 So, hello everybody and welcome to Siegel Talks here at the Martinie Siegel Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY of the City University of New York in Manhattan and so Wednesday for us it's the eight weeks of talks with CEDA artists from around the world and the globe. We get conflicting messages. We hear that in Brazil and Latin American countries they said devastating losses. They're coming in over a thousand yesterday meanwhile in New York's state and New York City which is the epicenter in the world. It seems to be that hospitals are less full but a thousand two hundred prison wards are infected out of 9,000 we hear so which is quite an astonishing symbol and I wonder what Foucault would think about that fact. We are listening today to one of the significant artists of the 20th century, artists that defined and wasn't the epicenter of what is called as the New York School of the New York scene of performing arts we have with us Richard Forman. Richard Forman's work and I'm just going to say a little bit maybe also for our international viewers is a wits like the history of New York avant-garde experimental theatre in itself. He was influence and friends of the Living Theatre and Jonas Mack is Robert Wilson, the great Jack Smith. He was collaborator of Richard Schachner and together they once founded the 68 Collective and if you just look at the groups that were participating was the Mabu Mines, Marinus Monk, Performance Group, Richards Group that later on morphed into the Wooster Group, the ridiculous theatre company and then of course his own creation the ontological hysterical theatre in St. Mark's Church which is for everybody as a kind of a sacred place. You have been there, you had to see the work and like every spring it was like clockwork and you know that would be a good year in the theatre once you saw Richard Forman production. Generations of New York theatre makers also have gone through it and I'm just going to see a few whole David Hershkowitz from the Tarkas Theatre Radio Hall, Elevator Repair Service, a very early John Jesseram, the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, Pavaliska, NTUSA, Yehuda, Richard Maxwell, Yang Jin Lee, Nick Bernersa from the Assembly and many many many many many others went through his work. His work is... What I mean, what you mean is that those people you named were all interns at my theatre at one point. All interns, they all got their start. They were influenced. It was a little alchemistic kitchen, a laboratory and with work, gnostic work, work that was cabalistic in a way and and that defied meaning that was creating new forms you know perhaps closer to a French theory at the time where he also went very often to Paris and the Festival d'Auton but he also did work at the Lincoln Centre at the public and it was Richard's work for those who knows. He has been a signpost, a very very very strong one and before Hans Tieslemon wrote his book on the post-traumatic theatre 30-40 years earlier he was practicing that and anticipated a future. So it's a great honor to have Richard with us here today. He is no longer presenting. Performance work is still involved in it and creating video and film work so enough of me now but we talk to theatre artists here on Seagal Talks to hear how they experience this time of corona, how they think about how they create and give meaning or take meaning away and to hear from Richard from whom we now do not hear enough is a very significant conversation for us. So Richard I'm sorry about my long wordy introduction and words of course cannot ever capture your work and your vision, your ideas. So first of all welcome. Well I'm glad to be here. You have to start me by asking whatever you want to ask. When I made theatre I did not have the spirit say that. So is this beard from corona time? Not really started before but maybe I anticipated it because I anticipated a lot of things in my life. So where are you right now? Well you know for the last few years I've had difficulty walking and I haven't really left my loft. I mean I live in a big loft and I gotta say shockingly that nothing seems that different to me in my personal life because we've always called for food from outside. You know what can I say video is omnipresent. So nothing in that sense is that changed for me. Now of course the plague seeps under the door like fog like mist comes through the closed windows. So I'm certainly aware of it but how does my work reflect that awareness? I hope not very much because I think that most people who try to attack a problem like that directly end up making a kind of journalistic theatre which is fine. Everybody should prosper but I have no interest in that. I've always been making interested in making a kind of poetic theatre you know I guess you would say in which I'm making objects that are like solid beautiful diamonds that you cannot penetrate but the different facets of the cut diamond reflect things in the world that everybody can see and relate to. I believe that if I was making theatre I would continue to try to make things that were in fact on a certain level impenetrable. You mentioned Michel Foucault in your introduction. Foucault saw one of my plays and said the best thing that I've ever been said about my plays. Foucault said you know it was fascinating. I could tell there was some kind of rigorous system at work but I couldn't figure out what that system was. I'd like everybody to feel that way. I'd like everybody to be fascinated to sense that indeed there was some controlling intelligence but they shouldn't be able to psych it out. It should be an eternal mystery. I think everything in life that is interesting should be thought of as an eternal mystery. The code cannot be cracked. I shouldn't be in the theatre therefore because the theatre of course is based on the idea usually that well there's the audience there has to be communication to the audience and the feedback from the audience and I've never bought into that so I've said from the very beginning that I was a misfit in the theatre in a way and I think that was my value. A good friend of mine Howard Bloom who's written some wonderful books about the world described what I was doing. He said Richard you make diversity generators. You turn out diversity generators and I think that's