 our hope for theater and see the absence of the thing and know what it is which was a real gift to me in terms of talking to you but talking to all of us but when I talked about them you said that you wished that they were better and so why how and how would you and how about you know the third volume or like what would be different now if you were to yeah I'm always cheered when when these they were originally commissioned starting back in 1994 production notebooks and Catanio in the great great and Catanio of geometry Lincoln Center two-time president maybe in three-time president I forget of literary matters in geometry to the America's Commission me to do something and I said I wanted to create the series of production notebooks and commission eight grommet turds to respond to productions they were working and and I think everybody thought well it's going to be just all about drama terms and and heightening the profiles of drama to be an advertisement for drama turds I never thought it was going to be that I never wanted to be that wanted to be something larger I wanted to be about investigation the process I wanted to look at great artists and everybody from Robert Wilson to someone like Roberto Hodge who I admired tremendously and I didn't want it to be something it was about how look how great these artists are I wanted it to be a look at the process the detours the mistakes and and how that works in retrospect and indeed earlier today at this conference air again is it something quite amazing quite astonishing he used the amazing phrase that theater perhaps our work as artists as teachers as mentors as students of the theater can be something about the preservation of the imprecise and I wish to hell you know what I was doing putting together these production notebooks and publishing them that I had had that phrase to put at the front of the book that these these documents represent the preservation of the imprecise the detours the mistakes because after all that's how you learn something as artists and I think that's it in many ways looking back what most people don't know people like Lisa and Johnson who did the who this amazing soul traveled all the way over to Germany to Munich and spent six weeks with Roberto Hodge followed him around and that's no mean feat and sent me back 200 typewritten pages of interviews and things and I had to edit it down to 60 70 pages because theater communications groups had what you you know it can't be at all and what I had to cut away was was hard it was fascinating it was even more useful even more meaningful detours and that's what I mean my regrets that's what was hard you know I just was so hard someday I'll send that to Jeff roll University of Puget Sound say here it is this is what kind of way but that that's what I mean and that my regret about that but my my greatest triumph though I think it's so funny again it's not about the dramaturgs it's not about the dramaturgs it's not about the dramaturgs I think my greatest pleasure was I was working with Moises Kaufman at one point for five years at one point he said for five years on the first on the American premier at the arena stage and then at the White Playhouse premiere and then on Broadway and then for 20 weeks in workshops and at one point for three weeks at the University of Illinois Urbana we were doing a workshop because there was a Beethoven scholar there and so we were there and I was sitting there at a performing arts center where we were going to work on it and I was sitting in this immense stage management office and I looked up there were two volumes the production notebook there the big stage management office and I sat there and went and I quietly said to this resident stage manager I what do you what do you have the production notebooks here for and she didn't know I was Mark Bly and anyway so I said what do you have that for and she said oh well you know we have a stage management program here and we use that to teach the stage management students all about process it teaches them you know nothing is easy there are no perfect productions and this is the way it works and don't expect it to work out the preservation of the imprecise and I was so happy at that moment because I understood that I'd done something far far larger than promoted the profession of dramaturgy something far larger than promoted the dramaturgical gesture that not matter speaking of Eric and we all do every day we ever do let's let's get in our doctor who TARDIS and go back in time to Vancouver 11 years ago I understand that Eric N said something at the last LMDA conference 11 years ago that meant a great deal to you he said that theater was uncovering the dead and reconstructing a history for a community and theater is a survivor's narrative told concisely without pity but with hope and if this is something that you have as a sampler yeah I do I am and I finally got to tell Eric that yesterday after which was whole weekend's been really terrifying for me I it was you just don't know when the creators going to give you the gift right like that that conference things I've noted that conference the last time LMDA was here in Vancouver we were at SFU but we were up the hill in the mountain we're up in the mountain and this time we are not we are down here still SFU amongst the people really really amongst the people so there's been an interesting shift in perspective I think which is which parallels the thing that we're all talking about about wanting to be more with the people and you know Kendra talking about this morning about I am my audience making that connection for us I had I had not taken native earth yet what year was that so I had been appointed but I had not actually taken native earth yet and and then I went to hear Eric speak at the I think he did the keynote and he he's fixed that by now he speaks way too fast to actually take notes so we can't quote him anymore but in his speaking he said many many smart and resonant things that for me over the over the days but in that in that first speak he said those two things and I wrote them down not knowing how important they were actually going to be to me and then I stuck them to above my desk at native earth and then I stuck them above my desk at home and then I stuck them above my desk in Saskatoon and now I have sort of those two quotes everywhere but just going into native earth those two ideas have huge resonance because we as Aboriginal people have been so disappeared here for so long and I at this point I do have to take an instant to honor my colleagues who put the conference together and thought of me thought of including me in something so high-profile momentous important as a conversation like this with you but also in the whole conference because it's not been it's not been common to be remembered to be seen I mean it's you know the Dean Swift right the vision is the art of seeing things invisible and it's amazing to sort of