 Hello everybody and welcome to Culture Hub at La Mama, it's my great, great honor to be for the first time in my life in this space where the rehearsals are taking place and to be sitting next to Dima Krimov and next to Tatyana, I'm a huge fan of course of Dmitriy's work and I've been exposed to it honestly only since he came to New York. About two years ago. So my name is Yasha Klots, sorry I forgot to say that. I teach at Hunter College, I do happen to teach this semester a course on Russian theater. And I should say that even in the past two years, not just this time around, it has been a totally different experience since Dima has been close by. And the students have seen his work and he has done a few things at Hunter as well and it's just not the same to teach Russian theater next to Dmitriy Krimov in New York. So it is my role as far as I understand to lead the conversation and ask questions on a range of topics that will perhaps inevitably these days touch on questions of freedom of speech, of course Dmitriy's career in this context, but not only. And my first question or topic that I would like to bring up is perhaps too broad for us to cover in less than an hour. But nevertheless, what you do is of course completely unique and I have a living proof of this. All of these students are the best proof of everything that lives the way they react to it. And still, when we talk about, let's call it Russian culture, outside of its home country, we have a context of at least a hundred years, but in this wide context that has lasted for more than a century across so many different historical milestones, we are used to thinking first of all of literature and much less of theater. Maybe because theater requires a physical stage, maybe because of any other reasons, because of just how it works, because it of course requires a life audience. And well, much more, many more technical dimensions right of it. So is there anybody perhaps in this wide context of Russian theater outside Russia in the course of a century that in any way serves you as any point of reference? Because once again, if you ask any writer, if there is one predecessor, of course the names would be dropping down immediately. Russian stage directors or theater makers, let's call them, no, not necessarily to America, to Western Europe, to Paris, to... This is a problem. A problem, definitely. And a really scary problem. Because there are no examples, there are no people that I can meet. And starting this path, not by my will, you know, I wasn't planning to do that. It scares. When we were at the T.L. University, and they decided to do Master Margarita as a workshop, and I can see the books that they worked on, I can see underlined passages, and they're trying to understand, they love the book. And when you tell them, but humans, and they laugh, maybe they don't understand the whole thing, all the dramatic, you know, the drama of this novel, they try to make it funny, you know, they think it's funny. But still, they're trying to read it and understand. With the theater, it's much more difficult. The writer needs to start with his energy, and his pen or his computer, and the paper, and here you go. But in the theater, you need to actually get the people to be energized by you, and people who speak different languages other than your language. For instance, I don't speak English really well, and so I am trying to get my energy flowing to them through somebody else. Well, sometimes Tanya, but something else, rather than the language. But in Prague, I don't have Tanya in Prague, and in Lithuania I don't have Tanya, and in Latvia I don't have Tanya. And every time I have a new troupe of actors, so it's probably easier in one spot, in one place, you probably will learn the language, finally, one language, or Tanya is always going to be here. But somehow you're going to get accustomed to the place, and the people who are here, and the locals will get accustomed to the way you're trying to communicate with them. If it's going to be for a long time, you know, American conditions of theater, it's not expected to be in one theater for a long time. Everything is very friendly, but in practice it's quite difficult to actually create theater here. So I think that's why I think that nobody among some Russians who immigrated, who left Russia, no matter where they wound up, I don't know, they say that there was this director, he was the uncle of a brother, he was related to Commissar Zhevsk as a great Russian actress. He was a director, and of course he worked at the same time when she was acting. She left at the beginning of the 20th century, and as they say, I heard that he was a well-respected director in America. Well, in Russia nobody knows about that, nobody. I never met a person who knew anything like him. Nobody. What did he do for America later? What place did he do? I don't know. You know, I actually tried to research people who were from Russian who