 Welcome everybody. We're going to kick this off, somehow, somewhere. Welcome. A few people are waiting to retreat from up in town, but we're going to get started in the meantime. There's so much to talk about, so overwhelmingly much to talk about. And a certain amount of time, before we get started with introductions, before I try to phrase local welcoming, I just want to point out Emma's in the room. This is Emma Garbidman, who is helping coordinate this event. Any housekeeping notes, anything? He posted if you need anything, because anything would just quickly let me know. I'm sure you've all found out from the story over there. If you're finding that you have died, hearing aids that aren't being asked, let us know. We also have on a handful of tickets left for tonight's performance that aren't being held, so if you found that after seeing it last night, you'd like to see it again. Let's face it now. But that's it. Otherwise, you can post on anything you need to hear out there. Thank you. This is one of these things that is unsolvable for me, where I write something in one notebook, and then I have to switch to another notebook, and then I have to go to the computer, and then I have to get a giant board, and then I have to... And the place where the things call less never seems to find the right template, the right size paper, or the right instrument. So I'm going to accept that as a fact in this very moment, even though I have one, two, three things in front of me. I'll just try and just very briefly, because I think a lot has already been said, and a lot will be said, and I think that's why we're here. What's essential to know about this gathering is that this is rooted in a simple belief that coming together to meet holds tremendous value. Like theater, there's an ephemeral power quality to these types of meetings. A skeptical side can say, you know, why? You know, we'll come together, have a great time, and then it'll disappear, so why? But for me, I think there's so many important reasons why being together in person holds true. It's hard to remember sometimes that, at least for myself, that I'm a part of a whole, or that we are a part of a whole, and that's one desire, one impetus for this, is to reconnect with being a part of a whole. It's a desire to listen more deeply to one another, and hopefully conditions like these allow us to listen more deeply than we can in our accelerated lives. There's a more imperative need to respond to the world around us than ever before, and to interact with each other. And there's also a desire and a need to develop an act of imagination about things that we don't know about, that I don't know about, so this is one way of developing that muscle. Some people have, take issue with the term or the word, the choice of the word survival, and I just, I like the word survival. I don't feel need to defend it, I think other words are good too, whether it's rival or evolution, whatever you want to pick is also good. For me it's a word that I've met early on when I first came to Double Edge. In Frenzy I decided to do the cliched act of looking up at the dictionary, and I found something sort of funny, so I'll read that, which is survival is a state or fact of continuing to live or exist typically in spite of an accident or deal or difficult circumstances. And then the example they give is the animals' chance at survival were pretty low. This is the first thing that comes up, it's from Googling it. Google has its own sensibilities, its own skeptical sensibilities. And then the second definition is an object or a practice that has continued to exist from an earlier time, which is nice, except the example is a little banal, which is his shorts were survival from his army days. So interestingly, if the internet in Google represents some collective consciousness, the metaphors and the choices are something. And I think this convening is somehow a desire to respond to a collective consciousness that exists. And that collective consciousness exists in the way people believe, the way people connect to greater meaning and purpose, the way people respond and relate to the land, the way people respond and relate to the environment as a whole, and then the way people respond and relate to each other. And when we look around, there's a lot of examples of amazingness, of beauty, of harmony, of heightened possibilities, and there's a fair amount of glaring violence to ourselves, to the land, to the environment and to each other, and this is happening in some deep collective way. That's why we are gathering, that's why survival, that's why art is surviving. So over the course of this day and a half, there will be these lenses, these conversations, there are different leaders, there are some focus, semi-focus groups in these, but it's open, so feel free for it to feel open, for it to be interuptive and to participate intuitively and distinctively. I'll stop there. We would like to do some introductions. I need to say one important thing I forgot already, is that we are live-streaming this, web-streaming this live, thanks to HowlRound, and one thing that will be helpful in that process is everyone to airplane mode your phones, because it will help with the bandwidth. We're in a rural place, you haven't noticed. There's coffee and water, it's hot in here, please feel free to get up and get whatever you need as we go. The fans are off because of sound. Is that right? Yeah, okay. If it gets too warm, someone over here, just put it back on please. I want to take a moment to acknowledge those that have made this convening possible. We're very fortunate, we're very grateful to have had the support from Doris Duke Foundation here. Thank you very much to Doris Duke, the New England Foundation for the Arts, to Alternate Roots, to the Ethics and Common Good Project at Hampshire College, to HowlRound at Arts Emerson, thank you HowlRound, as well as the support of some local businesses and restaurants, and to volunteers that are here helping as well. We are very grateful for this opportunity. Good morning. Before we begin the individual introduction, I'm going to turn it over to Betsy. She's going to help us analyze this place. The first people see the proof. Hi, I'm Betsy. I'm going to play who I am later when we actually do that formally, but this is actually a practice that I try to many of my brothers and sisters in Indian Country, but across the world as Indigenous people. And what we're seeing is that this practice of Indigenous protocol is being adopted in many other spaces. And all it is is just to take a moment, ground ourselves in this lab, and to give thanks to our traditional hosts. That is the Stockbridge Heakin people, and also the Wampanoag, the Quinoa Wampanoag, and the Mashpee Wampanoag of the state. And to say thank you to them, to acknowledge them, that they're still here, and that we give thanks for holding them together. With that in mind, thank you. So, Matthew maybe told you or maybe didn't tell you that you're on the farm here at Double Edge. How many people have been here for the first time right now? Great. And so this farm has been here for how long? That you guys have been here? 1994, we moved here. So hopefully if you are curious and you saw the performance last night and you want to see a little more, I would encourage you to talk to anybody here from Double Edge. Raise your hand if you're from Double Edge. Just to get to know a little more about the introduction to the space you're in. I'd love for you to think of this as a one full day and a half of introduction. So while we can't just introduce every little detail about ourselves in this circle, think of this day today and tomorrow morning and tonight as a means to just go up to people you're curious about and want to know more about. So I'm going to model how we're going to introduce ourselves and I would encourage you to help me out and I'm going to facilitate it if you get a little rambly. But my name's Nick Slime from New Orleans, Louisiana. I work with an organization called Mando Bazzaro and I make live performances and I do a lot of cultural organizing. Hi, I'm Betsy Theobald Richards. I'm a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. I am a director who a lot of my career has been dedicated to uplifting the voices of native playwrights. But I also found myself being a, I'm a former funder with the Ford Foundation where I focused on native arts and cultures. And now I have taken that work and for the last five years I have been leading work in a social justice organization a national social justice organization to lead their work on arts and social justice. Call the opportunities out of it. I'm Claudia Alec. I live in Ashland, Oregon. I'm a community producer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I'm a Poway playwright, director, theater maker, change maker and slightly obsessed right now with race and climate change. I'm Morton Janes. I commit a lot of acts of dramaturgy, primarily. I've worked as a teacher. I've been an agent. I've been at several theaters in literary development. But I've just recently started a consultancy called In This Distracted Globe which focuses on the intersection of arts and culture. I'm Javier Abinaventia, originally from Chile. I live in Holyoke, Massachusetts. I have been working at the intersection of art and organizing for about 15 or so years. And most recently I have started directing a new program out of Hampshire College called Ethics and it's coming good. My name is Mamika Verga. I live just south of New Orleans in San Bernard Parish. I am a member of the United Home Nation. I just recently took a seat with the Tribal Council. I do documentary work. I have a film that came out called My Louisiana Love in 2012. I don't know. I do lots of arts work stuff. It just depends. And currently I'm working on No New Leases campaign in the Gulf as it is the biggest carbon grab happening in our nation right now. My name is Chantelle Villardeau. I'm a playwright and translator and I'm the artistic director of a small company called The Arctic Cycle which was created to support the writing development and production of eight plays about the impact of change on the eight countries of the Arctic. And I also am the founder of a blog called Artists in Climate Change which features artists from all disciplines who address climate change in their work. Good morning. My name is Kita Sullivan. I'm a member of the Montaukette and Shinnokok Nations. I am a funder. I fund the National Theater Project. That's what I do currently. Funding, devised, ensemble, theater work. I am also a recovering environmental justice attorney. So there's a lot of intersection there. I'm the parent of an artist, the wife of an artist. So this is kind of, this is my life. Hi, good morning. I'm Shirley Kimia. I'm based in New York with the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. And my program is the funding for performing arts. So we fund individual artists, organizations, and the national sector which means helping national service organizations as well. And we also have an environment program within our, within the foundation, as well as child well-being and medical research program. In addition, we have another program which is called Building Bridges. It's about building more understanding of Muslim arts and culture. I think that one of the things that I'm always looking for is where there's an opportunity for cross-sector learning. And so we all often try to partner with our other program areas to see if there's some new ways that we can work together and go beyond the scope of our normal activities. So this is another opportunity for me to do that, especially with a focus on land here. But thank you so much for the opportunity for allowing me to be here and to also help with this conveying in a small way. My name is Gina Rayker. I'm an artist and architect that lives in Detroit, Michigan. And my husband and I run a neighborhood-based organization where we live and work called Powerhouse Productions. And we're basically a Canadian network of arts and culture spaces in our residential corner of Detroit. My name is Bear Ebert. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana. I originally trained as a visual artist but have found my way into theater. So now I do object fabrication, costume design, writing, et cetera, et cetera. I'm co-artistic director of a small ensemble there called New Noise. And I'm also one of the lead organizers of a project called Last Call, the Stack Barsha Street Project. Good morning. My name is Bob Martin. I live in McIntyche Inn. I'm a theater maker, activist, and teaching artist. Also the caretaker of a piece of forested land in the foothills of Appalachian Mountains, where I also create work with and for my community and other communities around me. I'm also the outgoing board chair for Altima Roots. I'm Vijay Mathew. I work with Haloram, which is based in Emerson College in Boston. And it's now Haloram's five years old, and we call ourselves a Knowledge Commons buying for the theater community. And I work with Jamek Alun and I'm an administrator of these platforms. Hi, my name is Mark Valdez. I live in Los Angeles. I am a director, writer. I do a lot of work in and with communities around the country and trying to figure out how to do more of this in my own community of Los Angeles. Hello, I'm Jennifer Dowley. I live in Millerton, New York, which is a small speck of a place about two hours away. For many, many years, I worked in the nonprofit sector primarily with visual artists as both running nonprofits and as a funder. But the last 17 years, I was the head of a community foundation in the county just west of here, Berkshire County and since surrounding the county. So my work for the first time was not arts focused and just was all about the well-being of this community. How do we make life better for everybody? It was just extraordinary. I wore myself out and so now I'm doing other things and I am just so happy to be here because that means coming back into the world of artists where optimism, determination, imagination is front and foremost and I've joined the board of the Wasea Project, a really interesting group in a hamlet, not far from me, that is embedding itself in the community. It's an impoverished lack of hope and so I feel like I'm bringing back to them what I'm hearing with you today and tomorrow. So thank you. Good morning, I'm Susan Clampett from Washington DC. You can read about me in here, but I'm going to update you to say that the two things that I'm doing now that mean a great deal to me are that I'm a commissioner for the Washington DC Arts and Humanities Commission and I am in charge of all grant programs there. We give out about seven million dollars a year which is nice for a city including artist fellowships and the second, maybe the first, actually the first, is that I'm vice chair and founding trustee of the new Mosaic Theater in Washington. Many of you have followed Ari Roth's work. We are now starting our second season and I am so over the top with joy and excitement at what is going on in Washington and what Mosaic is bringing to American theater. I'm Marion West. I also live in Millerton, New York. I'm a visual artist of Baker and I will be starting Bennington in a couple of weeks. Good morning everyone. I'm Jamie Galoon. I work at Hallround with Vijay. We're based in Boston, like he said and really everything that we're trying to do is about knowledge sharing and community building so I'm so lucky to be in this room. Thank you for letting us document this couple of days and please, if we want to know what work you're doing we want to put the word out about work that matters and share it with the broadest community possible so please talk to me or Vijay over the next couple of days if you have something you'd like to share. Give me time out there and come down the line for Sita and Will, we'll come back to you. Sita, could you introduce yourself? Hi, my name is Sita Magnuson. I'm a graphic facilitator based in Eastampton. Basically what that means is that I listen and I draw and interpret visually in any conversations I can dial up so I'm doing that today. Who are you? Yeah, come on. Oh, go ahead. My name is Travis Coe Thank you, Travis. Yes, Tom. Come on down, you can do it, yeah. Hello, my name is Alipe. I'm from Chile. I'm a musician and I'm here to... I'm a music volunteer here at Double Edge. I'm Liz McDowald. I'm an apprentice at Double Edge. I'm Rachel Reese. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana and I'm an apprentice at Double Edge. My name is Kian Hot. I'm from Montana and I'm a student here. My name is Miha Curriata. I'm a designer in the work of Double Edge. I'm from Poland originally. Hi, my name is Paola Pilnik. I'm originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil and I go to college. Hi, I'm Tessa Dewey and I go to Hampshire College. I'm Camila. I'm from Santiago, Chile and I'm studying here also. Good morning. My name is Maria Bernado Suzuki and I've been photographing Double Edge since 2011. Hi, my name is Amanda. I'm originally from California and I'm a student at the Boston Conservatory and a student at Double Edge. Hi, I'm Hannah Burks. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. I came to Double Edge by way of Chicago and I'm a student here. Hi. I'm Desiree and I'm a student at Double Edge now and still Boston University. Let's go hide the camera. Uh-oh. Hi, I'm Bob Staffel. I'm an actor, videographer and I've been training and helping out at Double Edge for about eight years. I'm Milena Debova. I'm an actor and associate director at Double Edge. I'm also part of the web streaming team. I'm Joelle. I grew up in Chile as well and I am a student here at Double Edge. Hi, I'm John Pezzo. I'm from Double Edge Theater and I'm just doing the audio here. Hi. One more before we go. Hi, good morning. I'm Anthony Golden coming to you from South Bronx, New York. I'm from Houston, Texas originally. I'm a device theater maker cultural agitator. I'm currently working on a piece called 125th in Freedom. It's a river to river piece that travels down 125th street and explores the intersection of the underground railroad and this cultural and political corridor. My name is Will McAdams and I'm a community based playwright and right now I find myself writing a lot about how white power shapes my most intimate relationships. A lot of my work I spent five years doing plays in partnership with farming communities in New York and California and I teach at Hampshire Commons in the theater department. My name is Chip Thomas I'm originally from North Carolina I presently live and work in Northern Arizona out of the Navajo Nation I've been in 29 years now as a primary care physician and in 2009 I started doing a public art project reflecting some of the beauty of the community back to the people along the routes. Alright. Hi, my name is Nancy Fuhardi I am from Appalachian, Ohio I currently live in Winona, Minnesota which is a small city along Mississippi. I am writer and visual artist and I direct an organization called Art of the Rural which does a lot of project projects sort of thinking about kind of like the contemporary rural condition of our culture, our design and I'm also a member of a project called M12 Studio which does kind of contemporary installations, collaborations and research projects across rural America and I'm also a kind of board member of the Forum for Art Institute I'm really glad to be here. Good morning everyone. My name is Carrie Brunk I'm here from Clear Creek, Kentucky and I do facilitation work primarily I come at this work from my own background and right now I'm managing a project facilitating and leading a project called Ridgeway, a transformative leadership experience which is a leadership program for people in Central Appalachia who are doing the work of transition to a post coal economy politics and culture and I'm also managing a program called the intercultural Institute for Alternate Roots the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, IE Foundation of First Peoples Fund which is a leadership program for artists in arts professions. Hi, my name is Dipankar Mukherjee I'm originally from India and I'm coming here from Minneapolis I'm the artistic director of a theater called Pangea World Theater very beautiful work with very few people we find ourselves at the intersection of social justice art and politics and we I primarily direct director we are from community of building communities and we try to create a space where we can have difficult conversations Hi everyone, my name is Nicole Garneau I was born and raised in Chicago currently living on the road and in Kentucky with these beautiful people living and collaborating on Clear Creek I'm a performing artist I recently completed a five year performance project called Uprising and now I'm finishing a book about that project coming out soon and I am a member of the executive committee of Alternate Roots which in case you don't know is an organization of artists and activists who locate their selves and their work primarily in the U.S. south I'm Carlos Juliana originally from the United States we worked here 20 years ago and one of the co-artistic directors of our theater primarily I'm an actor and by that I mean many things that I probably say no or even imagine but I don't think I'm an actor in the sense of performing but in the sense of acting upon things that I think need to be act upon including performing I think so I mean, maybe not I'm Stacy Klein and the founder of Double Edge I'm in the days at night because of our performance but during the day I really would like to show you all this place that we've been on for 22 years now and are part of the probably 400 years of people transformation of this place Matthew Glassman co-artistic director of Double Edge I'm Daniel Alexander Jones I'm a performance artist recording artist I live in New York City I have familial roots not far from here my grandmother was born in Shelburne in 1908 told me about riding the horse and buggy to school but yeah, I'm really excited to be here particularly because I've come to understand a lot of my practice has actually been contemplative and that's been something that's been invisible because we mainly focus on what we make but yeah, so excited to practice this conversation I want to know