it's like my cloak of invisibility just fell off and I'm here so those two things that Eric said that I was able to clip and put above my desk offered me a way to continue having faith in the work that I was doing at native earth where really we are sort of unearthing the dead and reconstructing history for a community whose history has been buried under a series of things the people who are the settlers who arrived and and the white papers and the residential school and aren't we tired of the residential school well yeah the last one closed 17 years ago so yeah we should be over it by now because of these are and and so unearthing these things and then looking at them in a way through art through a contemporary practice is hard work and sometimes I have to remember other people who do that hard work and how they do it and that I'm not alone and that I'm not it's not just me and it's not just Aboriginal people there are people all over the place doing the work that work and so those and also you know I wish I said that like it's just that thing of when you find the things that you when people have said something that I wish I'd said that I wish I'd written that and I wish I had said those things but they were a touchstone for me they continue to be a touchstone for me they're gonna have to continue because he spoke too fast this morning I don't know mark you better go um well I have nothing you've written a play recently called the unplugging that said in a post apocalyptic world there's two extraordinary women who've been exiled from their community and who are surviving in the wilderness and they have special abilities that the rest of this civilization doesn't have how did you write this play what was the spark for this there's many I had I wrote the unplugging it's the story was originally called two old women which Kugler had given me a book called two old women that was a retelling an Athabascan story by that Velma Wallace refold about two old women pre-contact who who are banished from their community in a time of need and have to go inside and learn relearn their traditional what they know their traditional knowledge in order to survive and they thrive and then the community comes back to them and ask them to rejoin the community and I don't really believe in this world so the only way that I could imagine us healing ourselves was to sort of wipe it clean and start over again so in the unplugging the two old women are not really old they're like 50 and 60 and what has happened is that the whites have gone out and not come back on and these two old women are banished because they're no longer a childbearing age and you know they're useless because I was also becoming my second cloak of invisibility I was becoming a woman of a certain age and and my mother died quite young and she was invisible because she was a little old Indian lady and so she was invisible and so that was something that I was working out about what our values as women after we are not mothers and and so that's where that story came from but I couldn't imagine us healing until I got rid of most of the world and then two old women in this case remember what they know how to trap rabbits where how to get water how to build community and and that's why I wrote the play and then miraculously Rachel Dider at the Arts Club champion the play and the arts that produced it last year in October and it was such a gift because it's the first time that I didn't have to market it or make a prop or raise the money or do any of those things it was really literally the first time a play of mine premiered with someone else's resources like that but it was a play it's a play that is that we did in a theater hence my you know desire to have a little more time in theaters like this with the lights and the control I like control over everything I didn't find it I mean it is it's a plan very proud of and I'm very grateful to have received and been able to do and is being published but it's a pretty traditional play in terms of theater right and one of the things that we've been talking about this weekend is risk what kind of a risk I mean it was a risk for the arts club so much of a risk actually that they asked me to change the title because they couldn't market to old women so they asked me to change the title so we changed the title to the outplugging which I don't know if that was easier to market or not total sense I know I'm not don't get me wrong I'm grateful however you know we've been talking about what we've seen that excites us I was excited by that for a number of reasons but like what have we seen what what kind of theater what are we what are we doing with our form you know have you seen anything is it like what's excited you in the theater when I asked you you said you gave me a bunch of books that you're reading about neuroscience oh yeah the project that you're doing with tectonic theater yeah I I've been starting I just only recently have gotten involved it's sort of a tangential way just informative stages Moises I have this relationship with Moises Kaufman it's just again very tangential I was invited to watch some early scenes that have been they're working on Andy and Anushka Parish members of the tectonic theater company in New York found it obviously by Moises Kaufman some other folks I attended this reading and then had a series of discussions with the playwrights and directors it's an interesting work Andy and Anushka Parish members of the company had a child in five years later five and a half years later to be precise discovered that the child had autism and it was a shock and as they talk about in the program notes in the conversations I've had with them it had a seismic effect that's an understatement and the scenes that I watched in the conversations that I've had with them and it's we've been having conversations with Hunter College and everything we may get involved in some ways and I as a dramaturg may certainly get involved just because of my past relationships with Moises and everything and some of the notes I've already been giving and talking about and passing on this book of David Eagleman's incognito which is an extraordinary book about the subconscious and he's neuroscientist and everything we had lots of discussions about the core of this piece one of the very first things I said watching this in the post-play discussion was and I didn't I didn't focus on oh isn't this interesting this child you know the victim I didn't focus on that my initial comment was I'm fascinated by and they had this term in the program the neuronal people and their seismic outsized responses it seems to me that's the event that's the event to try out that that's really interesting and the child you know is you know interesting and everything but it's that other thing that's that's particularly difficult and I my own personal background my own family had a my brother had a sister-in-law I grew up at a farming community