 longer and darker and less light coming in from the outside. Most books, up to 95% that are sold in America are British books or American books, of course, and the rest 5%, half of it is French or German. And then you have maybe one or two books from other countries. It's a little bit changing, hopefully, now, but still, and as we always say, no respectable musicians would just listen to music from one country. They see actually global music, world music, is of significance. It's a very big movement and it's inspirational and the same has to be and should be for theater to know about different realities we all live in, in this planet, and perhaps that we are not fully aware and do not always understand and hear and think about these other ways of working and living and trying to get meaning of life is part of the problems we also do have. And so we are making our contribution with this and we invited for the first time one theater. Traditionally, we have playwrights from all over the world, from Australia, from Africa, North Africa, Arab world, Indonesia, Australia, Latin America, minority countries, minority languages often. We support great, great writers who are very well known in their countries, but will never ever have a production in the US. And most of the time, you might not even get a reading and it has been very successful. But the work of the Gorky Theater is so unique and so important that we felt we feature them. It's an ensemble of actors and directors and writers. It was created in 1915 by Sherman Langhoff and Jens Hilge with the OK from the Berlin mayor. And the entire ensemble and everybody in the creative world are people who don't look like me. They're all migrants, whether they chose to come to Berlin because of work or whether they really had to go refugees or first generation children of immigrants. And they now have a place as they call a safe haven to create work about the migrant experience, but also of LGBT, gender feminist, global capitalist problems, as they would say. And they're having a little utopia. It's a beautiful theater. I think you all should go. It's a little temple. It's actually modeled after a Greek temple. And as the philosopher Heidegger said, if you just look at a photo of a temple, it doesn't mean anything. If you see a ruin of a temple, it really doesn't mean anything. But at the time when a temple was working, the gods were there and the people would come to have their rituals, oblige the births and the funerals and the celebrations or ordinations. When they would go for services, that was when the temple was shining and when it was brilliant, bedazzling and gave a meaning in the center to the local community or the community in general. And I think the Gorky in some way right now is a working little temple of theater and not always one captures such a feat. And they're also coming to an end. Shemin Langhoff is leaving, I think, this year. The Gorky and we thought it was really worth celebrating. They also have a very unique way of working together. Actors and writers are together in the room. Actors say what they would like to say or not. Would they rewrite a monologue or not? They put one in and up to the nine weeks of rehearsal until the very end, until the night of the opening, things could be changed. Nothing new for ensemble theaters, for off-off work, which we all love and know, but to do this in a very big state theater or city theater is highly unusual, it's never been done before. Not only that you would never see the stories like the one we had in the afternoon about a Turkish immigrant whose father was a leftist revolutionary who was part of a militia and the Turkey had to flee, came back, went back in the underground and the son has never met his father. So this was the story from before. We didn't see these stories about Turkish people, from Turkish people ever on the stage. So it was a big change that happened and we are really honored to collaborate with the Gorky. They, most of them did leave. Dimitri is still here. So it was a great honor. I think it was a very successful series and thank you all for coming, especially those who came more often. I am Frank Heschler from the Segal Theater Center here at the Grad Center CUNY and our Center for Riches Academia and Professional Theater International and American Theater. And this is right at the very, very hard of what we do and we're very proud to be collaborating with Spen for over 10 years. If you have a cell phone, now it's getting more serious. I'm gonna turn it off, actually the last show I turned it on, even though it was off and then it rang. As the only one, it was very sad fact but now we're going to start it. The play is directed by our very own Andy Goldberg, a great director and also a PhD student here and Anna Crivelli is the actor who will be engaging with the work of Sebel Dirk, one of the stars of German theater, of the German writers. Also a commentator for the Spiegel magazine since years and we are now gonna see a version of, and now the world or the so-called outside means nothing to me. Thank you. Gotta be hard so I know what counts, what matters. And then the world will get its answer fast which is this is me, I'm gonna last. I'm gonna win, not debased, not concerned, cut down small, I'm gonna reinforce my body. Gotta say I'm quite impressed by the way I can rhyme stuff. Andy promises, I'm gonna show you the world, the world of normal people, people with hope. And you are gonna keep quiet, that was the deal. It's only with hope that people can actually stand their lives, how are you? Anyway, don't know why I thought of that. Are you hoping to see the sun again? And that's who interests me most here. I don't think there's much point in that. Oh well. My hope, not that you asked, is for someone to be waiting outside for me. They could easily wait for me, one of those young people, most of them are unemployed anyway or they're studying to be unemployed later or they're doing an internship, a 10-year one. So I don't see why it should be a problem for someone to hang around out there waiting for me. Young woman with green eyes and an interesting kung fu. Let's call her Lena. This person might be standing at her window right now, looking up at where the sky used to be before this constant rain started, wondering whether there can ever be any feeling except pain when you're in love. It always hurts in the end, because one of you wants it and the other one doesn't or one of you doesn't want it anymore or both of you don't want it enough and then you just sit staring at each other, they lose surprise, buzzing. The spy drones are circling outside the window again. It's the new teenage boys hobby. They print those things with 3D printers and send them out looking for sex partners. They're attaching a penises to them soon. Fuck it, I don't know what things I'm like. Like being young and alone at home in the evening. My little self made family are all out. Gemma's shopping, Mina's at the gym and I'm hanging around here making a video that no one except you, dear Paul, will ever watch. The furniture, so what did you get up to today? The silence always traps me when I'm home. The bed, old bastard laughs while I decay. It smells so lonely in the flat. There's a yellow lamp, I watch it hang. I don't know what I like more being alone here or with the gang. Loves only a thing in songs I get bored. Life don't have nothing like it anymore and if you ever get that kind of urge then it's only at net a naked surge. I'm just gonna top myself a bit more and then I'm going to turn the light off, scared. I thought I'm keen on being naked. And urge isn't really the right word. The only things I have an urge for are like places and things I know. I never get an urge to see the summon of the Himalayas or have a golden oscoby. I just get an urge for a feeling I know from films. I've never been loved, violent way that love gets loaded up with in art and the media anyway. That person who got enchanted by me without ever getting used to me, that person doesn't actually exist. Even though I do meet all the