quite accurate. So that's where I was and that's where I am today. Now in making film I'm not sure. Film is more of a mystery to me still and I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to do when I make films. I can see that it's easier to penetrate than was my theatre because you well film just sort of engulfs you in a way that my theatre did not. My theatre was in essence behind a wall of glass and we even put up glass sometimes at the front of the stage and nevertheless I wanted to say to the spectator hold it hold it don't come in but I would build the set and items of the set around the audience so that at the same time I was saying hold it don't come in. I was trying to include people in that world for which the key perhaps was not provided. And that's what I would do now. I made a few forays into doing plays when George Bush was president. We did a play called King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe. That was about this sort of cowboy figure with his six guns. Obviously it was a stand in for George Bush and what I did not like about George Bush in those days. But even that the genesis of that was not the desire not saying how can I say something about George Bush in the world. I always worked by taking my notebooks which had all kinds of stuff that just came out of me looking for pages that I thought I could put together and then after that was put together and after it was staged sort of seeing a theme emerge and circling around that theme but never never starting out saying I want to do a play about this. I want to do a play about that. To me that's never been interesting. No so you had Pavaliska mentioned that when he was on Seagull Talks he referred to you and said you were the one who already put a glass screen between the audience. Yes funny because I did it one of the plays that the first play I did in Paris. You know they'd never seen anything like that and a lot of the audience walked out and so forth and it was in Jean-Louis Barreau's theatre. Jean-Louis Barreau when I was young had been a hero. So at the end there was a party and Jean-Louis Barreau came up and said oh Richard your theatre was very fascinating but I tell you something you cannot do theatre behind a wall of glass and of course he meant my style my stay-away style and ironic that in later years I did do theatre behind the wall of glass. Yeah and you know which now is perhaps one of the things people think about to create performances where perhaps actors are behind masks or behind plexi class like in shops where we go to. I'm sure even so you say you're secluded perhaps or monkish perhaps rabbinical existence of what you have now where you study the holy texts and images but COVID must be on your mind the virus what do you think? I think it's terrible that people would die. I think one has to bear in mind that it's still a tiny percentage of people that get sick and that die that doesn't make it any less awful that that's happening but I think that can't be the focus I mean life goes on and the intelligence should go on so I'm not interested in seeing I've never been interested in seeing plays that are about the current situation. The current situation always takes care of itself and presents it to people in various ways. The task of an intelligent person an intelligent viewer is somehow to separate oneself from those circumstances. I don't think those circumstances teach very much. I don't think it teaches very much that people are dying from this play. Yes of course it's terrible and I want there to be a cure like anyone else but the fact of death being more present than it normally is well it doesn't really teach me anything. I'm going to die soon just because you know I'm 83 and how much longer will I live probably not that much longer but it's really not part of my agenda or is it or has it always been? Maybe but not more now I refuse to have it be more now than it was throughout my whole creative life. Now that may shock people but I don't mind I've always been in the business of trying to shock people because I think that's what people need. People don't need a chorus of people saying oh this is the situation yes well is me what can we do about that. I don't think that's needed. I think shocks are needed and I never did shocks by very aggressive things like having people make love to each other on stage and so forth. I made shocks that again didn't often perceive as such but I think it was shocking to your system. One of the shocking things I did along with the glass walls that really made a lot of people uptight I always had a lot of lights focused on the audience which sort of blinded the audience and I thought a kind of blindness forces you back into dealing with the seeing problem of seeing the play on stage in spite of the fact that wow those lights are brightly shining on me so it forced perception to operate slightly differently kind of shock that was a kind of shock. Yeah yeah it really really was I think one of the great contributions of your theater is that it reinforced these new ideas I think of that late modernity or the postmodern modernity post-traumatic modernity that one becomes conscious of the process of interpretation and of seeing that it's not you see this and that emotions are manipulated things are explained that you try to at least I think to see they become conscious of what you see and and understand it's one one way of looking at the world. Absolutely absolutely that always concerned me one of the first things I did was an opera called Elephant Steps and at one point who was Julius Rudel who ran the New York City opera at that point he asked me what effect I wanted to have on the audience and I said well Mr Rudel the greatest compliment that I had was from somebody who saw the production that was I think it was in Hunter College at the time and she said you know Richard I really enjoyed watching your opera but more than I enjoyed that I enjoyed watching myself watch it. Julius Rudel lost interest in me at that point but I thought that was a great compliment. No no no it's a really really significant contribution in the way of Ronan Bart's idea that not the writing what you read is of significance the reader the interpretation the connections you make of the multiplicity of text the intertextuality and that you focused