were here, and who directed hero acting. I know there were some teachers here. There were people who were teaching Russian theater. But I don't know anything about Commissar Zhevsk. But I heard that he was one of the leading directors. I don't know. So it's a problem. It's a good question, actually. Not a good question, because there's no answer. It's a dangerous question. There aren't any. I have no base. You know, it's much easier to rely on somebody who is poor. You know, Van Gogh painted great paintings. Here you have colors, here you have colors. You know, get some flowers, put them in the pot, and so do something like Van Gogh, yeah? And everything would be clear, whether you are Van Gogh or not. It's very easy to understand how it works. And here in the theater, you know, there are so many converters. There are so many things that you need to overcome to get, you know, the language, the actors. For instance, I have great actors here right now. I'm rehearsing. And all this, you know, we managed to find good actors and will have good actors here. And one of our actors approached me yesterday and he says, and it wasn't a very good run-through yesterday. It was very, I don't know, something. I was trying to do tragedy all of a sudden. I'm watching it and it's total comedy. I don't understand what's happening. And I cannot explain to them that both things should be combined. And this actor is a very funny guy. He says, you know, I'm half Hungarian, half American. So half of my brain is Hungarian and half of my brain is American. And I remember in my family, when you were telling a joke, my father would laugh because he's Hungarian. And mom didn't understand anything. And he told me, and I will see how many Russians we have here. The boy went to get some bread and he was hit by the tram. And he lost his hand. And he comes back and mama asks him, where's your hand? He says, well, it's under the tram. And he said, well, go back, pick it up, so we can go to the doctor. He goes there, another one got chopped. So I started to laugh immediately. He said, my mom didn't understand it too. So what can you do? I don't know. There are very few, right? Very difficult to ask the next question after a joke like this. Reading Helen Shaw's piece in New Yorker, which I think came out in the spring, she makes a point about what facilitates your work, your theater makes it perhaps more accessible to the English-speaking audience. Namely, she speaks about the local theater of the Arctic, which is largely visual. It's not so heavily based on linguistic, cultural, verbal references, but it helps it. It's a fact that perhaps your career also began instead of an artist and as a set designer. Had yourself kind of some kind of free of that thought once you started working here, has it become more important for you initially, before you started directing? No. If you ask me what makes me believe that people will understand me, what will relate to what I'm doing. It's another good question, yes, because it's complicated. Why do you believe in something? Let's say in God. Do you believe in God? Let's say you believe in God, right? First of all, it's much more difficult without that belief. I just believe that it doesn't matter whether they're going to laugh at that joke about chopped hands or not laughing at that joke. We can come up with something and offer something. Is it visual or not visual? It's going to be humanistic. If we're not going to be afraid of these big words, it's going to be for humanity. We will go through the shell that is, you know, for foreigners, maybe we're foreign to them, but we will break through their shell and reach them. We can probably reach them with visual things, but anyway, I don't have any specific objectives that I'm going to use only visual approach to get my audience here. It's my style. It's my handwriting. It's very hard to describe your hand style. But, you know, yeah, it came out definitely from my roots of being an artist and stage designer, but I stopped painting a while ago. I don't know. I believe that it's possible to break that shell and reach the other audience. If I wouldn't have that belief, I wouldn't be able to do anything. You know, the first audience that I have are my actors who are audience. First, their audience, they come in and they listen to what I have to say or do. I'm going to get them to follow me. Because if they're just obeying me, they need to start believing in me in order to follow me. Because obedience is not enough. You know, I believe that in deep inside, all the people are very, very similar. And that's how you can reach them. Because they're basic things that are very, you know, that are humanistic, you know, that every human has them. Everybody laughs at something. Everybody cries because of something. Everybody is afraid of something. Everybody wants something. So, to be afraid to want and to laugh and to cry, it's almost approximately the same among