about that my name is Todd London I'm the director of the School of Drama at the University of Washington in Seattle I've been there for two years and prior to that I was in I was the artistic director of a place called New Dramaists in New York which is a beautiful laboratory theater for high rights I write about the theater, I write fiction and beyond that I'm still trying to figure out what I am Hi, I'm Barbara Schaefer Bacon and I'm sitting here realizing that my only theater credential is the lead in the Music Man in fifth grade at it was Girl Scout camp so I really was the lead so meanwhile that camp is in the Berks years in Otis, Mass, and I'm from here in western Massachusetts, Springfield and work in Belcher Town and from there with Pam Corza I've been able to co-lead which has been looking at your work deeply and helping to try document it and find other means to get it to be really lifted up, we hope and right now we're working on a project that some of you have been involved in helping to birth and help us to shape which is looking at the attributes of excellence in art for change work we'll talk about it I'm David Bollier, I live in Amherst, Massachusetts nearby and for the past 20 years or so I've been an activist scholar, blogger, author on the Commons as a new paradigm for conceptualizing economic, political, social change right behind us what's your name ma'am welcome hi, I'm Laura Brennan I'm the director of the MAP Fund which is a grant making organization that provides support to new works that particularly works that disrupting hierarchies I'm Zoe, I'm an intern at Double Edge Theater and I use they, them, their pronouns hello, I'm Jeff I'm the director of Double Edge Theater thank you very much anything else one last thing is that I'll be trying to track for myself there's some sticky pads here on the resource board as you hear resources that you're curious about or resources you want to share if you stick them and put them on this board at the end of this weekend we're going to make them available to you in some sort of digitalized way and in absentia in absentia, we cannot introduce themselves because they're not here exactly Javalee Willa-Jozala from the Urban Bush Women unfortunately has laryngitis and is sick just ran a very great institute and my friend Turner from Alternate Roots was to be with us but he has just, there has been their arrival of a new baby and Tristan Ali Turner came a little early so he couldn't be with us but they both sent their regards our first conversation is oh sorry I just wanted to acknowledge the brilliant work that you saw yesterday I'm not really interested in reading in different types of mystical thought the contemplative the source of poetry of metaphor inner work many of us here not all of us are somehow connected to the live arts which is an outward expression and really requires a ton of outwardness a ton of engaging with people a community of manifesting aesthetics and all sorts of things that go out this process in my mind begins with a lot of inwardness and there is such a wealth of incredible traditions within the artistic paradigm but also going into the spiritual at times the religious or the non-secular that have proven to be really rich and informative to this development of our inner work to where do we how do we cultivate our source of belief how do we cultivate energy how do we access a heightened self in our work this means at times going beyond the rational at times means going towards myth towards spirituality these are things that are not easy to talk about these are things that we often are private for good reason or personal and in some cases though it's also very there are practical manifestations of this study in the Jewish tradition of Talmud this was a form of study of reading and writing of contemplation that was meant in some ways to access another way of ecstatic being and discourse and dialogue as an argument so it's not purely intangible or esoteric there's practicalities for me at Double Edge meeting Stacy and Carlos in my early years I was really instrumental because there was a model here I had a lesson to this hard I had a lesson to this hard a burden that I would carry meeting these guys here at a time where finding a path that could be rich in meaning and also finding a path that could have sustainability was really important and training as we call it here physical training and artistic training became this this room this place where an artist, a young artist, an emerging artist or seasoned veteran artist or master would continue to look deeply within study and try to find their highest possible self in order to find revelation as the world gets more accelerated as this theater grows as the technology colonizes the inside the times these spaces get harder to access penetrating time stretching it out taking it back community with nature contemplating, goes against many brains goes against a sense of the momentum that's ongoing and especially if you're making work and you're in conversation with a marketplace whether you're in a city or an urban place that marketplace means it's a different set of exchanges let's say it's a different climate it's a different world then let's say in a different pace, a different relationship of time these are just some of the early thoughts about this subject I invited a few people to share a bit about their work as a launching pad I'll respond Nicole's going to respond and we will all respond as this conversation goes so I'd like to keep it open Dupankar I'd love to start with you and I'd love to start with a very simple question I've never seen your work I've read your bio I've met you and I've also seen I've looked at some of the research that you've done on PNG has done and I'm just curious to know about if you can say in a couple of minutes speak a little bit about your practice you talk about the importance of spirituality in your work I noticed the conference of the birds as being an important performance for Pangea and for those who don't know Conference of the Birds is beautiful parable and poem which actually maybe you can speak a little bit about that research as well sort of bring us in a little bit to your practice and your process and we'll circle back to some of these ideas as it happens Thank you the fact that we don't talk about it is that's why we don't have bad answers but we have to really some of our practice and I'll talk about the literature that we choose we always begin with first acknowledging the land on which we stand we always centre the indigenous in all possible way by the presence of indigenous artists in our group people in our boat, people in our staff people in our... so centering the land that's why we could not continue without acknowledging what we saw yesterday you know have to bring in the awareness of where we are that's Pangea is 20 years old my career is longer than that so we always begin with two minutes what we have seen what we have come to articulate as two minutes of silence we call it two minutes really not 120 is just a metaphor because we work with people from so many different backgrounds and we consciously bring in people who think differently from each other and the search is always can we still arrive at the centre and centre meaning a place where the work gets done you know because I love the way you phrased the topic that is the practice of it not theory not talk that sounds good but how do we really practice all this that comes out of our month and so we begin with two minutes of silence where somebody rings a bell we always have a lamp and we arrived at that it was the ensemble that crafted arrived at that we didn't begin with that we began with one year of clear planning the first day was a complete disaster you know that's why we arrived I love the power and rigor of the word arrived because it's not where we start from so we I mean we started with after one year we planned it I was coming out of a regional theatre in town and after five years I bought myself out of my contract to start Panjia to have literature conversations like this and so we planned it all out and so we started with you know like we planned it to the key because we had one year of time to plan this is what will happen then you say this then we'll do this and then we'll read the text and we are first choice of literature was Confidence of the Birds and and the disruption was that you know so he was a very elderly artist indigenous icon native artist and so he was you know he literally said he was blessing the space and you know I was saying wow we need the blessings of elders and then suddenly my friend easy mom who she got up she's an African American brilliant artist and she got up and started leaving the room and said tell him to stop tell him to stop you know and he just went on and everybody there's no silence there's nothing there's chaos and this we had planned it all out and then I just went out and he just stopped and I told Jim comes and he puts his stage in the bag and he looks at me and he said I trusted you I trusted you I trusted you he said just let's not be so I looked at the stage manager and he said like same he was so then I went to talk to Izzy and he said then she said that she has got fatal asthmatic attacks even if it's a candle smoke that stays for half a second collapses and then I went to talk to Jim and I said Jim just stay for a few minutes and you know and that became the agenda for first year of work you know we had all these planned events and first then he will speak then we'll read the script it just went out of the window because of so much of distrust that was in the room you know so then I said screw this agenda let's just talk about what is real in the room and so then we arrived at this two minutes where we thought that we'll so somebody said why don't we just like because we had Arabs, Arab-American we have indigenous people we had like diverse conscious diversity in the room and so we rang the bell and somebody said I already have a lord I don't need to bow down to any other lord I said wherever you got that idea from I mean nobody is really enforcing any lord here and so ultimately we arrived at two minutes of silence complete silence which does not have an accent a passport, a visa a nationality and so that's why I shared with you why we arrived there we didn't have a practice in our pocket and take it out so what we do now we ring a bell and we just breathe for two minutes because rehearsal starts as many artists over here know we are meeting the deadline 6 o'clock rehearsal starts at 5.45 we are sent and come and start to act very calm for a rehearsal so we wanted for those two minutes for just a breathing time for us just exhale and just exhale because we have artists who do two jobs and then come for rehearsal so and this practice we have started doing this in all our meetings with our board board meetings start like that, staff meetings start like that even foundation meetings start like that so we just take two minutes of just silence breathing that's one then second practice that we have like what you said we have contemplative practices which is a rigor of our ensemble training we invite other