on the mind of the audience and not the mind in that sense of the director that you say I have to take meaning away instead of explaining the inexplainable you said let's make what's explainable unexplainable and I would make one correction yeah in my case yes not what's in the mind of the audience but what's in the mind of each individual spectator each individual yeah and I think it's a radical invention a significant one that radiated as you said like in diamond and diamonds are diamonds because more light comes out than comes in that's why they are brilliant that's why they are shining which if you would be still in the business as they say to make your show now is there something from the time that would touch you to say I might go this even if it's not connected do you have something some scenarios in your mind what you would do if you would had to open next month you know I thought about that when I knew I was going to have to give this talk and I have to say no for me it's like an iron curtain has come down in front of the theater and I can't imagine what I would do I suppose what I would have to do would be I don't think I want to proceed from the text anymore the text was always the most important element to me I always started with a text always but I suppose I would like to get five or six people in a room and just say to them look I have to make another play and maybe you could be in it but I just want to look at you I just want to watch you for a while and they would say hmm you want us to invent little scenes I said no no no I just want to watch you I mean do whatever you want to do and I would watch and try to see some little something that clicked in my mind that I would think maybe I could build upon like right now I'm watching you and I don't I don't know how well the people can see you but you are sitting there nodding your head slightly well that might be something you know maybe I could build upon that I don't know okay so the idea in in a very small group and observing and sharing a moment I don't know you know I always shy away from those normal friendly terms like sharing mm-hmm I think it's more like setting up a little not explosion I'm not interested in explosions but again I would return to the image of a diamond of it doesn't let you see into it but it refracts beams of light it might be fascinating I'm interested in fascinating I suppose not in sharing now one might say well but in this time of crises that's that's cold that's inhuman I don't think it is uh I don't think I cut off the human part of me as I say you know it's the it's doctors and scientists job to figure out a cure and to take care of people who are ill I don't think it's the artist's job to do things that would soothe those people or distract them what is the artist's job what do you think in this time we live I think the art of I think all times the artist's job is to make something that is both mysterious which means impenetrable that's another word for impenetrable mysterious yet fascinating so you are drawn into an involvement with that which is fascinating but you cannot explain I really think that is the artist's job now you may say well but that's not what Shakespeare did no probably not but uh that's not my problem I can only see it from the perspective of what 20th century artists are trying to do with the 20th century world I'm sorry we're in the 21st century see I mean I'm living in the past it's okay hmm are you even though you say your time now doesn't differ so much the pre-corona time you are I think in Worcester street in your loft in New York do you engage daily in making art now well yes because I'm making film which mostly means editing footage that I shoot very fast yes so I'm making art every day so tell us a little bit how does your day look like and what do you do in that editing well you know when I I've shot video very fast I generally shoot four days I get enough material you have a couple of actors together in one building or one wall yes like the material that I'm working on now it was some of my people but also people from Slovenia because years ago I was supposed to go to Slovenia and work with some actors but I got sick and I couldn't fly or something so they said well can you do it on Skype so I was looking at Skype and trying to direct the actors I felt it was kind of silly but I did it but then the actors said oh no we liked it it was interesting and we'd like to come to New York and really do a project with you well I didn't think they were serious but like four years later I got a telephone call and they said well we're all set we're coming to New York okay so I told the woman who is organizing it that we should get an Airbnb space and she found this incredible brownstone in West Harlem up in like 139th or something and it was full of antiques beautiful and we had that four story space for a week and I told the act I gave the actors tasks that were not unlike the tasks I used to give them in my plays it would be abstract things like okay now Max you go over to the table put your hands on it then think oh no my head hurts hold your head and slowly collapse okay but all kinds of things like that simple things and we did that and I got material and then came home took all that material and I've been editing it now for a year and a half it's all on the editing so four days of shooting a year and a half of editing yes uh it's all on the editing because the mysteries you're looking for you you just cover them yes between the images uh no because in uh final cut online I work in final cut pro still even though it's supposed to be outdated now uh you can do everything to the image you can make a different kind of light different kind of texture zoom in do different things and it's figuring out how to distort the image a lot of times like if you make it very bright just like I used to shine lights in the audience's eyes so it was bright but you couldn't really see the actors I mean you could but it was hard so working in final cut you can make the image sort of washed out and bright uh and you can do all kinds of things like that and it's doing that that engages me that I do for three or four hours every day so my day consists now of getting up at breakfast with my wife and then and looking at the the New York Times online looking