visual criteria that this other person needs to nowadays, I have good teeth and I'm politically correct. Is that you I hear whimpering in this agreement Paul? Evenings like this, I get this vague fear that everything might just stay the way it is now, gray. And that I might slide straight from this dawning young person into what I see in old people. Pure despair, like an unkept promise. Everyone I know is searching for this unknown thing, which they almost feel those times may have just the right amount of alcohol in their body and just the right song is on. We wanna be limitless and infinite, but really we're just this drunk person going home with someone who's also drunk and just going home with someone. I went home with Lena, but then I'm afraid this feeling started inside me. But I ignore it. I'm brilliant at ignoring feelings. Now we're very good friends, she said. And I'm not suffering from unrequited love. I'm just going through a personality development. I'm learning not to have any expectations to take what I'm given, but I don't know any girl who doesn't love a bit of unrequited love anyway. You really lose weight for one thing. And all those deep thoughts are pretty great too. Unrequited love always gives me the feeling that I'm an especially emotional person. Do you like my video blogs? The everyday life of a teenager? Or are they pissing you off? Are you chewing the carpet? Oh wait, you haven't got any carpet. Better that way. The absence of decorative elements, the lack of a fascinator, encourage you to concentrate on the essential things when the human remains. So focus, look, the sun is going down. Maybe it's actually dying. I haven't been outside to check. This amazing outside isn't really doing it for me at the moment because that's where the world is. And you have to have an attitude to it. You have to have opinions and they have to be politically correct. I have to keep checking the stream of my thoughts for correctness. What marginalized group, for example, women, could be offended by what heteronormative phrase? Heteronormative is the word of the season. Last year it was authentic and the year before that, sustainable. Before printing, think of the environment. We all wear the same serious faces while we talk the same meaningless shit. We scratch thoughtfully out our noses, which are marked with notches from our clean glass glasses. That sounds as if I hate all people around me, but that's only partly true. In the powerlessness of my status as a female citizen, it's up to me to riot and debase others, even though my decision-making power is limited to blogging and making the relevant consumer choices. Every second of the day, advertisers, in despair because everyone hates them so much, fire these thousands of bits of content into the net, and I have to deny them access to my thoughts. No, I don't want any fucking sit-at-shit coffee. I'm not into things that have been through an animal's body. I can decompose things by myself and I demand the right to decide whether a normal sheet bean can perform the task of satisfying me as a health conscious food. We get fractions of a second to decide whether these products can keep their endorphin spring promises and yet we're manufactured in a politically unobjectible way. Are they fucking well-sustainable and sexy? You just have to keep thinking about it. So how the fuck are you supposed to concentrate on your well-tuned lifestyle? Well, it's a chance if you've got ADHD. So all you're left with are projects. And the first project is me. The many different branches of me could form a chorus in an anti-capitalist play and sing, I don't want any fucking sit-at-shit coffee and I don't want any sneakers, especially not sneakers, the perfect symbol of third-world exploitation. Can you still say that? Or do you have to say countries with suboptimal income structures? There I said it. The evil words. Income structure. Paul, are you still listening, aren't you? Or have you lost consciousness again? Consciousness again, you fucking victim. I hardly ever say victim anymore nowadays. The times when I used to beat people up, but was really beating myself up as my imaginary lawyer, let's say, are long gone. It's only on days like today, really boring days that I still think about them. What, you nice little thing like you, you got into fights? You can ask. And I would say, oh yeah, if you're aggressive enough and you're not scared of a little bit of violence, pretty much everyone else is scared of you. And off we go. As the sun sets, Gemma, Mina, and me, with our hoodies, with our masks, sometimes our bare costumes, whether committing, with baseball bats, nail-studied clubs. We take on one or two boys, sometimes groups of three, but only if they look definitely younger than us. Kick them in the back of the knees, use a surprise. Sometimes we hear their noses break, head on the curb stone, but I swear, we never broke anyone's neck. We just wanted to see whatever was left there bleeding, pissing itself. I always hated it. She was worried about her nails and kept quoting statistics that demonstrated the probability that sooner or later one of our victims would die, or that we'd get arrested, or that we're actually just psychopaths. I thought about it. We stopped them and started doing yoga. No, just getting cracked up. We moved in together, and now we live out the peaceful parts of our personalities. You know, all that feminine stuff. We've been knitting little bunches of flowers and faces, fashion and cosmetics blogging at the same time. Today we've become what this imaginary society expects of us. She obsessed, neat, sweet, and we always laugh at the right time at other people, in other words, or if we think of new illnesses. We are masters of simulated ADHD, Aspergers, borderline personality disorder, and we swat railing pills like they were apps. I put out cigarettes on my arms, shaved my head, Britney style, stapled magnets under my skin, and pushed hooks through my lips, only so I could belong to the right group, to the cruel people. I'm a stellar bipolar. Flip out, flip the fuck out, go crazy bonkers, wait. I'm just gonna fall over? I'm gonna fall over right now. Okay, I'm really calm. Complain within myself, centered. I'm not in love, and I managed to wait casually for hours before I look at this text. Determined yawn. Let's take a very quick look. We're gonna say she woke up this morning in bed with a young man. Excuse me, I have to do a kid. Who is not her boyfriend and is unlikely to become her boyfriend. Definitely not, who wants anything that is fucking tragic as a relationship. Sorry, I just have to puke again. But who she's experienced this life, everything is right, harmony, and all that. Soulmate. Wait, did she just say soulmate? And it says though they knew each other in another life. Another life experience? My eyes, wait, I'll show you. Do you think, sure. I think for him to call because I'm into claims of heteronormative possession, but because I think the uniqueness of the connection between our personalities deserves us to carry on seeing each other. Know what I mean? And me like, studies aren't history or theater or culture management, I didn't listen to this. I was too busy staring at her neck and telling her to light. And the hair on her arms, which I wanted to touch. I'm pretty good. I'd always getting just the right amount of alcohol inside me. Not enough to piss myself, too much to pass as a sober person. For no reason, I keep thinking about people who pretend to be adults and spend hours slurping wine doing important faces. There's literally nothing grimmer. Hello, they might as well say. I've done nothing in my life except in the yogurt. I know I slurp wine and they'll be popular. Nina doesn't answer. Now why isn't she answering? Do you think he sees it that way? No, she won't answer. I think the one thing that's even shittier than being in unrequited love is watching the person you're in unrequited love with be in unrequited love. Last week, I was with Lena with some friends and friends type people in one of those exposed concrete