 Welcome everybody back here on Segal Talks at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center, the Graduate Center CUNY in Midtown Manhattan, not too far away from the New York Public Library in Bryan Park and the Empire State Building. It's a sunny day today, quite beautiful actually for a day on planet Earth. It doesn't get any better than this and still the outlook on the streets as we said in the last says is optimistic and I think the country feels it's opening up. California officially gave the date for opening New York State so we have been following almost every day in the week since last March. These are the most optimistic days still. We hear catastrophic news still from India and London shut down again for four weeks prolonged because of the variation of the virus that can be traced back largely to India. It's of real concern to us. Theater also will open and should reopen but the questions remain. What is necessary? What is urgent? What do we really need to see? What is just an entertainment and what is it we should occupy our minds with on that short time we are alive on this planet Earth and if anything this corona time has provoked and ours is you know what is important, what is not, what is worth living for, what's missing, what is right and what is wrong and also what shall we do with the time and we of course think art is of significance theater and performances of real significance experience the moment and we are on the research here to do what to do as Brecht said new times need new forms of theater and they have been many who created such new forms people who were with us Shackner and Virginia Barbar, Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk and so many who were with us in this year and also today we have a great practitioner of theater with us who will help us to understand better the time where we live in and what role art has played in his life and what he has been up to in the time of corona here and we have with us Gerald Thomas Gerald welcome. Hello. Gerald where are you? In New York City Manhattan 23rd Street and FDR inside the East River quite frankly it's it's we're a bubble let's face it we are a bubble so you can see the river when you look outside your window and I can show our audience I can I can do better than that I can show oh my god look at that yeah literally literally inside the water yeah for anybody who doesn't know and I have to admit to my shame also was not fully aware of my great friend of the Seedles Center Raphael Vienna said you should have to talk to Gerald Thomas he's a great artist who is a global artist it was roots in the US actually but also Brazil and Germany in the UK and so Gerald is a theater and opera director and a playwright who spent actually most of his time in the United States and here in New York as well as in England Brazil and also Germany and he has worked in major stages in all these countries he began his life in the theater at Ellen Stewart's great Lamama and he said everything he owes to her he owes her life his life to her and we will come back to that but here in Lamama he began working with Samuel Beckett who he knew personally and he staged a lot of his work in Portland we will come back to that also with Julian Beck from the livings here George Pattanya who was in our program and Freud Neumann and and he knew and worked on place with Heiner Müller and has a very serious and I think friendship and relationship with the great Philip Glass who also talks about him you can find it on on Gerald's website a longer interview that is a part of a BBC documentary about him Thomas formed and established his dry opera company in Sao Paulo where he has staged a lot of his work and it has an part of an existence also in London but also is here in some way exists in New York City he has done over 60 65 productions a lot of operas actually in over 15 countries and and he continues it says on his CV to create work for the stage Thomas how do you create work for the stage at the time of corona what happened how did you experience this year I don't why don't I mean I have of course like with everything else a split opinion about what's happening right now and but it's it's a funny it's almost like it's almost like an in-joke or so to speak because I've had an incredibly pleasant experience during coronavirus because my online production of a play called earth and trance was in was so much I mean it was overwhelmingly seen by people both in July of last year and then again April this year two different filmings this last production was actually filmed with a film crew and and that kind of stuff and and it was just an overwhelming reaction which rendered me 30 for glowing reviews I mean you know I never left my house I've never left this this was all done via zoom like we're here and yet I managed to revive a play that was written and staged back in 2006 but in and and the actress of Yana Gugli was at her house in Sao Paulo and it was all done there the place the place based on Liebestor on on on the last area sang by by is all interested is all by Richard Wagner and it's about being it's exactly about this period it's about being locked up in a dressing room not being able to leave because there's another singing taking over her part but the idea of claustrophobia the idea of being locked in without being able to move speaking her mind off to a swan is what what the play was and I think it struck this is it precisely why I think the audience saw it they saw themselves in it it's right it's got that personal note with with with people so rather than go off and stage these you know huge things where people are just wondering what is going on you know and they this metaphorical metaphysical theater with metal language being the core center of it all this was a almost realistic production where people can actually really relate to and well that's it that's it's not very it's not very optimistic but you know Frank the thing is I I I've always been very critical of what we call theater and the on the other hand I love the idea of the ritual you know we meet at a place we have the camaraderie of the group the audience has to do the same they have to leave the house to park the car meet at a specific place and enjoy or hate experience the production together in time I mean together it's a social event here it's an individual thing and it's never gonna work first of all because it's a flat screen and there aren't many possibilities plus the attention span is not the same you know that in the theater you breathe together with the actors it's like a big lung it's a heart and a lung beat you know and here you can go off get a Coca-Cola in the fridge or get an ice cream come back and the play is still rolling so in other words it's not very different from watching a movie via youtube or of Netflix or something it's happening regardless of the audience and I love the