 apartments to stay in and but right now it's a place where we have to stay in so it's a it's a mixed blessing but you know we are lucky that most of us at least you know have have shelter have food have loved ones with it all if we are alone find a way to connect to the world it is again the time of corona it's getting bigger and bigger we thought over the summer was a bit more behind us it is looming like a dark cloud and it's coming closer on the horizon also it's election week it's a historic time it's a historic moment in the history of the United States over centuries this is a week that's coming up that will decide a lot of things and artists as we always say are part of change artists are the ones who are on the right side of history on the right side the complex struggle for freedom and the idea to encompass and work forth for the art for theater for performance all possible views you can look at it in different ways from here and there you all character speaks from different sides or expressions are open to for reflection and it's about what the people think who watch it and connect to it so it's a form of democratic participation in society with the hope to change to make a contribution it has never been more important it is terribly missing this is what I miss so much and but it's also a time now to reflect what do we need what is necessary what was wrong before what is the right thing to do and it's so hard to see all these questions we hear not to explain but we hear to explore and this week still we are in the second week of the Segal Center's prelude festival for over 15 years we invite New York artists and companies and only New York artists and companies was very unique to the city over decades has supported the field to show their work in progress and to talk about it and to see what is the meaning behind it what is it good for very simple questions and and again this is happening this week so with us here our fantastic prelude artist Yejulia Lowe and Hedina Igusti, Landrea Lecer and Stefania Buberela they are all with us here we said David Brun the curator to Landrea with Miranda Harmon he is curating the festival David is a dramaturg a critic and a doctoral candidate at Yale University of the School of Drama where he studies contemporary theater and performance but of course we think he really studies theater and performance at the prelude festival and with us so David tell us a little bit about what's behind the idea of this year's festival and why did you choose our guests sure thank you Frank you know the theme of this year's festival sites of revolution it's kind of the animating idea and Miranda Heyman my co-curator and I were interested in the ways that revolution was playing out obviously there was the kind of standard repertoire of revolution happening with the uprisings this summer along with various other protests you can also think of mutual aid as an you know integral part of that but we were also interested in ways that it was playing out between loved ones and in different time signatures so very brief moments also very long throws of history within family relationships but also histories of nations and in the case of Eugeo Lowe and her work this relationship between animals and humans which you're extremely interested in so that kind of thematically was really pulsing you know that was exciting our imaginations I would say you know it's what's great about the festival what's always been great about the festival is that it's been opportunity to bring together theater performance dance and interesting combinations you know past festivals have featured food as performance and virtual reality in addition to things that you might recognize under the rubric of theater or or dance theater or performance all of the artists we have gathered here today are are are really fascinating and exciting to me not only because they've you know found a way to use the digital platforms as a way to showcase the work but also because they're integrating and combining so many different forms so you know with Eugeo's work there's musical theater and animation it's really interesting battle between humans animals with Dina's work there's poetry you know she's a very accomplished poet and I've always been interested in the role of poetics and prosody and how that has informed theater from the very beginning so in some ways it's very new but also the most ancient part of of the art form you know Leandra works across various media using the gallery space in incredibly interesting layers with video but also performances in which Leandra is present in the performance so that's all assigned to me and Stefania works as both a director and a video designer and so I think designers really have a role to play in becoming more and more lead artists as theaters are experimenting with you know what type of work we might be able to showcase fund you know what kind of collaborations we might be able to build so even though as we've said on these talks before the theater industry is really at a very difficult time healthcare being maybe you know one of the most acute crises facing people who are working in the so-called field I've been very excited just by the four artists on this talk but also everyone in the festival and the way they're rethinking the form so maybe Frank we can we could do introductions people could tell a little about who they are in their project and maybe I'll recommend that we go in the order of when their work has shown or will show so we'll start with Dina and then Stefania their work has already been presented and is available and then Eugea and Leandra will follow them. Hi my name is Dina Agusti as David and Frank have mentioned before I am a poet and the author of Cut Woman which is published with Game of the Books and the work that I did for Prelude is a choreo poem of excerpts of that piece and the whole piece kind of centers around the concept of death and grieving and how do you navigate anticipated loss especially when it comes to a queer Muslim Indonesian body that is a survivor of female genital mutilation and you also performed the work right yeah yes yes I did. Stefania. Hi everyone I'm Stefania I'm in New York currently I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina and in Prelude I worked on una niña una familia un pueblo that is it's the beginning of an adaptation of my grandma's memories when she left Italy and during the Second World War and arrived to Argentina and created her whole life there so it's the beginning of an exploration of where do I meet my grandma as an immigrant so kind of going navigating the past and the present and it was the first time that we could start trying it out with actors so it was actually really helpful to understand where the story wants to go and how we want to keep on building the story and telling the story so yeah that was my piece at Prelude. Hi my name's Eugea I'm an actor, musician and a theater maker and I'm also a music director and accompanist what I'm showing for Prelude this time is it's a show called Animal Empire it's a work in progress it's about the fall of humans of human supremacy and about animals overtaking the human race in various forms so our pets attack us the zoo animals riot the wild animals invade the cities the insects come up on the ground all kinds of stuff that are totally plausible to happen but just haven't happened yet yeah and it's going to be eventually a digital short film using emojis and various other like phone technologies yeah Hi my name is Leandra Lassour based out of Jersey City, New Jersey my piece Passing Time with Grace specifically about kind of how we speak to ourselves how we kind of navigate this question of grace and what it means to accept grace what it means to show yourself grace show others grace so it's a piece that incorporates language it's a piece that incorporates movement in order to kind of process these kind of negative projections and feelings that deal with like how we process trauma and then also thinking about like the resolve and coming to terms with understanding one and understanding this image of what grace truly looks and feel like when you when you're at that point well it's a real variety of we're really covering I think contemporary