Uber apartments which had an artwork in a 600 square meter space. Carefully arranged in tense juxtaposition to a really uncomfortable sofa. Anyway, Lena was sitting on this also like sofa saying, using a permit for lovers. And I was sitting right next to her and it was obvious she didn't mean me. Do you know what I mean, Paul? Doing what we all do. She just doesn't want anyone who wants her because that sounds too boring and not passionate. She wants something that makes excitement and pain. She wants not to be wanted. She wants someone who's in a relationship or needs to think or is blocked right now or needs some time. Then you can be so nice and deep and suffer and write poems. And then three weeks later, the next thing comes along. Suffering? If I could ask you, you'd nod. Maybe when you're over 40, you'd say. If you could talk, but you can't, which is a shame because you've got that fucking sock in the way. I think when you're over 40 and not into sex anymore, you probably start thinking, people who don't want me can kiss my ass. I'd rather clean the apartment anyway. I should probably do that. My apartment has no chance on ending up on a blog as an example of an ironic yet cool interior design. No one is going to stop and think, wow, this is the apartment of an urban trendsetter. Although the punch bag and the swords do make an impression. For a girl, you have to add in a slightly raised voice. My interior design style betrays my earnest efforts at authenticity, dried leaves under glass, an old teddy bear that was never mine. As you know, I never had any toys. Photos of children who were never a part of my family. As you know, even though I did have a family, it wasn't one you want to take photos of. It's the apartment of a young woman with the usual effects, themselves easily kept under control with tablets and therapy. Fuck me, Mina, you're right. We have to cook up 10 hundred packs of Viagra today. C22H30 and 604S, melting point 187 degrees Celsius. Thanks for what felt like you asking, Paul. Our legal pharmaceutical business is doing great. I was only average in chemistry, as many of my clients would confirm. But it's all on the internet now anyway, that cute little internet that people are so scared of. Oh, you don't even know who that is. Oh well. While other young people beg off their parents to do unpaid internships in online shops, we make bombs and drugs, but the products that sell the best are the ones that satisfy people's desire for inexhaustible sexual ability. Mina, you know, my roommate, alcoholic's daughter from an immigrant family, father from Maine, mother from Trenton. Do you remember how we met or were we listening? We were 10 on a summer camp where we got kicked out of different groups for different reasons. We bonded because we had this feeling we were alone in the world and complete losers. Mina runs our company's online presence, orders, homepage, data encryption. Maybe one day she'll have a proper company. She deserves it. At the moment, we're having a little friendship crisis. For 10 years, we were connected by our outsider thing and then Mina got into keeping fit. That's it. No punchline. Zumba, great. Obviously, you can't be here with me on this beige Saturday if you're doing dance routines in unaired rooms. Breathe in, calm down. I should probably say Mina's physical exercise thing might be making me so angry because I'm a size 10 and I really need to do something about it because it's unacceptable for a young woman to wear a size 10 and then face the saleswoman disgusted looks in the shops or in summer puke at the swimming pool yuck because we can't just have an entire demographic of a group waddling down the street padded with fat basically because you can't meet the demands of the system when you're listing to one side. Mina, no, I can't go outside. Sorry, I have to finish some pills. Someone has to work around here. Finish the evening delivery for the online customers who get hard ons thanks to their powers of auto suggestion plus a little rat poison and glucose. Anyway, I have to call mother today. I have to learn a foreign language and more than anything, I have to not do Zumba ever. Yes, Mina, I went shopping, low fat milk, rice cakes and tofu. I failed to mention the crate of Red Bull, vodka and ice cream. Feel guilty about that, obviously. It started when I was nine and one of my breasts started growing and I thought it was fat and I starved myself. And when the others at school started wearing brands and trotter bags and all I had was a fake Gucci bag and an extra 10 kilos. Mina writes, he called, bully for him, I answered. And vomit, he had too much to do with his projects, she writes. And I get a stomach ache that I have no choice but to call him with ice cream. Last week, she was on an island and emailed me for revealing her feelings in detail. That's not like her, it went like this. I've been on this island for two weeks. For the last two days, I've been thinking I might carry on living, though I don't think about why. How could I can walk again and breathe and see the stars on some nights and feel something other than this mass in my chest that makes my breath so short but then becomes liquid on some night and lets me breathe out and feel something different from this numbness. I don't know what it is yet. I just think that I'll carry on living. An island was put, thrown into the water. So people could dream of it. Of how nice it would be to sit on this heap and once they're there, their palms start sweating because they realize it's actually quite hard to find your way off an island. The sea, friends in the tedium, cubic hundred weights of sadness and tedium, liquid stupidity, my heart beats quietly and that's what I still want from life. Some good rest. There's a person at home I should stay with. At this point in the email, I was already lying on the floor because obviously she meant me because it does me good. He carries me over brooks, covers me at night and my heart stays quiet. It's as if it doesn't matter. Something's died, I don't know what, but it's good that it's dead. I've become reasonable, I've become a grown up. Overnight, whichever night that was, we laughed a lot, didn't eat much, didn't sleep at all. It was the kind of love that might turn into hate or rage or mourning, but will never end. And never not matter, never. Too much of everything, tears and blood, and he was so beautiful that people had to look away. I had to look away because beauty scares people, freezes people, it's unstoppable. For me, I could have held him. And all I wanted was to lie next to him, on top of him, underneath him, and look at him and not move or eat or breathe anymore. I lay with him in the snow and he glowed like something radioactive, split from reactors and I licked his nose, his face clean and I loved him so much, my life for him because I didn't exist anymore. I wanted to saw off his arms, his legs, so he couldn't leave me. Tie him up, bend his torso, his head, his blonde head into a box, take him with me and be mad at everything around him that wasn't me. At everyone who was allowed to shake his hand, at the chair that was allowed to carry him, I would have carried him from Moscow to Stokey, but who the hell wants to go there? He didn't wanna go there and then he left in a cold night in a strange city and it was different from the endings before. Something died on that strange night. I saw him after he'd gone and I knew there'd never be no feelings about that image of that last night because he told me he was going in the morning and I tried to use my body to crawl inside his until he froze in revulsion. That night, the coldest of my life, that was the night I grew old, grew old. And now I'm becoming a woman. Now I'm going to live a wonderful life. I'm looking forward to it. I'm going home tomorrow to the person who does me good. Dude, I swear she means me. Lena says she's meeting him tomorrow and that she's excited. And if it's all right, she calls me later. And me, I'll like, yeah, sure. Don't know if I'll be in then. Very funny. I'm gonna carry the