to see what's happening in the world I'm looking up what Trump is doing and then going to work on my film and then I have lunch and then I rest a little bit and then in the evening my wife and I watch a film that's my life and that's satisfactory to me 83 I don't have the energy to do much more it sounds like a beautiful day to me if you mentioned Trump what do you think about contemporary America well I've never been shy about saying in print everywhere else but I've always had a very ambivalent attitude towards America there are many things about America I do not like I do not like the businessman culture that rules America uh and so Trump is just a radicalization to an absurd degree of that uh when I worked in Paris my dream was to go live forever in Paris and I almost did that but at the last minute it became difficult but I was it was lucky I think because I realized I would never really be a Frenchman and the battles that I had to fight making art being a battle at all times the battles that I uh sort of awkward American had to fight were here in America so I had to stay here and deal with all the things I hated about America because that's who I was an American the battle of producing in America or the battle of the artists in the world the battle of the artist trying to mold material that he got from his placement in America you know uh because Americans talk in a certain way Americans move in a certain way that's why I always told my my actors on stage I was not satisfied with the way the American language sounded when spoken by normal actors so I had two techniques I would tell the actors try to put your voice low in your register so you're always talking like that that sort of flattened out the voice and made it more interesting to me uh or I would give the actors an accent I would say okay look use some kind of phony German accent because that in the same way distanced the actor from what they were saying and made the words emerge as these clunky things that had a tactile interest so those are two of the ways in which I would battle uh my material which was my actors if you say it was uh you want to turn by the way by the way you you have an accent you're from where Germany German German German accent yeah I think Brecht always liked actors who had an accent and Heiner Müller always was point out that he believed that actors you know are more credible if they had an accent they were not representing the official language or were would wear words as he said like a Gucci clothes that was my theory very early yeah so do if you said in that battle to to make art in America which is one of the hardest thing and I don't know if people really realize especially in the European world how hard it is so do you see it as a contribution to society in a political sense that the artists work yes in this sense I don't see it in the political sense that it would be good to take clear Marx's point of view which I might agree with and you know make a play with that being very present this would be the case in Brecht but I think Americans the reactionary nature that's built into all Americans comes from wanting to know where they are you know they asked you used to ask you years ago are you a commie are you a good American what are you and Americans wanted to know where they were placed and wanted to feel secure uh because American culture was such a vast thing so I thought that in order to fight the American mindset uh I had to do things that as I've described were hard to penetrate and make made people not able to easily relate to them with their normal personality which was always a reactionary personality even if you were a liberal in America basically your mindset was somehow reactionary and the way to do that was through the style of the work I thought not through the content what did you find that was that worked I mean I think also theater makers now are looking for you know have to discover new forms as you did on your own but from your experience and from your decades of work what do you think one should keep in mind what is what is something that helps to penetrate that mindset in a way uh the only thing that one can say to artists the most important thing is courage courage to notice where your slight ticks might take you in other words when I was at the Yale drama school the playwriting teacher was a man by the name of John Gassner who was a wonderful wonderful wise man and he said to me once Richard you know what you do is very interesting but you have one fault you get something that you like in your plays and then you don't want to let go of it but you want to repeat it you want to repeat it and I went home and I thought boy Mr. Gassner knows and I must figure out a way not to to get rid of that tendency to repetition but then I thought well if that's where my instinct takes me then my task is to radicalize that and that's what I did I started in the very beginning I was making plays that just repeated a few words and a few basic movements and I would repeat and repeat and repeat and so I think what you have to tell people is have the courage to notice what your what your impulse or what the ticks in your approach to things are and find a way to radicalize that because that's who you really are you have the courage to do that and and in a way you do the opposite of what you were instructed yes of course of course because you can only be instructed in what's been done you don't want to do what's been done what's the point so you have to have the courage to do what hasn't been done in spite of the fact that people will not understand at least at first what are your earliest memories of theater what is the very first thing you remember that you saw where that was a kind of a theater uh when I was very young I think I was still in grade school the doily card opera company which was the English opera company that did originally Gilbert and Sullivan operettas when they were alive and is still doing them to this day and they came to New York doing a repertoire of like eight or nine operettas and my parents took me to see it and I had a profound effect upon me but the memory that I'll always have was the strongest memory it was done in the old saint uh zig-fil theater which no longer exists but was a beautiful old theater and had a curtain a show curtain