people other communities for we regularly practice yoga and a type of South Indian martial art called Kalari Payat Kalari which I have been practicing for many few years which is also based on yoga which is based on breathing which is based on it's considered to be the mother of all martial arts Kalari then choices of literature the choices of literature the confidence of the bird is one choice it's a Fariduddin Akhtar the Farsi Sufi poet and we chose that to be our first piece and then after 20 years what does that mean that every but our social media presence says that it should be a signature of all your I mean all the social media but we really stopped all this marketing jargon and said what does it really mean to be 20 years you know so we wanted to go back in and ask ourselves that question so that's why there was a let's revisit the script the piece was about the confidence of the bird Meena adapted it with Farsi scholars and we used a lot of the language on the Farsi language on stage and then transitioned into English and it's about people you know a group of birds that fly in search of their truth or in search of their truth or truth and ultimately after many many such stops only a few remain and when they arrived at that place where they thought that this is the rival point of heaven milk and honey and so on all they saw was added land and a small little hut with no you know doors windows and from a crack in the roof they went in they collapsed they were almost literally dead there was nothing left in there and when they opened their eyes all they saw was a room full of midders and they just saw themselves and I mean they speak to us in various levels and so we revisited that and we began with that so those are some I can talk more with other questions so those are our regular practices maybe suggest maybe we try this two minutes of silence I apologize to everyone but we will do this I have the bell do you want to just ring the bell it just happened to have it with you this was all prepared it was prepared between the two of you so would anybody like to ring you so I was you know as many of us do reflecting on ways to talk about what I do and a lot of that has to do with you know support fundraising and advertisement these sorts of external things but also as a reflection of what the practice is I come out of a tradition of the black American avant-garde my mentors the people who wove me into practice were all part of the first production for color girls who considered suicide they were movers language was connected to breath I have since a child had been obsessed with mythic systems that were not the Greeks I've been always interested in ways of knowing the world that are that escape language escape naming every time you name it stuff flies away and also music music was so central to me and that I found in listening to music whether that be extremely pop, secular music or music that would be considered in a sacred tradition I found that to be the place that I thought most at home and I was like what is it about that about sound about the field of surrender that an individual artist must enter in order to make that sound that makes me feel so good and known and whole and so you know tall colleague I'm like avant-garde interdisciplinary you know every name you can use and I think I had a lot of affinity with Afrofuturism this idea of work that is grounded in black American and also Afro diasporic tradition that imagines a future that has a speculative component it often engages science fiction it is political in a particular way and I said yeah that's good too but nothing quite fits and the reason that it didn't fit is because the core experience that I have of making the work in collaboration always I don't make anything alone and having the work move in the world was that there was this experience in the room where people's hearts open and there's an experience in the room of time living outside the boundary of the past present future as we discuss it there was an experience in the room of the ghost and the yet to be spirit being in the room with it and I said this is all mystical stuff and I was like but it kind of comes out of black stuff so it was like Afro mysticism I was like that's it and then I went to look up who all else uses that term to talk about I was like who are the other people who talk about it and there weren't any other people talking about it and no one else had coined that or used that term in that particular way although it is certainly practice and I'm sure I think there's a lot of affinity with I think of like the grandfather, grandmother like the Coltrane, John and Alice Coltrane and astral thought in jazz music but I said well let me start using this as a point of departure and so are there aspects of the work that can be discerned and discussed as a way of transferring or transmitting some of this core information how do you practice this way so that's where astral jazz yeah so astral jazz I'm sure everyone in the room is familiar with John Coltrane so Coltrane there comes a point I think it's right around this recording called Meditations where he broke wide and went into a much more modal and highly experimental form of playing that had a lot of dissonance and it's the kind of jazz most people go oh I can't I can't do it it's too frenetic it's too disturbing its purpose is not to entertain you but rather to unlock something in you and as he moved further right before he passed away his ensemble included his wife Alice Coltrane who was a harpist an organ player um and the music was in many ways kind of a record of a spiritual journey a record of a search an inquiry into a particular subject um and you can listen I think I can give some resource lists of some music to listen to by Alice Coltrane especially but the idea being that the music in some ways if you will is a kind of map of a spiritual experience that the player or players are going on right and any map is intended to invite you onto a journey not to limit your experience right but to say like there's a bear in those woods don't go there that's where the water is that's the road to the land now you go you have your experience that's where afro mysticism is sort of rooted in that you know a little before my time but an exploration of um what's even the term sort of mysticism um what is that what does that mean to you well it's you know one of my favorite sayings is the devil is a lie have you all heard that saying before like the devil is a lie that partly that means doesn't have power right but it also means to me that a lie is the devil right like that when we say something that is a falsehood it takes on as we're seeing nationally it takes on its own life its own way it appreaks it has gravitational force right and it is capital yeah it has capital and mysticism for me is the truth like it is like I come back to experience I come back to something that can't be named codified, sold there's not a tangible thing um but there is an experience that is uh if you will pre and post colonial right like it's not it's not owned and demarcated and zoned and I'm thinking about what you said about passport like there's no passport there it's a space of experience that I can access that can remind us of our nature as part of this larger system life system that we're living in this globe this earth um and that may be very sound very highfalutin but what it is for me is that it's a place where I could find truth um and is deliberately counter to systems of hierarchy and gradation that from I always call it auction block language about like our identifiers as ways of discerning who we are from the outside in order to buy and sell us in one form or another and there's not there's no currency on this in this internal landscape um so mysticism is that it's also ecstatic, erotic, joyful dangerous, scary you know like all of the forces of nature that are at work in the world um having a dance with them practicing what it means to experience them um I'm gonna ask you one or two more questions I like it because the coffee is not hitting it yet so I don't want you to do I don't want you to do here do you mind I have this sorry I'm like an addict um oh that's good I'm interested you're talking about you mentioned there were dance and ecstasy and I'm thinking about Jomama Jones and I'm thinking about the body and you know for me the training and the body is sort of so important in this conversation it relates to the silence it relates to um energy um it relates to I think we're talking about slightly different faculties than the most predominant ones the most speakable ones the faculties of imagination and faith and belief and prayer and memory those are in the irrational those are harder to track with our seeing us so in terms of the body can you say anything about this in terms of how either movement or how the body or how how physical transformation plays into this um most of you probably don't know probably the most well known part of my performance work is I channeled this persona named Jomama Jones and she's a singer we do I do many shows with her I performed her for 21 years like I started in the mid 90s and then stopped for a long time and then she kind of came back and I was trying to be a very serious playwright you know um and you know she's I think from the outside people assume oh this is drive performance and it really isn't like I I'm a vessel for this entity that comes through and she unlike me it has no hesitation about being very clear with her language about these spiritual matters um but what the process is for me is literally a radical surrender of my body my posture changes my breathing changes anyone here who's seen her knows I go away and she's there and it's a different it's a different thing um and what that says to me is that our bodies are sites that are not rigid not ultimately defined are constantly in motion and are capable maybe even susceptible to transformation and like let's say if I'm using I'm here Daniel speaking to you and I'm in a very I'm like a very cut and dry bad analogy here but I'm in a classical mode speaking to you order makes sense when Jo Mama comes she plays jazz so she takes the same instrument but she uses it in radically different ways and I use my body which then suggests that my body can be used in radically different ways so it's a kind of in a way it's a theoretically what I call a queer space like I can queer the body I can do something with it that's not supposed to be done within the rigid system devil is alive and I think that suggests something about the mutability of identity about the possibility that we can leave behind a lot of the ideas about what the boundaries are for ourselves and for others and it becomes dangerous as a result in a system that depends on us being identifiable it also blurs the boundaries between or helps us re-blur the boundaries between us and nature and it relates to transformation and I think when we're working physically in different whatever the practice is whether it's martial arts what you're talking about what you hear what other people do in some ways you're taking some you're working very concretely on a cellular level on the body and