everybody. So, maybe there is some little thing that makes it more understandable that joke about chopped hands to some people than other. But the main majority of the humankind is very similar. You know, I mean, you have pain, you have people scream because they're in pain and they scream the same in any country if they're in pain. It's exactly the same. And they probably all want love and memories. Memories, we're rehearsing a show. You know, I don't know. I don't know what this actress is going to do, but I don't know her memories. I'm giving her an example of my memories and I look into her eyes and I can see in her eyes that probably her memories are strong. I understand that she's trying to transform into her own memories in order to be able to do it. But it's amazing. I remember her eyes now. So, those are obvious things that unite everybody and that's how you get to the audience. If we're going to speak seriously, you know, God created a human and then split them into different regions and then created the same. So, you know, God created one thing and then it got split up because he wanted to punish humans. He decided to divide them into different ethnicities and nationalities. There is only one hope that we'll be able to break that shell and to find that similarity in everybody in the world. Because the feelings are pretty much the same if you go deep inside. The other theater is, in a sense, restoring that which God created. And, nevertheless, it is not too excluding the cherry orchard but the Wilma Theater, which I know was too much even for you. As a regular... The next thing that everyone saw here on this stage of Plamama was Anegin. Anegin in our own births, a very idiosyncratic adaptation, of course, of Pushkin's original Novel Inverse, which is not known to be the most, let's say, accessible text of Russian classics, which you nevertheless chose to experiment upon in the way that you did, including glossing, annotating, commenting on such arguably not necessarily universal phenomena as Russian themes. Which is explained as... I'm quoting Dmitri, it's very much like American blues, but no, it's worse because it's Russian. This is what makes it Russian. So, could you talk a little bit more just about how conscious was that choice of this work, of this production, as your first, let's say, entry on to this stage, and entry for, I guess, before the American audience, also with actors from most... Oh, I don't know. Who knows. It's a rather simple show. Four people appear and talk to the audience, you know. No real set. Very simple. I saw that for the first try, you know, we will collect enough money to have four actors on stage. That would be this easy thing. Especially one girl, I knew one girl from Yale, the actress. And I always thought that maybe I'll be able to work with her even when she was a student at Yale, so... And she agreed to do it. The rest was just the question of technique, you know, how you put it all together. But in reality... You know, that's what we do. Four people are trying to explain to American audience. And I was hoping that we will have American audience, not only in the Russians right here. You know, it's silly, you know, it's sort of silly to explain to the Russians about Eugene and Nega. But the whole basis for the show we're trying to explain to Americans in the foreign country how beautiful it used to be in our country. You know, my students at Gideon's, I used... I was touching on some questions about Soviet Union, about some things that used to be in Soviet Union because they were young. My Russian students didn't understand how it was in the Soviet Union. They had no clue. And right now, you know, explaining to Americans about spleen or some other things. You know, it's a despair, you know. We have Pushkin, who is impossible to translate, for some reason nobody can translate. Dostoevsky is well known. Pushkin is not well known. My son once tried to explain to me why. He told me that, you know, every country brings very specific cultural specificity of that country. For instance, tulips are from Holland. There's somewhere else probably that grows. But we know that tulips are from Holland are the best. For many years, everybody saw the ballet from Russia Bolshoi Theatre. Russia needs to bring the darkness into culture. And that's Dostoevsky. Why do you need Pushkin? Pushkin is light. You don't need Pushkin from Russian culture. I even found a phrase recently, even wrote it down. I think it was Pryshvin, Pryshvin the Russian, a Russian writer who has wonderful diaries. Mostly he wrote about nature. And the phrase is like this, the cow is very understandable. The horse is very understandable. Human being, understandable. But what is a squirrel? A squirrel is something extra. So in this, you know, when tulips are from Holland, Pushkin is extra from Russian culture. Because he is a very positive person. Positive Russian is an oxymoron. You know, those are the tulips that