interference of the audience when they cough and when they produce noise in one production at the Kavillier theater in in Germany during my production of Storm Spear which is the tempest with with Endgame by Beckett 200 out of 800 people 200 got up together like it was a rehearsing turned the backs to the audience and marched out of the theater and it's a it's a rock theater with wooden floors so you could hear you could hear the footsteps of vibrating in the theater I think it's a glorious experience really fantastic yeah so they they it provoked something remember they made a decision to get up listen I have a question if I understood right you you left school early you study yourself in libraries and to finance your your your life and your young as a young person you you drove drove ambulances what was going to your mind when you heard the ambulances last year and I'm sure you heard in your location many of them yeah I live across from Bellevue and NYU and they go all the time I mean it's like a constant siren thank god my windows are very thick and block the noise off but I was it was pretty horrible and in the building I could see it I live in a huge building and you could see the elevator always stuck on a floor because a gurney or you know some kind of a stretcher would be collecting an old person would be going out and then you'd never see them again so we know exactly what happened but the ambulance was one of the few things I did a lot of stuff like I guess a lot of young artists have to do a lot of stuff in order to support themselves I mean I wasn't in the professional theater I started here in New York doing something maybe I shouldn't talk about but it was I was a kid for high so to speak you know and so in London at the age of 16 I started reading everything possible at the British Museum library which then which is where Marx wrote this Capitol and so on but I was a coffee taster by profession which really is an insanity an ambulance driver I was a chef's assistant of course or you could say dishwashing liquid system or I was a telephone an international telephone operator you had to stick in those things you know depending on the country that the person was asking so it's you know I got married very early I was married very early so I had to support this thing called marriage family how did you connect to Lamar mine islands to what how did you get there from well driving the ambulances in London oh my when I when I moved back from London to New York I I'm not sure exactly how I got connected to the company called Mabu mines Lee Brewer with Malachek Phillip and the Fred Newman and so I ended up doing being part of a production of The Tempest at the Delacorte Theater in 1981 exactly 40 years ago now I'm with all these people Ronald Julia you know playing the role of prospering and a little by little I started wanting to do workshops my relationship with Joe Pat was going very badly because he wanted me to do all these Polish political plays and that was not what was a you know I want to do Beckett I want to do more you know meta linguistic here and so Ellen picked me up and Ellen said well do a couple workshops you know teach people how to speak with an English accent this you know this kind of stuff and then one day I said Ellen I'm ready with the production if you want if you want to stage it and it happened to be Samuel Beckett's all world premiere of all stranger way which or open January of 1984 was 29 years old and and then I got to know Beckett personally I started working with Beckett in Paris in 1984 85 in six not until he died because I stopped seeing from work but I got to do all these adaptations of Beckett prose and then and for some kind of a really is a coincidence because when my intendant the artistic director of the bias is not of the state theater in Munich was going to bail it's he had hired me and and I said to him well why not do waiting for Godot you know this was when Beckett was still alive you're being you're being German you know that things begin two years in advance you know with the sets and all that so it was also almost an unfortunate thing that Beckett died in a month later we were opening Godot at the Cavalier theater again so it seemed like you know I was an opportunist who sees you know the opportunity to do something because Beckett was dead it wasn't it was planned in advance but so I've also done end game the traditional so-called plays they're not very interesting for me because I do the prose I do the internal you know dialogue of of what Beckett is thinking and putting out and that's the way he was as a person he spoke that way he actually spoke that way I used to go to Paris to meet him he spoke that way well one one could argue that that the other the work of back it is you know also concerned is we will all die we know that you've been reminded now by something that we all tried to ignore especially America does try to ignore but what do we do before we die what is worth doing how do you connect that idea of Beckett and corona time did it get a new urgency for you or was it a confirmation yeah I mean I think theater deals with death this is what we deal with I mean go back to Shakespeare it's all about death it's all about dying all the Renaissance writers write about death and go back to Chaucer it's all about death it's all about death was Play-Doh and Sophocles it's all about death it's all about our ability to transcend this monster called death or accept it and just lie there like Finnegan's wake or Malone dies or one of those things so this uh we go I think in a theater we die every night when the curtain closes and there it's no wonder the the stagehands who keep the props they're called grave diggers for a good reason uh we die every time the curtain closes there's a kind of a you know you can only talk about the experience you just had you can never really communicate it unless you do a play again the next day so you're alive again here we just have this idea and I think you know let me just say this I think the best translator in my time of this thing called death is Pantheos Cantor uh his theater was about the living dead so to speak these people circulating uh almost like sculptures uh you know covered in dust almost like post-911 in a way um and I lived see my relationship with death is ambiguous like because most of my family was exterminated in in concentration camps in Germany and so you know at breakfast lunch and dinner I would hear about Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald the whole lot of concentration camps and who died and how they died and of course I used to live in Williamsburg which is kind of opposite across you I got the the clear view I used to have a clear view of the World Trade Center and I saw the planes hit the buildings in real time and the collapse in real time so that was a second idea of my goodness it's very close it's