theater and performance how does it feel for all of you to produce something where you're not it's not clear where it will be shown when in what form definitely most probably not designed for a screen but now you do it here in a time of corona maybe can share a bit about the how you how you're experiencing this moment oh I want to go um for me it's been an interesting process I think like especially for me as a poet initially I've always kind of worked within a digital space and also working in performance poetry a lot of how we navigate the medium or the poets navigate the medium is more so in the digital space because of digital publishing because of video so at first the idea of it not being in a tangible physical space was kind of daunting but I felt like it gave a lot more room to kind of play with not necessarily emulating physical space as much as possible but kind of delving into what is actually available so focusing more on like the importance of the internet in this work and focusing more on like the importance of like not being in a tangible physical space where people are actually watching you but interrogating the ways in which people watch you outside of a stage or some other reading or something along those lines to put for instance like your camera and do all these things I can also speak to to this as a video designer or projection designer um I'm generally used to thinking about video in relation to bodies on space now and but now we just see it through a screen and what I've been what I've been encountering lately is that as a video designer I come into a process into a rehearsal process much earlier like that we're used to in in what we used to do before so it's not that we only have a production meeting and we meet once a week I'm in rehearsal and even sometimes if depending on the project we're working with OBS at the moment and that is what can you explain OBS OBS what a world OBS is a software that we're currently using some of us there's a few other options but not many actually but OBS is one of them it's a software that allows us to live kind of live vj as we are capturing a zoom meeting so what we'll do is bring in the zoom meeting crop the zoom meeting and bring it into OBS and then what OBS is streaming the products and OBS will let us like change the background if actors have a green screen we can change it to so they can be in a space we want to choose we can put them together on the same space we can add text we can add effects we can add a few things um I've been like coming from programming Q-Lab and it's a door I'm like how do I do pre-writes on OBS this can't allow this it's another world it's a new world and we're getting used to it tech is weird tech it's like ah how I'm communicating I'm not seeing anyone it's a new world I I miss being in tech with all the people in the room can't wait to be there but yeah what's what the great thing about is is the designer I come in very early in the process and the video informs the story and the atmosphere as well as the actors inform the video which is not we're getting into tech and seeing it for the first time and in one week when we're gonna have trying to build this world which is actually so rewarding and I think the process changes completely I think for me uh in terms of where I you know how is it like not knowing where this project is going um I pretty much I think it was like earlier in maybe May or even early June where I just kind of ditched my old ideas that I had been working on and was like okay this is obviously gonna you know be happening for a while and so I made a list of like all my ideas and I looked at them I was like okay what which of these ideas would no one has to be touching um it can doesn't require lots of people around um it could maybe use some kind of creative audience seating or audience participation um and then from there I was like okay well this seems to be the project to work on now and it's like most feasible um and then I also made like a whole list of like things that I didn't just want to be like okay let's work with what we have but to like capitalize on the atmosphere now like okay so we're all stuck in this digital space like instead of just making do with it what could we possibly do that takes that further like makes use of it um and I think just during that period of time maybe like in May or April I was looking at my phone a lot and just realizing that like there's so much technology on our phone these days with like I think that was also when the whole TikTok thing was I don't even know what it you know I don't know what month was was everything um where you know like TikTok which I had never explored before but like there's so many filters on these apps like TikTok Instagram our MacBook like the photo booth even zoom there's like there's like so many filters options things that you can do and like I'm not a tech person at all so even like me learning how to use a filter is like oh a filter wow um but yeah it was like I was surprised you kind of realized that no one had really done a movie or I hadn't heard about a movie where you literally like use the an emojis on your phone like I'm like it's almost like you know the movie um emoji or something like there's some big Hollywood movie emoji like that could have been done using your iPhone technically on like a green screen um so that was what that's been my hit space for the past few months but it's definitely been like um the the end result was definitely meant for the digital world and not meant to be aged in any way yeah yeah I was going to add as um like thinking about my work in performance I've always thought about how the body responds to this idea of like the spectacle um and so for me I've always tried to create spaces uh where I'm creating this intimacy not with the audience necessarily but with myself and so I think in this time that we're in now um in this like digital landscape where everything now is digital like as creators we now have more agency and power over how our work is viewed and in what ways um the audience takes in what we're trying to say and how we're trying to say that and so for me it almost became natural to have this this kind of way or this mode of creating um because I was able to kind of you know have agency and control over how my body is is viewed and how my body is interacted within this kind of digital space and do you feel it it's it's working did you how did you what do you think about what you produce is a step in the process what did you learn I mean personally there's a lot of things that I've learned um I did learn that this could be definitely workshopped via via Zoom till we get into a space but I feel that I realized this piece is not meant to live in the digital world um I'm happy to to develop it through this world and start developing it but in my case at least uh yeah I'd rather wait for us to be able to convene in a rehearsal room once again you know have you done your have you done your your piece a cut woman as a performance on a stage the setting was that living room with the bed and all that is that no that was actually my first time doing it kind of more in like a more intimate setting so prior to cut woman I usually just read my poems or perform them on stage it's just myself and a microphone and there's just a huge audience and most of the time I can't see them so I'm not really concerned about myself so Leandra what you were saying before about feeling a sense of agency I kind of felt that more I usually feel that more on stage because oftentimes I'm not concerned about the audience but with this piece I felt the slight opposite where like while I did have agency I felt like I was more hyper aware of how I was being seen I think like while I was able to kind of control the ways in which I was being seen in terms of like I can add a filter when I need to I can blur things out if I want to I think doing it in an intimate setting as a living room and a bedroom made it feel more personal it made me tie back to where and why I wrote it which was oftentimes in my bedroom in a living room behind the computer screen analyzing everything that has happened and kind of writing in response to that so I kind of felt like the why and how I'm producing or