are growing somewhere, you know, in Australia. You can grow tulips in Australia. But you know, from Australia you need kangaroo, not tulips. You know, Australian tulips doesn't make any sense. How can you explain to Americans that Pushkin is lovely, that he is light. That he is amazing, that he is the highest lightest writer. The only hope is that you can explain it to children who don't know anything. Because if they are interested in something, they will just open their mouths and they will listen and they have no knowledge of what was previously. And so that is the path that we need to find for the children, the explanation. You know, try to explain it if I'm talking about ourselves. We were not only trying to explain Pushkin, we were trying to explain myself. You know, our language, our language. We were trying to present that menu as if it was the children's show that we were showing. What are we going to tell to the adults? Adults are not going to listen to our language. They have Hollywood, they have wonderful actors, everybody lives much better than we used to live. What language can we introduce? But we can talk to your children, you can bring your children and listen to what we are saying. So it was sort of a tricky show because it was for children, but we didn't mind if the adults were present. So, you know, it's very hard to announce that you're going to have children's show, but it will start at 7 p.m. Because here everything is sort of sorted out differently. In Moscow we had Eugene and Nick and many years ago this show. It was a children's show and we were happy if four children were present in the show. So, we'll be absolutely happy and the adults will listen to what we're going to tell the children. We were sort of pretending to be fools. We will talk to your children, but you can be present. But we're just talking to your children. Well, you don't know what to do with them, so you brought them to the theater, we're talking to them. You can be present and maybe, you know, you want to listen to what we have to say. That was not only presentation of Pushkin and Eugene and Nick, but also the language. We were sort of masking, you know, Pushkin and Russian language. We were pretending to tell you, you know, we're strange people trying to show something. If you like this, we might do something else later on. So, that was a little bit light sort of, but in some ways it was essentially necessary. Because we needed to say hello to the new audience. And that was sort of this. So, Pushkin really helped us. For someone else from about 50 years ago, by now, of Senevsky, who shocked the entire community of his fellow Russian-naming race in the 70s, very consciously, so of course, with his book, Strolls with Pushkin. When it was published, it created an uproar because how dare you Senevsky speak of Pushkin in such a casual, not to say absolutely obnoxious way as if Pushkin runs around on very thin bikes. Instead of standing firmly on the pedestal where he was put, of course, by, yeah, where he was put, probably essentially, and stayed there, thereafter, right? So, Pushkin is, of course, can be very different. Someone whom you enact in Anegin and our own world, whom Senevsky writes about, which is not the same, but also kind of more on that side, and Pushkin the official, for our everything. Was Senevsky's book in any way in your mind, on your mind, when you were choosing Anegin for your first book? You know, I'm happy to say that I was friends with Senevsky. Well, if I can say that, he was older, but he was older. And his wife, Maria Vasilyevna, they treated me and him as family. And we loved them, and we felt that they were, you know, we've been to their house, and they've been to our house, and they lived, when they were in Moscow, they stayed with us, and when I was a student. And, you know, I spent a lot of time reading that book when I was a student. And, of course, it's in my head. You said who I can rely on, I definitely can rely on Senevsky when I was doing this show. Because he created an amazing thing. Because, well, he wrote it when he was in camp. If you don't know about Senevsky, Senevsky, you know. You couldn't write a book when you were in camp. He was writing letters to his wife, and he would say, my dear Masha, I thought about it, and then he would write the whole chapter. And she knew, she would cut off, she would cut off my dear Masha, and she would put it in chapter after chapter in a book. And that's how he wrote the book, while he was still in camp. He was an amazing bullion, as we say. You know, of course, he printed his, you know, Abram Terz was his pseudonym and he was writing. And there were both adventurous people. And Pushkin was exactly like them, you know. If you read a lot of things about Pushkin, he was a real heroine. He was adventurous. He was a dash. You know, he was a real heroine. He was really adventurous. You know, he had this nail that was very, very long. You