very close so there's a mechanical thing that takes over I think you're right Americans don't want to deal with death and so it's always a happy ending it's always a sugary thing sugar coated ending um but Europeans on the other hand exactly the opposite they dwell on death so okay all the operas especially Wagner it's all about who dies and how they die and how how long they take to die on stage how much they can sing while they're dead already but this is a typical Schopenhauer it's typical nihilism it's you know it's typical um Nietzsche and Wagner actually it's it's although I think probably Nietzsche is a little bit more domestic with the eternal return and and all that but the corona thing so the second part of the question how I first of all I don't really believe we're over it right now you know like you said the theater might come back but how is it and I if we take just one example Broadway for instance where the producer needs a packed house or at least 85% of the audience paid audience sitting there if it's going to be one seat with two intermittent seats empty meaning a third of the theater is not going to make a profit so he can't pay anybody so unless the unions come down from the platform and make a deal say well we're going to work for nothing or we're going to when we no longer work for 75 bucks an hour we work for 10 and the actors do the same and it becomes a team effort which might happen it might happen it's like a war situation a team effort where there are no classes where everyone feels like they're part of the enterprise well maybe then maybe then otherwise the industry as we know it doesn't stand a chance at the moment because you can't sit you will never be able to sit next to the other person you know within breathing spitting distance and that's precisely the fun of the theater because you you're being manipulated from the left and the right and the back and from the front you have this magnificent thing which is unreal this world are opening up to you by actors and directors and musicians so it's it's a very unlikely situation so what we should do in my opinion is not read the papers every day and put New York one on and listen to what Cuomo is saying about opening up what the plans you're opening up yeah it'll it'll open up it's opening up gradually but we shouldn't take it personally the theater is not going to open up so soon you know maybe give it another year let these architects and engineers think of a alternative to the distribution of audiences you know groups of people double vast triple vaccinated quadruple facts I don't know what it's going to be but you talked about the delta variant in in in the UK yeah they're going to be variants I mean there are you know with the Yemen there are countries in the world who that don't even have a vaccine and these people when they travel they will bring it and so there's no question that this is a mutant virus which we don't seem to accept it's a mutant there was a Brazilian variant there was a South African variant not Indian variant and the UK variant to begin with we are there's a percentage of us which will be who will be immune due to this acquired immune of herd immunity this thing that we collectively apply but I think that exposing us the audience to a closed-in environment called theater you know maybe an open-air anti-theater yeah well that's a like the teleporting central part maybe maybe that's your turn to take all the roofs of the theaters and and let it happen maybe but you know that darkness the black box and that kind of spectacle too you know because the director as you know the director wants to be caught wants to control the climate wants to control the atmosphere the amount of light that comes in so it's not like a rock concert which you can do at midday you know with the sun blasting on everyone it's about the brain of the director it's about the concept as we call it and that is not open to weather it doesn't rain in the theater unless you make it rain right it's not light in the theater unless you turn on the light so it is the it's genesis happening the biblical idea of genesis happening the fiat looks idea of genesis happening every day in the theater well that will change yeah and also you know so 80 to 85 percent are tourists or people driving into new york and at the moment we have very very few of them with a if any um you worked in so much in germany in brazil and also uk and big big stages what do you think about american theater what's right and what's wrong about it i don't divide theater up into nationalities you know uh simply because i'm always surprised by what i see when i least expected i can give you an example i was in zagreb Croatia in 1999 i was a guest uh production of nowhere man and i was invited to see a production by it was an adaptation of duty Caesar by by Shakespeare and it was by a production directed by conceivable directed by branko brezovic a local serbian Croatian Serbian director he utilized on stage one or two actors from all the different parts of former Yugoslavia from Macedonia montenegro Serbia uh you know Slovenia and all that so the language wasn't important but the the performance was so magnificent and it was so much about the fall of the roman empire it was so much like and i thought my all these fat man had high heels on with little rabbit shoes and and i just and i never expected to see anything like that in zagreb but i did so german theater american theater i think what we can say is that Broadway the musical idea of Broadway is a fantastic american response to the stagnant german italian opera where people's you know basically fat singers stand in one position where they can see the conductor and they can project their voices but they don't move and if they have to move because it's annoying creature called the director told them to move they resent it and they don't do it well that idea of singing for 45 minutes sometimes an aria can last 45 minutes even more is boring let's face it even even for the theater goers who are fanatic about opera if you don't know what's going on and if you don't read the libretto in the program notes you don't know what it's about because nobody understands what the singers are singing the in the german opera in the italians because of the amount of consonants you can understand a little more but so i think at one point somebody uh from you know with a with a with a culture with an educational role of musical theater said enough we'll make it into an adventure you know we'll use the opera codes the codifications of the opera but we'll make it really exciting we'll do dance and we'll do this happen and the set is going to change which Wagner already did with the Gesamtkunstwerk thing that the there's transformation music written for for set changes but it's not usual it's not usual so i we can i don't know what american theory is is it tenancy williams is it bob