when those small transformations occur whether it's being able to make a higher kick or being able to transform in some way your sort of redefining possibilities in which case if your sense of what's possible is changing physically then that proves as a possibility for other possibilities to change I would like to turn to you my old friend Stacy old is right old yeah not like we know each other very long I don't know if I want to ask a specific question I sort of do this terrain is why I'm at double edge and Stacy and Carlos in the sense of it's always hard to and I guess I don't know why there should be a disclaimer about ancestry or lineage I just read about how like the master always knows the importance of the student because of the preciousness of lineage of future so I don't walk around feeling like a student that past exists for me the past exists in the present and coming here and being shown an aspect of for me the Jewish culture which is not the way I grew up it's not definitely what is available most of the time it's not available in most cases the tradition has sort of burdened the practice of becoming present in deep thought or in deep search and I had read and had been introduced to Kabbalistic things in the past but it's integration to the work in double edge was especially meaningful in some ways concrete in some ways accessible in some ways human I'm interested if you can talk a little bit about how this came into your life and into your artistic work yes I think I also didn't grow up with a real practice of Judaism my family was sort of people who fled Central Europe and denying their past so my interest was because I couldn't I needed a past it didn't start in when I was born so I started searching for that past however something in me is very maybe rebellious and so I couldn't accept also just the given writings or anything of what I was searching for so I started to look in at different places one of the main things was in the desert in Israel and Egypt where I spent three months at a young time pretty much by myself and so I started to see that the earth was where the answers were and that there actually weren't any answers there were a lot of questions so I think the journey for me is a journey of questions and so there's a lot of sort of precepts or concepts or writings a huge amount of wisdom that are all for me they're all questions and that's not really the same as like take what you want which I also am rebellious against it is really a deep question in myself of what should be and what shouldn't be and what's a lie and what's genuine and what's authentic and what is training that is helping me to be open to those questions and what is training that I have experienced in my life and still experience today that is taking me away from seeing the reality around me so from that desert I think the other important thing is meeting Rana Moretzka in Poland around the same time and she is the founding actress of Grotowski's laboratory and she opened training to me and I don't have any problem calling her my teacher today even though we are colleagues and collaborators and I'm hoping I'm a student forever so I like being a student I think that that training gave up practice to me or a way of putting that into my body and then I think I spent a long time in a kind of dual reality that I didn't think meant together one the desert which I'm going to call survival I also like that word survival I have and double edge has and the other was more internal and intimate and so moving forward I think the intimate part had I feel let's say it won for a really long time so I really needed to spend a lot of time inside of myself and inside even with my few ensemble members when double edge started and almost denying the rest of the world except as they wanted to come inside with me which wasn't certainly not a lot of people so it was a very rigorous practice and it was also I think opened up more of the journey for me which I think I got to that search primarily because in all the Jewish and all the theatrical and all the world things that I was doing there wasn't a real place for women so I think I needed to find something that included the divine woman presence so I finally found that search was extremely important and meaningful for me and also gave me the ultimate possibility to open myself up to other people and that eventually is quite open and really all that is a combination of these two forces which is the word I use as community I want to take that out of the lie word and put it into the humanity not just humanity but also the other species that we exist with and the land and all of that is part of that search what is the Kabbalah it is to receive so it is in the the way that it's written is that there's a series of books which are questions which have been written over centuries for me it's a search for ways to confront myself and ask myself questions and see how to receive and how to give and how to limit in a just way and how to resist limits in a just way does that relate to the rigorous practice you were talking about in the sort of formative years yeah I think that one needs to have some signposts in order to be able to continue a practice and also to I think to survive in light of the huge amount of pressure to give in to answers and give in to stereotypes and give in to not thinking it's okay to be a female or anything else what was that rigorous practice it's training in the larger sense is there's training there's physical training which I think is a blessing and there is let's say creative training which maybe stems from physical training or from engaging yourself fully there's training of the imagination which is related to all those things but also includes reading and walking and playing with your dog I mean or other things besides just oneself I think I was thinking this morning that I think interruption is extremely important for a practice for me now at one point it was very much like we're going into the training space nobody's allowed in there and I'm sure some of you remember that and we are doing that and we won't drink anything and we will just go which still has its meaning I think but I was watching some friends train at Greenland free theater in Norway a long long time ago and they had a five year old and he ran into the room and they were all upset because I was watching and they wanted to show how clean they were and stuff and I thought this was the best part of training but everybody woke up and had to really adjust themselves so then I was thinking well when I had kids they interrupted all the time especially one of them and that was really great for me because I didn't think anymore that I was the only important thing on earth I had to recognize that there was something always going to be more important than my practice so my practice had to find a way to be its ultimate self in light of what else was important I then after my kids weren't interrupting me anymore I read the book Ishmael and I realized oh I have to do this by myself now like my idea of myself has to be always in consideration of the world the earth everything that exists so I think that's what it is today hey Carlos this has sort of occurred to me so I don't know if this will be helpful or not but before you came to the double edge you founded a theater company for many years in Buenos Aires that was called Diablo Mundo can you say something about why Diablo Mundo is the name of the devil world that relates to this conversation but I was not aware you know somehow I need to confess I'm afraid about your presence because I think I feel a great deal of respect for all of you although I don't know many of you I have heard so it's difficult to jump into a conversation where you're going to talk about some aspects of vulnerability I think it is impossible not to talk about an inner general without not mentioning that one makes oneself vulnerable but and I think I'm redundant already because I feel I'm listening to from all of you this so but forgive my redundancy and also please please please interrupt me because I don't think what I'm going to say if I manage to say anything is will have so to me the language in my opinion or my feeling which is not too much of a thinking but more feeling is that when we talk the context is much larger than what we say so like you're nodding already gives me such a relief I know you're with me so say whatever like the kid you know so I I was very afraid of many things but probably was very afraid of being of being and then I landed in a family that was denying and forgetting origins and that sort of was trying to assimilate that have had principles but then they were forgetting and a very turbulent time and I felt the urge to change things and I didn't know how or what to do turbulence the turbulence was I mean I don't think that it's happening now sorry if I'm saying something but I I landed in Argentina what I remember in the 60s before the dictatorship it was happening Donald Trump here and all the stuff and with the cessation of people of all times that you can see and I think it's all connected I'm not gonna go in so this was a very turbulent time and I traveled and my family took me to places and I was very dissatisfied with that and I thought that there needed to be changes and I started creating groups and then my family decided to put me in a British school because I had high scores in school which was a mistake so they sent me to a school which was horrible it was a torture and I mean by that I'm not gonna go into the gorillas but yes we did have physical torture as students but it was in the 60s so you some of you can imagine and I started to rebel and rebel and rebel and rebel and my siblings did the same thing and it was not a good idea to do it at that time but then I get a little bit fixed or fixated one because I was a boy and I was trained as a boy I was afraid of a lot of things that now I recognize and maybe I'm still afraid but at least now I can see that my feminine side was very hidden and normally I did boxing I did rugby, soccer or football like we call I got into professional I was an activist I was outside in the streets and all of a sudden we started gathering these groups and I became a capitalist organizer and I organized a lot of groups and we started seeing that this world was the way it was and and we started to see the facets of the devil now we started reading again literature was a very important piece of that period and still is and there was a writer in the 19th century from Spain José de Fronceda who wrote this wonderful poem is an anarchist writer in 1850 it was called the devil work the devil's work so we decided to make it one word and say this is what it is this is the work and that's how we're going to name ourselves and at the time then the eruption of what they call the dirty war dirty war which is not a warfare which is so similar to what's happening here because you get shot dead anytime any minute and there's no warning or anything there's no normalcy it's not like something you can a pattern that you're following you get out on the street and something can take you and I feel more and more that that's happening