in front that was an embroidered curtain and for some reason I always remember when the overture started the lights came up on the curtain and you saw these unicorns and whatever was in the embroidered curtain and that sense of tense anticipation was my strong first impression of the theater and that's sort of what I always wanted to get in the future that tense anticipation of what's going to happen what does it mean what's it's going to be and then I saw other things of course but I went to the theater when I was a kid all the time every Saturday I would come in from grammar school with my friend and we would see a show and every Broadway show that I saw I would walk out say to my friend John it's hopeless if that's what they want I can't be in a theater I hate all that stuff uh then occasionally I would see something that got to me for instance I was very impressed with what was a big flop uh Ruth Gordon actress who was a friend of Falkner's doing Falkner's Requiem for a Nun on Broadway and I was profoundly moved by that it was a big flop but I thought that was great yeah I also remember the original production that Kazan did of Kimina Rial by Tennessee Williams I thought when I was 13 years old I thought it was wonderful in later years I saw an interview with Kazan where he said well I I did I missed the boat with Kimina Rial because it was a very poetic text and I should have done it in a poetic fashion but I did it as if it was very realistic oh my god that's what made it great Mr. Kazan poetic interpretations that I saw in later years were terrible yeah I mean this the the tension that was the curtain I think from your manifesto of the ontological hysterical theater you said you stage uh static tensions of interpersonal relations um yeah in space you know and yes yes yes and um and then and then the objects are in it um would you advise or think to theater artists engage in film work and video work in zoom online work what's your take on it that's not for me to say you know I started making films only when I gave up theater and when I was a young man I went to theater all the time and I never saw movies you know my friends would go to a film on Saturday afternoon and I thought oh no that's that's not high class I'm going to the high class theater uh in later years I discovered how wrong I was and I became an aficionado of film but that was only much much later sort of after I'd stopped making theater maybe a little before but uh then in film I saw everything everything and also underground film because my friends uh early on were the so-called underground filmmakers who gathered around Jonas Meekus and uh to me that was a big revelation when I saw young people my age take little home movie cameras and make films some of which I thought were incredibly beautiful so um yeah I was a child of underground films in that way and like flaming creatures flaming creatures yeah I think you were there when the police interrupted it and no I wasn't there actually I did I did go to see flaming creatures like 13 times in a row I thought it was so transcendental you know no Jonas Meekus and another friend of mine Ken Jacobs were arrested I didn't know either of them in those days that's how I got to know them because there was article in the paper that they got arrested and we had been going to the film screenings but we called up Jonas Meekus and said is there anything we can do to help he said oh you can come down to the office and help file things and so forth and I didn't do that but my wife did but that was my contact with all those people so the police brought you together do you watch any online theater work now new production things or or archival work do you do you engage all right at now in the time of corona do you watch no I find it hard to watch theater in any form but theater form I mean all of my plays are recorded we'll put on tape and I hate it all because to me theater is despite the fact that I said no it's by the wall of glass or at least a postulated wall of glass theater dependent upon the flesh and blood presence of sweating people and to see that on video I think deadens it completely you know there's no more tension there's no more live bodies so I can't watch performances really on video on video or online is that evil of me no I think this is it's a significant you know it's a significant comment you know I mean there might there I we do hear reports of young students who say oh really great I don't need to go to the theater I can just watch at home of course and then I don't have to get out it costs less and I can study theater like this and it's not what you miss what you miss even in zoom if you're in the theater the the stage is wide and your eyes can turn to see that side of the stage this side of the stage and follow an actor even though I claimed that I tried to make theater where you watch the whole stage at one time but that's not the way most theater works I'm sure it's not the way most theater on zoom today works but you do not have the ability to turn your head and watch things as they cross your field of vision yeah and I think theater for the foreseeable future if it will be open it will be in a way like your theater like small spaces there's so smaller audiences everything that people kind of complained about and and it will be now in the forefront and I think your work has shown what is possible what is thinkable let it unbox the mysteries we don't understand and points that actually life is a mystery and as you say the dazzling one a beautiful shining one if one can can see you know occasionally I had to do my plays on you know on tour and they would put us in some huge opera house or something and it was absolutely absurd I mean you know I always tried to mitigate it but you know I had a lot of strings across my stage come out into the audience so I would put strings way out into the opera house often dotted with black paint to try to make a distance sort of disappear but it was always a real problem yeah yeah and they're often it's so much urge to have huge spaces to fill it theater universities build gigantic halls with a thousand theater two thousand and I think it's against you know what we have learned from act from great masters of theater of thinkers like you Peter brook Kotowski and others that it's this small space