wilson doing heiner mehler or is it trisha i mean i don't really understand that kind of stuff and i don't divide it up into nationalities what i do um see i have to tell you a little bit about my personal story why i ended up in brazil it's uh because it it's it's called almost like a prophecy um when i was directing julian back he was terminally ill he was about to die for the back gate full for the back gate trilogy yeah and so i mean we did a incredible run at lamama and then we went to front foot to teatum tom in front foot where by the way richard schecter schecter saw us and and uh he said to me whenever i picked him up at 98 street in westbound avenue to bring him down to the theory he said you have to do you have to leave new york leave new york do julian back said that julian yeah i said leave new york and do exactly what you do here but do it in brazil do it on a huge scale they have the money to do it and they would love this kind of uh based on absurdist maybe you know theater where you just put in ideas ideas ideas and you leave it up to the audience to uh you know think about it later and he said uh well build your build a household name for yourself and then come back to new york and i'm sure that the new york times will give you a full cover page front page exactly like it happened when i came back with the company with the kafka trilogy uh the times uh uh uh cultural section the arsonizia you know stamped us on a huge uh couple give us and that projected us to the world you know next thing was to be in a festival and then from there on we went and and so i started doing things on a bigger stage in the world as well because as you know la mama is tiny you know basically you can't do anything the seating is very low um but in new york what what what it did in a way you know is is in new york you when you belong to a bubble group the so-called experimental theater people downtown theater it's downtown and it's poor and there's a a team effort there's almost like an ideology and all you want to do is you want to receive an obi given out by the village voice you want to be reviewed and liked by the voice you don't care about the mainstream new york times you want to you want a picture of yourself in the so-called news or the east village whatever it's called and the world tells you you know you can you can get out of this bubble and what what it and it did certainly did for me because i started winning all these awards i never thought in my life would be possible mainstream molly air prizes three of them you know all of a sudden molly air price so i blame people who want to be part of small uh groups of people and live in inside of a bubble that has its own uh verbology terminology and ways of communicating because it never breaks out and it never wants to really communicate with with a larger amount of people and it's the same thing with broadly it's about entertainment it's not about thinking don't even think about it every production that deals with the deep ideas of you know philosophical ideas about life and death will fail they do i i did i did i failed on broad because my production was taken to 42nd street my backup production was taken to 42nd street well the same critic who had loved it at lamama gave it giving it a glowing review said gave it a glowing review again and the last line said well unfortunately i can't recommend it to my broadway theater goes well i killed it that was the end of it you know so i mean it makes you wonder why in the west end in london well the national theater the old vegas park they're part of the west end and the barbicans and they stage bearing productions well they even stage craps last tape or you know some stuff like that well you don't see it ever here you don't see it's it's a safer way of conducting the industry it's about safety it's about money really is about money it's about ending so that you can catch parties around the corner to have dinner uh it's a it's a coordinated effort so the bus is waiting for that crowd outside sardis so they can be bused back to the hotel it's it's a moving mechanism um which you don't have enough to it don't it doesn't exist in other countries yeah what do you see as a future of theater a theater that has some kind of urgency you know i think philip glas talked about your theater as an adrenaline theater and you were this ambulance driver and somehow when i look at your clips i saw you know you have a feeling there is an urgency you know signaling through the flame um what what do you think is a theater that would be meaningful that makes a contribution right now what what do we need when you live inside of a theater called life you don't need theater because what is happening politically after donald trump we started living uh uh uh this uh farce of a life where the protagonist was an orange man with with orange hair speaking the dumbest possible things being a thief uh you know basically being the ceo liar of the country or the the liar in chief well but he is always interesting to watch you know i mean it's amazing to watch bits and pieces of his rallies because he commands the audience better than any actor i have known even john gilgood so this lying horrible conspiracy theorist uh uh he's not even a republican at heart he was a democrat 20 years ago he paid for bill clinton's uh campaign so you know he doesn't stand it he's an opportunist but we live in a post-trumpian world uh which divided as you know the country into really half and half and after the insurrection uh uh attempt on on january 6 it it really divided up even further but that is theater as well that is theater that is uh shakespearean tragedy in real life that is a pirendello play in real life that's a calderon de la barca play in real life so you have that when you when you watch the news on tv when you read it in the papers you no longer trust the left the right the center anything you have to make up your own mind which is what theater is about so we live in a theatrical world it may not be the theater that you would have chosen on that i would have chosen but it nevertheless it is a theatrical world and in when you so we the theater people need time to digest this thing you know and to regurgitate back something that is an adequate response on equal terms or even stronger like a good tennis match because we were caught off guard we were caught off guard by the son of a bitch called trump and so and and and all this uh all these maniacs these these these you know organizations uh white supremacists and all that uh which have been around for a long time but this time stronger than ever so we should use the opportunity of being alone and and brooding and thinking about the future and so i'm not not to come up with uh theatrical ideas but come out with we should concentrate on thinking philosophically what the possibilities could be and that's not thinking about a play two