how I'm presenting it kind of merged in a way and I think emotionally I had to step out of myself in a particular way where like while I know that I am performing I can't re-trigger myself in a way just because the settings feel intimate when I first wrote the pieces. Eugea were you going to speak earlier? Yeah in in response to like Stefania's work I saw her piece on the on YouTube on the on the website and like there were certain moments I know you said like this definitely belongs in the not digital space but there are certain moments I think especially the the giving birth scenes it's just funny to like be staring at your screen and then like you feel like you're on a call on a zoom call with someone who's giving birth um and then the person's like screaming there's just something like funny about that and I feel like we've seen people giving birth on stage and yeah there's definitely something interesting about about that yeah in terms of like for me I think about you know whether what I've noticed is that um in terms of you know working digitally and stuff like that I think I used to be like you know I think as theater people we're like oh live performance is like always the way to go um but I think over the course of the past few months I've kind of like seen the value of having digital medium as well because not only because um it makes you creative in different ways and you can do different things but just the fact that it's always there you have you have like at least one kind of art or piece or product that's always there um and can be watched or accessible at any time which I realize is very valuable and such a when weird things happen like this pandemic but yeah yeah I mean it is um many art historians those literary historians said when a new technology started um let's say Goethe and Schiller the writers they had vote was their feathers you know their quills on the inside you know horse carriages and then a typewriter came you know was changed the writing in a way that this was the entrance of women into the workforce you know and and all this sudden stuff got typed up and the first readers you know whether the type is and the man couldn't write the way anymore they were confused about because they were making fun of them Kafka went back from type writing actually you know to dictating and then um headed someone um um um um righted by hand that it was important to him and then the computer came up of stuff was seen on film and um so when or once here a friend told officer said if a traditional art encounters a new technology something radically changes these are the real changes and not you know artists in that sense the romantic genius idea who does it now we do have zoom we have this interruption um as a question to you do you feel uh this is uh that's just the time you would get over we would go back to where we're do you feel actually this is really radically changing the way we think or um it will be will be so I just to know how you at this moment experience that is that influencing you in the fundamental way or is it just a way to deal with a moment and then you will adapt going back to what we all were trying to do before that's a great question and I have a lot of mixed feelings in terms of why all like yes we all miss theater and we all miss like being in physical space I think this time and especially seeing theater and digital space kind of blew the theater industry wide open especially in terms of accessibility and in terms of agency and in terms of who gets to make art but who gets to see art like I know in the beginning of this time there were a lot of criticisms of theaters who suddenly had live streams and had free programs for things and performances that were usually like $50 plus and unless you were a student you weren't able to access that um I've been seeing kind of just other ways in which like people have like played with subscription systems in order to give like cheaper options but also accessibility in terms of well if you are hearing impaired how are you accommodating to that if you're visually impaired how are you designing things and how are you creating things in which like you are also accommodating to those people as well so I think whether or not we stay in this moment heavily depends on this administration and heavily depends on how we are as a whole community but I don't and while again we meant there are aspects of theater that I definitely miss and being on stage is great I don't want this to be this temporary moment where we're like okay we only did it because of this pandemic and then we're gone no we have to take away a lot of these things we have to take away like the role of classicism and the roles of accessibility and the roles of elitism that the theater industry unfortunately has had for years and kind of remove those systems as much as we can yeah something that happened while I was working on this project um it was that I worked with five actresses for in Argentina and one in Brazil well I'm in New York so that could have never happened before where I'm in New York and they are in another country thousands of kilometers away um so that was kind of in like I was like surprised of that is even possible when I could have never imagined it before um I do you know I want to go back to the theater um don't like as Dana was saying I'm like yeah true I don't want this to go by it's time to go by and it's like oh we're we're we're here till we get there I do think that great things are coming out from this moment we're going through and there's a lot of things that I'm learning or exploring that I would have never explored before and I think they will translate in a way to what's going to come in the future yeah I mean that's it's it will be it will be it's a big question I think it was the American dancer Louis Fuller I think she was in 1880 or whatever she danced in Paris a classical dance but she had heard of light there were electric light and she had how about putting a filter as Julia just now said you know what I put blue in front of it so she got some guy to do some cobalt you know uh sitting on a on a piece of glass and she held I think four neat patterns on it and people went crazy she did her dance and white rocks everybody's in but all of a sudden she had 20 colors and something changed you know and she also you know helped to guide you know people into into something that's coming and that will be coming in and the question is you know what will what will happen what will be the adaptations of it you know the first cars looked like horse carriages you know but it was not about it you know and so the real question is what will what will this moment do David you as a curator do you detect a change do you feel something truly different is happening at the moment I'm optimistic about well as I've said on other talks but I'll repeat here I'm very optimistic about the artistry and the vision and resourcefulness and willingness to collaborate and also willingness to adapt by artists I mean that festival if it's anything I you know I'll speak for myself but I feel like Miranda would support this well it's a love letter to that kind of generosity creativity and labor that I see everywhere in artists to me it's about the industries whether it's the theater industry or the art world so-called you know that are threatening the the art in some ways and or the ability for art to be a place where people can gather freely and of course the the burden of that tension or the burden of those failures falls disproportionately on black people indigenous people people of color gender non-conforming people we know these systemic injustices and they're they're exacerbated I'm very hopeful that you know I've been in New York in and around New York for about 10 years as I said we had a panel about the gala as an idea as a site that can has a tendency to amplify those injustices and inequities one of the panelists said it had the feeling of a caste system which I think is apt I mean the fact that three theater professionals very established in our field two of them you know embedded in and working at very important institutions so who are up in the public we're on a public panel and we're talking about decolonizing wealth that was to me