here and it's happening everywhere in the world and people call it terrorism or media I think that the thing is that it's a hidden warfare where of course in my opinion sort of the mysticism in my opinion it has to do more with the weapon industry and other industries with either religion thinking what's interesting though Carlos is that one of your responses to this was rooted in and inspired by traditions pre-existing traditions not only to form groups but also to gather in carnaval but I didn't know I didn't know this but carnaval and morga has been with you for a long while but it was banned so like circus everything that was banned I was attracted to rock and roll so I started producing rock and roll and because it was banned and it's the long hair not to tango because the military took it as the national thing the macho thing to do although I didn't know a lot of things about tango that then I learned but in order yes I was attracted to a lot of traditional things and I also worked with a lot of community like the diaguita community in the north which I went to explore what they would call the gualizzo which is I didn't know anything so now I know it's an area of energy I thought it was just making potions and making people funny but when I was doing that somebody talked to me about cabala it was one of the natives and I was like wow so yes I did a lot of research I did a lot of Mardi Gras things which was some of how subversive now how do you do Mardi Gras subversive that is something when they wanted to talk about that we did it it was invisible but it happened why do you think it was important like why didn't it resonate you've talked to me about these traditions the traditions in carnaval can you say a little bit where some of the traditions come from because although you didn't know at the time you do know now yeah it's so I have the sense and I might be wrong and that Latin America is a little more fused than culturally than the north I always think that we are very similar to North America and South America and Central America but somehow where the border is established now by the river that people need to swim to get in here there is like this is a positive and a negative like in a photograph the side in the south I think although there is segregation although there is not segregation but there is racism let's say racism a lot and violent for some reason maybe because of the Catholic background but like my father he had multiple families that we didn't know so we are mixed with people that we don't know but then we are mixed so it becomes like I was feeling this thing like I'm mestizo I'm not really white although I am white but one of my grandmothers came from Brazil so she looks African but her skin is different and so all those things were calling somehow but I didn't know that they were calling and I didn't know a lot of these things until I met Stacy and that's why I think that the best entry point to talk or to approach inner work is a love story but usually it's mine because then I'm really vulnerable so the night I met Stacy we had a huge fight this book was here imagine the room and I come in and I'm talking about I felt attracted I'm attracted to women I am ashamed in your game now and I want to try to do more people than women all the varieties but I'm going to talk about inner don't sigh so I enter and I see that and I enter with this discourse I'm an activist and I'm not going to do theater ever again and so what are you doing now I decided to be a manager and a theater producer and she looked at me and she said you're full of shit and I'm like where is the American niceness here I was told but I said okay I'll take it and I started fighting and I called her that she was agreeing a privilege then how do you dare talk to me about the necessity and I was really dumb I still am but now at least I can see it and I saw the book it was like you know these people talk to me about this I have the habit of not going into these traditions unless I know somebody from the tradition that like I wouldn't dare to do I admire Indian culture but I wouldn't I really thought that it helped me a lot you know if I don't have somebody that is from the culture I don't I read and stuff but I start practicing things when I have somebody like you know you say who rings a bell you do because you're bringing me there so I believe in that tradition is a call and I think that somehow my former life just to go back to the question was truncated by sort of like an industrial model that I was trained into and I rebelled and I resisted and it was not until I found through Stacy Kabbalah and other things my journey like the birds that I understood that I was in a journey of my inner self that I could connect all of these dots that are so many and by the way that year was my 40th so which in Kabbalah tradition is the year you're allowed to access to begin the journey because I'm also not from the culture but being trained by so it was very I mean so many connections which brings me to the idea of chance and how much we do not control and we cannot plan, you know what you were saying about planning there's this that if you want to make God laugh well they don't say God because you cannot say that but if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans so I didn't plan any of this I still not planning and things keep happening like this is amazing what more of an inner journey that have this opportunity to start knowing somebody else to be the student of other people so I'd like to jump to you Todd before I do that and maybe you want to be the person anyone here have any responding before I say something else or ask something else okay yeah you have something on your mind just go ahead no you yeah no I'm just sitting here in total terror I'm just feeling a vulnerability because first of all I really wanted to go last but then I went I'm going last and so I'm sitting with all this for the whole time this is just you know they say about don't talk about sex or money or religion I mean this is it this is like the thing that I don't want to talk about and and as I'm sitting here listening to you all I'm realizing it's the thing I think about all the time you know so I'm sitting in a state of sort of petrified self-revelation about the way that I have sort of glommed on to other people's spiritual searches as a way of taking my own so I guess that's what I would talk about now unless you had a question that's what I'm talking about so you know a few things I guess I have so these are all words I've never used so you know esoteric memisticism I can say kabbalah you know all these things I was raised you know the liturgy of my childhood was the American musical theater canon like George Gershwin Steven Son and there is essentially I'm married to a Jew I grew up in a Jewish summer post-war summer that was all about forgetting so I didn't know that in most of the houses around me lived grandparents who were survivors and spoke Yiddish but I didn't go to any of the services I didn't know this we were all happy and clean you know and so that as we're engaging with this topic I'm aware that in almost every part of my life I'm in contact with people who are explicitly searching in some spiritual way including playwrights who are all about you know writing invisible things and making them visible I've been working on two books lately with older artists one is Andre Gregory the theater director so this book is about a man who has a guru and whose great teacher and close friend was Grotowski and who is kind of famous as a storyteller of spiritual quest and we're we're so close and yet I'm aware that the quest is all his and my quest is what does it mean to be working with an 82 year old artist in terms of planning the next 20 some years of my life how do I live how do I use this example in order to teach myself how to live the other book I've been working on is a book of the writings of Zelda Fitchhander who some of you know is a founder of the stage and died last about eight or nine days ago and it's the same thing Zelda was 91 and wise in her bones and thoughtful in every movement of her life and as I was writing a little memory piece for her for American theater and I realized that my sentence structure is stolen from her you know my values somehow are her values even though I became intimate with her much later in her life but I so sort of attached myself through whatever learning to the people who came up with her you know I've made a collection of the early writings of the theater in America in the voices of other people so it's not even like taking it my own but it's an attempt to find the kind of ancestry that many of you have identified and that's so strong in you Daniel but I never really identified as my own ancestry except I was compelled to do it you know and then you know and the work with playwrights is really I mean I think about it as service but as I'm sitting here I'm sort of shocked to contemplate the fact that it's actually self-service because I'm trying to learn things that I don't feel empowered or like I have the means to learn on my own so like I'm glumming on to Daniel's journey or another writer's journey as a way of sort of understanding what it really means to live in this inner space and to trust that work and then to have the full heartiness of giving it to other people to totally fuck up but to be in that room with other people or you know and I'm just rambling it but you know the work at Neutrometis was for me really a service organizational laboratory for playwrights, a residency program and I realized that everything in my life there was about finding ways to help the playwrights turn toward each other is a way of kind of spreading their individual vitality. That's what I think I meant by community and so this sort of connectivity of that is actually a belief in spiritual community but that's a phrase that I never want to utter again and I've never actually uttered before would try not to so I think that's where I would begin Matthew it's this kind of like secret and it's not reluctant, I mean none of these things are reluctant but they sort of it's parasitical in a way like I depend on the bodies of others to do my spiritual work for me which is not a problem no, not maybe strongly it's actually sort of part of the equation is the dependence on the other and also the surrender of identity so what's interesting to me is the value of the vulnerability and also the apprehension which is also part of our ancestry we inherit our enlightenment frameworks and our industrial age frameworks which mean that we can't comfortably be too subjective or too emotionally unbound or too enthusiastic to some degree without some preparation or too intuitive of mystical thought and also that it is not analytical and that we need the borders between each other to be porous in a way in order to have any type of revelation and then we need to keep it's very dynamic like the training is very important because you have all these metaphors that are about the thing to walk on a ball to walk on a ball you try to find balance on walking on a ball ask Milena to say something but she's very busy conducting the technology