yes that is powerful in our talks around the world whether we speak to people now from Indonesia or from Guillermo Calderon in Chile and others who say we will go and work in small small spaces and yeah and this is what worked this is also an Indian colleague Abhishek who said we that's what we do we have no PR we have no money to do shows but we do them in small spaces and the government censors them if you want to know if theater has an impact ask our government they don't censor the films even if they are more critical themes yeah our staff nobody wants us to to to show it up do you feel that theater artists right now also should engage in kind of a social context and work to help out do soup kitchens to to you know help the healthcare workers do you feel well I think I have to stop producing art or is it a time to go deeper into it's a time to go deeper into but my answers have already indicated that I don't think there's any way to reach out to all those people who face danger every day and help the people who are sick or you know make food deliver food you know my hat's off to them and I don't see how art can contribute to them not real art maybe you can make things you know feel good I suppose you can make something the equivalent of hair where all the all of a sudden all the the hospital workers break into song or something and it makes the people feel better but that's to me that's not real art what do you read what do you how do you engage your mind yesterday or the day before from Indonesia the colleagues if we have to keep our engines warm today what do you do well I I look at a lot of film but I read for months but now it's worn out I've been reading and rereading this French author Modiano who won Nobel Prize a couple of years ago so I've been reading him why why I just found him completely seductive he you know why for bad reasons he made me think I was in Paris again he made me think I was walking the streets of the lesser known districts of Paris sitting in cafes in the lesser known places of Paris and just in a very romantic sense I enjoyed escaping that way in the last two days I've been thinking maybe I should start reading some Gertrude Stein again so I have pulled out some of her books tell us a bit about her if you have been often called a Steinian a grandchild or a collaborator or whatever what do you think of her what does she have to tell us at the moment you know this is a difficult question for me I always said that my two main teachers were Brecht and Gertrude Stein now it's been so long since I read Gertrude Stein that off the top of my head it's sort of difficult for me to answer but I know that again to me Gertrude Stein with that repetition nevertheless also held up her hand and said don't come too close and she uh I especially liked her theoretical work where she talked about you know what are masterpieces and there was no clear cut answer there was an answer that she if you delved into it you sort of discovered orientation what masterpieces were but both she and Brecht had a kind of alienating effect and I don't think I've ever seen a successful Brecht production I've never seen the Breller ensemble I don't know what I would think of one of those productions but the productions I've seen in America were all too user friendly ah with one exception one exception way back when I was very young I saw Eric Bentley who had been in Berlin studied with Brecht became an important American critic he did you know he did a production of The Good Woman of Setsuan with Uta Hagen and I saw that and I thought that was very good it was very cold it was very standoffish and it was hated it didn't last very long but I thought perhaps that was the most successful Brecht had seen I've never seen any good Gertrude Stein they always try to make her friendly in various ways no it doesn't work we are having a few questions we're getting from from our audience Robert Stanford wrote and said about musicals you say you also did musicals and plays they're such different formats what were your your your favorite ones and in the big question are musicals a way at all to deal with the times when we live in and perhaps perhaps you know when I did musicals I was much more of a normal theater kind of person I did not try to make things that would keep the audience behind a wall of glass so you did the three penny opera right yeah yeah uh and I did that in a way that a lot of Lenya didn't like it all because I did it in Lincoln Center which I thought was this big white elephant you know big white building it looked sort of like a pentagon looked like a war machine and I tried to make my version of three penny opera reflect that big overblown pentagon feeling now which is the exact opposite of what Brecht did in his little theater in Berlin originally where's a baroque theater you know it's like all the gold and plaster the opposite of a technical room for the so a lot of Lenya didn't like that but I thought I was being very true to Brecht's alienation sense yeah in a way people do bring it up there's this idea of the social distancing and the distancing and the Brecht's idea of a theater that you know do you see any new connection that could be drawn any new connection from that idea of that social distancing you know that right now we will not be able to be close you know I would just remember what I tried to do my work was radicalize that social distancing without any virus just you know behind a wall of glass or stay away don't get too close I don't want a theater that embraces you when I went to the Broadway theaters when I was a teenager and I hated everything I gave one example of what I didn't hate to me the whole content of those performances was the actors in one way or another even if they were playing a drama the actors were saying love me love me the director was saying love this piece come get closer we invite you into this piece I hated that I hated that no maybe that's my personality I don't know but voila there you are so I think that sure Brecht would be useful if people made the proper use of him today what do you think of I don't know when the last show what was the last show you went to see what do you think of contemporary also the avant garde or the experimental theater in new york oh I don't know what the last thing I saw was I mean as