unimaginable 10 years ago you know and I mean I remember when Oscar Eustis went on ok radio which was a podcast the collective the nature of Oklahoma hosted and said publicly when they were doing the renovations for the public theater lobby I need a space where rich people can go and I mean that that would just be grounds for termination maybe at this point um certainly a kind of reckoning so I've been really inspired by how artists have self organized in the context of the theater with we see white American theater that this wasn't sanctioned by a collective or body it was a grassroots movement that was very inspiring as well as the theater partnerships with mutual aid organizations that some of which we featured you know earlier in the festival so again I'm I'm optimistic about art I'm less optimistic about the lack of health care or the difficulty of getting health care again I sound like a broken record but this is incredibly important to me um not only personally but but for the entire field um I have a question for the people on the call kind of building off of this that Frank asked yesterday that I thought was really um interesting responses but all of us kind of in some ways intersect with New York City um and I'm curious what people's thoughts are about the future of the city obviously it seems like every day in box news they're talking about how terrible it is um so there's a certain need to push back against that but there's also real cause for concern uh given you know that cost of living doesn't seem to be dropping down drastically um you know I'll just say that one of my hopes would be that they would turn class B and class C office space which is not first floor office space uh the city should buy it they should do some small renovations to soundproof it and give it to artists because people are not going back to those offices they're just going to sit there so I think and this was a proposal by a group several years ago the center for an urban future so I'm just I'm cosplaying them at the moment I mean but that'd be my great hope is that we could solve this space problem because it was crippling before it doesn't seem to be changing honestly I know we can't gather now but that'd be my greatest hope that studio space would just be wide open to to anyone who wanted to use it but I'd love to hear from the panel of course what are your thoughts on the future of New York City as a arts ecosystem and as a home and maybe um Leandra I'd actually be curious to hear from you because you have um you've worked in in maybe the gallery context and it seems to me like galleries are coming back in a certain way obviously the major museums are open with restrictions and things but I've seen news of smaller galleries I'm not sure if microscope's open but um you know I'm curious maybe from someone who works outside the traditional theater ecosystem what your thoughts are yeah no I think that's a great question David um I mean in terms of just the arts in general galleries like you know mid-range galleries larger galleries smaller galleries um I think all with all of them are struggling um to try to figure out ways to engage in ways to get people to come see work in person um so they've been heavily reliant right now on this kind of digital landscape um but I think in in regards to the city and where the city's at and my thoughts on that um I'm not sure I mean for me sometimes some days I feel like it's very grim in terms of the outlook and on other days it seems like uh the the way that we can go is more positive um and I think that's because it depends on the people of the city and how we kind of like rethink space and rethink you know what we can do with the the space that we have what we can do within space in the parameters of of what's happening right now in the world um and so I think that's right why right now artists are so important to that thought process and to like creatively rethinking like what is space like how do we you know interpret space like how do we like recreate space but also um how do we build and make space out of no space um and so that's why for me this kind of move into this digital space our digital landscape um has been important and has been something that I feel that I felt has been really really key in like organizing but also a key in just like providing a voice for people who have sometimes been voiceless because they haven't had the actual space to do what they need to um so that's where the positive comes in for me in thinking about that and thinking about how artists are kind of taking the charge in the ways that we're thinking about future in the ways we're thinking about space and also thinking thinking about space now that I hadn't thought about it there was this was possible to make my piece because we had a space that actors had their own space to rehearse in maybe if if I if they didn't have their own space and we were rehearsing each one in their house I wouldn't have been able to start developing this piece at all because after all I need to to to eat and pay rent so I'm always working on projects that will hire me as a video designer and sometimes like directing was left to the side because maybe the projects I would love to to self like self-produce or direct I don't have time because I need to be working on other stuff to to pay rent and to eat so this actually has worked because there was a space and yes this is crazy now I hadn't thought about that before um I guess in response to David and like his you sound rather optimistic about space going forward and I'm just like not that optimistic I mean um for me I used to use spaceworks quite a lot so they have I don't know if people have used spaceworks so they have um studio space in Long Island City in Brooklyn a few spaces in Brooklyn and I think they have some they kind of regulate some space at Averins Art Center as well and they were I think one of the cheapest ones is like $10 an hour they had music rooms for $10 an hour it was like there was a drum set there was you know guitars bass you could you know it was great and I think they closed in June July or June so I was really sad to hear that and I mean I think that for me kind of uh indicates where you know pretty much I expect that getting spaces and artists is always going to be difficult um yeah so not too optimistic about that yeah I feel like with the question of space and I'm coming from us from the place of not only being an artist that is in New York but someone who was born and raised in New York and has been displaced and has been affected by gentrification due to art washing and expansion of arts industries and arts institutions so when we interrogate space and when we talk about space I think while yes there needs to be room for artists in order to create art we have to also be mindful of space for who and be mindful of who is the space for is it space for artistly artists that are going to raise prices and displace black and brown people of color who've lived here for years or is it going to be a space where it is actually going to be shared with other aspects of the community because I think like I'm sorry I'm getting slightly emotional about it but I think it is important for there to be art spaces but I think as artists who always want to be on the right side of history we have to talk about the ways in which we've been wrong and also talk about how when we've talked about space like what does it mean and who and which artists and for who right like yes I'm a theater artist but also when I was 12 I was evicted because NYU created an expansion of their theater program you know like so I think I do have some hope for New York in terms of repurposing and reusing space but I think as artists we have to really interrogate the implications of creating spaces and repurposing spaces and what does it mean for there to have been no space and what does it mean for there to be an empty space especially regards to housing. Yeah I think perhaps this is also something of the new times we do live and that we ask such questions. I remember Cami from the Laundromat projects that we produce and produce so many things we never ask each other how are you doing what's going on and as you said we create spaces but perhaps we didn't fully ask