but really be on the side of justice progressive justice and to be on the right side of history and I think artists always have been what are what are plans what is coming up on the, we have a minute or two left what what is my planning. Well, Nancy is doing a series of anti Asian violence forms between now and December and we're actually partnering with multiple theaters off Broadway to host these things. And then we are going to launch a new play in August about the Korean war and the legacy of colonialism and violence, but it's told through Korean fables and children's stories. That's going to be at La Mama. And then we have other plants in the fall, but we're not ready to announce but we're back to live theater and digital programming but also really much half of all of our activities will be focused on taking care of our communities. And making space for them to feel safe and going to those communities you know because not everybody can come to Manhattan so we have to go to those places. I think that's part of that's part of our responsibility. Yeah, what a radical actor easy to say but to say you know what we now take care of our communities. We go to them and just just the place might not be in the center but we see that as part of our vision as our presumed cons work of doing art is actually to to do that we just so we come to the end of our set really would like to to thank you for responding so very, very early for taking this so seriously we had also some correspondence of what to do for bringing your team on and I think what you do is something every theater company that is presenting work and just a scrambling scrambling to get back and hopefully we can show the Michael Jackson video and then it's a renaissance to go back and set up what perhaps is kind of a revolution or something turning around doing something different and you guys do so thank you and I hope and thank you for organizing this thing this is such a really important thing for our community to get behind and come together and say you know we support Ukraine. Yeah, it is an important one so we're going to move over now to another company that you know also has like my he has a laughter, it's, it's traces it's footprint that's vision, it's mission on New York City, the big theater they are a part of the landscape, and we have the National Black Theater here with us and we would like to welcome national black and Jonathan is also a wonderful way we always try to make a transition so today and Jonathan thank you for being with us and I don't know if you had time to listen in a little bit to you know what your what your colleagues said, so what's going through your minds now in this situation. So they maybe we start with you yeah. I'm not sure if your sound is on is two years into the pandemic and I still forget to unmute. Thank you for having us Frank. And it is imperative that artists lend their voices New York theater artists lend their voices for Ukraine and you know what's on my heart right now is so much of the wisdom of our ancestors and our artists that have given us. Sorry, this is the lonely as he breaks in often. You know, none of us are free until we're all free my Angela said so that's what's on my heart right now but want to introduce ourselves. I'm Shade, I'm the CEO of Dr Barbara and tears National Black Theater in Harlem, and I am always privileged to be joined by. Hi my name is Jonathan Macquarie I'm the executive artist the director of National Black Theater. And so when you asked us if we would join and lend National Black Theater's voice to this urgent conversation of course we said yes and so Jonathan and I has been over the last two years that we've been navigating the pandemic and all of the different layers of pandemic we've been, you know, leaning in and listening to artists and so we've brought some of those voices here today in the form of quotes in the form of writers in the form of our pedagogy around art from the heart and service of healing. Fantastic. Tell a little bit about because we also have listeners from Europe from other countries, they might not all know about you. What is the National Black Theater, all about. Jonathan, you go. So National Black Theater, National Black Theater was founded in 1968 by a visionary leader by the name of Dr Barbara and tier. Also should be known as Shade's mom. She was the forebearer of the black arts movement for mother of the black arts movement and a really powerful black woman who really took the in the roots of upheaval and the roots of a lot of and the 1968 we think about that historically in American society, there's a lot happening and in the in the brink of that in the on the heels of that here comes a woman from East St. Louis who was actually taking on the reins of trying to figure out how to center the healing of black folk by telling their own story inside their own community. So, founded on Fifth Avenue 125th Street, National Black Theater since at the intersection of really trying to look at what you in the service of black liberation, how to create the conditions for human transformation. The equation, our theory of change is that black liberation plus place making plus art equals the conditions for human transformation so we're in the we're in the business of creating a container for all of us to be seen. Understanding that, that if the black body, especially the black woman's body, especially the black trans woman's body builds the breath or the freedom of liberation and liberated breath, then we all can transpire and have the opportunity to have liberation be present in a room. And so I think that I mean we have over we have a large track record of producing multiple different productions and large track record of workshops productions traveling around the world. We have a breath and a dexterity of actually training so many folks to give them an opportunity to actually propel. I like to say that we are like a launching pad for for for cultural for for cultural visionaries, to be able to have a fortified space, a foundation to be able to excel and exceed and go to their highest height so that's a little crash course and mbt Shade I don't know there's more that you want to add but that's that's a crash course. And that's a really wonderful crash course, I would also just say, my mother, Dr Barbara and tier. In founding the National Black Theater what she wanted to do was to create a home away from home. And that for us is so resonant in this moment of why we're gathering here for this 12 hours zoom of artistic expression is that we understand the power of having a home. And for black folks in this country in particular, who have been ripped from their home of Africa, and through migration forced migration, voluntary migration and immigration the colors of our story, all demand that in order for us to be able to seat our liberation, we are able to plant roots or acknowledge or recognize something as a home that when we are in the world doing what we do we can only do it. If we know that there's safe space that's holding space for our own creativity and liberation and so in BT was created to be a home away from home for black artists, no matter where they are at what point they are in their career, that there's a safe space and that there's a space calibrated for their liberation and energetically spiritually and emotionally holding space for them to rise and fly and I would just add that to the crash course of what in who in BT is we are hyper local in Harlem, but we're also global as the diaspora calls our space home. And this is important that you point out the loss of home or Heimat as the Germans say, you know two or three million people have left that country, you know, mostly women, young children, men are left elderly people couldn't leave. And so, yes, this is something to everyone here who thinks about our creates that is so close to our thoughts. I think to your mind as a response you see you guys that we selected some voices we brought something what what what were you thinking about. It's it's made it's mainly a roll call of quotes from various by Poc visionaries who kind of lean into the curiosity of discomfort, I'm laying to the curiosity of also what is radical liberation look like. And I were just going to read those quotes and then hopefully just having a discourse and dialogue with you Frank around what stems from it. What does it mean to embody these quotes was it mean to actually have these quotes live inside of this context, and also utilizing this IP as a way as a potentially a North Star to think about how do we create a sad in this moment knowing that it will probably take generations in order to find healing. However, it is all possible in our lifetime, and that there is potential in allowing for the lessons of this moment to show up and not necessarily the trauma. How do we get there and not saying that has happened right now not saying that it has to happen three days from now, but it's understanding that in order for civilization to have the echoes of hope, the echoes of faith, the echoes of a new dawn, there has to be a conversation around how do we how do we learn from from what we what the tragedies that are ahead of us, so that we can find the common ground that allows for the bleeding not to happen but the healing to happen. So, without further ado, we're just interested in reading quotes and sharing sharing some wisdom that spans a lot of time and a morium. So you'll hear some elders in the room and you hear some contemporaries in the room. And you mentioned BIPOC, not everybody might know it if you can just very shortly explain listeners from Europe. BIPOC is an anachronism that can be controversial, we'll say that, but it stands for black, indigenous people of color. It's an umbrella that many folks, not all folks use to speak about black, indigenous and people of color, the umbrella of folks of color. I'm going to start with the bowl of this moment and read Tony Morrison, who says, in times of crisis, this is in times of crisis, this is precisely the time when artists go to work. There's no time for despair, no place for self pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilization heals. And then this time we are called as artists to lend our voice to ensure that civilization heals. What we fear is happening has happened for centuries. And no one has stated it better than Frederick Douglass, when he says, where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them. Neither reason nor property will be safe. And so, as Maya Angelou always says, the truth is none of us are free until everyone is free. This is the struggle that, you know, black identified bodies have had for centuries. This is a unifying, rallying call for liberation for folks across the world in all of our histories, but poignantly in the black experience. And lastly, before Jonathan goes into a seminal quote from Adrian Marie Brown, I would just read this quote from James Baldwin. It says, ignorance, allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. Jonathan. And so I'm going to read a quote from Adrian Marie Brown's Emergent Strategy. Many folks out there who are listening might know the book. It's a book that really looks at how nature and how the world can help shift how we think about policymaking and how we think about how we flock, how we think about movement building. And she pens in the book. P.S. if there happens to be a multitude of grease upon you, individual or collective or fast or slow or small or large, at equal parts of these considerations, that the broken heart can cover more territory that perhaps love can only be as large as grief demands that grief is the growing up of the heart that birth boundaries like an old skin or finished life. That grief is gratitude that water seek scale that even your tears seek the recognition of community that the heart is at the front line, and the fight is to feel in a world of distractions that death might be the only freedom that your grief is a worthwhile use of your time, and your body will feel only as much as it is able to that the ones that you grieve may be grieving you that the sacred comes from the limitations that you are excellent at loving in all ways, and even in the spirit of people coming for this 12 hour marathon, and all ways of you staying on for all 12 hours spring, and all ways of the people who are listening to this on a consistent basis. There are always for anyone who was grieving in this moment that the echoes of that grief stems from a power that is that is unfathomably transformative which is love. That is because we love each other so deeply that is because we feel the law so epically that we are generated at that we are reminded in that action that we are excellent at loving. I want to end with this beautiful quote by Alice Walker which is healing begins where the where the where the wound was made that if we don't start talking about the spaces where wounds were made that we don't if we don't start having a conversations where the wounds were made. I think we ever have a reconciliation at the same time. So, that's really the quotes that we brought to be present with this conversation, knowing the epic tragedy of what, of what is the premise of making this marathon happen as practitioners who work in and making profound courageous safe gathering spaces for us to for us to stand in tow with our other fellow colleagues for in the New York City area, saying that we really we stand we stand with we stand beside we stand in concert with the many with the many many other voices who are working as purveyors of a very sacred act, which is to gather, which is to allow for the hearts and minds of individuals to be transformed Shade talks about that all the time. And how if we are to be able to allow for art to be the healing elixir that Shade talked about from that Tony Morrison uplifted, we have to allow for ourselves, not only to allow for this love passion of grief or this love passion that shows up to sustain us. We have to lean into the curiosity of truly truly truly leaning on each other and creating profound safe spaces yet again. Well, this is a very, very impressive and one can feel that almost generations, you know, stand behind you, you know, who speak to us through you and an experience actually lived experience as you said also of the black body. And today, you know, we heard also in some some of the Ukrainian artists over centuries, their country has been invaded, even so it was once part of the Greek Empire actually in some theorists say that's why they are different, you know, they are not used to kind of the image of the one person about that there are, you know, traces of that kind of older European idea of pluralistic and voices their language has been forbidden 142 times in like 200 years to be spoken even very often came from Russia but I like very much what you said I also like the Tony Morrison quote if there's a time of crisis it's time to go to work. Yeah, yeah, that's what they said what it means yeah. Yeah. You know, artists are the greatest tool in the translation of the human experience. The ability to be able to be a storyteller is the power of the pen. It is how we create bridges of understanding it is how we translate culture through time, it is what unites us, it is what grounds us in our humanity. And in times of crisis, that is when the artists go to work. So, often, we are paralyzed through the through our trauma through all of what we're experiencing. The idea of how to make sense of the senseless is the space in which the artist creates an alchemy by which there is a possibility for healing for transcending for transformation that all is not lost if the artist is in the room. And so as the most incredible and generational translators right when all generations come and they go when the artists come and go, what is left is art. And so the artist becomes the most important purveyor of how we have endured, but how we will ascend and transcend and so I think when Tony Morrison says there is no time for fear. In times of crisis, this is when we go to work, we use language, all the things that folks take for granted as a part of how we communicate are actually weapons in the artists arsenal in order for us to show up to be represented to feel seen, safe and sacred. And so that for me is what the Tony Morrison quote means and Jonathan, I don't know if you have some reflections on the quote. I mean, I was just the what was starting to come up for me was this was this notion of when when impact happens and it shifts the breath and what is the response after that breath is made. What after after you take in that breath after that exhale what is what is that what do you do with every breath afterwards like like on so on so many levels. I've been sitting with this idea of how does, how does courage and the etymology of courage which I which I got from Shade, which means the heart to be living in the space of the heart versus bravery which is live in the space of the muscle. Live inside the space of the heart and live in the space of the courage and breathe inside of that. What do artists get to do and how do artists then get to utilize that that courage space to then actually shift and change the molecular structure of their blood memory. That is the blood memory that is that that is being that's being etched right now and also blood memory that's being reminded right now. There's a there there there is something that is happening that is oozing out of our system that is causing us to react, and also to be reactionary. And, and how we and how we respond to it is the is it is it is the promissory note that we will not repeat the sins of our past, or the promissory note that we will evolve past it. And I think that there is there there is a beautiful inside of all inside of all tragic moments, there is a beautiful love note that can be found amongst all of the tragedy. And if we are able to lean into the beauty, the beauty that can be housed inside of it, we can then begin to etch a new fertile ground, a volcano teaches us so much. It destroys in its path, but it also fertilizes the ground in which it stands. And so, not to say that we need to rush to getting to fertile, not to say we need to rush to making to making beautiful art yet again. But it is a it is a note that nature teaches us that that in this time of tyranny, like slate like I mean black folks and African American tradition can talk about it slavery being one of those right. The promissory note was not held inside the bodies of black and brown of my ancestors when they were on on whatever cotton field sugar cane field, whatever it was, they didn't have the promissory note of joy, or the promissory note of a future, inside of their body, my existence would not be present for you to interact with today. We wouldn't have such things as light bulbs or as peanut butter or even a machine to help us try clean our clothes, the mathematic wisdom to take us to the moon would not have shown the promissory note that comes from the devastation is the fertilization of a new dawn a new day, and that the wisdom that life teaches us that we look at history from its cake from its complicated space, but also it's loving space, and we don't water it down to be semantic with kind of how we want to the appetite, and which we kind of like one things popcorn style really quickly, that we actually live in the complications of it, we will find that there is there is there is there is something to be housed in in moments like this, that it creates the cocoon for new possibilities to be transformed and trans morphed so that we can become the butterfly, we can transform into becoming something that we did not know but was always laid inside of us to be more human, and not to be conditioned by the constant POV. No, this is, it's a powerful message and I think it's a message, you know, and the lesson over centuries, you know, when it seemed hopeless but that art has to be on the side of life. Bob Wilson also talked about today is that you know we have to be hopeful, our art is to be hopeful, and it brings communities together. I like what you said about the wound, you know, and that healing actually starts there is that German artist Joseph Boyce always said show your wound, you know, that for art as an artist but also as a country or as people and I had a conversation with Victoria Kopsinetsky who was working for Voice of America, you know, they might cover this, and she said what do you think? How come this happened again? She said I'm Russian, we said war should never happen again. Stalinistic times should never happen again. Now we had war and now we have a dictator who goes on and on and on, you know, and forbids to even use a single word war, you say the word war, you go to jail for 15 years. And perhaps an answer is that the killings of the Stalinism, you know, the 60 million people some say died, you know, of famine, of cleansing, of political repression. It was never talked about. On the contrary, he was taken away. Yeah, no, can I just say this is this this that is the wound, right? It's the wound, as you have described it with Stalinism, it is the wound of apartheid, it is the wound of transatlantic slavery and without truth and reconciliation, without, you know, shining a blinding light into the cracks, there cannot be a change day. And I, and what we want to say is the National Black Theater is that we stand in solidarity and we stand on the front line, as we have always stood on the front line. And the important part of this moment in time is that we are gathering, and we're using technology to find new and innovative ways to gather together because, as Audrey Lord has said, as Maya Angelou has said, until if I am not free, then none of us are free. And so for all of the viewers that are in Europe, for all of the viewers that are around the world for Black American folks, African American folks, for Black diaspora folks across the globe that are listening today, we stand in solidarity. We all have our story of how we have persevered, of how we have been tried to be extinguished. And each and every one of us are artists, as artists, are seeds. They tried to, what's the beautiful quote, they tried to extinguish us, but they didn't know we were seeds. And so we are planting today in all ways the seeds of hope, the seeds of healing, the seeds of creativity, which ultimately will root and be the fruit by which we all, you know, see a day in which we can be truly free, where liberation is our birthright each and every one of us. And so we have to find ways to be more human and to connect. And so we're grateful to be here, to be invited by you, Frank, to just meditate on what's happening in Europe, but also to bring the present pulse realities of what's happening here in the United States and what has for over 400 years. And that we stand in solidarity. Yeah, yeah, and that hopefully that kind of engagement was the truth. The word is real, you know, that people do listen to what you, your stories, the things you present, you know, and, and what you work about and that this is actually a significant contribution, you know, towards also the healing here in this country that hopefully will prevent developments, you know, that at the moment, hopefully unthinkable, but we do not know the ice of civilization is slim. That's what everybody says, you know, who lived long enough. And it's just, it's because, and I just have to say it's the power of convenings like this that bring intersectional voices together that that are not are outside of that that they stretch outside of silo and live inside of the nuance of what does it mean to be human. And the quest of stretching outside of the silo is the elixir and the SAV, because we are so conditioned through the multiple different ways we have defined ourselves and lived ourselves as a society, a global society a local society, an American society to start to silo and to generate from a space of solitude, instead of actually going across the line and understanding that the line was never there we actually put the line there, and then we have the opportunity to erase it with every breath that we take, and every step that we make and every action that we have. And if we can, and that doesn't mean to lose culture and lose the cultural nuance and dexterity that makes us unique and special and powerful. What it does mean is that it understands my cultural nuance is not predicated on my imperialistic notion of yours, or my denigration of yours. It actually lives in its abundance when I start to understand the space of your of the beauty of how you show up in the world with the beauty of how I show up in the world, and that there is enough space for all of us. There is enough space for all of us. And I would just say it as our timelines down. I think the thing that's really key in this. And this is the work of the National Black Theater and so many of our colleagues we just saw my theater right before we came is the degree in which history wants to not to erase our humanity is the relationship to how our ability to exist so if there is one thing that we chant and that we you know that we pour into all of our work is how do we find more ways to create the conditions where you see us as human that these are not headline stories these are human beings when the forefathers of the United States pinned black people into the Constitution as three fifths of a man, they did that intentionally to be able to continue to erase us or to use us as each channel as animal. And if we were seen that way then we could be