know, he had pants that were see-through and he didn't wear underpants. He was always shocking people. He was fond of shocking people. And not to mention that the wives of everybody, well, I don't want to talk about that. He was really, he was really very adventurous, to say the least. And somehow Sinyavsky discovered that in him, that there were companions in some way. In his first, in the first edition that Marivaselina published in Syntaxes in Paris, the cover was designed by... What's that called? Graphics. Shemekin. Shemekin did the cover. So there was the... Barbed wire. No, barbed wire. And Sinyavsky is walking with Pushkin. Sinyavsky has a beard and Pushkin has a cylinder and they're walking around and it's barbed wire around them and they are taking a walk. And this amazing spirit of freedom that you can see because the country, when Pushkin was alive, was exactly the same or even worse than it was when Sinyavsky was alive. They just, you know, we couldn't compare. They couldn't compare. But Ivan the Terrible, then Elizabeth, then Paul and everybody was scared one monster after another. And so Pushkin was the first dissident and it was, you know, Sinyavsky was dissident from the 1970s and this was... One of his head to the dissident who was the dissident in 19th century, the first one, who, you know, they fought the system with their humor and with their adventurous tricks and with being not like everybody else. When Sinyavsky says... When he... At his hearing, the person, he was criminal, you know, against the Soviet Union, it was during his hearing his last words, he said, my problem with Soviet power, with Soviet Union, is mainly aesthetic. I do not agree with the aesthetics of the Soviet Union. I am ready to cry when I say these words because I understand what he means by that. It means that those Russian bureaucratic faces that look like... I don't want to tell you what they look like, but they do look like. So it's a total different aesthetic. It's still... It's not even the aesthetics. When you keep killing all the best people and you're left with whatever is at the bottom, the worst examples of your country's faces, they change. And everything changes, and behavior changes, and the eyes change. Of course, of course, Sinyavsky is... Yes. Brave person and noble person. Highest level of... You know, you asked about Sinyavsky, you know, I'm not a great reader. Well, at least later, early in my life. But, you know, I approximately knew who he was. I went... When Daniel died, I went to the airport to pick up Sinyavsky. Daniel was his partner, and he was part in crime. They actually got seven or eight years in camps. So I went to pick him up at the airport. This old man comes out. It seems to be nice. I had no relation to him. And so we went to visit them. And then, at one point, unfortunately, to my shame, I opened his book. I don't even remember what book I opened. And I said, oh, my God, I am an idiot and a pastor. He's a wonderful writer. He's an amazing writer. He was sitting next to me. And I'm Andrey Donovich, why don't you have a little bit of wine? I'm sitting to a genius. He's an amazing writer. He's a Russian classical writer. I love the way he writes. So it's a long story. Another thing I want to ask, of course, is how you feel, how it feels to be directing things here in New York, on this continent, and be doing other work in Latvia and Lithuania, in Europe, for the different productions. If you could speak a little bit about, just about how it feels to be sort of between, you see geographically, in the Baltic phase, it's been very used to be, and very often out here in New York. How does this cultural geographically, perhaps it's linguistic and cultural. Difference is in the relationship between the three worlds that you're having. How does it feel? And in the audience, how do they react? Another good question. Another complicated, good question. Because there are some technical things that are not as interesting to me. But we need to consider them when we do this. For instance, I just opened a show in Riga in Latvia, Peter Pan. It's my version of Peter Pan. There are two scenes, Pushkin's duel. It's tragic and comic. Peter Pan explains to a little girl, do you know what the theater is? Oh, I'm going to show you what theater is. And he gives her examples of theater. And very often I used the work of my students and there was one girl who did wonderful creative tragic duel of Pushkin. And then my idea of my old idea comic duel. So we just need to show the girl that everything is possible in the theater. Pushkin is on stage of National Theater of Latvia in Riga. Here it's not even clear. Thank God for that. But this is a criminal offense in Latvia right now. It's criminal. And there are articles that the reviews came out and besides the fact that it's a good show and then we had positive reviews. We don't want to know about this wedding generally. That everybody pushed us to study and to