well what about the kid that has been displaced we kind of think they're talking about it but we didn't really ask and we didn't really listen and I think when people are also about you know about diversification of institution because yes it's important but if we really listen to what people were saying what what are we going to change they hope is that this this is a different moment so my question to all of you is do you see your art as a practice as an aesthetic practice as a practice that you know explores century old pursuit of mankind of color as form connections giving meaning do you also see it strongly also as a political work you know is it part of what for social change is it in between or or do you separate these I say well I'm delivering mask I'm delivering mask if I do apply I'll do apply so what are your thoughts on your work how do you put this puzzle together everybody else to think truly think about how is it for you individually I actually have a response to that because I'm going off of what Dana said I appreciate those words so much because I think you know as artists as creators like we can't just think about the aesthetic think about the creation of work we have to go a step further and think about how that work then changes the way that people outside of the arts are looking at the things or the world and the way that things are happening in the world around us and that goes into thinking about community and the way in which your work engages community but also the way in which your work prioritizes community and so you know within my work I'm speaking to my community I'm speaking to black queer women but I'm also thinking about the ways in which my work can support black queer women and those communities and and make sure that I'm making space not just for myself as an artist to create but making space for other voices to be heard that are just regular people who are not artists you know and who are going through daily struggles and having to deal with those struggles alone most of the time and so I think as artists like especially right now in the year 2020 a lot of people are kind of changing the dynamics of their practice and the way that they're thinking about the creation of work because it's it's beyond just the creation of work right now it's it's it's mostly about working to to change like systems um and and make these demands and and I think as artists and creators we have that power to really put a spotlight on a lot of the issues that are happening and and actually make those demands and and and kind of create this catalyst for change um just like I I also forgot to mention that in terms of like space in the city I am also in you know despite like like this space work that I mentioned being shut down um I'm also in a studio share a music studio share in a really really old building right on 8th avenue it's like really close to poor authority I think it's been there since like the 1940s 1950s like the the elevator barely works but it's an amazing building it's I think eight floors of six or seven studios in each floor and they're all music studios it's very drummer heavy because of all the drummers who can practice in the city but it's an amazing building I have no idea who owns this but I'm pretty sure that the rent for each room is stabilized um but yeah I have no idea who owns this building I I hope it continues to exist um yeah so that's definitely a contradiction to like a lot of the newer spaces that I've seen and been in um in response to whether I see like art or more especially my art as like more of an aesthetic purely thing or a political thing I I've thought about this question quite a bit and especially in the past few months as well and I think I just came to the conclusion that um well firstly I just think my forte or like my strength is not in being overly political like even if I tried to be I just would not know how to be I just isn't just not not in me I do not know how to make overly political art and then the second thing was that um I kind of realized that I think all art is political like whatever I say like if I do a show like um a story about a boy who wants to go get a fish he goes to the river he can't get a fish like that that is political you could meet that in a political sense so I feel like even without me trying to make something political it's going to be political anyway and and I think that the third thing that um I feel most strongly about is that for me I feel like a lot of my friends or the theater world is kind of very I would almost say like we kind of all believe the same things already very much like speaking back to like the whole 2016 like the whole echo chamber idea where like we're all we all thought you know everyone thinks the same way but it was just that we were all in the same bubble and so for me I think like let's say I want to try to convince someone that the sky is blue I would not like you know make a piece called the sky is blue because then people who think the sky is yellow would be like you you're crazy and like be like bye um I might make a piece about colors of the rainbow and then you know I could you know potentially invite this person to be like hey here's a piece about colors of the rainbow it has nothing to do with the color of the sky um and in that sense I feel like I could reach people who do not necessarily agree or are even open to anything that I personally believe in yes Dina it's I don't think my art is an entirely aesthetic thing and I think it's just it's mainly because of the ways in which I navigate art especially as someone who is Southeast Asian as someone who is Muslim um and talks about those things it's hard for it to not be political of course there is an aesthetic to it there's a beauty to it but I think also at the same time especially as a poet choosing what I get to portray choosing what I aestheticize choosing what I romanticize similar to what you just said before like that is also political especially as someone like for me I'm diasporic I'm first-generation like if I talk about my mother or if I talk about my aunt like I have to also be aware that while I wrote aestheticize them in a particular way that also to some degree I don't want to say removes their agency but I'm the main vessel and I have to acknowledge the privileges that I have in doing that as an artist but also kind of as someone who is born and raised in America and like understanding that like because I'm under this colonial empire like that is always going to be kind of prioritized so in short I think it's a combination of both but I think I have to be very mindful on in the factors when it is aesthetic yeah um it's it's also a question I ask myself all the time and I think I don't have a clear answer to it yet I think it's a it's a combination as well it's it's kind of an opportunity to have a conversation where the other person doesn't respond though so it's kind of like weird but there is there is a a desire for change and a desire to to tell story that okay there's something deeper within it yeah those are my thoughts yeah it's a it's a it's a really significant question one of the things we had Florian Maltzaker was a German curator and he wrote a book currently on the on the political and he said what he detects as the most significant change is that is about the how you do your work he said it used to be just the content you know let's say it is something about child soldiers in Africa about the destruction of an environment through an oil company and it was good enough but still it was written by one playwright directed by a director who's a you know a dictatorial style you know who in the world we live in now would look a very and so it's a hierarchical presentation was in a machine of a theater that actually represents the system especially in America it's privately owned it's to make as much money as possible that you know in worldwide at least what's successful is good what's not successful is not good as if in a bookstore you would only have books who are top 10 books you know or the top 20 and you wouldn't have the other ones available and so he says that you know the way you create work in ensemble he said there's a tendency that there's ensembles who work together even two