a race, we could have violence done against our bodies and it not seen as anything different than you would do to a dog. As we traverse this as we lean into the alchemy of what it is to be an artist what it is to be an artist is to, you know, put on a pedestal, the ideals of our humanity, and that we each and every one of us deserve to be seen and to experience what we are experiencing through the heart, mind and spirits of a human experience, a soulful experience that is rooted in our humanity. So I see our colleagues are coming on. Come on Kate say hello and Nicole and to your to your colleagues from the National Black Theater. Hello. Hi. Good to see you. Well Frank, I just want to say I hope you're drinking lots and lots of water. I hope you're drinking lots of water. This is a beautiful marathon. It is so beautiful to see our next the next company that's coming in with so much light and love and really thank you for orchestrating I know that takes a lot of weight to do this. And there's so much wisdom being shared that I think I think there's a transformation upon foot of what you have started and hopefully it becomes not a tradition because of the incident, a tradition because it's necessary. And that we don't need the incident in order to make this happen as a necessary precipice, we just need to love to want to be in space with one another again, and to transmute and again take away the line the line was never there. There's so much craft to it. So what does it mean to erase. And these events help to erase it just a little bit more. So thank you so much. Thank you that means a lot to me and thank you both for taking the time I know how busy you are how much you work and it is a holiday weekend. Thank you. Thank you guys and I hope maybe you later. So the play company which is I think one of the great companies in New York like the National Black Theater like my ego we had before and others, because it is a company that said we work and show and present global work, as we now say planetary work stuff from the planet, and not just you know, in our neighborhood of the well made British play. So welcome everybody Kate and Stacy Nadine and Nicole Kate maybe a few words about the play the play company we know there's a players club but you are the play company. Yeah, we are not the players club. So, so yeah, may I may I go into what I prepared to say before we start. Okay. Thank you. So, hello, hello everybody. I'm Kate law walled. I'm the founding producer of play co in New York. And we're honored to be here alongside so many colleagues from the New York theater community, and to be sharing our readings with everyone joining today and front thank you so much for inviting us to be part of this play co is dedicated to producing an international program of new work for the theater. We explore the work of artists from around the world to uplift curiosity about each other as human beings to open channels of communication and understanding and to expand the cultures and lived experience represented on the American stage. The courage and the perseverance of the Ukrainian people is a light for the world. There are many artists taking up arms there now to defend their country. It is deeply humbling to be here today, offering words, but we see that words do have power, because there is so much effort to silence them. So we offer them in the spirit of solidarity and hope. Today are the actors Nadine Malouf, Nicole Shaloub and Stacy Yan, beloved members of our play co community. Nadine is joining us from backstage at the public theater where she's currently performing Nicole from Oklahoma city where she's filming a project and Stacy from Indiana where she's currently teaching. So we're tuning in from around the United States. This group came together when Playco produced a play called Intractable Woman, a theatrical memo on Anna Polatkovskaya by the Italian playwright Stefano Mussini translated by Paula Wing in the fall of 2018. She produced the play to share the story of the journalist Anna Polatkovskaya, a fierce protector of truth, who was murdered in 2006 as she entered her apartment building in Moscow. And to draw attention to threats to journalists and free speech, while the Trump presidency was degrading the values our country is supposed to uphold. Today, which focused on Anna's accounts of Russia's second war in Chechnya has been echoing in our minds again since this Russian war against Ukraine began. For today's presentation, we've worked with the director and a designer from that production, Lee Sunday Evans and Masha Simring, to put together readings that we'd like to share today. I also want to thank Charlene Aviambo from Playco for her contribution. Lee has put this together in the style of our production, where Nadine, Nicole and Stacey together played the voice of Anna Polatkovskaya. They're together again today as three voices and one voice. So now I will turn it over to Nicole, Stacey and Nadine. We are a group of actors. A few years ago, we did a play about the journalist Anna Polatkovskaya. By the way, Anna was born in New York City to Ukrainian parents. Her parents were Soviet diplomats posted to the UN by the Soviet government. Play was written by Stefano Messini and it was an important project for all of us. It was important because Anna was such a dedicated reporter committed to telling the truth about the Second Chechen War and Putin's abuses of power there. It was also important because Anna was killed and telling her story, even though it ended in such a brutal act of needless violence, was a way that we could celebrate her and learn from her and grieve the loss of her life, her voice, her passion, her writing and honor, her courage, her dedication to truth telling in the face of unfathomable opposition. Today, we want to read some pieces of text inspired by the style of the play that we did. A tribute to the theater of Maria Pol. A poem, part of a new play by a Ukrainian writer. An excerpt from one of Anna's books. Part of a Facebook post from a young Russian journalist we met while making the play. A way to send our love to everyone in Ukraine, everyone who is fighting to survive and resist in the face of the senseless war. Playwright Stefano Messini wrote, this was the theater of Maria Pol. It was hit by an artillery strike with a thousand refugees inside. The theater is a place always in which human beings show the best of themselves. A place of words, of verses, of beauty, of bodies, of visions, of sets sculpted and painted, of costumes drawn and sewn, a place of questions and of memories. In sum, the best that humanity can express. Tonight, the Maria Pol drama theater was destroyed. It no longer exists. It lies in ruin. And they are excavating to save the survivors of the crowd of people who found in a theater this time a physical refuge, not just a symbolic one against the evil of the world. The theater welcomed them, as theaters always have throughout the history of the world, theaters that were created for the good of all who enter them. This is why the tragedy of the theater of Mary Pol is a catastrophe that cannot pass in silence in theaters around the world. As a man of the theater, I am struck and pained as I have never been. Therefore, I will try to launch to all those who make theater a simple proposal. Each theater this weekend will display a large M on their front door. It will be like all the theaters are the theater of Maria Pol, and as such, in part, will also be struck. That social media post was written by playwright Stefano Massini on March 16th. We want you to know, all of those who are listening, that many theaters, including some in New York City, did post an M on the doors. So that audiences saw when they walked in, tonight, this is the theater of Maria Pol. Today, Maria Pol endures in the face of continued violence and destruction. Now we are going to read a poem by the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky. This is from the book Dancing in Odessa, published by Tupelo Press. The poem is titled, Author's Prayer. If I speak for the dead, I must leave this animal of my body. I must write the same poem over and over, for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender. If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge of myself. I must live as a blind man who runs through rooms without touching the furniture. Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking, what year is it? I can dance in my sleep and laugh in front of the mirror. Even sleep is a prayer. Lord. I will praise your madness, in a language not mine, speak of music that wakes us. Music in which we move, for whatever I say, is a kind of petition, and the darkest days must I praise. Next, we are going to read part of a Facebook post. It was written by the journalist and activist, Elena Kotchuchenko, who was vowed to be a professional witness to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We met her in New York City. She was a fellow at Columbia University when we were doing the play about Anna Politkovskaya, intractable woman. She was living in and out of a kind of temporary exile, because... She did an interview in 2015 about Russia's military presence in Ukraine, which put her in danger. Also, Elena works at the Russian independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, which is where Anna worked. Novaya Gazeta has been forced to stop operating now, but Elena continues to post from the Ukraine. We thank Masha Simring for this translation of her words. I want to thank the Ukrainians who helped me from the moment when I, without money, cards blocked, and without connection, no roaming with the aggressor country. But with a Russian passport at night, ended up behind a border checkpoint in the village of Shakhini. From this moment on, you, your love of your country, your courage and faith, not me and my readers in the Russians, made my work possible. Thank you. I thank the decoders who followed me through the sounds of morgues, hospitals, destroyed houses. This is one hell of a job. Half of you refused to take money for the work or asked to transfer your payment to a human rights project. I thank my dear editorial office who sent me to war, believed in me, protected me and waited for my texts in my return. Beloved, I have no words, and there's no one closer to me. I have things to be finished before I can, before I could be imprisoned in my homeland under new criminal charges. Now I have a few months of work and sleeping in a safe place ahead of me. It will take time to finish what I started. This is a poem that Elena posted on Instagram a few weeks ago. We thank Masha Simring for sharing it and translating it for us. It's cold. The Metro has become strange by Fyodor Svarkovsky. Svarovsky. The Metro has become strange. Passengers are disappearing. At first we did not notice. But the number gone is growing. The station has leaked into the papers. Relatives are complaining. They are writing reports to the police. The rumors. After midnight, not long before the Metro's closing hour, on certain lines, new stations are appearing. Station seashore. Thunder by the river. Mountain meadows and meadows. Dark night in the woods. Open space. Station, ship. Station, dusk. The doors open carefully. You have half a minute to think. Beyond the doors, the shores of an island in the ocean. Clouds on a cliff. Pines, palms. The smell of oak and maple. Firm feathers crunch on the feet and porcupines. They say the stations are quantum. Unreal, but many still leave. This is an excerpt from a new play by the Ukrainian writer Irina Garrett, a founder of the playwright's theater in Kiev. It was translated by John Friedman and Natalia Brados and commissioned by the Center for International Theater Development. Which reached out to Ukrainian writers to give them work, if possible, during this time. Here's an excerpt of the play. Dwarf breeds of apple trees. They take up less space and they match my height. They bloom and smell wonderful in the spring when I can approach them and smell their blossoms without climbing up on a ladder. In the fall, I will collect their sweet fruits. Sources on the internet say the trees will bear fruit in the third year after the seedlings are planted. I'll wait. The main thing is to talk with my neighbor. He has a tractor and we have abandoned overgrown land. We recently bought a house with land in the village. We threw all of our efforts into remodeling the house, but never touched the land. We spent a long time thinking about what would grow here. One needs love and humanity in these days of rage and hatred. My youngest daughter is pregnant and terribly frightened. He called to tell me there was an air raid alarm and because she was on the street and did not know where to hide, my arms and legs began to tremble. But it's no big deal. No big deal. I repeat to myself constantly. It's nothing. You just must wait, struggle and suffer the pain. It's like giving birth. Then you look at the baby and think, wow, good for me. I did it. We will cope. I want to balance anger with love and tenderness. My pregnant Dasha picked up a little mutt named Bun at the shelter. Bun entertains my child and relieves some of the anxiety. My husband and I have a second dog, Squirrel. We love our little one. But to be honest, she looks like a little bat. Most important, the formerly homeless Bun and Squirrel are full of love for us. You need balance. My grandmother, who is half Tatar, was supposed to inherit a huge apple orchard from her Tatar grandparents. But she didn't. First, the Soviet government took away the apple orchard and destroyed the trees. Even if she had managed to inherit it, she would not have been allowed to do anything, acquire a profession or earn a living. I think, could it be my fault that the war started? Maybe my thoughts about the new apple orchard were interpreted as some absolute evil, a kind of mordor that rejects everyone who loves, creates and generates something that destroys for centuries anything that is capable of creating happiness and giving life. When watering the apple tree, take care with the supports under the fruit-laden branches. The next to last text we're going to read is an excerpt from the prologue to Anna Politkovskaya's 2002 book about the war in Chechnya. Who am I? And why am I writing about the Second Chechen War? I'm a journalist, a special correspondent for the Moscow newspaper, Nuvaya Gazeta. And this is the only reason I've seen the war. I was sent there to cover it. Not, however, because I am a war correspondent and know the subject well. On the contrary, because I am just a civilian. The editor-in-chief's idea was simple. The very fact that I'm just a civilian gives me that much deeper understanding of the experiences of other such civilians living in Chechen towns and villages who are caught in the war. That's it. For that reason, I've been going to Chechnya every month since July. Naturally, I have traveled far and wide through all of Chechnya. I've seen a lot of suffering. It has been such a terrible war. Simply medieval, even though it's taking place as the 20th century passes into the 21st and in Europe, too. People call the newspaper and send letters with one in the same question. Why are you writing this? Why are you scaring us? Why do we need to know this? I'm sure that this has to be done for one simple reason. As contemporaries of this war, we will be held responsible for it. The classic Soviet excuse of not being there and not taking part in anything personally won't work. So I want you to know the truth. The very last thing we'll read. Is a kind of blessing, a prayer. A hope. A poem. Let there be new flowering by Lucille Clifton. Let there be new flowering in the fields. Let the fields turn mellar for the men. Let the men keep tender through the time. Let the time be rested from the war. Let the war be won. Let love be at the end. Thank you all so much. Billy, thank you all. I mean, that is just such a powerful, powerful combination of the material and words. And thank you for your sincerity in preparing it and delivering it. And how does it feel to question the actors to speak those lines? I don't want to speak for my fellow castmates, but we did Intractable Woman, the show about Anna Politkovskaya, in 2018. And she has not left us. Her words, her work, her life's passion and pursuit and spirit have not left us. And so to return to that spirit is unfortunate, given the situation in the world today and ongoing, but feels powerful to convene in this way. Yeah. Okay. No, no, go ahead. Over the past few years, but obviously more recently, we sometimes check in as a group. Or even like some of the three of us, the actors and me, the director on text or whatever about little news bits or things, whether it's stories about certain journalists or things that are chilling that are happening. And then most recently, even before this project came about, we were sharing, you know, did you see Stefano's post? Did you see Elena's post? Did you see, you know, what's happening? You know, it's funny. I have to say that one of the more profound moments for me in that, in the play that we did was the experience of meeting the Elena, who's the young reporter who works at Novoia, and having her present for our first read through. And then she came back and saw the show and she had gone traveling all over the country. And I've always liked to check in when she posts on social media just to see the incredible work that she's doing. So, yeah, I've been, I've been in particular thinking of her a lot because she's, you know, she's part of the legacy of Anna and she's experiencing this all. And I hope and pray for her safety and her work and hopefully Novoia Gazeta will be able to open again and be able to report independent journalism in Russia. Yeah, it's very personal for all of us. I think just getting to know so much about Anna and all the other journalists who put themselves at risk and continue to report after being poisoned and harassed and their families as well. And like, it's changed the entire way that I look at any war and any independent media coverage. And I think like one of the most, and it's taking me back to that time, but it's forever with me, like Nadine was saying, like it's never left. And like, when we were working on that play, we had a lot of journalists come to see that Kate had organized some, you know, talk backs with like certain local online journalists and others. And that like, it was so meaningful for them too to see some of them who knew Anna and also just reflecting on their own journeys abroad and covering either war or personal stories in places that don't get to be covered. So it's just so, it's just so important, especially the way that the war on Ukraine is being covered and we're watching before our eyes, no via Gazeta being, you know, closed down. And yeah, so it's been, yeah, it was really great to get together and thank you for, you know, letting us be a part of this. What does it mean to you? Well, just listening to what Nicole and Stacey and Nadine were saying, you know, sometimes I, I think about the fact that we're doing theater and what does that really do? And I do feel that on a one-on-one basis or maybe on a, you know, on the basis of each audience that we perform for, sometimes you are able to sort of plant something in someone's heart or someone's mind that does reverberate. And certainly, as has been said, the experience of producing that play and, you know, other plays that Placo has been able to produce. You know, I was thinking before today, like I said earlier, I'm thinking of playwrights in Ukraine who have guns in their hands right now. And here we are with words. But words are powerful. They can be. And so it's very, it's very meaningful to be here today. And, you know, as Jonathan was saying earlier, Frank, I just think, you know, what you've been doing for the past two years, just bringing people together is so important. You know, whether we're together in a theater or together through technology like this, it's really important more than ever. Yeah, but also your work, actually what unites us with the journalists like Anna is the search for truth. I think it is really what you all are doing on stage as actors, the writers as writers. Kate as a producer and artistic director. And it is a strong play. It's a great play. Everybody loves Lehman trilogy so much, with Stefan also wrote, but I think this is a play that, you know, goes to the heart, you know, of making art and being a testimony and a witness. What theater does, what writers do, what producing means. And it's one of the great productions of the play company with, they were sponsored the Sacram binder or Guillermo Calderon's Villa and they were really engaged with the story and they stay with us. And they're not like television shows where they are like sugar, soda, drink and you forget what happened. You don't forget when you saw this play. It changed you as, I never look at news again the same, you know, so something happened. And also it became true whenever the Gazeta will be published again, it will be a free country, you know, so we'll see where it goes. But I really, really want to thank you for taking this so serious, for preparing so well, for delivering so beautifully. There's a very, very significant, you know, work and also the life of a person, entire life, someone who got killed for searching for the truth, for not backing down and for continuing to work, even so people's old children, you should know it in a way in antiquity, you know, of our times who says, you know, I care about the dead, I care about the corpses in Chakni at the time or reporting on the Ukraine what their colleague does now. So it's a very powerful thing. We want to really, really thank you and we already have the next group, Fesbanrynd is here and Moje and perhaps also Bernice Miller from John Jay College who over the last decade also engaged deeply, I think with Eastern Europe. So first of all, welcome everybody, but all of you, thank you. I hope to see it again. I hope you will put this episode up on the Playco website and send it out. We send you a link. This was very powerful and very strong and like all the contributions today, really, truly meaningful. It also shows what theater can do if we really ask what influence, what can we show, what can we do? This is an example actually what it is. Thank you so much and Fes, are you there? And all of you, bye-bye and thank you. Bye-bye. And Kate and again, thank you Stacey for being with us. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. It looks like Fes and Anne are upside down. Anne is here. Yeah. Yes. Oh, good. That's better. Yes. Wait one second. I got to do this video. Anne, maybe you too. You could move it around. We see you upside down. Yes, that's perfect. Yes. Yes. Ah. Yes. Here we are. And welcome. Both of you. We felt strongly that also CUNY stages, in a way it's represented CUNY is a, a large university system with 21 colleges, but actually a 16 or 17 of them have theaters. They have theater programs. It's not as well known. It's never been as richly endowed. Like our private colleagues at NYU or Columbia, but nevertheless it's important work. And the communities that are, that are also served relates layman college, John J college, LaGuardia, the Borough Manhattan community college, state and island, Brooklyn college, the programs, our colleagues put on is, it is stunning. But of course, today we went right away for this event to theft, who has been engaging in a way for a long time. For a long time in a deep way. And it's not just because of now what happened. And so I would like to welcome both of you and theft. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and about your work. Thank you, Frank. We'll tell you. I'm the chairman of our. Yeah. Hello. Renice here. Yes. He just joined. Hello. Oh, hooray. Hello everybody. Briefly, John J college of criminal justice. We are criminal justice college. And therefore our theater program is a minor. We don't give degrees, but we do the kind of theater research that other universities are not doing. Because we're focused on theater for social change. We're looking at theater, not merely as one of the humanities, but more research oriented, more background in the social sciences. We have a program called performance and justice. My research is very broad, but it did take me into Ukraine on and off over the years. Where I met some fascinating people who we're going to talk about. And then what happened, what brings Anne into this conversation. Renice and I both graduated from Hunter college. By the way, a shout out to Hunter. Yeah, Greg Mosher. Great theater man. Herman used to be on that faculty. Well, in any case, I had started directing again in about 2015. And I were joined together in Paris to do some work. And then we went down to Vienna to show the work. And some of the people in Ukraine actually came to Vienna to see the work on the theory that maybe I could bring the work into Lviv and work with the internally displaced people. And I thought this was... So the ideas internationally displaced actors. Internally displaced. Internally. In other words, the people that Anne and Renice and I were working with were already involved in the Medan. Our translator was one of the organizers of the Medan in Lviv and in Kiev. And she was at 19, a crack translator. Her mom is Mayor Harbuzia on the faculty at Ivan Franco. The group changed around a little bit. Our membership changed around, but we had gotten the invitation and Renice joined the group. And around January 2016, we prepared to go down there with something that we'd created on the condition we could give a workshop to young folks. And we went down there and we just immediately got to work. It was ice cold the whole time. And Anne and I were talking earlier today, and we were trying to get prepared in those days to teach people what we had been teaching ourselves, cross-section of various trainings and work on voice. Ultimately, one of our members was a little nervous about teaching. And I said, look, they're much better than we are. We really just have to go down there and be with them. And we had some incredible experiences just as human beings. And we learned the city from the guts of the theater out. Let's ask Renice and also Anne. Renice, how did you come to that project? As Seth was saying, he extended the invitation to me. We were, at that point, working in France with Anne and several other of the company members. And Seth invited me in. And so we ended up leaving from Paris after we'd been working on our own practitioner project. We went down to take that project and at the same time to continue working on this piece that Seth had begun to build with the students there. In Ukraine. In Ukraine. So we went to Lviv and that's where we spent most of our time building with, I think there were maybe six of us all together. Anne, do you remember how many of you were? Oh, yes. I think it was six, yes. And how did you connect to Seth? Anne and I connected to another colleague that I'd met up at one of Eugenio Barba's symposiums in, I think, 2014. And so we started like, you know, hatching this idea of what we could do, you know, with the sort of interdisciplinary work from various theater trainings. And so my colleague who I'd met in Denmark said, you've got to meet Anne. And ultimately Anne stayed with the group. In fact, she's still working with us now on different projects. So Anne just came in pretty much blind to everything. I told her what we were interested in. She said, I'll do it. Anne, you are connected to SAP Poetics International. Tell us a bit about that. It's a, wow. Maybe Anne, can you hear us, Anne? No, no, no. I'm here, I'm here. Tell us a bit, yeah. It's people coming from different countries, speaking different languages and meeting on stage. And each one with his own languages. So in the performance we, there were English, German, Russian, and Spanish, many, many languages. So it was about to create another language who is stronger that the language we speak. And the body language is stronger. So you all went together and next to the work you went, worked in France and you created something new in Lviv. Tell us about the project. What was it exactly about? Any one of you? Well, I feel this. It was at a moment where the global migration had really caught fire. And so even as you went through Europe, you would see a lot of people who were displaced on the streets of Paris. I saw families, you know? In Lviv, you didn't see that. But that was the story we were creating from these actors who came from all these different places including, where was Ali from? That's from Iran. Yeah. And so there were people who had access to these stories of displacement. And it was almost like we were in the safety of Lviv, creating the story about people who were displaced. And the students in Lviv were going through their own sense of displacement. And so there was all these levels of connections that were happening. But our piece was called, we were doing Port d'Algeres. We called it Port d'Alger in 1963 because we were focused on things that we could connect from our present world back to the uprising in Algeria in those days. And also we'd used photographs from the uprising to make our political positions. A physical score. Physical score. Yeah. Raqouzi as Mayor Hald would have called it. And so what was unique about our group, Frank, was that each actor was a wealth formed performer themselves who could hold a solo themselves. And so we brought our individual stories and ideas together. And Seth created different tropes from which we found a physical score and that united the telling of the different characters that we were bringing to life. And the kids, so we were working on that play while at the same time working with the young people on building their own story, which was vastly more energetic than our piece. So Seth, tell me, you're in New York City. I think 400 languages are spoken there. New York City has 12, 13 million people. Why do you felt strongly? Let's go to Ukraine for my work. I will tell you personally, I have two reasons. But first my family comes from Sli, which is just south of Aviv and we're from the old Rabbinic world. So 100 years ago. It's your homeland, your family. Essentially, yeah. And I knew of it through stories. And eventually I went to these places and, you know, I saw some fascinating just things about what remains of Jewish life, what happened to Jewish life, what's going on in these cities now. Stree was the first city in Ukraine to fly the Ukrainian flag after, I have to think the orange revolution, but certainly after the Medan. And the other thing is that when I understood my research on Kotovsky, it wasn't taking me where I wanted to go, which is more deeply into the ways in which secret police either support or interfere with the performing arts. Everybody said, you've got to do the research on Les Kurbas in Ukraine. And that's what really brought me in there in a way that, first of all, you know, I could justify all the research and also get the feeling of belonging in my homeland that I could never have gotten just through family conversations. So these two things were really motivating factors. And as really said, the energy of the people was even more motivating. The students, actually that Bernice and I and Anne were working with, I had followed through their four years of university because I was doing my research and everybody seemed to know these students. And indeed, I got a full right to do their graduating projects with them, which is quite a story. I want to focus more on what we were doing. Tell us about, yeah, the Les Kurbas Theatre, your research, what is that theatre? In 1907, it was a cabaret theatre and it had a lot of different functions, but now it's a state theatre. I remember, I think it's Kuczynski is the director. And so we became friends. But the point is that that's now a state theatre linked to the Ivan Franco University, but also with a great repertoire. But I remember in the days that Bernice and I and Anne were there and even before they were already raising money for not merely internally displaced people, but to support various people who were soldiering. And indeed now, just to put it in the conversation, one of our most important members from the original thing is now, you know, in the military. So these young students are now, you know, the weapons are in their hands. They're running various safety centers, hospital, helping people. And the Kurbas Theatre, unless you crank, you crank theater both, state academic theaters are doing that and they're creating new repertoire, which, you know, if you go on their websites, you can find out about. It's very important. But my motivations are quite different from Bernice's and Anne's. I'm just telling you about how I came into it. And why did you join and went to Ukraine early on? First, I followed Seth and his crazy ideas. And also I was just after the terrorist shooting in Paris and it was this need to tell this, the story we were telling around the world and that is getting outside of Paris. And that was, yeah, my, my, my needs at this moment and seems very relevant. And in fact, when I, when I, whether it was short, not shocking, but like it's amazing for me when I met this young people who are actually living in the country at this time was already at war, but this more silent war. They were ready to fight for their, for democracy, for, for, for their countries and, yeah, to see these young people who are 20s. And so committed to democracy was, yeah, quite a strong memory. So what did you learn being in Ukraine? What did you learn about Ukraine instead? What did you all learn from being there? I'm European and it's Europe. I felt like it's, it's my continent and I didn't felt any differences between being in France of being in Ukraine. And that was, yeah. And all these young people also, I had nothing to learn to them. They had such skills, great singers. Yes. Yeah, I think for me, like Ann is saying the skill level of the students really, I found surprising. I had no idea that they would be of that high caliber of performance. And I'm Jamaican American, but I've spent a lot of time in Europe. Nonetheless, what I found, some of the impressions that I was left with, which are now quite disturbing to me, was the meeting of the old and the new in this Ukrainian city, where so much of the city, the architecture, the feel, the smell was old, but the kids were new. They were far more adept at technology and ideas and their creative response into the world was fresh and unique and bright and vibrant. And so the juxtaposition of these two things really turned me on. And to see now the leveling of these cities, that for me, it meant so much to see and to smell, to touch, to see that being destroyed is just so painful. How is this for you looking at this war? You know, I've had Frank a number of different responses. The first level response to me is the devastation for people, just human beings, what's going on. The second level is the devastation for people that I know and what they must be going through and seeing places that I recognize in the media and how that resonates. But then there's also the complexity of me being a black person who had been in Ukraine and black skin and having experienced racism there. But because I had such beautiful experiences with the young people we worked with and the adults within the theater circle, I was so well taken care of that these two experiences existed there for me. And so for me, the response is very, very multi-layered. It's not just one response. It's like these deep responses that constantly question our humanity. Seth, if you... I'm thinking about what Rene said, and it's true. My experiences were quite different. And I learned much better than anywhere else that I worked and that when it's time to go, you snap your fingers and you go. The most important two words I ever learned in my life, I don't know what they are in Ukrainian, but let's go. I mean, that was the attitude. And then once you get there, you look at the materials you have and then you snap your fingers and say, let's go again. I think that the use and energy of the people that we were working with gave me an incredible new lease on life and a resilience to things that I didn't have resilience to before. Because if you look, for example, at the outrageous history of anti-Semitism throughout Eastern Europe and the Stathols and all of that, many people would ask me, why you want to go back to a place where they killed your people over and over again? And I just, I hadn't really entered into my mind. When you really look at the situation, it's just far more complicated. And so I was compelled to get involved in a historical situation that had little to do with my identity as a white male from New York. So, you know, for Denise and I, we're always approaching, we've worked together a long time, we're always approaching the same situation, but from such opposite perspectives. And in Ukraine, both of us just had to, you know, turn on the workflow. And that was the best thing I think I've ever done in my life as an artist. I'm so grateful for the opportunity. We can talk about personalities in Ukrainian theater, but we didn't know that the great personalities of Ukrainian theater had opened up that door for us. We were just there to work. And it was an honor, an absolute honor, and watching the cities get destroyed and hearing that some of the people that I knew had resurfaced. Some of our actors are in bunkers now, secretly carrying on communications and things like that. We can't even talk about it. So the now of that is the now of now. You know, and I'm very, very pleased that I could actually say to the people that I work with in Ukraine, you can take this and you can do whatever you want with it. So we have an NGO down there named Gershom Theater. It does what it wants. And the spawning of new projects is something that I just want to foster in ways that the students give us, the creative idea. And I say, let's go. That's my attitude. You're also working on a musical project or even creating a theater in Lviv. Is that you mentioned that? What is that about? Well, we're doing a lot of different things. The first of all, we did take over a building and we kept it alive. And then we brought new members into the group for not this original 13, but the singers and the whole dance community came out because of the movement exercises. Ultimately, we had to let the theater go, but the groups just stayed together. And then we would go back and forth between Ljubljana, Ljubljana was sort of our second city and Lviv. And ultimately we would have a symposium once a year with performances, workshops, et cetera. And then 2019 hit and it was impossible to get going on that again. And then it dawned on me, we could do it like we're having this conversation now. Everybody makes a very short 90 second to two minute video with a prompt from various poetry, but they don't have to use the poetry in the piece. So they can dance it, they can sing it. There's a lot of different stuff going on, but this is new. And it's the fact is that 50% of our 106 members are from Ukraine. So 50% of your members, go ahead. You have 100 members in that new theater you created that theater community in Lviv. Half are in Lviv, but we have some in Burkina Faso, Tokyo, France, New York, USA. I forgot about USA, right? That's amazing. I remember I said, you read something or from a text or something. You said, Frank, you don't understand how we work. We work in a different way. What's that different way? Well, to summarize it rather quickly. If I get a piece of text, I have to match it to the actions. I'm an actor. Or if I get a score of actions, it should be useful with any piece of text. When I learned this from Torgare Vettol at the Odin, Bernice learned it, I think, from Roberto Carrari. So we began to work this way. And the simple act of justification, which is something that Claremont introduced to us, we tried it in many different ways. And it's especially important when you don't know the language that you're working in so that the physical language should be able to justify anything. Bernice and I argue about this, but we both agree that it's what we are constantly focused on in the work that we do. And Anne got it. She understood it better than we did. And you know, just to add on to what Seth is saying, what's really unique about the work that we do is that we are very internationally centered in that we are pulling on all of us from the various countries and tapping into our common humanity and recognizing that these stories of injustices that we're exploring are not new. We're exploring the human condition and using our art to hold up a lens at the same time for us to meet each other. Like Anne said, we meet on the floor. We bring ourselves into the theater. And you know, right now I'm working with the Romanian playwright, Saviana Stinescu. And she's written this beautiful play that Heartbeat Ensemble is producing called Be Trapped Inside the Window about domestic slavery here in Connecticut in the USA. And this issue is not just here. It's like wherever there's injustice in the world, we have artists who respond to hold up the mirror and say, is this who we really are? Is this who we want to be? And Sub-Poetics International is doing that in a very global way. Yeah. So if you cannot do it now, obviously, and who knows for how long in the Ukraine, Anne and Stas and Marie, where will you do your work? Or where will the group come back together? Right now, we're doing our work on our website, a four-part series called Will You Love Me in December as you did in May. And we've got episode one and two already out there. Yes, we're charging a little $5 membership thing, but you can be sure that that $5 is recycled into supporting the artists. We're going to put together episode three. Frank, it's Sub-Poetics International at Squarespace. I don't know it right off the top of my head, but I'm perfectly happy for people to contact me to find out about it at my university email address. And Renees is also doing some exquisite work with one of our sister companies in the United States and it's called a Laboratory for Actor Training. So these are the places where you can see the kind of work that Renees and Anne and I have been involved with and are continuing. But it's on TV now, that's basically it. Yeah, so you reinvented the genre and you adapted to that new times after Corona, still the time of Corona we live in. I think President Biden said 100,000 Ukrainians will come to the US. Do you think some of your actors will come over? One is already here. I believe so, but I think it's actually the case. Are you reaching out to them? Of course, yeah, we're working together. We're creating episode three of Will You Love Me? in December as you did in May. And one of our Ukrainian members will be working with one of our members from Burkina Faso who are both here in the United States. Sanctuary or not, they're working hard. And I believe that family members will come and I've opened my doors to one family. That's incredible. I mean, that's quite stunning. But also in a way represents the spirit of the city of New York that in a way it's very local, but on the other hand it always has the global, the planetary scope in mind. I think it was Tony Kushner who actually joined us today with Oscar users who said New York is the melting pot that never melted. And there's some truth through it, you know, but perhaps it's this time, that time of Corona, the time now of a war, you know, perhaps the temperature is going up and that lead structure is melting and we are getting together and new fusions are coming out. I think it's really of interest. Also the fact that your college is named of criminal justice, you know, which is in a way also a mission for the theater, you know, to get justice for criminal acts. You know, there will be war tribunals. They have been, Milo Rao staged many trials. You know, might be also an inspiration, you know, but he had life, the real actors and about real, real actors in the sense of who were accused. He did this in Moscow, the Moscow trials, the Pussy Riot jail sentence. So he restaged it secretly in the Sakharovs and there was real judges and prosecutors and lawyers and there's a lot to do and perhaps, you know, this could also be one of the engagements, you know, or in your great work at that college for criminal justice to find a way to bring truth to light. We are already a little bit in our next segment. So we have now with us the next group and it is the great American poets cafe who is teaching, joining us at Daniel Gallant who was formerly the director, could not be with us, but we have the great Kimberley Ramirez with us, J.F. Ciri and Paul Latour. And so say hi to Stass and Vernice and Anne-Marie from France, right where you, it's almost midnight there or past where they touched and they talk, talk to us about their work in Ukraine over the decades, almost for many, many years they have been engaging their created work, created a theater company in international one and now, of course, all the rules have changed, everything is different. So thank you for joining us and Stass and Vernice and Anne and we move over to that also, I think, jewel in the New York theater community, that famous place in a way, some say legendary place, the Neyarikin Poets Cafe and Kimberley, you are, I think, at a conference somewhere in Florida. That's true, that's true. Yeah, so tell us a little bit where you are, what you do and also perhaps speak a little bit about the Poets Cafe or Paul or J.F. Ciri. Okay, so first I have some exciting news to share. We were on the backstage with the stage managers and it appears that the Instagram account for the Seagull has crashed, like has been flagged for censorship because so many people are tweeting and retweeting and sharing the hashtag for New York theater artists for Ukraine, so it's quite interesting. So everyone's trying to contact Instagram and recover the Seagull's Instagram account but I think that this is a testament to the amazing work that you're doing and you're only part of the way through the long day marathon already and you've crossed the internet with the censorship. We like it, I hope it's not our fault that CUNY technology just wasn't up to pick but who of you will tell us a little bit and also audience about the Neurikin Poets Cafe? Okay, do you want to, Paul Latore, do you want to give a brief history or I can do that if you'd like to start there? Paul, start and then Kimberly before. I'll hand off gracefully. So the Neurikin Poets Cafe was started by Lower East Side Manhattan, what's called Lower East Side, queer, Latinx, black artists who started in parlors. It started with Miguel Algarín in his circle, Dikin Bimbo, like so many visionaries, luminaries of the Lower East Side of New York City outside of the theater district and they founded this cafe starting out of living rooms and evolving into various spaces throughout the Lower East Side and then eventually residing where they are in East Third Street today where the cafe has operated successfully with poetry performances, ASL slams, you know, theater productions and as a venue for teaching, education and culturally impacting the world, honestly now, moving through virtual spaces such as this one today. Yeah, Kimberly, you can... It's a cool fun fact that the Snap kind of evolved from that when audiences and poets were assembling in Miguel Algarín's living room, they applauded a little bit too much for the neighbors, so that's how the Snap was born. So it's a good fun fact. Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, and legendary Jean-Michel Basquiat was supposed to be hanging out there and crash there when he wasn't famous yet in the attic of the place. So let's talk a little bit. You know, it's also mostly known also for spoken word artists, you know, which you are and since this war started, the invasion of the Ukraine in Russia, how does that spoken word community react to that? What do you hear, J.F. Ciri? Maybe you tell us a bit. Well, I can't speak for all poets, but I can speak for myself as a poet. I mean, I think, you know, poets are observers, poets are translators of the human experience and the human condition, and so it's very... I would imagine that it's challenging for a poet to watch what is happening around the world and not be inspired to comment on that artistically. So like a lot of different things that are happening around the world, I'm sure lots of poets are gravitating towards the images that they're seeing on the media, the stories that are being told and reported on in the news and, you know, taking that and sort of wrestling with it philosophically and creatively and then sort of sharing some of those stories in our work. So that's how I would answer that. Mm-hmm. I've seen a lot of frontline activism and people speaking, people of Ukrainian background and descent and heritage speaking towards what's going on and those not, but who feel, you know, solidarity. There's been a lot on our online and in-person mics, support, people wearing the colors, people leaving words of love and embrace and endearment. So it's been a rallying cause, I think, in the Nereken Poetry Cafe circles that I've been present for over these last few months, for sure. Mm-hmm. I mean, the Nereken Poetry Cafe, people may not know where it's located, but it's E3rd between B and C, but it's also at the intersection of art and activism. And this is no exception. And I think that the way that the cafe has handled the lockdown period also has made it a somewhat more international outreach, and we have all kinds of hybrid, high-flexy things going on in the space where there's screens with other spoken word cafes all around the world, like super international slams and things going on to Tokyo and a bunch of other cities around the world. So I feel like, now more than ever, there's an international awareness and this is certainly a playing a role. It's been less than one month since the Russian military bombed the Ukrainian theater at Medigovol and 300 people, just civilians, innocent civilians, and when you think about the way we gather at the Nereken Poetry Cafe or the way that we gather at our theater, it's the place where we feel safe, and it's always an escape, even in times of peace. It's always a place where we can just kind of go and just be like, huh, I'm with my people and with my community. This is my space. And if you have to be hiding from bombs and terror and war, a theater is a top choice, right? We all feel like we're gonna, especially with the children, the amount of children that were in that space and how that was probably comforting to them, like in contrast to hiding in the subways or just to be in the theater, like maybe a transcendent space, this huge red roof. And on each side of that theater was written children in big white letters on the entrance and the exit of that street, just children. And when you think about, like my mother was, she was oppressed by an authoritarian regime and had to flee her country as a child. In Cuba, right? Yes, in Cuba. And so I've been hearing about experiencing war and oppression and totalitarianism from a child's vantage all of my life. But when we see these kids on TV, these Ukrainian children asking questions, trying to get a rationale of looking to adults who can't explain it. It doesn't make any more sense to adults than it does to the children. But their words, if you listen to their words and their songs, they are accidental poets. They're making poetry. And I have some of the words from the children of Ukraine if you can indulge this offering before we take segue into the readings that everyone prepared. So these are the Ukrainian children's words. So this is kind of now from me, or for us, a found poem of their terror. When they shoot, I run home. I am afraid and I cry. I think about dogs. When you get shot, when you get shot at, it's the scariest thing. I try not to think about it, but it comes into my head. Mines can be either very small or big in order not to be deafened. You should lie on the ground. You should cover your ears and scream. I do not want to go back to the basement. Do you hear? And the Ukrainian charitable fund is amplifying these voices of children and they're doing everything that they're looking to artwork. The children gravitate to artwork naturally to try to feel better in this time of terror and crisis. We hear them singing. They're reaching for paintbrushes and paints and they're painting these drawings and they're creating this artwork and psychologists are analyzing it and helping them. And this one kid, this one little Ukrainian kid paints these billowing ways and curves of paint just like on the paper. It looks like kind of an explosion. And they say, what is the name of your drawing? And the kid says, war. Really emphatically, like war. And then the child continues to work on the painting and then all of a sudden holds it up and says, I'm done. I'm finished. It's a clown. It's a clown. And the psychologist says, but didn't you have another name for the painting? Wasn't it war? And the child says, no, no, no, I changed the name. Let it be a clown. And it just like, I'm getting chills right now. Just remembering the story. Like the idea that that child was able to manifest from the terror that he was witnessing that went directly on the page and their artwork to manifest humor out of it. And I don't know if any of you saw that article about Zelensky, where Zelensky constantly references humor. He talks about Monty Python, the Beatles yellow submarine. He's making jokes. He talks about our American movie, Groundhog Day, and he urges us all to keep the humor. I mean, if Zelensky can say this, he's like even a surgeon in the surgery, like you have to have some elements of humor and he characterizes Putin as humorless. Humorless, yeah. And Zelensky, as was Hitler, was known to have had absolutely no sense of humor ever. And it's a bad sign. And it's not a good thing. And maybe Paul and J.F. C. No, I don't want to disagree into that. He asked us to think about the poet in the time of war. I'm just opening it up like it can be anything. It can be, you know, we can spin it into humor, spin the art into humor like that child did. So whatever the offerings I think J.F. is going to share something first, and then Paul and then coming back to J.F. for another piece. Thank you so much. So the first piece I'm going to share is really just dedicated to the women. It's written originally for Latinas. And so I just want to open to everyone watching that it was originally written for one group, but I do see it as a call to all women. We are of the earth, brown and rich ever connected to our race as we birth humanity. Our bodies grow like the limbs of a tree. Our children, it's leaves ready to embrace the world. History is written into the lines of our faces, our eyes, the stories of our past. We are our mothers. We are our daughters. We are the Guerreras of our past. I force a Nuestra Sangre. We are of the water. Yemaya welcomes us in her ways, teaching us her rituals, guiding us as we guide our own ancestral spirits, urging us forward. Our mothers once daughters, our daughters soon mothers, the cycle of life keeps to the rhythmic beat of our hearts. In sync, we travel as one. We are of pride and knowledge. We feel with our minds and think with our hearts. We are strong and sensitive at our cords. We defend and protect and defend and protect and defend and protect. Somos de hiero. Withstanding the abuses of our society, continuing to raise the children in our communities, practiced in the art of patience and love. We are of work. We know the burdens of home early and we take flight from our parents to create new spaces of rebirth. Somos de alta y poesía. We are a song and dance. Somos de cultura y orgullo. Mujeres Latinas somos. Thank you. And now I'll pass it on to Paul. Beautiful, beautiful. Ooh, okay, following that. Just got to brush off some of these chills. All right, this piece is called Starving. Tonight we bring voice to a most noble plight. What's a noble fight to a missile strike? What's a colony to a country? Distended bellies to those well fed? What's it did now? What's it gone on to those still battling climactic threat? What a survival to a super powered rival who might simply not care to comprehend? Human beings in a mile. What's a mom to a king? What's a king to a god? What's a god to a non-believer who don't believe in anything? We make it out alive. All right, all right. No church in the wild. No churches in war, no temples built in wild brush and no religious schools. High school senior bulimic, I would take table scraps, offer them up to gods of lack, starving myself of sustenance purposely in hopes that I could grow smaller. It's ironic when we deprive ourselves. At times we deprive others of what we could provide. The world had we been full-strengthed beings, beacons of light, bastions of human decency. They're consumed by not eating. We atrophy hopes to be free to pursue the inalienable rights of life, liberty, happiness, sad as I was in those days. I'm not sure what much of the world has to endure. Justices of war, enslavement, another uniquely first world trigger fingered horror scenes blowing what remained of my faith, smithereens' faith. Not one in all omnipotent, reigning king, some kid sat upon hill, ant magnified glass in hand as he decides who is worthy of savior, faith lost if not only in gods, but in the bullies of our worst nature, faith in us collectively to do the right thing. When confronted with choice to act or stand pat, sat on hands, turning backs, on table scraps, tossed aside while so many go underfed, you know. In ninth grade there was this bully, I forget his name, that's not the important part, was crucial was how during lunch he would roam and patrol the cafeteria like a Bolshevik armed with a scowl and his red right fist stirring shit, sticking his privileged thumbs and plates on trays of whoever food he deemed so fit, ruining meals, spoiling appetites in equal measure. So many unable to afford replacements, he felt compelled to enact this atrocity not because of lack or want to keep what he pleased from their plates, rather just to lay claim to it, dominion over his white-tide kingdom just for the sake of spite, simply because he could. He found power in being more ruthless, larger, stronger, agent of chaos, mischief, God of pure selfishness, like low-key, high-key, hating on his brother's accomplishments and ever since that day I noticed most bullies simply grow up without outgrowing this. So these days I praise the lips that give me capacity to tell these stories to speak my peace on such unholy days as these on Seder, Easter weekend and Ramadan breaking fast upon dusk telling non-man-made gods that we will forgo in hopes to be granted serenity. My long-modeled modus operandi of lack offered a sacrifice to only feast after forty long nights not to relent, one moment sooner such a shame that the strength gained in caving in and filling concave cave of this cage's rib, the sustenance would make one far less apocryphal for we will not accept atrocities brought on first hand neither by disorder nor power-drunk presidents setting megalomaniac precedence with arms hovering over button ready to red-right palm invoke red dawn where doomsday clocks tick down to final hour and bring ruin in frigid wars recounting how all life is merely biting their borrowed time. I recall that bully in the lunch line how not one administrator authority figure in the room stepped in yet we collectively govern ourselves to the decision it was time to bring stock to it yet that reckoning wouldn't come soon enough it took until junior year two whole years of hunger and torment when I said every time he tries to eat off his own plate let's flip tray so maybe that when he sees what it's like to lap perhaps he'd stop and what do you know our tactic did the trick two days into a borscht fed famine he demanded we stop this bully sought ceasefire yet only when we fired back till nary a crumb was left yet when temples of body come Jericho crumbling down tower are babble undone by merciless serpentine tongues like 900 bodies dumped in unmarked graves in Kiev stacking pyramid all along the eastern front soviet warmongers no better than pharaohs begetting furors who enslaved the whole race and we know who's to blame those lunchtime bullies left unchecked with thumbs pressing axes to grind family lines to find powder war crimes in Crimea Warsaw Kharkiv and Shenehiv where red armies will not cease until they're sworn enemies for reasons untold to them are Putin the ground these Vlad the impaler neighbors to a sister city now Vlad a mirroring destruction conquering a place they lay no rightful claim but still want it anyway every but the overfilled gut of fascist bully bear back upon horses unsaddled with the very smallest of small dick energy guilty partying these united soviet socialist sent republican missiles with promise to follow up warhead Chernobyl the atomic thread between superiority and unclear threats shows we can very much consent descent and mutually assure destruction and we sing songs of war and calls to arms but you can't embrace your young or hug someone with nuclear arms isotopes isolate unable still so far to go just to reach armistice arms racing Armageddon setting doomsday clock ahead of time finished lines run through red tape conflicts brought on by delusional dogs of war desperate desiring power so absolute it corrupts up absolutely because whoa huh yeah what is it good for absolutely nothing these hollow caustic hollow acts that cost us more than spoils split amongst victors very few far and between could ever be re keeping count of countless casualties the causality no statistics could ever cat tally child anatomies buried the true tax of war's taxonomy but we stand with heave evive maria pool along with a 7.1 million displaced inside Ukraine 4.5 million seeking safe refuge as they flee now being embraced by nations far and wide united welcoming refugees for the many more we still need to offer support not deny passports of entry based on place of origin I say if you are not letting in those of black brown and african descent then you are doing a disservice to the cause causing shame not embracing sovereignty can't say you heed peace when you still speak colonized tongues of apartheid seek to divide amongst lines of race creed non-believers who don't believe in equality so we the healers soothe sayers and painters of word we poet stand on watch today united in palms length the only arms we wish to race or raise this rice says this human race we once reclaimed giving offer what we can offer in calls for support to those still resisting fight for liberty to live to see another day as resistance sends Neptune missiles to seek flagships of black sea fleet upon the black feet of wanderers still seeking asylum refuge from attempted coups invasions a tale as old as time and evil still seems to be trying on its new mask this time no birthright or throne war we condone support for those in the throes of survival the only triumph because as I learned the best way to fight a bully is to starve them that we are not one to stoop to levels less they wish to deprive others we can very much go blow for blow so long as they target one of our plates none will rest until the bully respects that if we go unfed so will they a thumb for a thumb nor an eye for an eye because we're not blind to injustice so long as Ukraine's not free we won't allow these Bolshevik bullies to digest one bite thumbs in eye so garks if we must kick up a bit of dust because liberty is rarely ever won nor given freely on silver plated lunch trays we get we must seize it so we stand with them as Ukraine fights for a home rightfully theirs even we typically non-believers believe with all the conviction we can muster that this resistance this time is justified stood by side stood until the bully sees that he will not eat until Ukraine gets back their seat not just the seat but their entire table to sit with no fear of Russian reprisals of thumb stuck in orbital plates in sight as they eat in peace finally all the while knowing you can never stamp out all war like you can't prevent all bullying we know at least we can stand on the side filling us with nourishment to not only survive but thrive find happiness because the one thing we believe is in these intrinsic rights to life liberty we can only find happiness divine when we free all our people still starving peace throw it back to you now thank you amazing so here's a draft stage thoughts war world round sun rise to sunset avian melodies drown in rapid fire ammunition for some violence be a permanent condition we think we know war we think we know occupation we think we know corruption masters of western media we think we know wars are a tugs of war on threads where are avatars don flags of solidarity as we wax ignorantly about the toils of war we praise resistance from a distance glorify heroes prepackaged and fed to us but how does one explain pray for Ukraine to a Palestinian or an Ethiopian or anyone whose lived war for generations to children traveling to freedom with a desperate mother's scroll on their backs empathy until the border comes into focus. See, there is no asylum for those traveling north, only west. We accept the racial hierarchy of resistance, arming only those who prove useful allies. We lift up one casualty, ignoring simultaneously the cries of others. We who are afforded the luxury of cash-shapping our charity, we never get dirty. And so I wonder, when do we rise up from the constant contradiction? When do we take the blinders off? Do we stand a chance against the agents of war? When war comes for us, who will pay? Pray it all away. Thank you. Thank you all so much. It looks like we have five minutes. Amazing, amazing. Amazing, well, I'm so impressed. The war Chernobyl-ing from Paul and the liberty was never saved, served on a silver tray, actually, you had to fight for it. And as in your question, what are we gonna do if war comes to us? And what about the war that's already here in a different way, of course? And I really want to say thank you so much. The last two poems, Paul, also yours, did you just, did you create that in the last days? Yeah, my poem I wrote today. Or yesterday, because that's the kind of person I tend to be like, occasional, right? Something occasional, but it always turns into like, I'm going to go with the energy of what it's giving me right now and today. So you were sitting at home or in a cafe or how did it happen? Yeah, I was very much like sitting at home between, you know, reading and seeing headlines, seeing everything going on with, you know, the shooting down of that warship that marked a pretty big victory on the Ukrainian side for defending, but also seeing, you know, all kinds of things like 900 bodies found at the border and just being like shocked, horrified, mortified, but not surprised, like, because this is what war, the spoils of war is. And even when it's not one walked into willingly, it's one of defense over invasion. It's just seeing a lot of the same things. It triggered a lot of things for me. And so just being really honored with being asked to come into this space today, I felt called, you know, to write something for today, just like I know Siri did with her second piece. So like also big, big ups to my Ramana who both, both her pieces really were moving to me. Thank you. That's the longest poem written, I'm sure on planet Earth, you know, about the crisis in the Ukraine and something, you know, very strong and beautiful and it just show compassion and care as does yours. Siri, when did you write yours? When did it, what was the moment you were sitting down? Oh, so the timeline is similar to Paul's in that oftentimes I spend a lot of time meditating. So I've been meditating on this idea since, you know, we were first asked to participate. And then I think the writing really started between yesterday and today. I was also working like a dog right up until the spring recess. So, you know, so sometimes the poems sort of get written up here, up here, up here until I can sit down and play with words. And I really wanted to make sure that I shared that it was in a draft stage because certainly I believe that the work itself has a lot more growing to do and there's just a lot of complexity in talking about, you know, war and the effects of war that can't always be sort of like really, really visited in a first draft, you know, but I think for me it's just sort of like thinking about my seat in the world as being within a seat of privilege and how I get to sort of look upon. And so that's really what I've been thinking about and marinating on in terms of, you know, just who am I in the world and what does it mean to speak on these issues when I'm not on the front lines myself? I mean, I'm really, you know, looking forward to survivor tales and seeing what folks, what kind of arc it's generated from the folks who are experiencing this firsthand. But I hope that, you know, my hope for the piece was for it to generate conversation about how we wrestle with these experiences when we're not physically in them. Yeah, I think you said resistance from a distance, right? Which is a beautiful way. It says actually also possible or supporting it or, you know, having it on the mind. And I'm sure whoever listened to it, you know, if there are Ukrainians listening still, it is very meaningful. They might see later on that there are fellow poets or, you know, people really took time, the energy and thought and that they showed compassion. And in a way, a joyful, as the Buddha sometimes say, a joyful participation in the Thoros and catastrophes of life. And I think this is of real importance. And Kimberley did say that, you know, that, you know, we need this engagement where we also put our life mask on like an airplane, you know, before we go down. I think this is a very beautiful and strong contribution. And I think it's also important for the world to know and everybody, you know, that the Neurican poets' cafe, the history of the spoken word is something significant, it's something important. It has something to say and in a way follows, you know, the traditions actually of the bards, you know, the Asian ones for over centuries or thousands of years, you know, had put together long oral poems which they recited often also in competition. And so you're very close to that spirit. We can't believe it how fast that went and we already at our seven o'clock p.m. So maybe we can have our friends from La Mama with us, stay for a second with us to say, so you guys can say hello. And I see the names here coming up from Adam and Martin Sophia, Marina, Verlana, Vanda. And here are your colleagues from the Neurican poets' cafe. And, you know, here with us, Adam and everyone. So we're really Paul and J.F. Siri. Thank you so much for joining really, for taking the time and it's a big honor that you both took the time to write a poem for us, a spoken word, utterings, you know, that normally we see it on the stage, poetry needs to be spoken, alive, we need to hear it. And we did hear it, we didn't see it, but we heard it. It does exist on a paper. It's true, but it really exists when we hear it and the rhythm and the speaking of it. So this is really very beautiful and a great contribution. Thank you both. And we go on to our next segment, to La Mama and Yara Arts Group, which we put into sections, but in the big way, they are so strongly connected and I would like to welcome all of you and perhaps, first of all, Verlana, thank you for joining us. Can everyone hear me? Yes, thank you. Thank you for inviting us. Thank you. Will Mia join us? Do you know, will she? She will on tape. We have a couple of tapes. Partly we tape people in Ukraine and because of the connections and also Mia will be with us. So tell us a little bit about you. Who are you and what's your connection to La Mama? I direct the Yara Arts Group, a resident company at La Mama. And today we're gonna be speaking with the rest of New York theater artists about the bombing in Mariupol Theater in Ukraine by Russian forces. And we'll hear from Mia Yu and Nikki Paraiso as well as our current resident artists at La Mama today. And then I'll describe our relationship to Ukrainian community and artists. And we'll hear from Maria Kutnyakova who worked at the Mariupol Theater's community and Valdemar Kliusko who created performance projects in the Mariupol port area. And in the second half, Maria will describe her experiences as she was sheltering in the theater of Mariupol during the bombing. And finally, Yara artists will read poems by Sidhija Don from Kharkiv. And some of our participants will be speaking in Ukraine and I'll be translating then when we're making sort of transitional comments. The wonderful, really, really thank you all for putting this together, this complex program that perhaps helps to reflect the reality and the many angles of that situation. That is so unimaginable in a way for us here but it makes it a bit more real. La Mama, of course, is one of the great institutions in New York founded by Ellen Stewart in the 50s. It was one of the first places to give voice also to global theater artists, I'm thinking, before her, perhaps Asia society had some pop up the others but La Mama was the one that opened the door and we need to have a door always open as Bob Wilson said today, quoting the Bible and I think La Mama is such a door and but I give it now on to you, Valdemar, guide us through the session and we will listen to you and I ask everybody to very, very carefully listen, this is as close as it's good for Lana herself is from the Ukraine, if I understand right and so we will really, really learn something and these artists will share something that is of significance and importance. Okay, and I thought I'd start off with a greeting in Ukrainian to our Ukrainian audiences and a good day. I'm Vilyana Tkach, the artist and director of the Yarmus of the European Experimental Theater of La Mama, who is located in the Ukrainian district of New York. We look forward to the New York theater in the Ukraine. And now, Mia and Nikita from La Mama. Oh, my name is Mia Yu. I'm Nikita Rizzo. And we're here at La Mama in support of the artistic community and beyond in Ukraine through the power of art. La Mama has invited resident artists at Ham Hafez and Sofia Guchinov from its 60th season to read poetry and texts in solidarity with Ukraine. We are so honored to be a part of this event. We thank Frank and the Martin Segal Center and we are proud to be here with our resident company, Yara Arts, who will be connecting with artists working out of Maripole. By Zukraine, you know you. Slava Ukraine. Be Zukraine, you Slava Ukraine. And now La Mama's current resident artist, Adam Hafez will join us from Egypt. Hello, everyone, and thank you, everybody, for this evening. I'm very moved and touched to be invited to speak this evening what's been happening in the Ukraine is heartbreaking. And every time I look at the news, I just don't know what to do and I feel helpless. But I also keep thinking that every life matters and every loss deserves mourning and that mourning has become a privilege into today's world. And as we're gathered here today and as I'm saddened and heartbroken over what's happening in the Ukraine, I must also highlight what's happening in other places in the world, particularly in Palestine, as it is under attack the past 24 hours with over 150 people injured where the Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest buildings in the world, has been under attack with people just praying, people in a temple praying and being killed. And this made me feel like I should read a poem from the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, speaking of homelessness, the disgrace of war, the silence of complicity and the loss of land. And the poem is called The Passport. They don't recognize me in the shadows that suck my color in this passport. To them, my wound is a showroom for a tourist who passionately collects pictures. They don't recognize me. They don't leave the palm of my hand without a sun because the trees know me. The spinning mills of rain know me. Don't leave me mummified like the moon. The birds follow. The palm of my hand to the distant airport and all the wheat fields, all the prisons, all the pale sepulchres, all the barbed boundaries, all the weaving handkerchiefs, all the dark eyes, all the eyes are with me. But the masters drop them from the passport. Is it my name that brings this honor? Or is it my love for the land I raised in my hands? Today, Job cries the sky's fill. Don't make me a lesson twice. True masters, true masters, honorable prophets, don't ask the trees about their names. Don't ask the waddies about their mothers. From my forehead gushes the sword of light. And from my fingers flow rivers. The heart of every man is my nationality. So rid me of this passport. The heart of every man is my nationality. So rid me of this passport. Thank you, and I'm sorry for your loss. And now another resident artist at La Mama, Sophia Guccinova will join us. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here. And also, I don't wanna say happy, but I think it's a great thing that we're all coming together as people in the theater, in America and around the world and in New York to bring awareness and solidarity with the current situation. And all the current situations in the whole world, like my other resident artist, fellow artist said, this is a Ukrainian poet who is currently a refugee now with a newborn baby, because a lot of things that are happening right now, the women and children being separated from the fathers, which is heartbreaking. And her name is Katarina Bobkina. And this first poem I'm gonna read too, the first one is called, Give Me a Brother. Give me a brother who can protect me, who can be there every time I need him, the woman begs. But the earth is silent in the garden, the golden shoots grow lush, but each fruit hangs down ominously on its long stem like a stone. Give me shelter from peering lascivious eyes, so no strange unwanted hand ever reaches me. Hide me in the radiance and reflection of your blue depths. The woman says, but the river quietly flows by. No, the river can't hide her while she's still alive. The woman looks at the sky and says, up and at all. Now fall follows summer before winter comes. There's a time for roses and a time for bitter wormwood, a place for every beast and every weed and grass, only I have no place of my own. And the sky answers, make it yourself. You're on your own now, on your own now. Thank you. And the next poem is untitled. Don't ask me how I am. Ask me something simple. Look how quickly my hair grows now. It seems to have its own special goal. When all this is over, I'll braid it around you. Don't tell me how you are. Tell me something easier. Because here, even the smallest stone has turned into a weapon to defend its own in this war. Don't tell me how this can be true because this is all we have now, these stones. When the bell rings in warning and the shockwave takes your breath away, even the dead rise up from the ground to defend the living. Oh, how they wail with longing, those sirens in the night. Don't try to say it because there is no word to describe it. There is no time, no place, no dimension, no sphere. It all simply happens here and now in markets, schoolyards, suburban buildings. After all this, what can cure us? Maybe it's love. Love can bind together the ripped edges of the wounds. It can feed the powerful rivers and streams. It can wash away the abuse, properly mourn all the spilt blood. But until all this is over, don't talk to me of love. Till the pale light of early dawn replaces the flashes of dark night. Better don't say anything to me at all, just rest. Thank you. Thank you, Sophia, for reading the Catarina's poem, which one of the fifth translated with me. And Catarina lived in Kiev, as you know, and is now a refugee. These are poems she wrote several days ago. And I wanted now to talk a little bit about Ellen Stewart and her relationship with the Ukrainian community because the Lamama of Lamama, Ellen started theater on East Ninth Street in the very heart of Ukrainian community. And because a Ukrainian landlord was willing to rent a basement space to her. An African-American in 1961. She started Cafe Lamama and became the founder of American Experimental Theater. Lamama's second home was on Second Avenue. And then Ellen acquired 74 East Fourth Street, Lamama's main building, which is now being renovated. And in the early 70s, Ellen put the roof on 66 East Fourth Street and turned it into the Amazing Annex, which is now called the Ellen Stewart Theater. And I came to Lamama in 1982 with Amir Baraka's Money at Jazz Opera. And worked there with many wonderful directors, George Ferris, Wilford Leach, and Ping Chang. I directed workshops and performances by Native American artists and Polish artists. And one day I met Ellen Stewart in front of St. Mark's Church. And she asked me what I really wanted to do. And to my own surprise, I said, Ukrainian theater, Ukrainian poetry, finally, she said. And pulled out her little composition notebook we all knew with the Lamama dates in it. And she said, what's the name of your show? And I said, a light from the east, right off the top of my head. Actually, there was no show. I hadn't thought about it a minute before that. But now we had a date, March, 1990. And all my projects started to come together. We made a piece about ourselves and Lech Kurbas, a Ukrainian theater director from the 20s. And we called it a Dock U Dream because we made it from history and diaries and poetry that Juan de Fips and I translated from Ukrainian. And we became Yara's group. And Yara performed the light from the east at Lamama and we received an invitation to bring it to Ukraine. And Ellen urged me to go. And I'd never been. And I decided to take a look first. It was December, 1990, very dark times in Soviet Ukraine. I hated it, quite frankly. And until I met one of the old actors who had worked with Kurbas in the 20s. And it was just like a cosmic moment for me. I started seeing around me the dream, their dream of creating a new world and a new stage. And I decided to make in the light a bilingual project by including young Ukrainian actors in the project. And we returned in August, 1991. Ellen Stewart joined us for the opening in Kiev at the National Theater. And that week, right on our opening, the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine declared independence. In 93, Ellen came to open a huge international festival in Kharkiv with us. And in 94, we worked with the view Kurbas Theater and brought them then to Lamama. And we did a joint production. And every year after that, we create a new show that Lamama and Ellen would always ring her bell and say that Lamama was the home of Ukrainian theater in New York. And now I'd like to introduce you all to somebody very special, Maria Kutnyakova or Maria from Marupol, she likes to call herself. And she'll tell you about her city and its theater and cultural life before all this. I'm Maria from Marupol. And I want to tell you about the city life in my native city. So the Marupol drama theater, the building that was destroyed by Russians, it was like almost 70 years history. And long, long time, it was the only theater in Marupol. But after the war that started eight years ago, when Russia occupied Donetsk and Lugansk, the art people in Marupol, they started to do another citrus, independent citrus and amateur citrus. And in last year, we have in Marupol almost 10 citrus, children's citrus with some kids' stories and young people's citrus. They're doing plays, some art stuff, some performances and citrus for aged people. And it was very different content. It was Ukrainian content, so like performances about Ukrainian history, about Ukrainian literature and others. And also it was like content by foreign authors and others. So the Marupol cultural life was very different, but very beautiful. So like every week you could choose where you can go. You can watch one play, another play, you can go for the performances. I was, my hobby was actress in Cetra, Cetra Mania. And we're doing very different projects, also projects with foreign directors, actors. We have a project with Dortmund Cetra. The Cetra are called Kulturbrigaden. And we're doing in a pandemic when it was COVID. We're doing online performance. The Dortmund children was in Dortmund and Ukrainian children in Marupol was in Marupol. And we're doing a Romeo and Juliet play and we call it, it's like online game about Romeo and Juliet. Also we have in Marupol very big Cetra and art festivals. Gogolfest, IT stage and another, it was very big. It was like a week with like a few Cetras from all Ukraine, from the Lviv, Kharkiv, Kiev, Dnieper and another they came to the Marupol and show us their projects. And Marupol actors go to another cities and show our stories. So, if you like Cetra, if you like some art, if you want to see some new art in Marupol, you could choose it where you could go. It's very beautiful stories. Also we have a few very interesting components. The building of Marupol drama Cetra was built 70 years ago. But on this place before was the church that communists, they destroyed the church. And on this place, they built in the Cetra. So it's very special place for our city, you understand? So it's been like really like Cetra church now in Marupol and now it's also destroyed like the same people. So Russian destroyed church. And years ago they destroyed Cetra. And also I want to tell you that have a lot of cultural organizations like Palace of Culture, like Philharmonic and after the wars that started eight years ago, our cultural life was very like really life, really. And we have a new cultural organization, not only the Cetra. We have like contemporary art centers for the painters, for the musicians, not only actors, directors. So we have like a new art life in Marupol last few years. So it was like, I don't know, we have like our cultural life in Marupol was like, hard like was, and I hope that after the war we could rebuild it. Marupol is in Eastern Ukraine. It is a port on the Azov Sea. It has an ancient settlement from the Bronze Age, a fascinating history and a diverse population that included a large Greek community. It had a theater in the 19th century where Russian and Ukrainian troops performed. About history of our Cetra. So in Marupol like 100 years ago was very unique situation. We have a Greek Cetra. In Marupol lives a lot of Greeks and they have their native language, native culture and they want to build their own Cetra. This Cetra work in a few years, but then communism, USSR, totalitarianism destroyed. All people was going to jail or killed by communist people. And this Cetra was destroyed, but it's unique situation in Ukraine, Greek Cetra. They doing like Greek performances on Greek language. So it's very, I think interesting fact about Marupol. Also Cetra history started in Marupol like almost 150 years ago when Marupol was in Russian Empire. We have Cetra and it was Russian Cetra. Because in Russian Empire, you couldn't do like Ukrainian Cetra or something else. So it was Russian Cetra. And so our like drama Cetra in Marupol always telling people that we have like 150 history because it was like the one way of Cetra life in Marupol. Also I want to tell you a story that we have very big factory, metallurgical factory, Azostal. And the people who work on this factory, they also doing a Cetra. So they like one day, they doing some metallurgy stuff on the factory, but another day they going to the independent amateur Cetra and playing like actors, directors and other. And this Cetra call it Narodnyi Teater Zavoda Azostal, like Cetra of factory Azostal. And now the Azostal is the center of Ukrainian army, still in Marupol, they fighting with Russia army. And I think it's very interesting that the people who working on the factory, they also want to do some art stuff. And also. Valde Marklusko has designed Yara shows since 2011 and worked on several performance in our projects in Marupol. In 2019, we did a Google Fest, almost even in April, 20th, I don't remember the first or second year. We did a exhibition at the factory, we had an opera and a ballet. I was involved in the organization of this event. And I lived a month at the factory, physically, solved all the problems. And we created a ballet. The ballet was in sports cranes. I was in charge of the movements of these cranes. We had a musical support for this kind of performance. This performance is recorded, it exists on the internet portal Open Theater. This ballet of cranes was part of Google Fest's large opera project on the dry dock in the port. Valde Marklusko describes how the dock is lowered, the ship comes in and then the dock is lifted above the water and how these movements were used in the opera Miro. And at the factory, we did another opera. The opera took place in the dry dock. This is the place where the ships are repaired. This dock is lowered to the water, it inflates the ship, then it inflates and does repair work. During this opera, the ship stood on the repair ship in the sea. And the opera took place in our country. We had actors from Kyiv, we had technical dancers who danced with the rhythm. I was not in charge of it. And at the end, the entire dock, with the audience, was flooded and water came into it. This was an extraordinary event, not only for Mariupol, I think that for the Ukrainian theater, performance and festival, this is the most powerful project that we could do. From what I recently published, the director of the factory sent a message to us that there is a fire at the factory, there is smoke, something is burning. And the dock where this opera took place, it is flooded. It is now at the bottom of the Azov Sea. We have a video from Mariupol showing the dock on fire and saying that the dock itself is on the bottom of the sea. The other project that Voldemort did was included pinhole photography in Mariupol. One of the projects, they used a trolley as a camera. The people had to stand still for 34 minutes to take a picture of the main square in front of the theater. And this is the famous theater that was bombed. Okay. So we will hear about Maria's war experiences in the Yara segment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And the Yara segment, which comes next right now. And I, we have a ritual that starts each of our shows always. We always say welcome to the Yara Arts Group dedicated to the theater and all the poetry, music and images that inspire it. And Yara has worked with Ukrainian poets since its founding in 1990 at Lamama, and we have worked with Sidhija Don since 2005 on a show about winter rituals and the protests of Maidan. In 2013, we worked with him in Donetsk on a piece of history, about the history of the city, which the following spring became about the war in Donetsk and in Ukraine. And now this war has intensified, and Mariupol is the center of the struggle today. We continue now with Maria for Mariupol, who spoke with us earlier in the Lamama section about the cultural life of Mariupol. And now we'll hear about the war, how it came to Mariupol, and what she saw and personally experienced. So I was 22 days in Mariupol after the war started. I didn't want to go away from my native city. I believe in Ukrainian army. I couldn't imagine the Russians are so crazy. They bombed us from the airplanes and artillery. They destroyed every building. The bomb came to my house, my apartment. I didn't get how I'm still alive because my neighbors, they died. And to me, my mom and my sister and my cat, we are now okay in physical way. And they destroyed Russians, all the communication in Mariupol. They destroyed lighting, like water, gas. We have no mobile connection. And it's very cold weather in March in Mariupol. So we were in cold. They bombed us every hour. We couldn't go away on the street. You sitting on the shelter, or like me, we sitting on the corridor. We didn't see what's happening in our city. We understand that everything is destroyed. We saw dead bodies on the street. And we didn't understand because we have no information how we could save. And we know that in the center is like a refugee center. Refuge center. So we know that in the drama center in the building is a refuge center for people who didn't have a house after the bomb came to their houses. And we decided that we should go to the center because we have no food, no water. And on our street, it's like street fighting. So we saw the tanks, we saw the snipers. And we understand that we should go away from our house. And when we get on the street, we saw that house near us on fire. I didn't recognize my native city because everything was destroyed. Like on my street, every house was on fire or bombed and some parts was destroyed. And we ran in, we saw Russian tanks with that. And we was very afraid about our life. And we ran to the center. And we hope that now we are in safe place. But on that day, few hours later, Russians destroyed it by bombs from the plane. And I didn't know how. And second time, my family is like, OK. After that, because we have like second bomb on our roof. And we run into the philharmonic. We have an item philharmonic. And the Russian trying to destroy philharmonic by the artillery. But the building is still standing. And we understand that Russians, they didn't fight with the Ukrainian army. They want to kill every citizen, every Ukrainian in the city. So they bombed like kindergartens, hospitals, like citrus, everything. Like, you know, my apartment, we didn't have like any army people near us. They just destroyed. I really don't understand why they do this, want to help us. But everything that they've done, they want to kill us. I really don't understand. And in March 17, we decided to go away from Rupal by walk. And we go to the little village near the Marupal, Milakina. It's on the, as of sea. And we go from the fields, you know, and we saw Russian soldiers. And they said like, the Ukrainians bombed Marupal. And we said, and he was like, what? Like, you're craziness. And we go to the Milakina and Milakina was also occupied by Russians. Is there no food, no communications, no gas for the cars? So we live in Milakina for days. Then we go to another village, Yalta. And after Yalta, we go to the Burdansk. This is also occupied by Russians. This is the city near the Marupal, but it wasn't destroyed so much. Like Marupal, we live in the sports center in Burdansk for four days. We also hasn't food. We was very hungry and we was very, you know, not good health. And then we have evacuation buses from the Ukrainian government. Buses to the Zaporizhia, this is Ukrainian territory. And from Burdansk to Zaporizhia, a road is 100 kilometers. But Russians, they wanted to stop buses, like every few kilometers. And our road from Burdansk to Zaporizhia was 18 hours, 100 kilometers, 18 hours. We slept in the buses. Not only my family was advocated, it was 3,000 people in 56 buses. But Russians stopped every buses. They watched some clothes. They talking with us and we have a very long way to Zaporizhia. So when I go away from Marupal, I need nine days to get to Ukrainian territory. So it was a very long way. And I was very disappointed about everything what Russians do. And I was like, understand that I'm very lucky because I can get away from the Marupal. But I have relatives still in Marupal. We have no connection. I didn't understand their life or not. I watch news from the Marupal every hour. And I understand that they still bombed Marupal. There's still no food in Marupal. The 75% territory of Marupal occupied, but 25% territory of Marupal is still Ukrainian. Ukrainian army is still in Marupal. They fighting with Russians. And this 25% of territory still bombed. People who live on this territory, they died or they live in the shelters. And they still haven't food, haven't water, haven't some medical help. So like now in Marupal, more than 100,000 people still in Marupal. And you understand, you all see the photos from the Butcher, from the Erpin Gostomel, that territories that Russians occupied, they started to do very crazy things. They started to kill people, to rape women and children. And I understand that every citizen in Marupal in danger because Russian soldiers could kill you. Russian artillery could kill you. Russians, planes and other stuff could kill you. So I really hope that Ukrainian army could save Marupal. And all the Russians go away from my city, my country, to the Russia federation and do it what they want in Russia's federation, not in Ukraine. Ukraine is an independent country. And Russia started the war and we didn't do anything bad. So Putin is a new Hitler. And all the world could help us. As I mentioned, Yara worked with Sidi Zhedan, the major poet in Ukraine. And we worked with him in 1913 in Donetsk on a piece about the history of the city in the polling spring. The city was invaded by Russians and our peace-hitting bedrock transformed into a show about the Russian war on Ukraine. The war in Donetsk was brutal. There are 2 million refugees from this area in other parts of Ukraine in just a very short time. And one of the Fips and I translated Zhedan's poetry, including this one with this poem, which will be read by Marina Salander, who appeared in the piece at Oman. Thank you so much, Rolana. And it was translated by Rolana and Wanda beautifully. Thank you so much. I'm still reeling from hearing about Maria's experiences. And so I'm just going to breathe for a moment. Take only what is most important. Take the letters. Take only what you can carry. Take the icon and the embroidery. Take the silver. Take the wooden crucifix and the golden rachicas. Take some bread, the vegetables from the gardens. Then leave. We will never return again. We will never see our city again. Take the letters, all of them. Every last piece of bad news. We will never see our corner store again. We will never drink from that dry well again. We will never see familiar faces again. We are refugees. We'll run all night. We will run past fields of sunflowers. We will run from dogs, rest with cows. We'll scoop up water with our bare hands. Sit waiting in camps, annoying the dragons of war. You will not return and friends will never come back. There will be no smoky kitchen, no usual job. There will be no dreamy life in sleepy town. No green valley, no suburban wasteland. The sun will be a smudge on the window of a cheap train rushing past color pits covered with lime. There will be blood on women's heels, tired guards on borderlands covered with snow, a postman with empty bags shut down, a priest with a hapless smile hung by his ribs, the quiet of a cemetery, the noise of a command post, an unedited list of the dead so long that there won't be enough time to check them for your own name. Thank you. Thank you, Marina. Wanda and I just heard the news from Kharkou today where Zhedan is living, that it's under heavy, heavy bombardment. And now we're going to ask Wanda Phipps, who translates with me, to read several more poems by Siddhi Zhedan. Thank you, Verlana. First, I'd like to read headphones. And this was published in the New York Times last year. Headphones, Sasha, a quiet drunk, an esoteric, a poet, spent the entire summer in the city. When the shooting began, he was surprised, started watching the news, then stopped. He walks around the city with headsets on, listening to golden oldies as he stumbles into burnt out cars, blown up bodies. What will survive from the history of the world in which we lived will be the words and music of a few geniuses who desperately tried to warn us, tried to explain but failed to explain anything or save anyone. These geniuses lie in cemeteries and out of their ribcages grow flowers and grass. Nothing else will remain. Only their music and songs, a voice that forces you to love. You can choose to never turn off this music. Listen to the cosmos. Shut your eyes. Think about whales in the ocean at night. Hear nothing else. See nothing else. Feel nothing else, except, of course, for the smell, the smell of corpses. And this next poem is called It's All Up to Us, and Seri Jadan is also known for his love poems, and this is one of them. It's All Up to Us. It's All Up to Us. You touch the atmosphere and disturb the equilibrium. Everything, we've lost everything. We found all the air that passed through our windpipes. What sense does it all make without our pain and disappointments? What value does it have without our joy? After all, it's all about your fingers. You touch her clothes, and you know nothing can be taken back. A name spoken once changes the voice, coils around the roots of words. So you struggle from now on with dead languages as you attempt to use them to communicate with the living. You touch her things and understand behind each word, behind each deed stands the impossibility of return. Courage and sorrow push us forward. Love is irreversible, and we can't decipher most dark prophecies and visions. What happens to us is only what we wanted or only what we feared. The question is, what will win, desire, or fear? The night will ring with music and the web of our fingers. The room will fill with light from the dictionaries we've brought. After all, everything depends on our ability to speak the dead language of tenderness. Light is shaped by darkness, and it's all up to us. Thank you. Thank you, Wanda. Thank you for all the work and for this amazing reading. Thank you. We, Wanda and I are now working with Zidhi on a new show, a jazz musical opera about Kharkiv. In Kharkiv, we started last November. We had a workshop and we created the first two acts, and we were supposed to do act three in March, but then the war came to Kharkiv, and we hope to open the show at Lamama in February in 2023. And that said he will be with us at opening night at Lamama. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Siegel Center. Listen, what an impressive, impressive and strong program. We still have a couple of minutes left. One can feel the heartache, especially of you and of course of everybody. And I think the testimony, it was just heartbreaking to listen to the young actress, what she shared. And it makes it really, I think, so very, very, very real. It will be hard for Mariupol to come back, right, as a city it looks like. This is a true devastation. It will have to be a new city built by the people who want to return to it. So basically everybody except for the 25%, she talked about people have left. There's nobody there learning. Yeah. I mean, there are still many people who need to be evacuated. But there was a small part that was still being controlled. We recorded some of this yesterday because she couldn't. This is when we could do it with her. In terms of just connections where she was, she was in between places. Yeah, incredible. What a moment in time. Also, you captured there. And there's an eyewitness report. And the poet, Sadan, he is now in a city that is Bombarded too, you said. Today it's really been, this is what we heard today from Ukraine because we spoke with Baltimore just about 10 minutes before we went on. That was the artist who was showing us his projects in Mariupol. And he said that he just heard that they were bombing Kharkiv. And every morning, whenever Zhedan posts, he likes to write on Facebook because he's been really trying to gather the spirits of Kharkiv and to keep the musicians and artists together and working to preserve the city there. Because it's a very special city for Ukraine of musicians and artists and people who are committed to this. And he posts a lot every day. And every time I see a post in the morning, I feel so much better because it's just another day. Yeah, you worry about him. This is clear. And one can only imagine really how this time has been for you and will be for you. We spoke today with the Maggie Theater that said, you know, we understood from our community and they spoke about violence against the Asian American community. They said, right now it's really time for us to take care of our community. Maybe we have to do less theater or theater is not what people need most. What do you think? What do the theater artists need? For ones you know in Mariupol, how could they be helped? What would be? What is helpful? Well, I think first of all, they all want to talk about what's going on. I think, you know, and get that news out. And I think it's important to include other people in the projects of talking about all this. So it's not just all of us talking to all of us necessarily. So we're sort of almost feeling the other way, you know, kind of we want to reach out to the world to talk about all of this. And in terms of Mari, one of our first pieces, Ralph Pena was in it and it was a piece about Chernobyl. And I think that has kind of always been what I felt very strongly that it's important to open our community to the world because our community has been so closed, you know, and to really, I so appreciate how much one does put into all the translation efforts to sort of really for us to be able to talk to the rest of the world and through the voices of people like Marina and Sophia and Adam and everyone here today, but also our very diverse company of actors. Because I think it's very important for diverse voices to voice these ideas. And because they become then international, they speak to the world then, I think. Yeah, and also, Sophia, also really thank you for being there. Do you feel that your stay at La Mama is kind of overshadowed by it, or do you think it's a challenge or it's something that one just have to deal with? Or do you feel this is taking away something? I think as an artist, we exist to show what's going on in the world. And it's really hard to, like when people ask me or ask artists in general, is our art political? I don't think art exists without the world around it and what's going on. Like you can't, like whatever you make, whether that's film, dance, visual performance art, whatever it is, theater, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists because of what's going on in the world, whether you're even aware of it or not. So, you know, the world is gonna happen no matter what's going on in any individual artist's life. And as one of the current resident artists, I can't control what's going on in the world. I can only control what I'm doing with it and like the activism and the art I'm creating. And I, of course, like many of us want world peace and I'm choosing to be a part of what's going on to help others, especially like, you know, it's an honor that we are here safe in the United States right now and that we're not dealing with a war in our own front and that the theater artists there are dealing with devastation and their whole life has changed, you know, we're prettier moved from it. And it's hard to even imagine what they're going through but it's important to give them voices and talk to them and, you know, let them know how we can help them as fellow artists, like this is what's going on in your life. Okay, tell me what can I do to be of service for you to get your story out there? Cause journalism, you know, we don't know what's actually being reported. We can only speak to the people who are there and the power that we even have this connection through the theaters being connected is amazing that we can bring their voices cause, you know, they're not worried about putting on a play right now. They're worried about surviving and not being hit by a bomb. And we have the privilege to be able to give them the voice through ourselves as a vessel. So, you know, whatever's going on in the world is going to happen and I'm honored to be here and just, you know, make my art no matter what it's going to be to help everybody in the process. So. Well, thank you so, so much. This was a great contribution. Thank you, Verlana, for putting this together. I can only imagine how much time and work went into that wonder for translating. We are already as segwaying into our next session. I see that some of the North theater collaborators are there. So, join us, come in and say hello to the Yara Asgut but I think it was a very powerful, I think a testimony and especially to hear, you know from basically what's happened yesterday or the day before on the ground from someone who was in the Mario Pole Theater is just, it's heartbreaking I have to say and this young voice, this young face, this young woman, you know what she had to go through and we don't know what she will have to go through. So it is a shocking and it's truly a crime against humanity and not just against a nation and whoever would commit such a crime, whoever bombs his theater where people are seeking refuge to this is a criminal act and has and should be prosecuted. So, thank you Yara Asgut. Thank you, Lamama and it's wonderful to hear, you know how deeply Ukrainian culture actually has been connected also to Lamama that the first space rented was by a Ukrainian landlord that Alan, you know gave voice to a Ukrainian theater in the New York city and so this is a longstanding tradition and we're learning actually so, so much about that. So thank you all and welcome now to the North theater and I see Kate and Bazid if I say that, say that right and let's go on to our next session and see what the North theater was on their mind. Often, you know, the catastrophe is often they are the ones who on the center of it or a bit more than normal and now things are kind of shifting but they are there, they are standing up also and we love to hear from them. So Kate, tell us a little bit about you and also about your theater. Hi, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us. My name is Kate, I use she her pronouns calling in from Lenape land here on Manahata and I'm the artistic producer of North theater. We are a theater that supports develops and produce the work by the work of artists of Middle Eastern and North African descent also known as Southwest Asian and North African descent and we're here because we stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. We, with those impacted and displaced by conflict war and occupation throughout the world and we're really grateful to join our colleagues here today and today we're going to share a couple of offerings from some artists. First, we'll be sharing some poetry and a video offering from one of our artists, Noel Gosaini and following that, Bazid who's here with me on the screen will be sharing some poems by Palestinian poets as well as some of their own work. Bazid, do you wanna introduce yourself? Sure. Hi everybody, I'm happy to be here with all of you and I don't know what to say by way of introduction. I'm a poet and a prose writer and a playwright. I'm an Egyptian immigrant slash settler to Turtle Island and wish the occasion were different but happy to be in this room with you all. Thank you, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. So I'd like to start by sharing Noel has shared a few words about her piece that she'd like me to share before we watch that. So I'll go ahead and read those and then we'll jump into her piece. So Noel says, how do we cope in moments of atrocity from Ukraine to Palestine and beyond? How do we stand together as humans, as resilient, vulnerable and magical spirits amidst unimaginable violence? Violence that sends waves of trauma into the depths of our bones and across time and space with repercussions for generations to come. I do not have answers. Yet the wisdom of my heart tells me that our creative voices can help heal wounds, help us reimagine new worlds, beautiful possibilities and reconnect us with our heart and our humanity amidst so much unimaginable loss and pain. And so the video I'm sharing tonight turns to the creative voice, a re-imagining of the words of the renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Dawish through the lens of my father and I as Lebanese people deeply invested in Palestinian liberation. We created this during the separation we encountered during the peak of COVID while my father was in treatment for throat cancer while I was dealing with a severe injury that led me to temporarily losing my ability to walk. And during the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement in New York City and across the world. The process of creating this video helped us to embody the wisdom, vision and courage of Dawish as we probe and imagine what liberation looks like. Dawish is a poet whose vision and words are spiritually transcended, rooting us in the material world while expanding us into the mystical. I often turn to Dawish as a beacon of light, as a spiritual warrior and as a poet of liberation, particularly when I encounter moments of darkness. And in watching this video tonight Dawish's poem in Jerusalem becomes yet again devastatingly relevant amidst the violent attack of Israeli police raiding the Al Aqsa mosque compound yesterday as Palestinian worshipers gathered for morning prayer during the holy month of Ramadan. May Dawish's words and poetry serve grieving, resistance, healing and openings connecting the struggles for freedom and dignity for the peoples of Palestine and Ukraine and ultimately for the freedom and dignity of all beings everywhere. Again, those words are from Noel Gossani, the writer and artist whose video I will play now. All right, so just one moment as I share my screen. In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls, I walk from one epoch to another without a memory to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing the history of the holy, ascending to heaven and returning less discouraged and melancholy because love and peace are holy and are coming to town. Hi, Dad. Good morning, Noel. How's it going? Very good, very good. My voice is bad, but otherwise I'm good. Okay, good. So I wanted to talk to you about during quarantine, you and I have been sharing Darwish poetry and when you recorded back to me in Arabic, after I sent you that poem in English, I was so moved by that and I guess I wanted to know a little bit more about Darwish and what he means to you. You know, I started to read Darwish in the mid-late 60s of a crop of Palestinian and literary men, he stood out truly as the poet of the Palestinian resistance. I was walking down a slope and I was thinking to myself, how do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone? Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up? I walk in my sleep, I stare in my sleep, I see no one behind me, I see no one ahead of me. All of this light is for me. I walk, I become lighter, I fly, I become another. Transfigured, words sprout like grass from Isaiah's messenger mouth. If you don't believe, you won't be safe. And his poetry was adopted by the art resistance movement especially by the popular front for the liberation of Palestine which had his poems on their posters. As a person that witnessed what was being done to the Palestinians in the Holy Land and even in the camps, in the Lebanese camps in Beirut, three, four miles from where I grew up, it was like a knife in my heart and I picked it up as a cause and stayed with me. I walk as if I were another and my wound, a white Biblical rose and my hands, two doves on the cross hovering and carrying the earth. I don't walk, I fly, I become another, transfigured, no place, and no time. So who am I? I am no I in ascension's presence. But I think to myself, alone the Prophet Muhammad spoke classical Arabic. And then what? Then what? A woman soldier shouted, Is that you again? Didn't I kill you? I said you killed me but I forgot, like you, to die. Thank you, Kate. And now I'll turn it over to Bazin. Thank you, Kate and Noel in absentia. I'm glad we have this piece. I am going to read a few poems today. I think as a member of the Arab community, one of the things that's been particularly difficult about this past period is both watching the disaster of the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolding and then on top of that having to have this additional awareness of the language of white supremacy that has dominated the news waves as we all sort of hear it discussed. I'm sure some of us have seen some of this coverage. One of the things that I've seen from CBS, for example, says, this isn't a place with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. You know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European. I have to choose those words carefully to city, where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen. With someone being very careful about the words that they're using, what they would have said if they weren't being very careful. And I've just been thinking a lot about Du Bois talking about the double consciousness of the black person in America and sort of seeing how the majority assigns value or doesn't assign value to one's life. So in solidarity with Ukraine, I am going to be reading some poems from Palestine and also just want to bring into the room that Al Aqsa Mosque is under attack. This is now an annual event that happens every Ramadan. I am going to start with reading the poem running orders. So the poem starts with an interview and then the poem will start. So I'm reading from the interview first. What happens before the Israeli military bombs your house? For many Gaza Strip residents, it's a phone call. Sauson Kauera, a resident of her newness, said she was in the house Tuesday when the phone rang. She answered and on the other side was David who claimed he was with the Israeli military. He asked for me by name. He said, you have women and children in the house, get out. You have five minutes before the rockets come. Kauera said in an interview. Lina Khalaf Tufehah writes this poem in response entitled running orders. They call us now before they drop the bombs. The phone rings and someone who knows my first name calls and says in perfect Arabic. This is David. And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass shattering symphonies still smashing around in my head. I think, do I know any David's in Gaza? They call us now to say you have 58 seconds from the end of this message. Your house is next. They think of it as some kind of wartime courtesy. It doesn't matter that there is nowhere to run to. It means nothing that the borders are closed and your papers are worthless and mark you only for a life sentence in this prison by the sea and the alleyways are narrow and there are more human lives packed one against the other more than any other place on earth just run. We aren't trying to kill you. It doesn't matter that you can't call us back to tell us the people we claim to want aren't in your house that there's no one here except you and your children who are cheering for Argentina sharing the last loaf of bread for this week counting candles left in case the power goes out. It doesn't matter that you have children. You live in the wrong place and now is your chance to run to nowhere. It doesn't matter that 58 seconds isn't long enough to find your wedding album or your son's favorite blanket or your daughter's almost completed college application or your shoes or to gather everyone in the house. It doesn't matter what you had planned. It doesn't matter who you are. Prove you're human. Prove you stand on two legs run. So that was Running Orders by Lina Khalaf Tuffeha. And now I'm going to read a couple of poems by Asma Azeiza. This one is called Things Sleeping. It is translated by Maryam Hajjew. Look at me, mother. I'm back with more meat and bones and wisdom. These days I can think of death can sleep without being loved. My milk teeth now grind my losses. I come back to find tongues of lullabies severed. Children bellowing in every corner and the moesans call stifled by a strange hand. Return is a movie screen and I no longer recognize the lead. Though she's only come in once, she's tampered with the script a thousand times. Return is a cat who ate its young. Return is my braid which I cut off and fed to time. The one screen garden is now a woman afraid of old age. The well a bed in a hospital and cats are the souls of women who cried on my arm. And I am now your mother. I shield your body with my own from the bullet that your 70 years will suddenly release. The accent I once rode now rests beneath the earth. What happened to the shifting cough and the calf that barely came out? Where is the sling and the bird? Where is the neighbor's boy? What was his name? And what was mine? If I'd only had a single name, I wouldn't have forgotten it. It would have struck me right on the head like a sniper's bullet. Where are the skins I cured with life salt? Where are the supplies for the war that never came? They were devoured by waiting and nights. Where is that northern gate that opens out onto happiness? Where is my uncle Mahmood who used to eat grass and ask God to forgive humanity's sins? My old father who became my son is dead. But where is the young man who was once my father? Where is that body I used to climb from whose forehead I picked the sour fruits of time? Tell him that all the teachings of politics have rotted in my head and that I've replaced them with poems I do not understand. I wanted to repair the verses, but ruined them instead. My mother put a finger to her mouth, signaled me to keep quiet. She pointed at the piles of things sleeping. And now the last thing I'll read is a poem of mine. I wrote it in response to a video that I saw in October 2021. That was documenting Israeli soldiers savaging a Palestinian mother who was trying to protect her son's grave site. That was being demolished to make way for a children's theme park. So this is from October 2021. First, they send in the girl soldiers. They look better. No, no, not the soldiers themselves. I mean, no, no, the optics. They're sending even a tiny battalion of boy soldiers to peel the old woman off her son's grave. Ruth E. Glass writing for the Washington Post has an article on the rise in the Israeli army of voluntary Orthodox girl recruits. If you hover over her name Ruth E. Glass a helpful little box comes up. It tells you Ruth is a reporter covering for Israel. The Palestinian territories. In other words, colonialism's her beat. Because that's part of how you steal a country, don't you know, right from under its indigenous inhabitants feet proper nouns turned adjective. Israel is Israel is a nation state. Palestine as territories pile of black caviar on a plate ready for eating. Have you ever been to territories. In the summer. I hear it's lovely that time of year. Keep up with that kind of thing and you'd very likely stand to win the very hummus out of the bowl with its traditional blue and white flower motif. But anyway, this isn't a poem about hummus. It's a poem about the old woman that took an army of them to peel off her son's headstone. The better to make way for a Flintstones ride in the theme park planned in its place whose building plans she alone surrounded by bulldozers and guns was delaying manifest on the Holy Holy Land of proper now nation state. Another article kind of about the same thing shows a photo courtesy of the Israeli defense defense defense defense defense defense forces as proper now nation state Doth consistently me thinks protest too much shows a girl crowned in orange sparks haloing her face a girl from a mixed gender combat unit using machinery to reach missing people under the rubble. Dina Kraft with the cake correspondent on Twitter at Dina Kraft coming at you all the way from load in proper now nation state begins her reportage this way rain is pouring down and the soldiers and helmets and neon orange rescue vests are covered in month. But the search for the missing under the massive piles of rubble continues for the first for the third straight sleepless day. Dina Kraft with the K till about the third paragraph for her to craft this sentence, the missing people the soldiers are trying to rescue or plastic dolls, and the scenario of proper now nation state being under nationwide missile attack, only a drill. If you already know anything about the lead lead this to load as hummus is the hummus. You'll know it was taken not just with the miracle of words sublimated into colonial strategy, but a proper noun massacre, miracle mission possible accomplished in a mosque. This isn't a poem about hummus or plastic dolls or mask mask massacres or people shot dead in their hundreds praying an entire village in insert territory name. It's a poem about the old woman it took an army of them to peel off her son's gravestone to raise the way for God's chosen proper noun children to play. It's a well known fact about people from territories that the mothers having too many of them like sows just don't care about their kids. According to what the settler townies from Crown Heights Brooklyn have to tell you a common rhetoric among proper noun subjects of proper now nation state. Why else do they send them off to hummus then why. Why else there a lot valorize their lifting stone against tank baby faces I level with the tread. Why do so many you'll you late like it's a wedding when their daughters and sons return to them as stillness as future soil for all of harvest as future soil for trees. How ancient and deeply rooted they transmogrify loose earth into ground. There's a book everybody read that I never did all about trees. How they speak a secret language. How scale to the eye of God there is interconnected as mycelium. Another article I have read one time said that if you approach a plant with even just the intention of cutting. It releases a stress hormone detectable in the lungs of its leaves. The thing about life is it gives you about a million metaphors feast on a platter big as the world. It's cheating really a poet barely even has to look. Because now I could say this poem is about how the olive trees in Palestine have been communing with one another in the language of centuries. They are older than the Washington Post. That they know and remember the name of the soil that fixes them rememberance is nitrogen and phosphate nourishment through the earth, or I could say that this poem is about witness that bark and branches bristle with eyes from the river to the sea. Or I could say this poem is about a people is about a people so unbelievably lost and lonely in the desert they'll spend three days unearthing humanoid plastic, all of it without sleep. But this isn't a poem about humanoid plastic. I'm actually going to have to stop there, because I ran out of time. Thank you all very much. Well listen, thank you. Thank you both, Kate and I think there's a very, very important point. I also brought up, you know, the ranking, you know, of human lives, you know, when Syria got attacked, you know, for example, I think America took in 3000 people, I think Germany others a million. But Ukraine is 100,000 they're like good refugees and bad refugees Hungary that you know was fighting docs and else against anyone who came, you know, from the Arab world. And now we Ukrainians can come, you know, or Poland the same a million people enter so what is that isn't a refugee a refugee isn't injustice injustice isn't violence violence against anyone and what we heard through the day from the African American community said we know what's happening there we know the violence we know they're taking away of a home. We used to have no home to be displaced to