plays or three plays it's about our existence or maybe not but it's certainly uh uh uh we have to find and and re-cement the foundations of our lives we've been cut from our foundations the the building is is wobbly because it no longer has the you know the the the pylon set to hold it up that has been cut off and of course because we are liberals in the theater to half of america meaning 150 million people we are the bad guys right now because we're in the liberal arts so it's a great opportunity to take us a backseat and and think well there must be a way out uh after the inquisition there was a way out after the mccarthy era there was a way out after each repressive era uh you know the spanish and the portuguese and the the latin americans and and uh even germany after the third rash had to come up with an answer about about what to do so maybe brecht was the answer during and after the the the third rash but each country found its own solution to that repressiveness here i find it equally the same it's a repressive force coming from the outside whether it's in the form of a virus or a virus coupled up with an ideology it's the same thing we are forced to take a backseat and it's affected all of us equally did you dream something out did i what did you dream something up did you think of something in that year yeah i mean i believe it or not i'm writing plays and and uh one of the plays i'm writing is called traitor you know from treason and betrayal because i feel that we as as human as humans have been betrayed by a force of nature and by ourselves because you know we we communicate the virus to other people we become the enemy i remember the beginning of the mask wearing thing the instructions of the cdc the social distancing mask wearing don't the streets of new york were empty i used to go out here on 2030 they couldn't see a single soul and whenever we did see somebody coming our way we would hide our faces meaning that person no matter who he was was the enemy so only a traitor somebody capable of betraying the system will come out the winner so i'm i'm i'm writing uh i'll show you these are these are the books and i'm writing a sequel to all of them it gives me time to uh reposition my myself you know think about britain during the blitz during the bombs falling um everyone had to rethink life and even in germany too being the germans or no germans being addressed and being bombarded uh but the germ the inhabitants of dresden were not responsible for the third right but they were being bombed or hiroshima and aghazaki each of those was that is their life afterwards well i went to hiroshima in 1989 1999 back to life trees growing people living buses going taxis you know restaurants open we think wow you know in a place where there was this mass destruction killed almost everyone burned everything to the ground yeah it's back i think we will always come back frank we are we are uh undefeatable phoenixes you know no matter how the amount of ashes we make a comeback because it's our nature and that's what i think the theater is is is an important thing because theater reflects the nature that we are in our weaknesses in our strengths at the same time that's the wonderful contradiction about theater we can place both on stage but not always within one generation or 25 not not even two it takes time which is something we are not used to because the internet gives us quick answers to everything google this and it's on your screen and you forget it within minutes but there if we only think well all right so this time it's different and it is different because it's the first pandemic in a hundred years so we you know we don't know anybody who lived through the last pandemic and told us the story but maybe it was the same after 1918 not after 1919 or 18 came the 1929 crash and then the uprising of the Third Reich and then the war think about all that and how much of art was important to huge amounts of civilizations being destroyed well my father tells me there was no need for us and that was in the middle of Germany um my mother tells me there was no need for art we looked at Rembrandt you know on the wall uh there was no need to be reminded of Goya's black period you know eating a child there was no need for any kind of a grotesque approach which is what we do we are grotesque people we are we reveal the grotesques in the human race well when they are living that on a daily basis they don't need to be reminded of it because their skin tells the full story I'm sorry to be so no no that's a that's very important so in a way you might say we are still in a time where we do not need art but we have to think we have to prepare we you know how much of us and I include myself how much of us really take our ego and our creative ability through the seat called existential questions uh or maybe Sigmund Freud or Jung or you name it Alakan how much of us really question everything we do in a very serious manner there was no time because tomorrow morning the agent will be calling is it ready we need to rehearse in three weeks and has to be ready in six weeks and has to be on a stage in Hamburg at the Talia Theater or at Camp Nader in a matter of two months there was never time to do anything we were always tied up with money production costs cut it by two days travel costs I remember when a set of mine came from New York and it got lost in Hamburg it went to Johannesburg and said oh what do you do without a set well you have you have to you have to do it it'll take time to come from Johannesburg to Hamburg so the improvisational aspect is questionable but it is also an existential act which we need to exercise I think for a long time we've been auto automats we've been robots geared by a mechanical need to produce now there is no such thing so sit on your fucking ass and think about a proper strong response to the human questions human questions which arise from a pandemic hmm there is no need for an answer tomorrow or by September or by November we shouldn't put a date on these things how how can you put a date on anything it doesn't it doesn't have the only things that should have a data vaccines I need it ready by then so work your asses off so science maybe has a date but this is a very intricate mechanism which does not always respond to pressure hmm I think after 9 11 you ask Ellen Stewart in that interview you did with her is the world better now or is it worse what do you think about not for now is the world better is it worse it's more adult we you know America never had a war at home except for Pearl Harbor which is Hawaii it's all the way you know it's not me it's an island we never had the war here at home we always sent people to Normandy we people you know we we sent people to Afghanistan around all the Vietnam all the wars and they all came back in body bags but we don't know what it's like to be hit in the middle of a city like with