directors three directors now curatorial things are two or three people that there's a distribution of the text where actors can like when they polish at the folks where you can choose what part they want or they write something on it and he says if I come in as the director and they tell them what to do I'm paid more I create a lead character I lead the second and the third I am reproducing structures we actually are opposed it and my entire play is against it but I do the same on stage so do you feel or do you use is that part of your thinking the way you produce your work so when you implement it all the stuff we don't so do you are you rethinking that is it also is that something you can say yes that's true or reducing it's not part of your part of not not part of your consideration and say we just the what I put out is significant and and I feel like every day I'm rethinking it I think I think in that similar way in terms of like what does it mean to be an artist that is against certain structures but then also implementing other structures it's tricky and I think while like I'm mainly mostly in poetry like you see it in the systems too like in the poetry room for instance like there's a lot of conversations about tokenism and like the roles in which like elitism and classism play into play into the practice right so for me as a writer but also kind of delving a little bit into theater sometimes I wonder like what does it mean to kind of engage in art itself and specifically what does it mean to engage in art in America and especially like as a person of color in terms of what does it mean to always be hurt by different traumas and systemic things but also not reenacting them but still talking about them certain ways and like what does it mean for instance too for and a lot of our institutions and a lot of artistic structures for us to be against the system and the social systems that are in place but then also oftentimes for youth writers like we kind of force youth the IPOC to kind of remind their trauma in hopes that like they will get a footing or set foot into these industries and in these practices and then another thing of what does it mean whenever I do engage in trauma at all what systems are in place in order for me to write these poems what systems are in place and what are the things that have happened prior before me in terms of generationally what wars have occurred what forms of colonialism have occurred what roles of classism and elitism have happened in order for me to like not only just be a writer and have the privilege of being a writer but also at the same time like being able to be to write about these things but being seen not as a spokesperson but as someone where it's like okay if she says it then it must be true so that's something I've kind of been interrogating in terms of like the privileges of like what it means to be an artist and rethinking how much authority an artist has in a particular sense. Yeah I also think a hundred percent in collaboration I'm a fan of collaboration and the ideal world for this project in terms of keep on developing it would be like take me to a house of state with a dramaturg a playwright five actresses a video designer a sound designer and we'll create from the beginning of it all together and as a director I can facilitate ideas and like organize in a way that we can try different things but then the best one will remain and it won't be my idea it won't be maybe the actor's idea maybe it's the sound designer's idea but we've all created this world together but of course that is like I can dream about it now how do I actually get the budget to do this you know so those are things that's beautiful to dream about it but is it possible is this possible but yeah collaboration a hundred percent I totally yeah I definitely work in the same way like I love collaborating um I'm definitely still and I've been on both sides like as a music director of an art accompanist where I'm like kind of serving someone else's vision and composing or arranging according to what someone else wants and then also been on the other side where I'm like okay this is the idea but I've also kind of struggled or I'm still learning how to be like this is the idea let's bring in a group of people to kind of fill in make this idea of this universe larger or to kind of fill in that little universe or tie in something that I did not think could be tied in and then me having to go okay now stop this is where we are going like for this project or like this project at this time this is this is what we're doing um it's something that I'm definitely learning and I guess going back to like if I'm going to work in a different way when whenever this thing is over um so two of my actors are also not in New York um but I mean I it's great that we could work on this but I definitely think that I mean as actors and like people train to like you know read body language and if we're very sensitive to body language like it's just completely different um when you're working with someone and all you see is like this and you don't even know how tall the person is or like you know where their feet are like are their feet pointing towards you are they like pointing towards the door like I want to leave I hate you it's like you can't you know it's it's so much better to just be in the room and I feel like we're all great and already doing that so like having to train yourself to be like let's try and read this person's mood from like what's in the background is like just does not work for me so going forward like I don't think I'll be collaborating digitally um but there have also been instances where I've like kind of composed music for a friend's dance film and that worked totally smoothly like I guess also because you know I'm composing off something that was made for the screen and that collaboration is not so just it doesn't need such a direct sensitive collaboration yeah um I was just going to add about uh the idea that Dina brought up about challenging or privilege and being able to challenge that I think like you have to go through this process of continuously checking yourself and making sure that you're not taking too much authority over like the creation of something I mean I think a lot about like my work it's always like putting myself in front of the camera and becoming the subject and then that process like going through this process of kind of questioning my own authority over like my own feelings my own body and like leaning more so into this vulnerable state allows this kind of connection with others and that can become like a collaborative process but also thinking about in this idea of like challenging privilege your own privilege and how you kind of fit into like certain systems and how you can reciprocate or perpetuate certain systems of oppression um thinking about like challenging standards challenging the way that you think of things um I've been having this constant conversation about reclamation versus just claiming um and thinking about this idea of not necessarily centering whiteness and thinking about reclaiming a story or a narrative from um the starting point of whiteness but thinking about just claiming what our pretty is you know and thinking about my identity as a black woman claiming that and thinking about the ways in which blackness has always been a starting point and will be be continuously a point of reference forever um and so like constantly grappling with that I feel like that's always been a part of my process and I've been doing more work into letting more people into that process of questioning um because I think when people understand like as an artist it's not just about your end product it's about kind of what you're doing in the process of creating that they can see that like the same things that I'm struggling with and dealing with in this process of creating are similar to maybe what someone is dealing with on a regular everyday basis um so I think that's that's an important part of just you know being vulnerable and allowing people in to kind of what you're doing and what you're thinking and what you're creating yeah I think um and in terms of like I think this was so funny that you know how there's like quarantine bubbles