learn about this imperialistic system which was Soviet Union and every Latvian had to learn about Pushkin. We detest that we're independent. We don't want to learn about Russian. And when you start reading in Russian and don't know translation into Latvian totally different, not a good translation probably. We tried to read it in Latvian. It doesn't sound good. Even the actress, I was giving him amazing Russian actress to listen to the way they read the poem and all that. It's just the rhyme. If you're reading Pushkin and the rhyme is so beautiful you don't need to listen during the night. I didn't think that I was creating a revolution. But they have their own problems in their own business. They're in Latvia and here in the United States they have their own problems. And in Czech Republic where I'm going to direct they have their own problems. Here if you say 1968 nobody would react to this and in Prague if you say 1968 everybody would react. Sometimes it's better not to touch the mud all because you won't be, you're going to drown. You will not be able to run away from it. You will drown, you will be sucked into it. And sometimes you feel ashamed. They're not your problems. And you're joking about something that is not painful to you but painful to other people. And that's not comfortable. And also there's lots of danger that traps everywhere. You need to understand either you're going to I want to get into that trap. But then you need to be ready that it's going to be painful. It's possible to do that. But you need to be prepared for that. I'm curious about the other side of your question. Yeah, really you have the audience. You have interests. You have some people know something and you're trying to understand what is this audience about. You need to feel. My students, I was talking to them we have this image that we usually discuss. We're working in Moscow. It's a Moscow image. Not only Moscow but it's built on Moscow electricity. You know, when you plug in the lamp, yeah? Sometimes you have three and sometimes you have two. And sometimes you have this gadget when you have a lot. Five or seven. It's a very complicated gadget. And you need to find the right position to get them all in. So that's you. We need to... What was... What did you do yesterday in the theater? What's interesting? What's the most... Who was on tour yesterday? Is Czech of... Boring. Is everybody fed up with it or maybe not? So all these seven things that you need to plug in, you need to feel and get it in. And that computer will work. But it depends on you and how you're going to feel it and how many those little things you need to know. How do you feel it? But it's difficult to do it in Moscow. While you're in Moscow, you're native and you know I never thought about what am I going to do next. It was very natural. I was just going to do another show. I don't know. In Israel, for instance. You know, I had a couple of suggestions from Israel. I'm suggesting one thing. And I thought that I was suggesting something very exciting and good. I was trying to do Peter Pan there. And they said, no, they would not understand that that's not for Israel. And I'm like, that's so silly, that's stupid. How can you tell me this? Not for Israel. Not for our country. If it's a good show, why isn't it for your country? But I'm a guest there. I don't understand what is necessary for that country. What is essential? What would be interesting? It's very difficult to understand. With all these circumstances, you know, the conflicts and the wars around and of course, you know, painful points, you know. It's very hard to identify. Sometimes one of my friends very experienced and very close friend of mine he said, why are you doing Russian? Take Greeks. You know, it's a sure thing. It's a sure thing, you know. Take Odysseus. You know, Minotaur, you know, Helen. I mean, you can do anything. You know, Sisyphus. I mean, you can do anything you want with the Greeks. Everything is clear and no confrontation. It happened many years ago. We don't have, you know, not one Greek will be upset with it. It's ancient Greece. They have other problems now. They're not going to get upset. They gave it to the world, the world, you know. They cut the umbilical cord from Greece, you know. The ancient Greece is way back there. Anybody can do it. It's property of the world. It's practically Shakespeare, but ten times more. Because Shakespeare is already, it belongs to the world. But, you know, the Brits, they can get upset, you know. If, you know, you can do sacrilege with the Greeks. Nobody will get upset. I think, I never done it, but I think. But the Brits can still take it. They can get upset. But when you take something that is closer, you start thinking, how is it going to affect? Who is going to take it personally? Who is going to get upset? Why will somebody will get offended? Or maybe you will inspire them and drive them to something. But, for instance, we saw a show