I said many of the people who are now well known in the experiment experimental theater I'd say at least 75 percent of them started in my theater as interns and did their first plays in my theater yeah uh trying to remember what was the last thing I saw any university in america or in the world would be proud to have the track records of interns or students you produced as I said I have nothing to teach to you and you're on your own you know which is the opposite of traditional teaching because we in america don't have really a university that's dedicated to truly experimental uh a theater we have one we have one which one uh travis precedent at cal arts cal arts okay that's fair yeah I think cal arts does adventurous things and it's open to doing adventurous things and I think travis is trying to encourage that yeah yeah I know he has been at the CEO that is that is true and it is not looking you know towards broadway and yeah towards the production I think that's what's so wrong with ART I think Robert bruestine said that you know any money that's been made in any connection with with broadway should go directly to the program or to students who for a long time even the acting students were forced to pay I have issues of 60 70 000 so it's a shocking way of a lot of educating and yes it's happening in small spaces like yours that you know the Richard Maxwell's young Jean Lee the Pavoliska's the radio whole ad they came out it's an incredible legacy yeah you pulled out yeah and better they do things that I don't know well I know the last interesting thing I've seen when I saw the original production of a group called object collection yeah it's group uh the person who has a sound used to be my sound man he's a composer of very aggressive music and his wife teaches costumes in Colombia but she does the texts and the staging and when I first saw their first production I thought I don't know if I hate this or I love this best possible response and I saw it again and I got to love it and uh I think what they do is very very interesting that first production they were saying this abstract text but perhaps because she was a costume designer all through the production there were piles of costumes all around the stage and the actors all the time were getting into one costume getting out of it getting into another costume it was great they don't do that anymore but I think their work is very interesting yeah it really really is here's a question from from London Patrick Kennedy who said you know he had a he directed some of your work in the UK yeah I know yeah you want to know when is the film coming out you're working on how can people access them I'll go I don't know I don't care I don't know I'll put it on video I suppose I'll put it on I have one other film on Vimeo called mad love which is not the Peter Laurie film and it's not the Andre Breton book it's my film mad love and this new film I'll put on Vimeo also so they can find it on your website or in general they just go on Vimeo and put yeah I just go on Vimeo yeah I don't care when it's out or not so for you is that could be for years your editing process and yeah yeah first interruption to that you have to bring something I suppose I suppose yes yes to an end yeah I mean there are examples there are a few examples of artists who never sort of released their work at the top of my head I can't think which ones but there were some and since you say you know inspired you watch film and maybe also for our you know listeners who now also watch their at home on criterion or other places what what do you watch what do you feel is meaningful oh we watch everything and especially these days my wife doesn't like the more challenging films that I like which ones do you like what are the more challenging films trying to think uh I used to be very fond of this french filmmaker Bruno Dumas you know I always respected Godard but I was not really convinced that that many of his films were that successful and he seems to share the same opinion actually you can believe what he says uh I'm sure there's somebody after Bruno Dumas but that's the last person I could think of he made very very interesting films especially his early films first five films plus five films well that's a good a good tip so what are you watching right now what did you watch last week or this week well because my wife she wanted to watch things with music so we're watching all the musby berkeley musicals uh the musical numbers are great but the question to sit through all these stories leading up to them which is not so great but the musical numbers are great I think Kennedy also asked do you have a favorite musical at all that American art form that is also not a favorite musical in the theater or in film in in theater he asked yeah uh in theater well I can't think of any that I'm crazy about no any Kurt vile I was always fond of Kurt vile for years I was fascinated with uh Mahagani I mean I did the three penny opera of course and there was somebody in France who said okay you can do Mahagani in my theater and then I got sick and I couldn't do it and he said okay Richard call me when you're better I want to do it and I want you to do it so I finally got better and I contacted him but his theater uh had lost its funding and so I could not do Mahagani but that was the piece I always loved that would be my favorite musical opera what have you okay the opera wonderful well it's uh something the world and truly lost that would have been fascinating um yeah coming closer closer to our hour with on howl run but um since you are the most successful as we pointed out school of in in the Americas of of new work of experimental work which you did without any formal curricula without any semester breaks and papers and writing you know what do you say an important thing I would never offer a critique of the work that the people did you never did no because often I wouldn't like it very much but I knew that that was me and uh people you know artists who are trying to do something I don't think need a critique they need encouragement they need encouragement this is really an important advice you know encouragement they're not not critique yeah you're you're ontological historical theater perhaps only the Gießen school in Germany can be compared to the influence you