but to walk on the ball to find balance in the ball can you say something about it what's the essence of walking on the ball doesn't matter the essence is that you're never still in order to keep the balance you always make small movements to adjust all the time so it's a conversation with an object which cannot provide balance so you're constantly moving or that provides the ultimate balance because one of the things that I was just thinking when you said that is that we need to sort of surrender to the fact that everything is paradoxical so as soon as we name the one term of the equation because it's an equation algebra is a philosophical discovery it's not a mathematical it's an epical as soon as you're talking about the other you're talking about yourself which is what happened to me when I met Stacy it was like oh actually I need to go into myself in order to work with others because right now I'm empty I do all of it well I mean it seems like one of the paradoxes and I guess I feel the need always to be practical about this too is that I feel in myself I need to look for people who are akin to me and to move with people who are complementary and other than me so I live in a secret twin ship with Eric N so Eric is a deeply catholic activist, experimental playwright international activist and he has for many years been working with silence silent practices and he did it here he worked on something here I learned yesterday and I lead artist retreats sort of across disciplinary we've come to refer to his work as silent and mine is noisy and I feel in myself to be the secular Jew with him and he's the Thomas Merton with me this monkish, precise haiku speaking person and I'm this messy schmuck you know from middle America and so a couple years ago before I moved to Seattle we were talking about trying to merge these two practices in a kind of foundation or center or something but neither of us of course wanted to get our hands dirty and have to raise the money to do it so it sort of exists as this floating thing but I feel that in terms of the complement it's like I wouldn't even have an idea who I was if somebody didn't exist they both shared something and also was utterly different completes completes that that is amazing so there's two things that are sort of rattling in my brain right now that I'll just put out there and hopefully people can can grab onto it those two things are the how does this what do we want what we want I think one of us concerned with the live arts is to feel the most alive and to conduct and transmit in order for groups of people to feel more alive again and to access highest self and elevate the whole right so we start with some form of practice that allows us hopefully a prayer to tune to mystery expand and invite and then create and create processes that will then hopefully instigate and animate more creativity and more allowance so I think I would say that's one thing we want but I'd like maybe someone to reinterpret that let me say one other thing and then hopefully someone will grab it that there is a a deep individual concern that there is we are born alone and we die alone to some degree that's whatever it doesn't matter but let's say there is a need to go inside inside one and then there's a need to have an other and then there's this very interesting question about how does a group how does a group travel with this how does a group grow and stay in regenerated sense of belief how does the tribe with or without land create the practices like you're talking about with Eric that carry forth evolution in a group you've talked about with me at least and then double edged this story of the part of the Smith Smith which is important for a group because you have many people seeking some type of of knowledge of sorts so how this plays into the group process those are the two things what's the part A Smith the part A Smith the part A Smith is about seeking knowledge and how to it's about for rabbis seeking knowledge the well of knowledge in part which means garden or paradise daring to go in there and and how to approach the water of knowledge and what happens to them and I think it's really important and it in some weird way relates to what I was going to say which might not have anything to do with what you said but I want to say it anyway because a lot of us we're talking about our being afraid to talk about fears and stuff like that and I think in the last year of this society I want to try to look at myself and my ears in a different way and like I I don't like to talk about the inner things or maybe I don't like to talk that much in any way but I think that our practices whatever they are need to instill us must instill us with the courage to speak and to overcome our fears about speaking and sharing our truths whatever our truths are whatever our practices whatever our mysticism is whatever we call what is genuine to us because there's a lot out there that is part of a big lie and the only way to fight that I mean maybe not the only way but a necessary way to fight that is by us sharing truths and the reality of love and the reality of our creativity and our imagination our possibilities our spirituality that's not what's out there so I want to be force myself to not use the word fear in terms of my love but use it in terms of fighting the fear I have for lack thereof can I trust in 1000% amen I'll shake to that 1000% you know when Alice Coltrane who I mentioned earlier died it was a real service that they held for her at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City and it was like all the people who were still living who had played with her and like they just played jet like it was the whole building was going like this and it was just insane but it was peppered with remembrances of her she had a deep spiritual practice that was rooted in Hinduism she lived on the west coast and like you know had a long road together and on land you know all this but they said you know here are some things that she has said and this one I'll just put it out there and then I want to share a little thing with you they'll be there they'll be moving in a trans linear path boom and what that says to me and this is what I want to kind of put out of words that I think a lot of people myself included get nervous about talking about in public is we're not only talking about the living we're talking about our being across time and if I if I want to be genuine with you I will say that some of my deepest relationships are with people who are no longer living right and with ideas that belong to people who are no longer on the planet and there I say people who haven't gotten here yet and so it's a space that is rife for like you can immediately put me out with the New Age crystal over like yes that cat but in reality what I'm saying is that that I know from my study of history in particular my study of the black American experience that the people that we often go to who we quote them and I'm going to go back to the you know oft quoted Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman whatever they could not have lived their life if they believed that their life was the end they couldn't have done it and they couldn't have done it because the circumstances did not change in their lifetime but what they saw was beyond their lifetime so they knew that they were part of a conversation that was going in a trans money or a path so if that is the case if I'm part of a larger thing what is that central message that I want to be involved in I want to be involved in a message of love which is a way of saying that there are energies that are generative energies like other people might call it biophilic like I want to be involved in something that is generative life giving life sustaining and life including death life including loss life including doubt life including fear and uncertainty all of those things are present in life but that I am not willing to sacrifice the life force to fear and limitation and the idea of certainty I'm not willing to do it so I'm currently working on this project that we're doing this fall and one of the persona in the piece is Dr. George Washington Carver and he made stuff with peanuts you know from your black history must tell me but he was a mystic he was a scientist who was a mystic who lived on the land he was at Tuskegee University and famously started their science and agriculture department and they asked him when he was there in many interviews like how do you how do you know how to take this plant and do all of these things with this plant and instead of saying well you know I break things down in the petri dish or I'll do the microscope he said I go out into the woods before dawn and I take the flower of the plant that I'm going to be working on and I sit with it and it tells me what to do right so if I can do this little thing so I just got back from a residency with Samora Penderhugh the great extraordinary jazz musician and we've been writing songs for the show and this is brand new there are no chord changes so it will sound like I'm singing off key if you love a thing enough it will reveal its secrets to you unlock all its codes and keys and send the message through you so says the man who talks to flowers science yes but so divine in nature you will find your guide to mystic senses of your life that escape definition so says the man who talks to flowers in the hours of the morning I walk the woods to greet first life all my worry and all my wanting grow pale beneath the verdant mic the flower is a portal to the universal wide it's trumpet ear placed to my eye nameless wonders I do spy so says the man who talks to flowers my life in service to the science my life in service to the race an elegant tale to tell a flower in my lapel if you can love with all your heart and love without an ounce of fear you will surrender all you know and open up your inner ear almost done if you love me as I do you I will visit in your dreams and whisper secrets bold unto you leading you to mystic streams so says the man who talks to flowers so says the man who talks to flowers there is so much more available to us than we avail ourselves of if we get over the idea that it stops with us or that it started with us and Daniel I mean I have to say as a you know as a secularist that that's just that's not entirely mystical it's actual we know this we have memory we have history we have children and we have senses that are not just our minds when we sit with the flowers you know what I mean so for me that I completely enter what you say as a sort of mystical reality but I also feel like you know we gather around in the apartment of someone who died last week and we tell stories and we've all been changed by this person and we take that change into our lives and presumably other people are affected by it too and it kind of you know it spreads in that way I at Baltus it's not a contradiction it's sort of like and even in the secular space it's from someone who wouldn't use the term mysticism that's accurate to me but then where does the struggle take root because if it's so obvious if it's so material and it's so mystical why are we why are we missing it just feel that