those two planes and that as traumatic as it is and you can hear it on my voice this is asbestos my voice was never like this because I worked at ground zero as a volunteer for three weeks uh three months I'm sorry um this the the the impact of that you can you can certainly camouflage it with George Bush's we'll be back dead or alive you know catch or something or but I think most of the people in New York or in America understand that life hangs by a very thin thread and and that things can happen that nobody ever expected could be possible so I think we grew up a war if it does anything to you it makes you grow up very quickly um this is the you know you don't need to read clouds of it to understand that the syndrome of war or post-war is something that is imprinted in you like Kafka like Kafka's nightmares or the idea of becoming a a bug in metamorphosis or the trial being imprisoned without any reason whatsoever with no guilt apparent guilt uh those are traumas that that um that Kafka acquired as as a as a child speaking German in Prague in in the Czech Republic the Jewish German Jewish community spoke German in in a in a country that wasn't a German speaking country a Slavic country so that was an imprinted trauma and I like to explain to people you're German and you know it but I like to explain to people that trauma is dream and trauma is a deep wound only aided by one letter the letter a at the end um except for the spelling of alp trauma you know the nightmare or the dream of the alps differently spelled but you can know I'm living an alp trauma mean I'm in the alps I used to live in vain and so in the alps it is a dream but how much does it is the contradiction included in the word meaning it can easily turn into a nightmare and a trauma can easily turn into trauma depending on the circumstances and those circumstances which we highly regard in the theater because it's that moment where it flops the the plot flops to a different thing is caught in real life by tragedy when you least expect that's when you think oh you know the hand of god there's a magnet the hand of god has given you a slap in the face deal with it grow up deal with it well yeah I mean don't we all dream of I mean I do I mean I am you know a stiller hippie I believe I'm a guy from the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s a picnic directed Julian Beck very closely connected to the ideals I was in Woodstock very closely connected with that kind of a lifestyle and ideals but I think of myself I'd love to have a house in Florida in Miami or nearby you know a huge pool uh I'd like to go swimming I'd like to have a boat into some fishing it's the bourgeois the bourgeois in me and the bourgeois in everyone comes alive in in times of these where you you're restrained to basically the minimum and you should question that who are you really are you the bourgeois inside of you are you repressing that bourgeois or do you stick by the principles that you are committed to and that you announced to the world that you were well that's a difficult question to answer sometimes sometimes all I want is money and to live in Montana or Nebraska in the middle of nothing with a huge farm and 25 goats you know and 10 horses and 10 dogs well but what else what was the point right I mean the whole after maybe a year you would go crazy long to come back to a city and and deal with people and and and get you know nervous about this that and the other and politics and all this shit happening in the world but we don't need it in reality do we need I'm asking you do we need to know what Biden is telling Putin right now in Geneva is that necessary it's a change anything it's all lies anyway you know it's all the departments of the press department and the department of communications that put together a press release and announce it back to the we don't we'll never know what they really talk about we'll never know we still don't know what John who killed John Kennedy we still don't know anything it's still a conspiracy people think that Elvis Presley is alive and living vegetating in Memphis Tennessee it's isn't it fascinating that you cannot really convince anybody of anything and and we people in the theater want to convince people of something all we do is we put a temporary halt on that kind of a definitive answer and we give them a little room to oh that was good I cried I don't know why I cried it was wonderful I laughed I don't know why I laughed so we give them that suspension of disbelief basically what it is but they'll go back to the cynicism imprinted upon them by by politics in daily life and history history history it's always a pact between a few people and we are caught in the middle it's always a pact you know no matter if it's a politician you like or you don't like it's your party it's the opposite part doesn't matter it's always a pact behind closed doors or the situation room and it's hard to believe that it's true well it's it was kind of a pessimistic view on history which you also in the way share was Heiner Müller you spoke about the machine the idea of the machine the importance of history and that it is important to know about history because you don't learn from history we know we don't learn from it and that's it's important to know and but also Müller's sense of you know of of a of history of politics and real politics and also the classics you work with Backhead you also work with Heiner Müller he came to your openings what was your relationship to him and what would he think now you mean Heiner yeah I think he was actually a very funny guy I mean he was you know when he lowered his head with his half of a little bit left of a cigar in his fingers uh through those thick glasses there was always a a a funny commentary to be made and I remember he took me to see there was a a conference in New York because he stayed at my place in Brooklyn at the time and we went together to a pet pen conference of writers and Norman Müller was the you know the leader the chief of whatever the boss at the moment and Norman Müller had written a play about Mary in Monroe and staged it and we all needed to stay there and watch it it was dreadful it was absolutely awful you know the acting was really bad the lines were terrible and Heiner and I said listen let's just leave and Heiner said no no we need to be exposed to the protest so we can answer so we can answer it and and at the end I said you know Heiner are we gonna speak to Müller are we gonna say congratulations or are we gonna be truthful and say this is horrendous we didn't need to because there was a critic a former critic from New York called John Simon I think originally from Yugoslavia who who said my goodness you guys must have hated it right and we said yeah oh good I didn't but I'll tell Norman I said Heiner let's go and we he he loved being a kid Heiner Müller loved being a child running from a