now and I think like I was absurd I you know I was reading about this and it kind of I thought was funny because there's like a parallel between like you know what Stefania was saying like getting a group of artists going to an upstate house and like making work um that seems like a strange parallel to like oh let's all quarantine ourselves and um you know only interact with these people and I think it was I think Brian Brooks um his dance company is currently doing that are like they have just done that I think at Jacob's pillow something like that where their whole company has been you know both it's almost like a forest I guess a forest like arts residency where you're only where you can only interact with your fellow artists not because uh it's an arts residency but because you can bring the illness in to the rest of the company which I think there's just something funny there and also speaking to the point about like um you know accessibility I think I think there was a push kind of a few months ago um of like the critics at New York Times being kind of all the same you know the same kind of profile the same kind of people and I used to think that like these people just like because I I don't because I personally don't read the New York Times to tell me what theater to what show to go see um so I kind of thought oh I mean I don't really care but then I started to hear from directors um and friends they were like I'm so concerned that my show is gonna be like misunderstood or like they're not gonna get it and I'm like and these director friends are like and this will actually affect my career in a big way and I and I never realized that and yeah and I think they still from what I heard last um I don't think anything has changed um on that front so yeah yeah so um this is uh truly I think in a way taking the temperature before we come to an end maybe all of you say um I I know this is a project in development and it's not even done but what else do you have a cooking on your stove I'm sure our our um audiences you know will be will be interested you know maybe mention the website we're very confined by what are your project and then also I would like to hear what inspires you at the moment like do you listen to music is there a poet you read is there a novel or is there what what including you daily what what do you say well this give me a moment of enlightenment or something so both so what are you working on what's inspiring you or are other artists yeah maybe you'll start Stefania and what do you think um it's been long weeks of editing videos so at the moment I was like I don't know what is inspiring me I just I'm on the computer 24 hours but yeah um I think the projects I'm working on at the moment inspire me I'm I'm doing video design for an experimental uncle Vanya at Fordham and going on to a project end of December um doing some video design as well so I mainly I'm on the computer too many hours editing just like the silence of going to my bed and just being like okay now shut down it doesn't but I think my bed inspires me good yeah it's a corona statement yeah another project that I've been working on um it's an old idea that I've had that I never thought that I thought I would work on three years later or something because it's so expensive to do but then I thought doing this time is kind of relevant um it's uh no it's a theater show with no actors um it's like lights moving across furniture furniture moving across the stage and music driving the whole thing it's about an artist trapped in her apartment doing the Spanish flu and um having no access to clients she paints a self-portrait for the first time I would never have worked on this now because it's so expensive because it's all like you know set pieces and puppetry and stuff like that but um I also wanted to have only one audience member in like a 200 seat theater to highlight that element of loneliness and just um you know the work of art which is the title um but so it seems like it might be relevant now um so I am working on it now um oh in terms of what inspires me now um I've been listening to a lot of music because I've been composing music for this uh prelude piece I think one song that I've been thinking about a lot in particular is Benjamin Clementine's Phantom of Leopoldville um I love his songs it's a great jump blend of genre I love him as an artist I think he's so good um and very interesting um and I guess similar to Stefania I've I think I've also just been inspired in moments where I forced myself to sit there and not think about not be doing something because I think I think everyone is kind of like in a state of elevated stress these days and so it's easy to just be like just engage me in something anything you know I don't want to have to think about anything um but when you actually when I actually forced myself to be like okay just like stop and do nothing um that has been when kind of I you know more ideas of value come to mind for me yeah David um I'll go I'll go last because I want to close I would need to say some things about the festival overall you can do that afterwards oh well one of the things I'm inspired by a couple things I'll throw some couple I mean the last um six months I've really been thinking about General Baker who was uh this kind of formative figure in the what's often called the black radical tradition he was an organizer in based in Detroit and he he worked in in a Dodge car plant and he led a series of wild cat strikes which are you know you don't have the permission to union you just leave you can think of the MBA strike as a kind of version of a wild cat strike and he saw I mean I'm totally stealing it from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney these two very great uh critics and thinkers about various forms of systemic injustice and you know General Baker saw no contradict contradiction in working for Dodge and trying to bring down Dodge and because and part of it was because he liked being around workers and for me you know I've felt a lot of contradiction you know obviously of course informed by my own position I sit at almost every vector of privilege and I need to take responsibility for that but I I have I've grown comfortable sitting in the contradiction that I want to bring down or completely rebuild the theater industry while at the same time working and benefiting from that industry and part of it because I want to be with artists and arts workers including everyone on this call so General Baker's example he passed away several years ago but he he has loomed large in my imaginary by way of Moten and Harney so that's been really inspiring to me over the last six or seven months yeah thank you Dina okay in terms of projects I'm working on a docu theater slash docu memory comic book thing that centers around a particular high school in Brooklyn and kind of just the roles in which race and class like played into this particular school I can't necessarily say the name at the moment um in terms of by I guess ongoing and I don't know if I'm obnoxious for doing this to slowly bring up my book but you could buy it spd don't buy that amazon um in terms of what I'm inspired by I've been listening to a lot of music but specifically I've been like listening to 2000s pop music and r&b music and I feel like I feel like lately there's been a like an interest in like how great of a decade that was early 2000s but I feel like no one really talks about how unique it was in terms of millennium pink and like um baggy pants and like just the style and the aesthetic of it and like clear transparent technology so I've just been really excited because like when I was younger I really wanted to dress like that but also like I just feel like it puts me in a really great time and it also like I also feel like people don't talk enough about how the early 2000s was like a decade of remixing in the best way so I feel like it's inspired by art in ways of like trying to figure out ways of repurposing different things and repurposing different narratives and things like that but also fashion you know yeah so maybe it's time for you to write a play or a screenplay like my wonderful londonette to capture what you say of the 2000 at the historical decade that's already