about five years ago. Miller's Bridge. Ivo Van Hoola. View from the bridge. Yeah. View from the bridge by Arthur Miller. It was five years ago. Ivo Van Hoola was the director. You know, this is an old place from 1940, I think. He was very smart. He politically is always, you know, right there. It's the squirrel in the eye, as we say. You know, the skin of the squirrel is not destroyed. It's the perfect. He creates the view from the bridge as the Greek tragedy. Everybody is barefoot. There is sand on the floor. Here normal suits. But on the floor is sand. And then you have the rain out of blood. And everybody is like this. And this is the text from 1940s. And it's about the people who are basically, you know, it's a depression. Those people who lived during the era of American depression in 1930s, right? And then he brings them up to basically be Greek characters. He talks to Americans. He says, guys, you have ancient roots. You are related to ancient Greeks. You are not, you know, not those poor people under the bridge. They are philosophers from Greece. And the passions were, like, from Greek tragedies. You know, it's related to Agamemnon and Odysseus and everybody. What was it in Greek? It bullied us. That's what you had under the bridge there. And Americans take it not only as a good theater. He is a good director. But as that message to them, they call the sun and feel that they're proud of themselves. This is us. You know, we are the ancient Greeks and us. We're like this. We belong there. You know, this is the nation that is only 300 years. But we are ancient Greeks. And I felt today that I was an ancient Greek today. And you know, you talk to your wife and you say, I am an ancient Greek. Look, I was absolutely right. Look, he came from Holland and he tells us that we're ancient Greeks. I always felt like an ancient Greek. So this manipulation, it's a good meaning of that word. You need to have manipulation. You're manipulating with the audience. You're manipulating with your feelings and the feelings of the audience. You know, something that the locals feel. But you want to manipulate them and bring them to a level. And it's very scary to make a mistake if you don't know how to do that. Because you can wind up being a spam. And just, you know, they will just automatically put in the garbage bin and that's it. So it's very complicated. I don't remember what you asked, but it's a good question anyway. Whatever the question was, I'm glad we heard it. Thank you. Two more hours and we'll be free to go, right? For like one or two hours. Well, there's a huge difference. You know, at home I was, I wasn't thinking who was going to see it. I was just creating shows at home. You know, I was like, you know, when you're at home and you're making dinner for your family. I'm making pelmenyo, cutlets. I know that my family loves it and I know that they'll come home and they'll eat it. So that was absolutely calm. I was absolutely calm when I was directing there and opening the show. And here, of course, immediately you turn on this, you know, this algorithm that is in your head now that you have to calculate. I will repeat myself saying you don't have to pay attention to that and you can do whatever you want. You know, but it's the same as I'm crossing the street and I don't care that the cars are actually passing by. They can hit me. I have the right not to pay attention to the cars that are actually on the street. But they can actually hit me at one point, right? Because I'm not paying attention. But on the other hand, to wait for the green light like an idiot when it's an empty street, I don't want to do it, right? Because that's silly. So you need to decide for yourself. That car is far away. I have enough time to run. And it's raining. I'm going to run. It's a huge difference. Question about New York. Does New York inspire you to create something on stage? I have at least two ideas. You know, here the problem is that I can do one show a year, well, maybe maximum two, and that's practically impossible. You know, here you need to make money somehow and raise the money. You know, theater doesn't make money here, it turns out. And so I have to direct Peter Pan and Riga, so come back and try to do something here. So one show a year. And we just started. I don't have enough time to, like, I'm thinking now we're going to do this show that we're working on. And then I have this thing about New York. I have an idea about New York. You know, I'm sorry, some of you probably know. My son and I were, my son is much more advanced in computer science. And we were talking about AI. And he has, in his phone, there is an AI in his phone. And he said, wait, he pushed the button. And he asked the AI, he says, tell me, do you speak Russian? And some female voice says, yes, I do speak Russian. And so he gives me the phone. Ask her something. And I ask her, please tell me, what show should I direct to New York? So I'll be very