phone in my hand, check it every few minutes and at two in the morning, she's gonna send a series of incomprehensible texts which I'll read deep messages into. Things like, bye, see you soon. I'll kiss that. Bye, see you soon. And into that soon, I'm gonna read the promise of a future together. Fuck. Sometimes I can't wait to get old because maybe that means nothing is stupid anymore. Not having to go to those fucking parties anymore, those gallery openings or those protest festivals or those modern dance productions. And this standing in corners making hedonistic plans all of which absolutely have to end in a performance piece all that stuff you have to do in a certain age to prove you're alive. But what the fuck am I actually doing with this fucking SpongeBob tattoo on my hand? Whenever my people go to a site specific immersive experience, we get surrounded by vultures dressed as old men. They wear converse and think they'll distract us from their faces. Definitely no. Ever since I could think or walk, I get surrounded by old men who wanna take photos of me because they're talent scouts or they wanna help me. They say, hey, you must be pretty insecure. Starting there like that or I expect your looks work against you or don't pretend to be so cool. You're still just a little girl who wants to be loved. But they're talking about themselves when they say that love thing. I used to feel weirdly uncomfortable after these old men came up to talk to me. Now I just imagine what they look like dying. I hold them in a tight hug these old men, stroke their shrunken skulls. Their breathing slows down. They cling on to my arm. Please, I don't wanna go yet. They say, and then I close their eyes gently and say, you never had a menna. Menna, are you still listening to me? She's not listening to me anymore. I can hear a rhythmic stamping and stomping in the thoughts of 3,000 housewives, mothers, war ravaged people. We like to steam off. We love our sweat. It's aromatic and athletic at the same time. As long as we keep busy, sustainably busy, we should say, desperately trying to eat too little in the day and at night secretly stuffing ourselves with baby food, we hid under the bed and then she running up and down the stairs 10 times because you can't puke up baby food. As long as we keep watching makeup tips on the internet and prodding our bodies for cellulite, then we don't deserve to win the battle. The battle for what anyway? World domination, okay, fine, but I can't stand us menna. Some days I just actually can't stand us with our addiction to perfection. What's the point to be a perfect sustainable corpse? The family's calling. I don't know anyone apart from Gemma who uses Viber. She likes that squeaky noise. Gemma, my possibly manic depressive half sister, the business side of our enterprise. Gemma isn't actually her name, but her real name was too provincial for her. I can only stand her because we're related and because we've been through things you don't forget. I stand her because I understand her obsession with wanting to be loved because I accept that there are people who just give up, who just pack up their sanity and say, the only thing that still counts today is money, which means I want a lot of it, which means I smile. It doesn't matter that my sphincter's failing from the constant stress outside. It doesn't matter that I've got psoriasis from all the competition out there that makes people rush through their lives like they're on coke, about to lose their minds. I understand people who just do what everyone else does. The easiest thing to do in the world, look good and shop. Gemma, no, I don't want to go out. I don't want to go shopping with you. I have to work. Do you know what shopping is, Paul? It used to be called going to the shops. And if you believe the old films, it meant going into a black and white shop and choosing between two types of cabbage. Today you shop, just like that. It doesn't matter what. And it isn't embarrassing because you're fulfilling your civic duty. I could tell you how the shops have changed in the past five years that by buying products you become part of a family that you prefer to your own. But maybe you're more interested in watching whatever that stuff is growing out of the holes in your flesh. Gemma, no, I've got no idea what the key pieces of the season are. Less is more, Gemma, put that amphibian leather thing back on the shelf. Lena, my future ex-love. I'm so glad she wants to dump her worries on me. I'll take them and sling them around my neck like a chain of sausages. And it's snogging a young man called Sven. Who she's cheating with to torment the young man she's in love with. And she still has time to text me. And honestly, if only we could use all the time we waste fucking people we don't really like to build utopian communities. From the toilets at Zumba where she's doing a bit of coke so she can enjoy the final stages of the dance event. She'll be back late tonight. She wants to go over to Beths who also has a different name in real life. And is a woman who used to be a man or if the other way around it doesn't matter unless you're unlucky enough to meet a pack of moronic young men who are depressed because the world isn't giving them enough attention and aggressive because they're not taking their pills. They go mad if you threaten their masculinity by kissing the wrong people. It's weird when you think that our brains are in constant contact with all corners of the world and that we're getting more and more open and politically correct all the time or should be. The truth is outside, remotely controlling spy drums with penises stuck on them talking and idiotic ghetto slang and kicking the shit out of anything that doesn't fit their worldview. In other words, everything. My mother used to tell me when she was still interested in something other than watching her walls. Just wait till you're older, then you'll learn to fear men. And I thought, today I regret being peace-loving and no longer thoughtlessly using my combat boots to express sustainability. Sustainability is Gemma's thing and vibrates sweet for every bag. I'm dying inside. Gemma's the wing of different products. Sometimes I think she must be healthier than me so totally free of any resistance to the system. Studying business, paying for her higher education with illegal pharmaceuticals, shopping, planning holidays on the Côte d'Azur. Gemma is fine with all that. While I was still working off my aggression against my invisible enemies on victims who couldn't help they were the wrong sex, Gemma was already doing her masters. Sometimes I wonder whether my lack of empathy is something I should worry about or whether I just have a bit too much testosterone. Assistant, aren't I, Paul? You're in a precarious, risky situation and you're trying to figure out what kind of person am I? A normal young person, it seems, with all these normal young person things with dirty fingernails, cut off trousers, a weird hairstyle and no clue what to do with this life. A psycho, you think, because I hit people. Well, used to hit people. With this strange kind of aggression and hatred for all the different lifestyles they see around me, the way people fall for all this shit, you have to work to be fit for your work so you can work more and then you have to earn money to get into debt and earn even more money so you can go shopping so you can get into even more debt. You fucking slave. Yep. Confusing, maybe not Paul. The rain out there that never ends and the disasters, the tornadoes and floods and diseases that keep getting closer and everyone pretends they're just a passing phase, but what if this really is the end and we're gonna have one of those Roland Emmerich scripts out there, the Ice Age and the floods and nowhere left to go and not even a religion that I can believe in so that if I have enough pity for all those oppressed fuckers, there's this golden place waiting for me somewhere up there. I'm not even fucking pious, just clueless because nothing seems worth it and except for having fun, nothing is worth it and