we're missing it I can try I've been thinking about that I think we alright let me talk me I identify that I I do get seduced by the certainty like you know anger is an easier response than love blame others it's an easier response and it doesn't require that big of an effort it does require effort but it's in the beginning you know somebody that was I love learning to do work in the land from people that do work and somebody told me one day be careful with the task that it's easy at the beginning because normally at the end it's a nightmare you know if you do a task really meticulously and really effort in the beginning at the end you're flying he said those things and I was like wow that's so philosophical and I took it to heart I still do so we can be we we get an hammer to patterns and matrix of behavior of work so of like you know how we communicate it's not about the word the word is a tool a fork is as dangerous as a missile you can poke somebody's eyes with a fork everything is dangerous any tool is dangerous but it's up to us to create them safely and to our advantage so but it's easy I find myself easy and sort of like giving into that pleasure and then trying to shake myself out of that and go to the effort because anything requires effort the easy also requires effort but it's it's numbing you know we had from Asia master here for years and he was training us and one day he told me when I was explaining this to him he said well yeah he said it's just like the frog and the boiling part and I said what is it well you ate frogs when you were a kid so you notice that if you grab a frog alive and you throw it into a frying pan the frog would jump out immediately but try putting a frog in a pond and then turn the heat on the frog will die it would get enamored with that heat and not feel it until it's too late and it won't react so I also thought about that to myself well maybe I'm like the frog in the pond I let myself numb of course of course there's also systemic structures whose power and survival depend on our belongings depend on our dislocation depend on our disconnection from tradition, from community and from real self and they are very strong and they're all around us in politics and advertising it absolutely these structures, systemic structures depend on us being aligned and that are the real power this is just an insight out of question I'll just share something from that I don't want to be patriotic shared with me as an advocate we live in an information society and a lot of the way we manage things is through information and folks don't really understand the difference between information and knowledge and knowledge comes with a lot of responsibility and it is gifted to you it is an orientation and it is a it is something that requires you to be position yourself as a receiver and a giver with responsibility across generations and it also comes with the bearing of grace so I just wanted to was that bridge between this disassociation between and that isn't necessarily about religious practice as it is just in orientation because we're bombarded with information even information about religion or practice and we're bombarded with it but are we oriented I want to come back to Dupankar we haven't heard from you in a bit so are you writing I'm writing what others are saying yeah I think when we give up the desire to be original because then we automatically realize that we're a part of a lineage in America in North America there's a strong desire to sort of which are very subconsciously we take it from the corporate world but we don't frame it that we're about patenting like my movement my idea actually the ideas emerge and then we give it an English term called mystical or we give it a term I just want to address somehow when we use the word it's such a personal journey anything that we talk about becomes sort of prescriptive and that's not the intention but in Hinduism it's a way of life it's an English translation that calls it religion it isn't one you know it's really a way of life and we have four Vedas and the fifth Veda I'm just bringing it back to theater that we are practitioners of theater it's the Natashastra Natashastra is considered to be the fifth Veda which is a book on philosophy and in it how in practice your question was in practice how do we how is there a praxis informs it even the Aristotelian poetics you know has a big story structure the beginning middle and end where as eastern Ramakarji the Trinity Trinity itself is a Christian word is need desire and revelation so that's the three so there's a need for us I mean there's a need inside our bodies and the need if it just stays within us it can eat us up or make us into self-aggrandized self-proclaimed leaders so the need has to live in a desire of a community you know that means the intentionality of the need pushes us to a desireness or is there a work of desireness academics in the room and then it's revelation that means the truth exists it gets revealed to us so which is the distinct difference from the western the protagonist, the hero's journey the hero entices the north riding action, falling action solves the problem and voila whereas in revelation is a very powerful word it already exists elders have thought through it future generations have thought through it we are just a tiny speck so there's no desire to really patent a movement on my name I've said he's always afraid of any ism especially when it preceded by a proper noun but people did their PhDs on Gandhism it's just contradicting it's basic coherency so another aspect we practice that even in our staging because time is seen like in many ancient cultures cyclical in eastern Ramatharji there is no ending of a scene there is no ending of a generation like December is not winter of discontent does not exist in our thought process because it's seen as a rebirth and so even in some of my movement especially when I direct in regional theatre lighting designers that I don't choose always have a problem that suppose this scene is over here I will always have one person just walking across like even actually yesterday's play how you wanted to remember her that she is moving it does not end and so the lighting designers say but that's another cube I said yeah it's another cube but the play is already over is that a curtain call should be the next cube they don't say what should be this is what is so it does not end it does not end that's a part of our practice and I just wanted to share this thing about one of the practices maybe it's called Kulam it's in the southern part of India where they practice however regardless of the economic strata of the person there's always even if the smallest of the smallest house even in a corrugated shed on a pavement when some people say they'll sweep and mop just that small little house that they have outside and with chalk or rice powder they make these designs and then during the that's how we begin the day that's how we begin our rehearsals and then during the day people walk on it is street I mean sometimes people are living on pavement it just it washes off or with footwork I mean when people are walking it does not exist after sometime and to me that it's very humbling you know that the desire of permanency and the desire of it actually it just does not exist you know so I mean the idea that it's impermanent so it's like the play like a play you know we come together we create community we work with intention we fail miserably we celebrate powerfully that happens and then it's over and so that practice you know it sort of it humbles and makes us realize how infinite we are and how unimportant we are and so in Pangea especially you know we have to search for rituals which honour all our circles and because we are surrounded by multiple circles and what gets sort of placed in the center sometimes especially as an immigrant a new recent immigrant you know I mean the reality that the room is never empty it is always full with people who have like the system that are in place so how do we create an open space in which that is messy does it mean represented and messy great, thank you you have a question and you'll be functioning the conversation with this question I also think about the world of ego and pride and arrogance which I think is central to what we do I think sometimes ego gets a bad grab but I think there's something very arrogant about putting on a performance and there's nothing wrong with that I don't see that as a bad thing but I also think it's a thing you know in conversations of certainly a lot of conversations I will be in around some of these topics around religion, faith, mysticism I think we move we want to start to move towards humility and kind of like our place in the world but I think there's also something that you said about the hutzpah of I'm going to bring together people who otherwise from different cultures all around the world and we're going to figure it out and there's something beautiful about it and there's also something arrogant about it and that's like again I don't mean that as a pejority it's something wrong but other than there's something kind of a drive of force that I I think is present I don't know how it fits in but I do feel like it's there and I don't quite have the language but it's just a thing that's going through there's a spectrum with humility and ecstasy that's all one humility I just want to say one thing I completely I feel that is a search but humility not in a form of like I have elders from India sometimes they're the biggest patriarchal arrogant assholes but they'll give a speech oh I'm just an artist I serve the art but they come out and they believe in hierarchy and even Gandhi said don't act humble you're not that great so we're talking about strong powerful disagreeing political spiritual voices and who are in search you know there's rigor there's rigor in that search there is no artificial humility bullshit in that I mean because there is power when everybody shows up as powerful in a room but the point is how do we create rooms like that just like this room is being created like that not many rooms in many rooms we are invited you know and there is a larger narrative already present yes right we are subgroups and speaking in speaking of larger narratives speaking of subgroups I'll make a crude segue and I'm sorry to cut you off here but it's a this is the question and I think we have to move on from this at the moment we don't have to move on at all actually but what I want to say is that we have there's a resources thing up here which I'd like to change the resources and other things feel free to put a question up there or a thought that didn't get voiced it'll be implemented or integrated somehow this is not the end of a conversation this is all one conversation but we are going to shift the landscape a little bit so we're going to take a break thank you first of all all of you guys thank you all of you and thank you in TV land we're going to take a break now it is 1140 we're going to take a 20 minute break for whatever you want to do and then we will be meeting at noon under the tent please take a look at see this beautiful work of yours thank you