successful. A tiny little pause. And she says, you know, New York people love when you tell them about them. If you're a foreigner, it will be very interesting to the audience in New York to see you. And she starts to tell me amazing, clever things. I'm looking at my son and saying, this is absolutely correct. And he says, 5% belong to me when you do it. And really, I was thinking it would be great to tell New Yorkers from the point of view of a foreigner. Because I don't know everything about New York. I don't know emotionally about it. But it would be interesting. Because even Brodsky had just read a book about Brodsky. Brodsky was writing in English, and he was very proud of that. And I discovered the memoirs that were written by members about him. And she was so skeptical about his English. And she writes that he would get very upset when people were trying to correct him in English. And he was very upset with all the Americans who were trying. So it's impossible unless you were born, you know, I don't know. Maybe Nabokov who spoke English from the time he was 2 or 3 years old. It's impossible. Of course New Yorkers fire me. Yes. You know, people who walk by, you know, you can just sit on the bench and watch them, and that's the whole show. But I think it's the eyes of the foreigner. You can even dig deeply, but it has to be a foreigner. You know, one of the best books that were written about Russia. It was semi-forbidden in Russia. I remember he was... I didn't read it. He said Russia is a bad country. When you ride from Russia abroad, all the Russians who are traveling with you, they're laughing. When you go back to Russia, all the Russians who are riding back, they're all very sad and don't want to talk to anybody. That's the possibility to do something like this. You know, clear eyes to see something interesting. Another question. Something for the Russian audience to direct something here. What's interesting is possible. It's not that it's not interesting. I don't have that much time or strength. I cannot do everything that is interesting for me. In Riga right now, I'm actually doing a show with Shulpan Hamatov and all the rest of the smoke. And another actor who is Maxim Suhanov, they're wonderful actors. You know, in Moscow, we didn't have time to connect and do something. I would do it not only in Russian. Chinese, they're amazing actors. Yeah, they're amazing artists. And here, I'm very happy when Russian... Russians come to our shows and the Russian audience is great. It's mine, you know, I understand. But I would like... What is the challenge here? You know, to get the connection, to see. I want to see the language that I have and my feelings and my veins and my aesthetics and my understanding what is beautiful, what is not. And the movement that I appreciate on stage. Is it possible to break the shell of people who are in totally different culture? For whom Mark Twain, we love Mark Twain and know about the United States. I was doing the show in, you know, in America. Two stories by Hemingway and Eugene O'Neill. Two scenes from Eugene O'Neill, from Desire under the Elms. There is not... It's an American... it's not American literature. A lot of people don't know who they are and it's not very popular among Americans. I didn't know that. You know, you need to find opportunities. Right now we don't have a suggestion from somebody. Let's do it in Russian and we'll... Yes, let's do it. Let's do it at Lincoln Center. It's going to be in Russian. I would do that because that would be interesting. Lincoln Center would be a great, not only prestige, but Americans would come to see the Russian culture. I would love to do that, but nobody is offering that. They have another program. Well, we will try to do something. What's the difference between theatrical society in the United States and Russia? Are you being welcomed here? Unfortunately, I don't know anything about institutions. I don't know them in Russian. I don't know them here. Actors who are working with me and I've chosen my actors here, they are very interested in our process. Well, some people cannot. I don't know. Some of them... I could never figure out the actors in theatrical society in Russia. I don't want to think about it. I want to have five people who are in the same boat with me and we will row and we are going to a very specific island that we all want to reach and we have... We will have... You know, we have to dig at that island and I believe that the treasures are buried on that island and we have to come back. We have to go to that island and we want to find those treasures on that island and actually take a boat back because on that island you only have treasures, but nothing is there. We need to bring the treasures back. So there are too many problems for me to think about some institutions and societies that are here. I think everything is very similar. I don't think... I think theatrical societies are very similar everywhere.