sometimes I'm tired of this flood of fun that actually isn't really fun at all. What do you mean you're depressed? Gemma got very bad style reviews on a fashion blog for her in-between outfit. She believes in the system and is going to be the first person ever to have her vaginas straightened. The complete absence of depression in Gemma's psyche is really getting to me. How does she stand it? Knowing that you're gonna die one day and be shoved naked into an oven. How can you stand knowing you're alone with your responsibility to a life where you do everything wrong and knowing it's going to come and save you? Knowing that you're alone. It's unbearable on some days. On some nights when I come back from parties from so-called social contract, from so-called having fun, from alcohol and chemical support and then the Blackburn avatars start singing and the plaster avatar gleams moistly and I realize I will never experience this moment again and maybe no better one either that everything might actually stay this way in an in-between zone of undefined feelings that nothing will ever happen that I can tell apart from my state of indecisiveness. Pretty hate for someone without a philosophy degree. No. She says she's basically confused by sex. Well, there's a surprise. No one understands sex. The obsessive talk, the swinger clubs, the latex costumes, old people's sexy vice makes us sick but we haven't found anything new. We watch you porn ironically, do some gender-neutral snogging buck without it meaning anything. Every now and then there's an abortion or an 18-year-old mother but no one has ever really understood what sex is about. No one I know anyway. Paul, I'm talking about sex. Probably here in my bedroom, my power place, I would say, if I was a bit bonkers, which I've said out according to the principles of feng shui, scornin. Sex was never as nice as I imagined it. I imagined I see a person glowing. We recognize each other, approach, silence, music, then holding hands, walking slowly away together. In my imagination, there would always be a completely secluded meadow available where we could lay ourselves out without it being damp or cornered by insets. Music, then look into each other's eyes for ages, stroking the hair in our bodies, laughing, embarrassed, then sunset. Then kissing for hours, holding each other, pressing against each other. To be honest, in my imagination, there was never any bodily smells or sweating and we never talked. The music would always covered it. The truth is, drunk, party, tense, light drizzle. A person in need, snogging next to an upturned beer bottle, then into the tent, fumbling, cold feet, breath, not so great, skirt up, trousers down, pain, finish, sticky, crying, music from the next tent. Pitbull, no longer. I was sitting bare-assed on the toilet under a rainy campsite, crying and not knowing why. Booze, the bad weather mixed with the disappointment. It was so nothing. Mina! Mother, mother! Mother always calls when I think about sex. It's like having her stand in the door watching me masturbate. Shit, mother, I've got Mina on my mind. Yes, I know I shouldn't say shit, but I'm currently being overstimulated by my technical accessibility. And anyway, it's Saturday night, I'm in the middle of recording a film. I've got an app, a bottle of, oh, forget it. Mina, I've got my mother on the phone. Yes, the phone. She thinks the internet is under surveillance and cell phones activate the spores of some kind of fungus in your brain. Mother, yes, I'll be with you in a minute. Conversations with mother are always connected with certain feelings, usually helplessness, because she expects me to produce a life plan. Barley, anyone has one of those because we know that we can't plan anything anymore. And then most people go into an ordering system where they let themselves be stored away. Learn, study, go to work, marry, make a baby, put down a deposit for an apartment. And then they lose their jobs, the systems break down and they hurt themselves. Or something shows them that life can be different. If you break out row beards, litter communes, legay, transgender, queer, or they become guerrillas and find some obvious enemies to fight, we should all just stop participating out there. It's also ridiculous on a rainy night in the final phase of economic growth in the middle of the end of the world, which I'm not allowed to believe in because I have to re-produce, but not today. Mother, yes, of course I've been thinking about my future today, the world. And I realized this at 6.34 p.m. is waiting for me to free it from mediocrity. Mother doesn't believe in the struggle. She doesn't know what's worth fighting for. For her, life has got to be harmonious, uncomplicated, well-tended, and mother believes that by conceiving offspring, she's done her bit for saving the world. So I have to show her another life. I had to do that. Didn't I? I had to show her that it's always worth. Oh! Mina screams, the day after tomorrow there's a new phone coming out, which is similar to her old phone. It won't work two years from now when it will desperately need to be replaced with a new phone. They have to stand in a queue in the sales personnel. We'll cheer for the first idiot who leaves the shop with this new phone, which is just like the old phone, but new. Mother, I can't hear you. I can't hear anyone. There's this rushing in my ears. The camera's on, the apartment is floating in the sea. Strange. It's vibrating in the room. Somewhere in the city, four people are sitting at their devices in silence and someone else is sitting in silence because he doesn't have any other choice. Hey, Paul. When no one talks to me, my existence becomes boring. I don't know how people can stand it for decades alone with themselves, with this so-called light. I, this so-called light that goes by so fast because you're always waiting for the summer, which happens for a few days and then you run outside and try like mad to enjoy your existence. And that puts me in a really bad mood. Lena, oh, God! I've just forgotten her for a few minutes. And now she wants to talk because she's bored. Mother, I never called you mom because that's a warm word. And our story, at least from my point of view, was a bit tense, mother, because you never were a role model for me. Mother, I'm scared at night more than anything. I'm scared that I'll stay the loneliest person on earth. The ugliest, the saddest, the only one ever who doesn't know how to understand they're just a cog in the history of the world. I'm scared it won't get better. And that I'm not a superhero who bravely creeps up on boys at night and saves her mother from the patriarchy, but that I'm just a bitch like all the others. Mother's sitting in darkness. She's crying. It's Paul's birthday. Paul is my father. He's disappeared. He just didn't come home one day. Weird. And since then, mother has been sitting there waiting for something to grow out of the wall. Gemma has finally found a bag. She's on her way home. Now your mother's breathing. She's waiting too long. Everything she does seems to be aimed at making me uncomfortable. They have quiet for too long, breathing too loud, sounding strange. She succeeds. Mother, have you, and by that I mean you, old people, got any happier with your goals? Your family goals, real estate goals, separating your rubbish goals. And when I say you, I mean generation, I know all this generation talk is totally fucking idiotic. Gemma, I thought you were coming home. I can't, I'm on the phone with mother. Yes, our mother, you think I randomly call mothers I'm not related to? Hello, are you her mother and do you feel like talking? Our mother, who's sitting frozen in the darkness. Wait, I meant, Mina, I thought you were on your way home and you were bringing salad. Gemma, wait, Mina just found out some kind of new hacking shit on my way home. Oh, mother, I think I'm drunk. I'm staggering around communication loops. My interface points don't overlap as my generation would say. Lena has found out that a woman can become addicted to sperm because it has such an