be taken away from your country or the Asian American community who also said you know we know violence we actually experiencing right now it's it went up 300% in the Trump time because they were appointed to carry off COVID, you know, and then from the Palestinian experience you know of violence and displacement, and, and tanks, and, and all of it so it's really really clear that what happened especially in this theater with 300 people died seeking refuge. Many children we just heard today from one of the actresses what happened to be in there after her home was bombed. You know it wasn't safe in there she had to flee again. And it is shocking what is happening and I think there should be a planetary reaction as the you know racism is a planetary problem by the environment the climate change homophobia, and also you know injustices like these war and I hope we will see a better future and art has to be on the side of life, art is on this right side of justice, and I really want to thank you, Kate and Bazeed for for sharing, and, of course, also from noelle that that strong contribution of speaking to her elder of the community we have to go right away to our next segment maybe stay a second and say hello to a new group that formed the Ukrainian actors of New York. Who are with us notice the Mabu minds I'm sorry it's the Mabu minds and performance space, who are with us, and we're going to have if it all worked out Carl Hancock's work with us and Mitchell, and, and, and so I hope we why we got that right so thank you all for your contribution and, and we move on, and I see Sharon here from the Mabu minds with us. And so, let's move on and to our next segment, and goodbye, Kate, thank you for preparing this by seat for stopping to us and for preparing that beautiful, that beautiful reading Thank you. So here we go Sharon. Hi, I am. I am here as a substitute for Carl Hancock rocks he got, fortunately had something come up and wasn't able to join us today. So, our apologies mod Mitchell, it was in the waiting room I presume she'll be here momentary. Yes, absolutely I am sure I'm sure. Should we wait for her should we know so tell us a little bit you know not everybody knows about the Mabu minds we also have many international listeners, maybe tell us a little bit about the Mabu minds and perhaps also PS 122 now known as performance space where you are and what you do. Yes, so Mabu minds is a 50 year old collective experimental theater company whose founders were Joanna Colitis Lee Brewer, Philip glass, Ruth Malachek, and David Warlow so the company is just celebrating our 50th anniversary, and we're a collective of theater artists who are doing experimental work. And we're located in the East Village at the 122 building, which is where PS 122 was for many, many years now it's called performance night performance based New York. We underwent a massive renovation a few years ago so we're back in the building where and pandemic. We've been doing things for a while too. So we're back and beginning to perform again. Just in next month, actually, we're doing a piece called the Vicksburg project, based on women's lives in Vicksburg, Mississippi, over five different four different periods, 50 year increments. So that's premiering next month. Yeah, so thank you so much for all of our listeners to know PS or PS 122 was also a place for New York artists. It had a very strong local roots in the community many, many artists came out there often performance artists solo performers, and it has a great impact, but then also developed as a place as a host for international and global work. So, mod and Julia welcome both maybe you also talk and say who you are maybe we start with mod. A little trouble getting in through the internet. I've been working with me for 20 years. I'm primarily with my beloved light. Libra and but as we were talking about this event today, we have two brief offerings and then we really would like to augment the voices of Ukraine and in particular we have invited. The representative of an organization that some of you may be familiar with resume that not only is doing incredible relief work, but also interesting street theater that I think will be of interest here about fantastic. Yes. Sharon's going to read first. And then I have a song to offer, not that I'm singing and then Julia. Okay. Yes, what are you going to read. Well, when we were talking about, you know, this desperate situation, a piece that my mind's did in the 80s called dead end kids is a story of nuclear power. And it was, let's call it agit prop but I mean it was an amazing piece. And I'm going to read a small section that was written by Paris Ellis who was an alchemist in the medieval times, and essentially the point of the show I believe and I spoke with you about this who is the director and the conceiver of the piece that it's really about the danger of an investigation that could lead to something that unexpected and lead us somewhere quite unexpected. So I'll just read it. And this is offering for in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. I am the poison dripping dragon who is everywhere that upon which I rest, and that which rests upon me will be found in me by those who pursue their investigations in accordance with the rules of the art. My water and fire destroy and put together from my body you may extract the green lion and the red. But if you do not have exact knowledge of me, you will destroy your five senses with my fire. From my snout there comes a spreading poison that has brought death to many. I bestow on you the powers of the male and the female, and those of heaven and earth. The mysteries of my art must be handled with courage and greatness of mind. You would conquer me by the power of fire for already very many have come to grief. I am the egg of nature, known only to the wise, who in piety and modesty bring from the microcosm, which was prepared for mankind by Almighty God, but given only to the few, while the many long for it in vain. I am the old dragon found everywhere on the globe of the earth, father and mother, young and old, very strong and very weak, death and resurrection, visible and invisible, hard and soft. I ascend into the earth and ascend to the heavens. I am the highest and the lowest, the lightest and the heaviest. I contain the light of nature. I am dark and light. I come forth from heaven and earth. By virtue of the sun's rays, all the colors shine in me and all the metals. I am the carbuncle of the sun, the most noble, purified earth, through which you may change copper, iron, tin and lead into gold. Again, that's from Dead End Kids, created in the 1980s and toured throughout the United States. At the time we were dealing with nuclear plants that were exploding, but also it was looking at Los Alamos and Nagasaki and all the devastation that nuclear power brought throughout the world. We know that Russian troops were actually utterly shooting at the nuclear plants in the Ukraine. Russian troops actually went through Chernobyl without any special protection and disregard for their own lives in a way and whoever would have thought that a Soviet or a Russian army would shoot at a nuclear reactor, it's shocking and I guess this piece proved to be timeless. Yes. Well, we didn't expect to have to bring it out again. We may need to. So I'll hand it off to Maude now who has another. I was looking for something to share that was both a salute to, a testament to the spirit of endurance and perseverance, but also bulwark against despair, which I think many of us have been feeling. And this is a song from the piece The Warrior Ant that was a great extravaganza, a cross-cultural collaboration written and directed by Lee and the music is composed by Bob Telsen and you'll hear Sam Butler singing. And there was a 16 foot tall ant. Ratchet, take it away. Thank you, Ratchet. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, but it's also a moment, it's a great idea, a warrior ant, you know, it's kind of small tiny, but it can be very big and you have to be a warrior, but you have to be persistent and preside and in kind of organized as a community. So Maude, tell us a bit, why did you want to bring Giulia along? Because I felt as though it's really, we're here in solidarity, but we want, we want to augment the voices of Ukrainians and she can speak most directly to what the issue is at hand. And the work that this organization is doing is quite incredible. So please, let's hear from Giulia. Okay. Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you for inviting. I am, do represent the Razum for Ukraine, a sexual organization that also located in the East Village, right next to the Selka. That's where we started in 2014. That's where originally we were a response to the, the beginning of the war, which nobody like realizes the war did not start today, it started 2014. And the revolution of dignity that started that happened. But the organization was, were sometimes actually this was more of a piece, like not peacetime but more ceasefire, more quiet time we had like we did a lot of cultural educational project. There was a book club where people were gathering reading books and one of the Ukrainian actually, our Ukrainian author was nominated for Nobel Prize this year. So, all of that was halted and put on on pause when on February 24, the full invasion happened and we mobilized, I can share like, at some point our website or mobilize to do an emergency response right now. And the emergency response besides the sending the first aid setting hospitals, helping refugees in Ukraine moving. We have this taken unto the streets so shown like shown basically we're doing that not just it's not demonstrations per se. I think a lot of flash mobs to draw a lot of attention to the cause to draw a lot of attention. For example, if you if I if you let me share, I can share a screen right now so I'll be more. One second. And in Washington Square Park recently. Yes. Oh, give me a second. I'm trying to to share because I am just. Yeah, we did events that are so doing so do I do this. I should be able to know. I mean, together, right together together together. Correct. Thank you. Now we can share. So this is the, I so let's see if I can get. That's one of the example it was I can go and probably share more pictures from the event that was actually done because as butcher, as you know, the butcher was freed and a lot of cases when the women were rape. came out and that was one of those moments when, you know, people came together and I'm trying to see how I can share more pictures. Because it's. So, then they came to share that they basically are silent. There was silent by Russian soldiers and they were silent by. At the time that they happened to on the occupation happened and it came out and they did like this flash one of this flash mobs came out of this need to. Park right about a week ago. That's correct. And in Washington DC. That was me just because I also, I think, or no, I don't know it in Washington DC. I believe this is was one of the also. In New York when we did the for the kids are who were bombed in my real pulse theater. That was one of the flash mobs that was done in to get attention that 1200 kids were in this mario theater that was bombed and they basically were buried alive at this point. When people came out. So we have this flash mob of to say Mario, well, which would draw a lot of attention but because the siege and the people probably not probably, but we had to draw attention to that cause that's Grand Central Station right that's Grand Central Station. Yeah, this is a grand grand Central Station. They're where. And this is, oh no, I can actually know I see how I can share. Okay. Let me see. There's green. There's I will. Yeah, I can share more of this of this pictures because I just realized. Yeah. So that was for the cause of when the one with the all atrocities that were done by Russians came out in butcher. That was done. That's that's still New York. Right. That was still done at Washington Square Park. Washington Square Park. Thank you. So, again, the person who is actually that our team who is doing with creating this a lot of flash mobs decorated one today and they are at the one of the event. Today is bringing information so unfortunately they could not enough was leading and that she could not be here with us today. She shared with me all this pictures. I'm happy to share with everybody. But I'm, I also can basically tell you how all this project that we used to have on our like you can tell it's on our website. It's rather for Ukraine.org. It's actually where you can donate right there. You can tell like you can donate. You can participate. There's a way of donating your time, but we all have all this different projects which is with the children with the veterans. We had the racism culture. This all right now stop like all with the toy drive. It's all right now stop for one and the only project emergency response, which is where we, you can tell it, we are basically all our efforts are right now on getting was needed to the ground. And in one of the more like very, very important parts of our activity. It's, it's doing this flash mobs and doing the going on the streets taken to the streets and taking it to the streets in a way that we can draw as much attention as as possible to the everything that's happening. So that's Sorry, this is sharing. You were saying that there are different units who are who are handling various parts of the emergency response, you know, working with moving people and sending various essentials that are needed or helping low relocate people. Can you talk about the Yes, we have actually absolutely we have the This is one of just a second. So we have One unit that used to be working with just with kids and needs in Ukraine. They were helping basically kids with SM Atrophy muscle atrophy. So we were the actually it started with a one child with who needed help to get this one shot that was cause close to $2 million with their muscle atrophy and the son was a kid who was A son of the one of the soldiers who came back who was a veteran and one of our volunteer started this program and she Absolutely amazing was able to fundraise $2 million close to $2 million for this shot. So she at this when the war started, she took on that she is a doctor and she took on that part of the project that she they are moving people from Bakhmut, which is right on the line on the front line basically kids on the front line, they're putting down a buses, moving them closer to the more safe places and that's one of the our emergency response and I am looking right now to see if they do have That's hospital team so that that's that the people who are help right there that's that's in basic an update from this specifically that was done published April 9 so we're, you know, we're trying to update us. This is what people who were gotten on the bus and were moved by one of our part of our volunteer teams. So that's that's where we're Amazing we I think we have two minutes left so this is certainly a project everybody who wants to get involved or donated something to consider it's an important work and it's also interesting that you go and use what we would say street theater performance techniques to get the word out and as we are experiencing that theaters who now go and do voluntary work eight work they help communities as the my yeast theater said today, we work now with our communities and we do less theater. So it's complete time of change which we are experiencing the world is upside down and but it's also something is happening and things are are moving we said it earlier that Tony Kushner who was with us once said that New York is a melting pot that never really melted but perhaps was the time of covert with this thing like this war happening. There is something that perhaps will bring and people together and rethink the fundamental values of our life to the freedoms we enjoy and artistic expression. How important it is how great today we had 24 theater companies, everybody could say whatever they want that nobody wanted to see up front, something that's really an act of artistic freedom of engagement for what's right and and we really would like to thank the Mabu minds that they also show that they care, and that the Ukraine is is on their mind and and I hope, month and Sharon and Carl and Mallory and everybody you know that you will be back in the theater that you can perform and do what you love to do most and where you're very effective but that these stories come out and how great is to see to see this picture, you know, of a powerful moment of a woman taking a stand for what she believes in and what is the true, the message and theater is important because we search for the truth. I think we are at our nine o'clock. A moment and we're going to move over to the next group and you group that formed and maybe you all stay for a tiny moment on so you meet them this is the Ukrainian actors of New York. The group forming right now of Tiasa is kind of joining us and Tony and Alex but Sasha Gordon or Sasha Odessa she will change her name to our hometown with us, and they're going to read to us so tell us a little bit. What you will be doing and we would like to say thank you say hello to your colleagues from from the Mabu minds and and maybe Sasha tell us a little bit what we're going to hear from you. So today we're going to be reading from the Paris review, the beautiful article that Ilya Kaminsky wrote, which is a compilation of stories of Odessa poets and writers, and we're going to give the voice to them by reading them and honoring them. And I would just like to add by saying that, as you know our fellow brothers and sisters are dying right now in the arms of pure evil, and our brave armed forces of Ukraine are defending the freedom and democracy of Ukraine, as well as the whole world. So, when we watch this right, we cannot help but ask what can one person do, and we say that a person can do something we can use our voices, and we can use whatever it is that we're good at to bring change to put the spotlight on what's happening. And really, as a group, we have strength because our strength is in numbers. So, don't forget that we're all bringing the victory closer together. And like this event, there are dancers there are singers their theater performances do that, tell our story and keep going, don't be silent and stand with us. Spread the word it's really important for everyone to come out and do whatever it is that they can do everything pounds, everything that lets them know that we're fighting for them just as they're fighting for us. So we're going to start off as one story the first story I'm going to read I'm going to read part of it in Ukrainian, and then I'm going to read the whole thing in English and then my colleagues here from our group, Ukrainian actors of New York are going to continue. So I'm going to start with the first story. Yeah, and it is again, as you said from the Paris review conversations to the tune of air rate sirens and Ilya Kaminsky introduced it and put it together. Thank you. Thank you so much Frank for putting it together this event is really wonderful so thank you for doing that. Thank you. This is from Anna Michalewska. The cats are screaming in the night, trying to out scream the air rate sirens. I find beauty in strange things, graffiti on peeling walls, a street dug up for repairs. I look about greedily. I don't know if I will ever see this for that street ever again. I see photos of Harkiv in ruins, photos of a bombed out cube. Everything is changing too fast. If you want to do something. You need to do it right now. Doing something, anything is medicine at the moment. When I managed to help someone, I can forget about the war. People have discovered this pre-war life already seems unreal and far away. There's so much in it. I didn't appreciate it. Always rushing, searching for new projects, not enough time for basic talk. Now there's so much talk, but it is tense. Truly, this situation brings us back to each other. Thank you. This is Lava Ilinskaya. After a week spent in a stupor, I walked out into Odessa streets to see anti-tank fortifications, barricades made of sandbags blocking the avenues, boutiques and restaurants boarded up, people with guns on the street. I'm writing this in a taxi. We were just stopped at a checkpoint. It's frightening how quickly I've gotten used to this life. The most terrifying thing is the silence. When you know that the whole country is boiling in a bloody broth. Our people are amazing. Never before have I seen such solidarity and care among neighbors. The strange feeling is if I haven't lived before this moment, as if some kind of shell has burst, a carapace that prevented me from breathing in deeply. I don't know what I did before the war. I've never been so aware of being needed or being involved in reality. Hi, this is a poetic reflection from Eugene Deminoch. I have been dividing my time between Prague and Odessa for many years. But when this war started, my family was on a trip to New York. For a few days before our flight to Prague, we did not venture out of our hotel room other than to attend protests. We spent our entire time scrolling through the news and calling our friends and family. Back in Prague, we found we could be of more use. The Czech Republic has already received more than 200,000 Ukrainian refugees. I spend my days between the refugee integration center, the train station, and a community residence for 72 people that my friends are building at their own expense. I cannot write anything. I don't have the stamina, desire or time for it now. For many days I have been grinding my way through a piece of the correspondence between Henry Miller and David Berlich. I would love to publish a few letters from Miller and Ukrainian translation for the first time. And yet my mornings start with calls and letters asking for help. My days are spent in volunteer work. And by the time I am free, it is already late into the night. Elena Andrejchikova. Thank you. Every morning starts with this question. I'm asked and I ask. Family asks, friends ask, colleagues, acquaintances, my lines of defense. I still can't understand how it can be. War in Ukraine? Attacked by Russia? They're bombing our cities? Just days before the war began, I finished my latest novel. It is Dreams About War. Dreams impacted by stories of her grandmother, who was a prisoner in the Salis Pilsk camp. I haven't found the strength to reread the novel yet. I still feel disgusted. One day I will find the courage to rewrite it. I will speak as a witness to how scary it is when air raid sirens wail in the early morning on an ordinary Thursday. How I kept smiling while packing frantically, trying to signal to my son that I was not worried. How a warehouse exploded and burned before our eyes, less than 200 feet away. How we spent a night surrounded by jam jars in a root cellar in Odessa. How my three-year-old nephew had just arrived from Harkiv shuddered, stuttered and cried. How unwilling I was to decide whether I should stay with my husband or drive the kids away from all of this. I left Odessa at night, ate cars, women and children, cats and dogs. Some of us were driving for the first time ever. We were stopped at the checkpoints. No cars were allowed to pass through the night. One woman suddenly exclaimed, I know the password. My husband wrote it down for me before he went to war. We fight our own information war. We wake up every morning and hope that it's all over, that we can live, plan, write novels again. But for now, I just message everyone and you, how are you? Hearing an answer is the only thing that matters. Vidya Brives war entered my life in Lviv. I was there on vacation and urged to go home. I got on a train back. I'm still not quite sure why I went to Odessa. Most people were leaving our city for Lviv or to go farther west abroad to safety. I struggled to get through the crowd at the station in Lviv. People were waiting for trains to western border and trains were five hours, seven hours late. Some folks were sleeping under our suitcases and kids were crying just like they do in movies about war. Today is March 18th, 11th, the 16th day. The war of bullets and bombs has not started full swing in Odessa yet. But you're going to read this later so you'll know more than I do. I envy you. In the beginning I taped my windows, crisscross, so that even if something exploded nearby, the blast wave wouldn't leave my entire apartment covered in shards of glass. I moved a large dresser in front of the window for better protection. As days went by, I got used to being afraid. So I moved the dresser back to the wall and peeled the tape off. Our cities get bombed. Missiles explode and Russian soldiers walk down the streets and sometimes shoot the locals for entertainment. Those who are leaving Odessa now see that other side of war crying children, 30 hours of waiting at the Moldovan border, not knowing where to live, where to shower or when to return home. I live on the 21st floor. There's no one left around here. Of eight apartments, only one still has inhabitants. My dog, my cat, and me. When I hear the sirens wailing, I walk out on the balcony to see if missiles are coming. So, yeah, Sasha, do you have a second and one more story for us? Yeah, so let's do, we'll do another round. So we have a second set of stories so Cynthia can start and then we'll do another round and then we will have time to talk. Go ahead. Vladislav Ketik, a seagull, all fluffed up, sits