had so what would you say now um I'm I'm sure today what do I do I wish an artist are listening what what what do you what at twice do you have for um you know there's next generation of the people who would let's say you would be still working that the people who would be your interns your light designers your composers who would go on to great things what do you think this time of corona and this time of crisis that does existentially uh ask questions I mean we just had a mirror who found that from from Palestine who's theater who said you know the western world never had this unsecurity the uncertainty whether we daily live with like people in Africa we talk to say we live 400 000 people die of malaria we have now 100 000 close to 100 000 death in in the in America which is whatever five times more than the vietnam war socials but still what do you say to young artists who now engage with the world and well it's difficult in the theater because you have to get together with other people and I don't know if it's possible for you to find other people uh you know two three five that you could work with but then if you can find those people who you know pass the test and are not sick and are not contagious if they can come to your apartment and you make something in your apartment and you have a uh cd player that you can record a soundtrack you can record music and you just figure out what you can make in your apartment that's all the only way you do anything is by starting to do it you know uh I never you know I wrote manifestos and things well I assure you I never looked at them when I was making theater I never thought about them when I was making theater I proceeded purely by instinct purely by instinct when I wrote it was writing little snatches of dialogue purely by instinct not knowing what I was going to say and then I would assemble them and I would design a set I would design like 12 sets until I got one that I thought was sufficiently ambiguous whether it was taking place in a cafe or a church or what was it and we'd build a set and I'd make music in the soundtrack and we'd go into the theater and on the first day I'd say to the actors okay uh Joe you say the first line and you come in the door and you go and you try to sit down but then you get scared of the seat and you go against the wall oh no no he did it that's lousy let's instead Joe you come in you say the line through the open door then slam the door and we would just keep trying other things that my instinct would lead me to try then when we were finished I who am pretty smart uh could see that unbeknownst to me the play did have a secret coherence and did have a secret theme but I never planned it but I could see it most people who came to see the plays didn't see that but I could see it no this is a significant advice to trust your instinct to to do something and you start doing things when you start doing something and just just have an impulse and do it and see where that leads and do not be afraid do not be afraid to throw out a lot of stuff you know in my rehearsal I used to tell the actors millions of times every day I was like oh no that's stupid I'm not referring to you I'm referring to my choices that's stupid yeah and going back to your image of the diamond you'll find a raw diamond a stone not only that you lose up to 60 percent of the stone to make a yes you have to cut away that's what makes it yeah and Ernest Hemingway said the thing that a writer needs above all is a built-in shit detector because you turn out a lot of shit yeah you have to be able to tell that and throw it out yeah well Richard really really thank you for for taking your time and interrupting your day and your work and you know we all admire you and we we miss you well it's been a pleasure and your work is significant and important and you continue doing this I hope that you know that people will tune in and see your work on the Vimeo I think also I think Lincoln Center Library of the Performing Arts has your videos and all your work even so as you said there are a lot of my a lot of videos of my work is you find online but I hate online you know I hate it shouldn't it distorts the work you know and we can take the Stiegel Center proud in the fact that we got Richard Foreman to join Zoom he's now on it you know if some of his colleagues you know can send him the Zoom invite for for interrupting him even more and certain is that life will be interrupted and nowadays will be interrupted so really thank you Richard for listening thank you all our listeners for being with us this was I think an important message from from Richard who in a way has always worked in a way as if there is a coronavirus out there in a way perhaps he was a vaccination that the body of American theater got to got stronger and not that it changed the body but it was something that helped it to to to to become more strong yes well I'd like to think so I'd like to think so yeah and and tomorrow we will have Thomas Osfuber end up with us the great curator also started out as a playwright of the Berlin Festspieler who runs the Martin Kropius Bar where he has exhibitions out he runs the film Festspieler overlooks the Theater Traffin the Jazz festivals and and also his engagement here with the contemporary medias and and he is a close observer of their scene in Europe and in the world and we really are looking forward to hear from him what he did that should be good the changes that will be good so I hope you will all be with us thanks to howl around for for hosting us the DJ and Travis our single team Andy and some young and Friday Philip Hough will be with us and with two other one or two other partners Jordana from the Jack space so um hopefully you will again give us some time to listen and I'm busy everybody is how significant you know basically if anybody has any comments about what we've been talking about I wish they would email me okay at M M E D W A R D A madame aduardo which is the title of one of george batize erotic novels madame aduardo at earthlink.net wonderful and good that that is good and and if not send it to us to the seagull talks at gmail.com seagull talks and we will forward it so thank you again Richard and I hope to all see you all again tomorrow and hear you from you and stay safe and stay tuned. Goodbye Richard.