amazing effect on our formal balance. Mother, did you know what I've always wanted to tell you? Our family had all the intensity of a glass of lukewarm water. There was nothing unique about us. Paul wasn't my father, but he behaved like he was full of kindness and so on. He was always so exaggeratedly happy when he came home from work. He gave us a hug. Mother had a break after Gemma's birth and the break became forever. She liked it in forever. She wasn't bored. She looked okay for a woman in her late 30s and on the weekend, we went to the YMCA. I mean, it's not a child that you could use as an excuse for some kind of failure. If you haven't at least got an alcoholic sex abuser or a child that in a forest being raised by a family of animal, you can't expect accentuating circumstances in the young offenders court. One day, I thought maybe if Paul never came home, it would give my life story a kick in the ass. Maybe you'd become like a desperate social services case and with your last despair and powers you might turn into a JK Rowling type thing, that you could finally become that damn role model I needed. I threw plant pots onto the street when Paul left the house. I poured sugar into the tank of his car, smeared soap on the bathroom floor and then one day Paul was gone. Odd, Paul was gone and I waited for your talents to break out but nothing broke out, nothing changed except that you became sad and silent. When I was 18, I moved out. That was the whole story. I left you alone. What's your poem about it? October, Sunday. Tea's cold, can't drink. You clear your throat and speak and the blue lights wink. The tea's no good against this thirst. Gaps too wide, we sit and breathe. Can't swim across, get off the island, choke. But how can we leave? Here's forgotten, melted now, gone away, staring into cups. You know I like you, is all you say. I know, but it's not enough, won't do. No good to hold your hand, can't hold you tight. When you go, don't turn off the light. October night blew through the tree by the house came the light. Took the gray suitcase, moved out of your life, moved out of your sight. October night, maybe the light stays, dust has flowed. The world was still and you said, quiet. Don't forget your coat. We talked for hours at that table by that wall, found in a French warehouse on holiday, but that was really all. You said I was distant, your fingers flickered, twitched some more. I said I liked you, but it wasn't enough anymore. Even the rain outside stopped and inside the world stood still. You said, I'll go pack, don't need much for now. The tea is cold, climbed the groaning stairs. I feel my throat, I'm at that table and say, quiet. Just don't forget your coat. So you're gonna go, you say. I say goodbye, suppose I better go. Hours later you're staring at that gap that I left, that hole. You wash the cups, clean the plates, cream your face, cupboard bare. And then you stop for years on end, just standing there. Paul disappeared a year later. Shit happened. And my mother didn't become a chancellor or a microbiologist. She dried up, she expired. And that's my fault. Mother, are you there? Are you crying? Nina, you really can go fuck yourself. Nina, Gemma, please come home. Paul, are you still in the cellar? Are you scared of every new day? Are you scared of forget your down there? Are you scared you'll go blind if you ever step out into the light again? Don't worry, you won't be seeing any more light. I can't get out of this anymore. You understand that, don't you? I can't get out of this. Are you all out there in this city? Dark now? Are you standing at your windows and waiting for your lives to begin? Are you waiting for it to finally start the great adventure? The empty rooms leave all these questions. Do you people out there even exist? Or is there just this empty bottle and me and my devices and Paul? It doesn't matter, I'm young. For me, it all starts tomorrow. Tomorrow, the world. Andy, thank you so much. And a big applause again for Anna and Andy. Wow, that was, that was quite a reading, quite a tour de force, thank you. It's amazing, yeah. There's also something about the text of Silvillain Burke. So Andy told me about it. You said, I want to direct it. I teach her what's going on. Why do you like her work? So I first became aware of this play in Cibela Berrig a couple of years ago. I was teaching a course in contemporary European drama at NYU and I was looking for new plays and particularly plays by women. And I don't know exactly the connection but I ended up talking to Ben Wright who translates a lot of Cibela's plays. And I read this and just instantly loved it. So I've been teaching it for a couple of years and then saw that you were going to doing a reading of it. So I asked to be a part of it. What do you see in the play? I just think Cibela has managed to capture, even though this is not her generation, of the voice of young women in a way that is really remarkable. That sort of, and again, this is through Ben Wright's translation but the cleverness and idiosyncrasies of the language, the way that language is just deconstructed and played with and political but disposable that she just kind of nailed a voice or a tone. And that's been borne out by my students when one of the students of my class said, I felt like I was reading my own journal. Right? And that young people in their 20s sort of really read this and connect with it. And Cibela is not, I mean, I think Cibela is definitely older than that. This is not her generation. She's been trilicalizing of a generation but endearingly so. So yeah, that was, I'm first reading it. And how did you, or was that for you, that experience? How was that experience? Well, it's very cool to see a text that long and that full with so many complex ideas for someone of my age and for my generation is really exciting. When we were doing tech today, I was like, this is like my happy days of right now, which is cool. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I completely agree with Andy that she somehow manages to capture a lot of different points of view in a very specific age group as a young woman. Yeah. Yeah, and if you talk about happy days though, instead of being burned in sand, she's burned into kind of a digital world that she had as barely functioning. And you did, yeah, Tim said. So I mean, when I teach actors in the context of digital dramaturgies, that this is, there's something about being alone and all your connections being through all of these devices and living the world virtually. So like the whole thing is the outside world means nothing to me. And so the just sort of the associative pinging from person to person as opposed to a plot or a drama, the stasis of it and the kind of virtual connections. Again, I think really the dramaturgy of it connects to a contemporary moment as well. You did cuts. You changed it, but tell us a bit. I mean, so this was about half the text. But because she just talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks. And at some point I wanted to show you the Gorky production of it because the Gorky production is just looks radically different. And I'm sure they, I know for a fact they cut the text there as well. If you just did the text at this pace like this it would be well over two hours. And it was less than that there and very physical at the same time. So I mean, it's in the German tradition like an Alfreda Yellenek text where you just a director can just cut and choose their way through it. This was the shape of it. We just proved it down for a consumable audience size. So it has all of the key sort of relationships and the points in the beginning, middle and end but just, she just talks a lot more. Yeah, I mean it is in the tradition of the monodrama where out of one head, out of one voice words come up and which is centuries old but this certainly is the most convincing if you would say in kind of a digital age. We live in as Brecht said, he wrote for the children of the technological age and she writes for the children of the digital age. Very clearly and how devastating