restaurant without paying you'd never think that but in New York he did in Brazil he did too in Rio and Sao Paulo he loved the attention that he didn't get in Germany because the Stasi scandal was you know is he an agent it was an agent is there an ambulance passing by yeah yeah so he was he loved the fact he couldn't believe because he couldn't believe the fact that he was known in Brazil he was recognized and known in Brazil and I'm responsible for that because I opened Quartet in Brazil as well with two of the most you know famous the Grand Dame of the Brazilian theater and you know the the actor so he came to the opening and he was just he couldn't believe that it was done on such a scale and that he would be giving so many interviews without the fury and the rancor of the German journalists who didn't like him um like Benjamin Hendricks in the site or Peter Eden in the he didn't hate it yeah Peter Eden and in front for the Rundschau precisely that production the Beckett trilogy brought over by Peter Eden is what made Heiner Miller contact me because his agent at the Fertrack of Walter something said Heiner you must come to you must come to Frankfurt and watch this and that's where he came so in a in a way it was it was Peter Eden who was responsible for my connection with with Heiner Miller in a way one could say both Beckett and and Heiner Miller marked some kind of an end of writing for the theater or turning points Heiner Miller perhaps in a more dramaturgical idea this brilliant Hamlet machine needed Beckett who perhaps brought the form to an end where perhaps not so much more formal innovation was even thinkable except perhaps the lights and lines of movement um do you um do you think um that uh after that you knew both of that both of them you know first of all what are the connections where were they different and where is playwriting going after them as a wonderful question I wish I had the answer I think Beckett wrote from the heart and the mind but there was a huge connection between this and here and what he saw and he wrote and of course there was a word play and he fooled everybody by saying that he wrote in French and then transmitted it's bullshit though you know the name Lucky does not exist in French God though would be dear it's God you know the words like that Ham is a Ham actor and and and Ham shinkan meaning it does those words don't exist in French and Heiner Miller was a structural investigator almost like the architect but also the structural engineer who needed to see the inner workings of a play who dissected the inner workings of a play reveal them to us I don't know if Heiner Miller is for a wide audience or maybe just for an audience of theater people because what he does with Hamlet what he does with Medea material what he does with the Laundromatica or all of the plays that he is is to reveal the trick within dramaturgy and so I don't know that the audience wants to know that in the same way that an audience like somebody wants to buy an automobile does not want to go to a garage and see it all stripped and the conkers of you know the skeleton and being put he wants the readymade car ready to drive so that machine was taken apart by Heiner Miller the autopsy of drama was made by Heiner Miller while Beckett was still doing drama so I think Heiner Miller was a little bit more advanced in in in front of because he was already critical of Beckett um he didn't really want to know much about my relationship with Beckett he never really asked much and he always asked he always laughed uh at my knowledge of historic facts in the theater he said well it's not necessary it's not important you know uh it's important to be the read the first 20 pages of something in the last 20 we leave the middle the middle is the ego of the author yeah you know uh but Hamlet machine and Medea material are still incredibly strong impactful statements but I would put them on a podium as a lecturer not necessarily as a director on the stage now after having done so much Heiner Miller of course I can say that but of course the experience of working with Heiner Miller him being there his opinions on common confilter might production that he was vital to because he really wrote half of it um it's there's no price to that and there's no price when you've been when you've been through Heiner Miller you're not the same ever again it's the same with Beckett you're just not the same you've grown yeah yeah in in in a way what you said about the time we live in and uh and so something something has happened what but what do you think I mean you talked about your your dry opera company say ask me in 20 years if it's still standing lying it's dead you know it's almost 20 years later so where are we and um and what are you dreaming on is utopia is you talked also about utopia especially also when you talked about great julian back which if I am right died on the tour performing your performing performing your work so what what is happening is that dad is that is it there do people dream on what do you say to young um if you would be you know talk to the young kid you know it came to ellen steward that's your two other what do you say now what do you say dream keep on dreaming you cannot kill a dream never kill a dream because that in the dream may be the answer to future questions don't ever kill utopia don't ever kill the hope hope it's almost like a a phony thing to say it's almost tacky but hope is the most important thing especially after having lived through a heavy you know a heavy period this is a heavy period if you don't have that if you cannot dream if you cannot take the time to pay attention to your dreams if you don't have the time to relish your hope and make it into something concrete then there is no point but if you do you'll gain a lot from it so that's what I do a workshop that's always no matter how pessimistic I may be personally the message is always a hopeful one because the youth is the future and there is no denying that so I may recognize that my time is over soon will be over soon I'm 60 I'll be 67 so I mean you know uh like peter brook peter brook's heydays with my brother or the conference of the birds all that stuff was you know until you reached 55 and stuff after that it just became you know another cherry orchard and a beckett piece and this and the other you lose that adventure the impetus of being an adventurer if you lose that forget it um you have to keep renewing the pact almost like Faust and mithistophus you have to renew the Gertian pact with the devil every day every day and uh and you know you and of course you know making a pact with the devil is not exactly a pleasant thing you may be very atrocious you may be doing atrocious things to yourself and other people but if it sparks there is a flame if it doesn't spark there is no fire so it needs you know friction is necessary this is what people don't remember