out in South Dakota you know years ago I mean it was it was it was different that's all I can say I know I'm Mr. Yale but I came from another place I went to a London schoolhouse for eight years I was the only child in my class for eight years my aunt was my teacher tells you where I came from and my brother they had a child during the German measles outbreak and for three years they didn't know he was deaf the child and when they found out it created a seismic event in my family is all I can tell you I shared this with Andy and a new show and I said so I understand I understand I understand I understand and this play goes beyond being about autism it goes beyond a lot of those kinds of events in families and so I'm very interested in this play I'm also very interested in another play and this will seem like hardly what you would call fringe or cutting edge I saw this amazing little play at the Signature Theatre by Bill Irwin David Shiner called old hats I don't know if any of you saw this new vaudeville and again it's about is it is a lesson to me about don't judge don't judge don't judge you think oh Bill Irwin clown vaudeville and I went saw it and I knew somebody else in that Nellie Mackay who always you know she's a neo-feminist performer she always shows up with a little flower in her hair and everything a ukulele you know you know plays a piano and they great so Bill Irwin and David Shiner showed up on this big Signature Theatre stage glossy stage and everything but with Wendell Harrington's extraordinary or futuristic projections and my god did he take a stay take us on this amazing journey and I can describe it as it was a collision a surrealistic collision of vaudeville neo-feminism and and at one point so that you know here you have Nellie Mackay walking around playing a ukulele in singing a love song going I hope you still love me because if you don't I'll slit your throat and then on stage you got Bill Irwin and and David Shiner doing all of their vaudeville things and clown routines and suddenly these amazing projections of Wendell Harrington's will kick in and they'll suddenly disappear into a slit of a projection and that is reminiscent an echo of Buster Keaton Sherlock Junior where suddenly the central character you know Buster Keaton will suddenly walk down the aisle and disappear into the screen and and suddenly find himself in the surrealistic landscape in the past and and suddenly keep dropping you know into one nightmarish thing after another after another and where you your foot touches something and boom it's a trapdoor into another nightmarish realm another nightmarish realm another nightmarish realm and my god I thought I was just going to the signature theater and I love the signature theater but I didn't expect this I didn't expect so old hats a little vaudeville turn and and whatever the reviews said you know you're gonna love this it'll be sweet but look well I think they missed the point because I was seeing Sherlock Junior it talked about 1900 in 2013 I mean past present future all over the place is great that excited me that's so great that's so exciting I mean it what you what's you know tweaking for me as you're talking is we keep talking about change we keep talking about change and I'm I'm a little reluctant about you know let's not just throw everything out so that we can go forward to the new thing and one of the things that we've you know that I learned of working in in average practice in with some of the artists the amazing artists that I work is to accept and acknowledge that we bring it all to the room right and so there's turtle gals performance ensemble which existed for a decade the almost concurrent with my tenure at native Earth it wasn't my fault that they broke up but they did three really important astonishing shows which is one of the reasons that I have to write about them and the first was called the scrubbing project and they they brought everything to it in the shape of the of the show it's well it's it's impossible to explain the shape of the show is kind of a ceremony for the dead a feast for the dead you don't really know that unless you're me or Lisa or Tara unless you're indigenous really you can you can apprehend that over the course of the show but they brought everything to it like they're all breeds of some sort Jenny calls herself a fendian so she's finished and Aboriginal fendian Monique and Michelle both have Jewish heritage so they bring that to the room everybody brings everything to the room but they also brought vaudeville and they brought pow wow and they brought and there's a there's a moment near the end of the play where they're singing somewhere over the rainbow pow wow style and it's absolutely transcendent it's amazing and so it's it was and that was the first show out of the shoot when I came to native earth they were it was already in production and I was like wow okay so we're it all it all comes with us which of course it does I mean in indigenous worldview you know we do this at native earth like all those who came before and all those who come after and this is where you are and continue up right I'm here and I'm responsible to these people and to these people even if I don't have any of these these real like blood people but I still am responsible to every all of this and and part of that responsibility means bringing all of my stuff to the room and not putting it down which is one of the reasons why we fail so miserably in conservatory programs because what one of the things they ask you is to like be stripped away and then rebuilt into an actor thing and that won't work for us because it you we've been we've been being stripped away for 500 years I'm tired of being stripped away I need to hang on to all of my stuff and bring that into the work with me so hearing you talk about that is like yeah of course we bring vaudeville into the 21st century of course we bring our traditions and our practices all into the work with us and in that way do we become whole again in as a community in that way do we become whole again not just in this community but in this community and in this community too out there and that's the thing that I keep hearing in this conference all weekend is about connection connection making connection reconnecting and the book that I'm writing about native theater the epiphany I had is like it's medicine everything is medicine Joe Boyd had said I'm sorry Joseph Boyd if you're listening Joseph Boyd had said every act every trapline I walk every paddle every tea I have with my aunties all of these are acts of medicine and and I was lying in yoga going so if we're if all of these are acts of medicine then what we're doing in the theater is also these are also acts of medicine and therefore maybe I'll just call the book medicine shows like a spiritual chiropractic and I went oh right okay and then the definition of medicine in my culture is not about curing something it's about