also and when she also says mother, I can't hear you that disconnect which is and for Europe at least, a radical break maybe in America it has been always be a more loose structure and family scene but for Italians or French or German families were families or families that devastating rapture that happened there and her engagement was three screens I would say so the restlessness of it which we all know when we sit in our days at our work or computer in the evenings and it is quite something that perhaps well we should monitor all the screen times but since we talked about the Gorky should we look at it? Was it also one actor? I don't think so, right? So the script says a piece for one actor or more what does it say? For one person several voices or something else and so when it was done at the Gorky it was done with four actresses and then that sort of became the model for other German productions that I've seen online it just sort of was typically done but it's four actresses in unison and so I think not only we should look at this clip but then also this place spun a sequel and then came Myrna in which the unnamed character has a child and so the sequel had four women and four identical daughters or not identical but four daughters and then there was a, and then it became a trilogy where she dates someone and goes out to outer space so it was, this was really became a popular play and a popular production and it's still in repertory at the Gorky I believe Yeah, and it's also, yeah it's such brilliant writing as someone said he has to be sharp as a knife, clear like an icicle and kind of light as a bird's foot you know, she has all of that in there and it's very, very rare so maybe we have a look at it and one of the Gorky actors and co-creators of other works will still be with us at the reception if you come with us towards the archive so we could talk to him also a bit about it so maybe Jackie and Michael thank you again all for your help at the festival but let's have a look at what the Gorky, I don't think they can trump what we saw here but Yeah, maybe we open it up right away to our guests our final discussion as always at the Segal this is a significant part of it, not a little add-on but so we have some kind of a dialogue so from the audience some questions or a comment or like to share I'll give you, we are recording it with how round we also want to sing, how round for live streaming it Sure, of course I'm curious, seeing because when you started I said to myself there's more than one person on this stage which is amazing I guess my question to you as the director of this is why one person as opposed to two or four or six I totally heard and saw and felt more than one so that's, I mean, about to you Yeah, good question I mean because I had seen this and thought about this and it is about sort of the way identity sort of starts to fray at the edges the way our identities sort of exist in different ways I guess I just felt for this reading and I don't believe her work has ever been done here in the United States that this would sort of present her language the clearest and it takes a lot of hours to do that well, you know, and so it wasn't a dialogue between people it's multiple aspects of the same person and to pull that off is just more than than I could accomplish well if I could clone four Anna's then I would do it in a second but given the time and resources we felt this is the best way to honor Cibela's work for tonight I mean, that was just that Well, one could also argue the three devices performed you know, they were characters, all of them you know, so even more and so it was like, they were there just not as we said, they were non-human robots you know, people think robots look like the RT due to or whatever, you know, though they look like our phones these are I think those four women are Mina, Gemma, Lena and the character and that it's not just random that it's not infinite number that those are the four and that there is a certain sense of is any of this real? Is all of this a kind of virtual fantasy? Is Paul, did she really kidnap her father or did her father leave and is this just kind of a fantasy that she's made up to explain his absence and so this format implies a kind of different psychology that I thought was also in the text and worth exploring and I was there something in the text where you felt this, I don't know, difficulty this doesn't feel right or I can't connect to that was there someone or you had to work through till you found how to do it? I'm lucky that a lot of that was cut for this particular, which is luxurious I'm trying to think of something really stands out I think generally I don't have as strong opinions on anything that the character talks about as strongly as the character does like I don't think and Andy had to explain to me that the German thoughts are like it's like thoughts and parenthetical and so many parentheticals and then like a verb and then more stuff and so just sort of like my brain doesn't work that way yeah really, did you know that about you? But in that writing having that translated into English was completely like a really wonderful and interesting challenge cause it's not in my training to think quite that in that many stages you know what I mean? I think it's a brilliant translation actually and it added something actually to the work which not always happens, yes? Great job, so when I see this I think okay I wanna throw away all my technology tonight and get outside and meet as many different kinds of people as possible I'm wondering do you think the character has any sort of change in her view in the world between or from the beginning to the end of the piece? I think maybe there's a toying with what it would be like to leave this room and leave the devices and feel free to just leave me and that actually delving into the trauma only reinforces the safety of being here that so I think there's a question that that's always being sort of toyed with and then the character is answers it with the same answer every day, you know? Yeah, but it's difficult, right? It's hard to maintain like a line that I love I'll paraphrase it is like when people don't talk to me like my existence is blurry or something like that that like when there isn't any contact that's when I think the flooding of the demons come in and then yeah, the outside is too scary. Yeah. What did you think? Yeah. Did you think, I mean, I guess one of the questions you're asking is that like in a traditional play as a director or working with an actor, you'd go how does the character change from the beginning to the end and you're looking for that sort of dramatic through line and I think it's a valid question of whether that exists in this play or not. I mean, I think one thing to hang your hat on is that she does kind of give up on this Lena fantasy at the end. So there is a kind of putting away of something that she knows is not healthy but that's pretty small potato. And she might have another one tomorrow. And there might be another one tomorrow. She seems lost. She seems... The ending is a little that and the ending was not a bridge. So like that's the ending, which is very quick that suddenly like, okay, well, maybe tomorrow I'll go out. That's all the text you get for a kind of turnaround at the end. Maybe unconvincing it deliberately. I don't know what... Yeah, it feels very stagnant, which I guess is the point. So I, and it feels very one note actually, even though yes, there are multiple, there's so many ideas coming and going. It feels very myopic. And I guess that's how I... That's fine, no worries. We have one more thought or comment or... Okay, so I thought it was very interesting but I wasn't completely convinced that the devices made for such a very different profile of youth than I experienced. If you substitute the nuclear war for climate change, if you substitute the telephone that you're waiting for for the multiple different bongs and things, knocks at the door. I mean, I think that it really... I mean, I identified with it when I was in my 20s or early 30s, it felt very familiar. And of course, the idea that it's so modern, but I wonder, I think that the power of the play came from the fact that there's something far more universal about young life in a urban, sophisticated setting. I was in New York and I don't know what city in Germany that was originally played in. But I mean, I think it's very characteristic of like a sort of hopelessness and there was an added layer of it, though. But I think that might be due to the history of the current world. But on the other hand, it really didn't feel that unfamiliar to me. Well, it feels like it's kind of an updated software system. It's kind of, you know the old one, but this is the next layer of it. Like a contemporary feminist hold-and-call field or something, that kind of teenage snark and attitude. But I do think for me, one of the things that struck me at the time is that you don't really hear like a female monologue like this very often. I mean, I couldn't really think of too many others. The disaffected teenage male we hear a lot of, but less so of women. She wasn't a teenager, was she? She was very young, you know. Whatever, so she probably isn't exactly a teenager. 