so far far behind us it's stunning so really um thank you all and it's a significant important discussion you know also about the political and on one hand yes all artists political but some artists do political art you know so if we say everything is sometimes we take also something away from them who dedicatedly and very clearly say this is political so we but a boast is true you know I'm saying every uttering and statement you know of course by definition them is and I I have to say I'm stunned you know by all of you and the engagement you know the geos as well I didn't know about the emojis I found out but actually I could do a Hollywood film you know that you find that out that Stefania has an actor in Argentina go down the step in your video you know and the one from whatever Brazil comes up and they look in the same space but they are together so something is happening and Dina who you know created that chamber piece in a way it is you know in a colonial heavy bed you know where she talks about such the most private intimate moments but they are so so political also so connected to history but as well as to to to to know we are and and Landra's work so and how to reflect on that and to engage with community so I think it's a real kaleidoscope and we really have to listen closely what everybody said here and because there is something in there that might save us that will help us to understand the world and also to engage in whatever they think about you know it's also we should ask us those questions how have we done how do we produce but how are we with our neighbors how you know how do we listen to stories so we understand what perhaps we might convey in messages and neighborhoods we move in and in all of it so really um thank you this was a very significant talk that was an honor to have you all with us and I hope that festival also gave you a moment in time to you know create something show it and then you go on to the next one that the process is of significance because as some say the goal lies in the way so sometimes what you want to do is is in between what you want to achieve as you know it's the opposite so David tell us what's happening at prelo today and and and everything and what do you think of the festival um oh i want to give one thing leonard did you get a chance to talk about your inspiration i can't remember if we touched you or if i blanked out thinking about what i was going to say no i didn't get a chance to oh sorry yeah we're right in line but go ahead i want to hear it's it's totally fine um i want to also plug for uh dana you should follow by shon brown who's totally into the 2000s movement and it's incredible um but uh yeah right now i'm just thinking about the abstraction of language uh so uh been rereading argy lord um also thinking about a book by robin cosluis a voyage of the sable venus that i always think about um in regards to poetry language the abstraction and how you can kind of bring words together to create this movement and then in regards to music which has always been a huge influence for me um i i've been listening to sun raw on repeat um alice coltrane and feral sanders uh are just a few that just constantly like bringing back to again it's this movement of rhythm language and sometimes even the absence of language and how beautiful that can be um and i'm gonna just do a my piece is premiering tonight uh on prelude's website at eight p.m passing time with grace so if anyone's able to to check that out please do and i'm so thankful for it as well thank you excellent um and thank you all you we have as um lander kind of intimated we have a marathon lineup today so penny thoughts uh which is an in caps a video kind of reflection on a project that's ongoing that you can check out on instagram um is happening at five and then it will be available uh animal empire uh by our very own ugia and her collaborator just an erin hall will be at uh five thirty and then we have a performance at six thirty called body one hundred uh collaboration between gary allen and uh nazareth hassan and then lander's piece at at eight passing time with grace which i can't wait and then um at nine o'clock man tail is concluding her two week long project called hold um in which she uh has been inviting well she's holding space for meditation it's about 25 minutes and at the end uh she's invited a series of speakers whom she calls queer holies to give a prayer to close the event so i'm not sure who um is is speaking tonight oh it's uh naya witherspoon so um please check that out and then the festival some of it will be available forever some of it will will have to come down but the website is there prelude nyc2020.com and you can see the work of all these wonderful artists so thank you all thank you frank um it's been great to kind of co-host the last week with you um i'm not sure how much i brought to the equation but uh it's just been great to bear witness to to this this enterprise and thank you and randa you know for all the work you did for the feulu for the prelude festival it's really truly an experiment it's very open like these talks and as in this remarkable the group of people artists you brought together the conversations you all generated the idea of the site and the website to take it serious this kind of retro mac into early mac look you know what you you created for the website and and the quietness also of the pieces lots of them you know they were not screaming and attention and Broadway and entertainment they were often that radio place there were small pieces or not long so you couldn't really i felt get a sense of of the atmosphere of the moment um we are in which also is something of significance to capture that and there's a variety of voices that also make clear really clear statements so um we did great and um really proud of us curators having put that together so um this is an important thing for us at the seagull and this festival it's the biggest event of the year and the most significant one so and we give it to people really as a full free white page to create something or cut launch so it's um as something and is there a celebration at the end and will there be yes there is a party although i don't think it's not open to the public our team has put together and i'll quickly say thank you to our entire team as i've said on these other talks i'm merely an emanation of a larger ensemble you know i'm i'm standing in for a group people making it happen all the time not only my co-curator marina heyman but the producers samuel moriali sammy pine lucy powis our graphic designer liana mitchell and our website developer lorraine uh remeer's lopez who made magic on word press happen uh as long as our collaborators at the seagull center not only frank but andy learner as well so uh and our stage manager harry who is amazing at calling cues on zoom um so uh he should really publish something about about using the chat feature but um so thank you thank to all those people as well incredible a two week festival today already is the is the last day it's coming to an end um and that might be a good thing for this this time of prelude and the current uh political regime all all things come to an end if they're good things or bad things so uh and i hope um this is a good thing that comes to an end but i hope also that what's bad and insufferable will come and tune in so thank you all thanks for howl around for hosting us see uh vj and everybody at travest so thank you and stay safe and stay tuned next week we have with us caron melty melpied and george bartena two actors or writers who have in all their work focused on the political playwrights on the day after the election you'll have simon dove from arts link um and the idea of radical hosting something they feel strongly about what does that mean maybe this is a way to change our neighborhood since also something of a significance for the performance world how do we engage with the people and then uh we have the great susan feldman who runs saint dan's warehouse and let's hear what's on her mind how is she coping with the situation what are the plans what are the realities of running such a place so um thank you thank you stay safe stay tuned and uh i can't wait for today of the trailer thank you