at the edge of the pier, chest against the wind. A sharp explosion over the bay interrupts its contemplation of the gray water and it spreads its wings. The seagulls don't know what war is, but after 16 days, the gulls have managed to overcome their confusion and learn not to fly too far when the sky shakes with landmine explosions or cannon fire. Not to hide. And they hear the howl of sirens. The seagulls fly over Odessa streets, which are usually crowded and noisy. A rare pedestrian leaves footprints on the untouched snow. In silence, the famous potenkin stairs climb the slope, buried in bags filled with sand. They hide the monument to the city's founder, Odessa's bronze soul, from the malice of artillery. The seagulls love the sand. The street bristles with anti-tank devices. Will they be able to protect us against modern missiles? Of course not. But there is something coolish khaki in these six pointed crosses known as hedgehogs. Such hedgehogs stood here in 1941, and now time has jumped off the footboard of the past. The gulls circles over the houses and flies once again to the sea. Taya Nedenko. On the first day of the war, people in Kharkiv, Kiev, and Lviv, first among them Russian-speaking and bilingual people, started speaking Ukrainian en masse. Some have already managed to surrender and transition back to their customary Russian. At first with a disclaimer, in order to be understood by all Russian enemies, and then silently, without rationalization. When, hurriedly between air raids, you try to articulate your thoughts and feelings, you involuntarily switch back to the language you've been accustomed to thinking in since childhood. Others keep their oath, not one more word in Russian. And I think they will remain strictly Ukrainian speakers even after the war. The Russian invasion showed what a source of strife regular words can be. Some fear mongers, including those from other countries, accused me of naivete. After the war, they could ban speaking Russian and Ukraine. But I remind them, saying what you think in Russian language is banned only in Putin's Russia. Gana Kostenko. A few days ago, I decided to listen to Rachmaninoff's second concerto. I wanted to clutch it in my hands like a brand so that I wouldn't slip into the sticky mud of hostility toward everything Russian. Rachmaninoff is innocent. He has nothing to do with Putin's crimes. Just as Gata was innocent of Hitler's madness. Yesterday during an air raid, I hid in the bathroom and I understood with clarity that I don't want to sink into hate. I have made a choice for myself and I'm trying to stick to it. Hate is the language of my enemies. It is their source of strength. How else to explain the bombardments of kindergartens, maternity wards, hospitals? I come back to Heine, who said that every new epoch needs a new kind of a reader. Needs new sets of eyes. Nayom Muratov. Has Odessa changed in these first few days of war? No. There are lines of people at the gas station so long that they're blocking traffic on the streets. Lines in stores of people sweeping everything from the shelves, cereals, sugar, salt, matches. This blizzard of movement pulling the city from its usual calm. This human and hero. Checkpoints have sprung up, but cars still weave through the streets fewer now. Passerby go about their business, supermarkets, and some small stalls and kiosks to open. On Monday, classes are starting in schools and universities, but no one knows what will happen next. In times of war, riding goes badly. What can you do? Your mind refuses to make sense of what's happening. Some people have left and those who remain have banded together. My 92 year old mother returned a couple of days ago from the store and in her bag with several cans of preserves given to her by women she didn't know. A city that is preparing its defense does not make the best impression. You can simply pass through the streets of the city center. Everywhere there are tank traps, sandbags, wire gauze. Several times a day, there are air raid alarms, and some neighborhoods have no bomb shelters. I bring my 85 year old mom to the bathroom, the only place in her home, where it's possible to find some kind of shelter. Through all this, the decides are not losing their sense of humor. Across the city walls, there are giant banners advising Russian soldiers to do as Ukrainians on nearby Snake Island and famously suggested a Russian worship should. In wartime, profanity is forgivable. It relieves stress. People are volunteering everywhere, assembling sandbags on the seashore. You're in a desert. The song goes, and that means that neither grief nor misfortune is scary for you. I've written several poems about the war. A poet should be a vibrating string that responds to everything happening around us. I am following what my poet friends are writing and the level of their poetry has risen. The language has become very precise and strong. There are no words nor justifications for what the Russian army is doing in Ukraine, in Harkiv, in Kyiv, in Mariupol, in other cities. Still, the task of poetry is to find words even when they're not. And that was from Anna Struminska. Thank you also so very much. And Sasha, you are Ukrainian, working here in New York as an actor. How does it all feel to you? What's happening in your country? It doesn't feel like it's real. I still hope to wake up from this horrible nightmare that my country is in. Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's too real and unreal at the same time. It's just, it breaks my heart. It's the only thing that I'm thinking about every day. And it's really difficult to think about anything else. That's why I've been focusing everything on helping in any way I can, on fundraising, on spreading the word, on really doing anything I can to help. Yeah, my soul, I am here physically, but my heart is there and my soul is there, so I just hope it ends soon so people are not suffering anymore and dying. Sure, this is a hard time and we can hear, we can really hear and feel, you know, what's going through your mind. And so thank you for sharing. Thank you for putting this reading together. Maybe all the participants, Tiasza, Alex, since they are Tony, tell us a little bit about who you are and how Tiasza. Sure. Hi, I'm Tiasza. I'm an actor, playwright, and I'm the founder of a theater company, Transforma Theater, that's dedicated to creating interactive theatrical experiences, the convergence of science, consciousness and ritual. And I'm originally Slovenian, but just so happy to be invited to participate with this amazing group of people and to give a spotlight on these gorgeous and traumatic and traumatized voices from Ukraine. I think that what really struck me, also Frank, thank you so much for organizing this. So bombing a theater is such a huge gesture. Once you start bombing theater, you're bombing culture, you're trying to get the word out. So one of the maybe most hard hitting pieces from tonight for me was Alex actually read it by Tia about how people first vigorously started talking Ukrainian not giving up their word. And then slowly the Russians started creeping back in for utility and who knows where this is going, but I feel like our role here and our job is to sort of like promote Ukrainian culture and keep the Ukrainian word going and by doing this, letting them know that we're with them doing what we can in their own capacities, but definitely supporting and co-suffering. And also being super lucky that we're here, that we're not there. That's true. And by chance, you know, it would be any one of us could have been born there by just by chance. Alex. Yes, hi. My name is Alex Salzer of Meyer. I'm a Canadian Russian. I came to Canada when I was 13 years old. I'm an actor. And my family is still in Ukraine. I lived both in Ukraine and Russia. So I'm in kind of an interesting conundrum here where like I have a Russian passport. My grandmother lives in Russia. You know, my family is in Ukraine, my dad, my stepsisters, my grandfather, everyone's there. So this kind of divide, you know, is torn between that between like, I used to visit both countries. I used to speak Russian. I went to a Russian school, you know, and it's just so difficult to see all of this. Just like it just absolutely breaks my heart, you know, like I came here at 13 years old but like just to imagine that I used to live there. My family is there as as devastating. The other day I got a call from my, my aunt from my dad and we talked about various things about the war and everything but she, she know she, and this is a perspective that I've never heard of before. And I didn't know this might have been an issue here in America and Canada that like, she, she's in, she's in Turkey and she was saying Alex, you know, are you, you know, you're born in, you're born in Ukraine, right? You're not, you're not Russian. I'm like, no, actually, I was born in Ukraine, but I have a Russian passport. My mom wanted me to have a Russian passport and she said, Alex, don't tell anyone. Don't tell anyone you're Russian. Don't speak Russian. Don't do, and I'm like, Elena, what do you mean? What are you talking about? This is, I've never heard such a thing. I didn't witness this discrimination, you know, like this isn't the Russian people don't want this. They don't want this war. This is the government. This is the Russian military, you know, and she, this, this kind of fear that the Russian people are having to sort of speak their own language I think is very devastating and I just want people to remember and remind them that that this is Putin's war. This is whatever Magalina maniacs person and power, you know, and the whatever is happening on the war side, the military. That's the destruction, you know, like the Russian people are suffering. Also, there's many consequences and like they have many Russian friends who are in Ukraine. So just as a reminder, that's something like a message I wanted to sort of say to And over 10,000, some say 20,000 Russian soldiers and died Cynthia. Who didn't know. Yeah, who didn't know what they were going to know where they were going. They thought they went into some kind of a maneuver exercise Cynthia. Yes, hi, Cynthia. And I'm an actress, a writer and a satirist. My heart is so with Ukraine. Reading these stories and listening to these stories my heart breaks. I mean just breaks. One of the reasons I'm so close to Sasha and close and understanding what is happening in this crazy senseless, insane war where innocent people, innocent people, babies, pregnant women are dying. There is no reason for this at all. And I feel really honored to take part in this tonight. And it's a beautiful thing that you're doing this whole day, because this needs to go out there and everyone in America has to understand what is happening there. Everyone has to give their hearts for that. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. Tony. Tony Namofsky. I am Macedonian, New York based actor. I mean, it's really difficult to say anything to be honest. It was really difficult to read these words, even, even though we are actors and that's what we do to give any sense of truth of life to what was written by these brave people. It's really incredible. And I always remember this. I'm going to paraphrase probably you're going to correct me what Brecht used to say that in the future. They will not say the times were dark, but they will ask why were the poets silent. So we're not silent. This is a way of finding a voice and making whatever difference we could make, even not being maybe physically present there with the people who are suffering. Yeah, that's one of the poets from the Neurican poets cafe said is resistance in a distance. It was part of her, her spoken word rough riff and I think there's something, something to it. So really, I think this is also what you did tonight. So really thank you all for, for joining taking the time staying up so late. I know it's a holiday weekend and and yes, Alex since Tony and of course Sasha, you know, we heard from you and how close this is to your heart. And I think the entire day, I can't believe we are coming to our last segment really does show that there is a support for the arts and for the atrocities and this kind of criminal acts that have been committed war crimes against national conventions against war conventions against Geneva conventions. And we all hope that this dark days will be over as soon and but if we don't speak out nobody will. So it is important. I think it's a very, very strong voice that we we show today. We're going to go now to our next segment that we have with us an organization. It's called theaters, theater without borders, like these doctors without borders perhaps a little bit more famous sister or brother organization, you can still stay and say hello and theater without borders for decades also has engaged in regions of conflict brought people together, created a safe havens for for theater people and so we started with pen pen America the writers organization and we now going to go to theater. Without borders I hope they are with us and I'm going to ask them to to join us if they're here if not maybe we take the stay a little bit longer. With this conversation. I don't see them yet entering I'm sure they are still preparing. They're also they're showing a video okay I just hear they're here. So, they're on video so we are going to move over to the session so thank you all for joining taking your time. They think this was an important statement and also to Elia Kaminsky's thank you he wrote us and said it's okay to use the material. Congratulations also on the Paris review to put them put this beautiful essays and together in such a short time thank you all and we move over now to theater without borders thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Frank and everyone behind the scenes who made today possible. We are honored to be with you at the end of this day. I'm Lisa Schlesinger playwright librettist theater activist and a core member of theater without borders. I would like to introduce Leal shocker, my collaborator. Leal has appeared as a soloist performer, composer around Europe, the Middle East, North and South America and Asia with collaborations and commissions from West Eastern Divan Orchestra, Avignon le Cern festivals and the New World Symphony among others. Leal works regularly with Zoukak theater in Beirut Lebanon her her home. And she's a winner of the Silk Road Seeds inaugural 2020 award Leal's most recent composition is in the presence of absence, a staged performance or string ensemble with our car or archival recordings from piano recitals by Edward Said. We are here on behalf of theater without borders, a global all volunteer grassroots virtual community that shares information and builds connections between individuals and institutions in international theater and performance exchange. It was co founded by Roberta Levito, Catherine for you, Eric and Deborah Brevort. Theater without borders has recently partnered with the Department of Theater Arts at the University of Iowa, where the archives will now be held in the university special collections library. On behalf of the theater without borders collective, we stand in solidarity and offer unconditional support to Ukraine and Ukrainian people. The school presents a musical excerpts from ruinous God's suites for sleeping children and opera in progress ruinous God's is an operatic dreamscape of resignation syndrome, a rare trauma response to the state of living in the limbo of displacement. The resignation syndrome originally diagnosed in Sweden is now recognized globally. It affects children who are displaced by war and global conflict, and who in most cases are denied asylum. Children literally embody the future. What does this mean for the future ruinous God's draws on myths and fairy tales to tell the story of an 11 year old girl who was forced to flee her home. As well as the distorted map of displacement and the liminal realm of not home. She meets other young people who have fled war and climate disaster, who have survived herring escapes and are yet full of courage and hope. The next piece we will play from this work in progress is at the very beginning of the opera. It's an invocation to the story goddesses to wake up the story and the characters to welcome the audience for safe passage. A song in Assyrian. In the, in the second excerpt from sweet three, we meet the character of crow in the camps. I'll read a bit of crow's text. From this hell, I heard the boy say out amid a field of soggy tents. I stole his grandmother's grandfather's knife from under the pillow. We're in migration. The egrets pigeons wandering tatlers in me gathered under the hibiscus tree, bathing in dirt, rinsing in a bowl of water, someone left on the stoop. Sometimes mortals tangle with gods. We're bored in hell, so we steal and sing. Heaven is the first bird song at dawn. Can you hear it? Under all those engines, special Air Force operations, flying over 135 countries. How could you possibly hear us? Look up. This is what they make in America. Just war. What will I do with your grandfather's knife? Sometimes mortals tangle with gods. Look up. This extract is scored for soprano, dulcimer, bassoon, and trinquentet, compromised of viola, violin, shallow bass. Two violins. Of soggy tents, I stole my grandfather's knife from under his pillow. The excerpt will play this evening. We'll just call the rabbit. And I'll read a bit of the text. It never stops snowing where I live. I found her in the snow. Snow white rabbit in the snow. We are leaving soon. I have a white rabbit tucked under my arm. Don't tell no one. I found her in the snow. Snow white rabbit in the snow. In sleep, things get mixed up, but only because they're more true. Sleep is death's brother, don't you know? So things are going to get real. I just wanted to say that it's scored for soprano voice. A piano prepared with dulcimer hammer, two cellos, and flutes. Of soggy tents, I stole under his pillow. How beautiful is that and what a great ethereal ending. And I was thinking all those displaced children in the Ukraine, one of them for sure had a white rabbit that lost or had to take with him or her. And we all imagine what that means to a child and what it stands for. What beautiful music Laiale and Lisa, you know, what a beautiful project you worked on and created. It is stunning. When will it all come together? Has it already been presented? Please. Go ahead, Lisa. Please. So it is right now. It's going to be actually produced into 2024. So we are right now in discussion with the producer. And right now we are discussing the first phase of development, which will happen at the beginning of 2023. Incredible story. There's a very famous children's book in Germany, but Hitler stole my pink rabbit. And one of you are aware of it. And it tells the story of that. And it's very, I think if I remember, it ends, you know, you will never get it back and you will also never get rid of that idea of that person, you know, who took it away. It will get paler, but even a bit more ghostly. But this is such a beautiful work. And I think it's also such a great moment to end these 12 hours on that music that we will take with us in this space you created that is full of poetry, but also sadness, but also hope and enlightening enlightenment, I think. So thank you all for doing what is a very short question, perhaps for Lisa. And what is, what is theater without border doing at the moment regarding Ukraine or in general. Gathering our people all over the world and cat for you is out. And so is Jessica Litvak and Roberta Levito all working on making connections and since the very beginning, in fact, perhaps that may be why they're not here this evening. Yeah, no, there really is a truly amazing it's a great organization is something to, to join to support also for new generations to come in and take it on like doctors without borders this theater without borders had made a real difference in people's lives and border together I can't believe we had the end of our session and it's so wonderful that we have both of you with us here we had 12 hours. We had 24 New York theaters and companies with readings and conversations. Abrams Art Center, BAM Booking Academy of Music CUNY Stages here Art Center, Howl Round Commons, La Mama, Mabou Minds, the Mayi Theater Company, Neurikin Poets Cafe, Penn America, P.S. 21, Sancton's Warehouse, Park Avenue, Armory, the National Black Theater, North Theater, the Play Company, the Public Theater, the Shed Tone Page, Theater Without Borders, a limited company. Ukrainian Actors of New York, Gyara Arts Group, the Water Mill Center and Robert Wilson, and we're with us as a stunning array that I think represented the complexities of the world. Nothing is black and white, which is so hard to understand and we just grabbed just a tiny piece of it and we I feel even so we listen now for 12 hours we scratch the surface of what is this really means for the people who they are people who lost loved ones people who died. What it means for the world and in a year or five or 10 years from now, and we will know much much better what it really was all about but it feels like a change in the world as if tectonic plates are moving and in front of our eyes and this all after corona and we often do wonder do they even wear masks is Russian soldiers, you know, do they keep their social distance when they shoot the Ukrainians you know I mean it's just incredible to saying we all know that their vaccination is not working so well and how many of them also you know will will be victims you know of a failed policy it was a stunning, stunning display of artists engaging I think with the world was the real producing imaginary work imagination, real work symbolic work. And I think it's something we can all be proud of that the New York theater community came together and that organizations like pen and theater without borders came and to show solidarity and we hope that for some people in Ukraine who were able to hear that it was transmitted that it is also meaningful it was a big big event for our little center to pull off and I really would like to thank our people who helped us actually our team in India and Bombay, who stayed with us all night it's seven o'clock in the morning it is the three people who who made this happen. The whole round and gave us the key to the house and add it to a rabad. And the wonderful time be sure where with us all these 12 hours made happen, made it look all easy and I know this is always easy when things go right and we take it for granted but it was flawless is a stunning was all these people that coming in and out almost I don't know how many we had us in close to 100 artists were involved it is an incredible and think that it happened and we can only hope that also for you the listeners. It was as meaningful as it was fast the organizers we put a lot of care and work into it on the other hand it was done very fast within two weeks. But it is a stunning what we put together and what a New York theater community can do when they put their forces, energy and imagination together and it's a really wonderful that we had you at the end I think the sounds. The violence and the songs and the voices will stay with us and I think it set the right tone and it provided me for the moment at least with a safe space also listening to it or. I felt at home and this is home is what people said to do is what was taken away and this is the worst thing you can do so thank you all for for for joining us. And who was also on our side is the paper planes agency. They tweeted full hours for 12 hours from India also they created our digital identity, and on a very short notice and, and we really are thankful it's almost unethical to ask someone to come on in such a short time and make all that happen but they did. And again, Tanvi Shah thank you for making this happen for the connection I think it was a very successful one and we hope it contributed to have a little bit less suffering in the world but also to show that we care that this is important to us that our heart reaches out and that we are outraged of all of it but especially those people who died in a theater a safe space a sacred space to us, including children and as someone said today. It was written on the building very big their children in this building, and it was one single strike 300 people died and I think it was good that we had the ending of this also dedicated. And to the children and for all the children in the world who suffer such a so thank you all I'm going to now click my bread leave button, everybody for listening thank you for taking the time. We know how much is out there and how tired we all are to the time of Corona be to be on zoom so ever listen to us thank you. We need great art we also need great audiences and but writers say also we need people to listen to in after all it's for an audience that's how it is created it's not just for the artists and this is what missed. So it was missed for terribly in the time of Corona and audience so this was the most important part is that people were on the other side listening. Thank you all again, and thanks for how around BJ, and the for hosting us again, and to all our listeners stay safe where mask it's not over yet numbers are up again. And let's all hope that such horrible things will not happen on our country here, and but we all have to work on democracy that's always to come and to make sure the democratic forces prevail. Thank you so much, and, and bye bye.