they want everything to be smooth things are not even birth the amount of blood the woman loses and what comes out of that it's just think about the pain of all that it's so painful to be born it's so painful for that little baby to be you know hung upside down and being slapped and that not being able to express an understanding and growing growing is painful the bones hurt within the body everything hurts yeah still we celebrated right we celebrate the birthday yes we celebrated but we celebrate because we don't remember that day we remember the cake where we don't remember that day and then there is a period uh which i call a plateau you know like maybe between 30 and 50 where everything is wonderful stuff and then it's the way down again you know so you what is the point when you're at your wisest and you know everything you have the answer you no longer have the physical ability to perform that it's ironic isn't it it's the least you could say about it it's it's ironic yeah but it's the truth people are living longer and longer but are they able to give back to society what they did 50 years ago maybe i don't think so i don't think i want to see genius again front you know i want to see a moza a real moza i don't say i'm a real partner on stage i want to see a you know uh isenstein or you know people like fritz lang you know these people that i want to see another birth of a Bauhaus really where it was take a cold shower at five o'clock in the morning no matter if the weather is 35 degrees below zero it's cold and be sitting waiting for your lecture i think it's uh it's educational you know people know that life is not a comfortable thing but that the education they're receiving is they're so hungry for that kind of stuff that having that is a gift that's a gift education as a gift needs to be cultivated culture is a gift culture needs to be cultivated it's almost like an oxymoron but it it we need in this time what you and i are doing right now hopefully will be watched by people and hopefully it might influence people in a beneficial way inspire people because inspiration is the only fuel we have gasoline doesn't fill us but inspiration will it keeps you awake at that makes you produce stuff makes you think i look out of the window here in the middle of the night and i look at the still water you know maybe a little boat passing by between queens and men and i don't know why it fills my heart with love you know i feel passion coming back because of one image which is not the reality because the guy driving that boat in the middle of a freezing weather in the middle of the east river with no lights on maybe night marriage to him to me it produces love and that is my mission in life is to express that love yeah that's why what a beautiful and great great great image and coming close or close at the hour end and this should be the last sentence but i still want to ask are you preparing are you directing next year in two years are you at what are you doing a stage direction work coming up scheduled i know everybody has halted everything in theaters but do you have things lined up i do i have a new play called gastrointestinal prayer meaning i have the coming back of a play that i did in 1996 called nowhere man coming back like earth and trans came back in in south polo and brazil no in them in them yeah and some in brazil and i want to open uh gastro gastrointestinal prayer here in new york as well so it's a danish american production and and i'm working with a transvestite hopefully opening new doors also towards sexuality and stuff like that and i want to reproduce i want to give people the idea that vivaldi might have been a woman so it's it's actually called vivaldi basically that's what it is fantastic so you know four new four new things on the horror things you know next next to your writing you you mentioned so things are are hopeful and i think you have what you said that's ambiguity that you can have the weaknesses and the strengths the horror of light but also the beauty like the paintings of a bosh you know where you have hell you have the paradise in the middle is the earth you know that's reflects in a way men we have really experienced this year and i hope that we do learn the lessons and also we you know take to heart what you said it's so true and it's real and if there's anything what we share artists with the scientists and and everybody we should listen to search for truth and say you can never hide the sun or the moon and not the truth and and it's for us also to reveal at least for that moment as you said when we hold life for a second yeah you mentioned a wonderful analogy because here on a most bosh and dante people have to remember that the inferno is called the divine comedy so that is the thing and and bosh is probably the most divine thing there is you know yeah and we went through that so listen thank you for taking the time i know we could talk so much more we could have shown so much from your work and it looks like early castor over you know and where he got inspired from we could have seen you're the great philip glas interview about you so but everybody can go to your website at Gerald Thomas and find out and tomorrow we will hear from from india and the netherlands we will hear from abhishek tapar who is creating a kind of a lecture performance and trying to to wrestle with what's real what's not what is a promotional business talk and what is a spiritual heritage of his country and how to combine these these worlds and friday we have the great civil camson the new york director and also a leader of her seven daughters of eve and he's now upstate new york where she works and she did these great ceremonies you know at the moa and so let's hear what a civil is up to us but it was a great start of the week really thank you thanks again rafael for connecting us i hope gerald it was as inspiring for you as one of us listeners really thank you it's a i will respect for your work and i'll be calling you on your number okay and really and um thank you thank you for sharing to our listeners thank you for taking time out we are slowly coming to an end maybe the seattle talk might come to an end end of july of june and in the current form and we rethink maybe engage in the parks and engage the idea of a festival here in new york but um it's been a quite a journey so really thank you all for listening because it is important for for you what gerald has to say but also for gerald to know that there's interest there listeners out there as it is you know for abhishek tapar from india who lives in the netherlands so um thanks to howlround again and all of you stay safe and uh i hope you will tune in again and all my best and again sure i hope um you'll see lots of great things looking out of your window bye bye i would like like the artists in their studios and that's what they often paint it and photograph bye bye