18, you said early 20s. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, she does say at one point, teenager. But I think we think, I said early 20s, yeah. And yes, but it is also just a language play and the language is what marks it as utterly. In fact, it's almost, it's like it will, this is a play that will age quickly, I think. And then 20 years from now, it will be kind of a good period piece, but it's almost out of date. The references will, Zumba is already a little dated, do you know what I mean? So there's certain things that mark it as 2012 or something when it was written and now it's already just starting around the edges, in terms of the cultural. Yes, I agree. But it's an update, but in a way, to giving to the data, I think lots of the Gorky plays feels like pop songs or pop play, they are made for the moment when they are created. As we heard last three days today, yeah. Zajstuk. Yeah, Zajstuk. I mean, they have 40 of them in repertoire and then they also change a little bit. They said, oh no, there's something was about ISIS, but now ISIS is out, okay, let me change it. You know, so they adapted also, but they are a different idea also. They are not meant to be classics. They really are like a song of a summer of a fall and there's something very beautiful about it. Also something highly crafted that we don't know. There are so many love songs and then one love song we like. Well, they're just the same stupid words, the same stupid melodies, but some catchers as I think she, of course, found something here. Also interesting I think is her inability to be alone. She's so alone, but she can't be, she has all these things around. Hannah Muller famously said, so much evil in the world came from people, especially men, not being able to be alone. That Chinggis Khan had to go, destroy the world, create a bigger empire. He had no home to return to. And he talked that about Kleis, the German writer. He said, you know, who killed himself. He had no home to really feel at home because Germany was not his home and he couldn't write it. And she also, she is at home, but she has no home and she's alone, but she can't be alone. And this is kind of a real, something of a 21st century that she captured something of it. And kind of shocking that this is the first reading of such a significant work in European or German theater. It's, you were all here. This was the American premiere. Yeah, yeah. I've been here for the last three days, seen five of the six performances. And in my mind, looking at the Gorky theater and looking at what you've done, I get this sense of the thread of existential angst. The running through all of their work is just the struggle of who we are living with ourselves and living in the world that we, and your commodification of being you in this play just comes out to me and just, you know, I'm a commodity, I'm waiting. I'm just wondering, does that resonate with you as the director and you as Don Ludlin? Ludlin, you know, you were the producer of yesterday's performance as the actor. You remember? Not really. No, there was a picture of you. Oh yeah, they made a joke. Yeah, I know, I know. Don Flunker and the Hollywood actor. Yeah, no, as the producer of a bad movie. But it's true. No, I think maybe, yeah. So does it resonate with you, the question to take? Yeah. Does that, you're not a young German girl, does it resonate with you? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, I think from what I understand of contemporary German drama that the questions of existential questions of identity are absolutely a major question that writers are asking. And whether it's about who is German in a lot of the sort of post-migrant theater context. In this context, it is generational and it's focused on the individual in technology, who are we in relationship to our, what happens to our relationships when they all become sort of mediated. But I think it's a wonderful observation and I totally buy that thesis. I just want to also thank Radek Kanopka for doing the sound and video. Thanks, Radek. Thank you. That was great. Yeah, so thank you. I think, yes, theater I think is there to create meaning and to tell us where we come from, where we are and where we are going to end as, I think, and Bogot famously quoted a Sanskrit text. It also has to entertain the drunk. So I think the Gorky plays also do that and make us, you know, at home in the world we live in and we might say, yeah, she did this, but that has been like this before as it's just a new version and it's okay, we will survive it, but it really anticipates in a way, a future, but also makes us comfortable with it and say, yeah, it's okay. There are Turkish people on stage and I hear people from Israel there fighting with someone from Russia, but it's interesting, it's okay. It's not bad. So that's the message for Berlin, a big city to say, yes, that's exciting. You know, there are problems, but it has some energy in it and I think this is only theater could do that, at least in Berlin. No film, no television series, nothing did that. What that theater did for the kind of vitality in Berlin, at least for the people who engage with the arts and people do know about it. I mean, I was there and there was like my friend's daughter who was 16, 22, a friend, yeah, should we go to the Gorky or daughter, can we see the faster people who are kind of abnormal and not really transferable to here. So it's a fantastic theater and I think I'm happy that we made that decision to invite them. I hope you will all join us at the archive bar. It's on 36th Street between Fifths Avenue and Madison on the south side. It's the closing reception. We had an opening reception and a middle reception and it's the closing one, but it's a fun and thank you for everybody to make this happen. Again, to Ancher Uegel who helped us, Christopher Tarras-Culler who had to go back, Jackie Michael especially and also George who joined us. So it's always a big thing for us. We are a very, very little team. We don't even have a theater here at the Seagull. We call it the Seagull Theater, but we have to share it with 30 other programs and 30 centers and it's rented out so far. So it was a big deal to be with Penwell Voices. It was the Gorky and have ended today such a great play and have you perform it. So again, thank you all for coming and check out the Pen Festival. It's going on for a couple of more days and come back. Next year, of course, but also have a look at our ongoing program. Next Thursday we have a fantastic with Julia Charco, a great New York playwright, actually a teacher of playwriting and she engaged with a text from Racine, a 17th century writer. It's about how to stage women's desire. Very interesting. Three significant New York artists, Oakley and others will come and do engage with that text. But again, thank you all and thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you.