 at the Graduate Center CUNY in Midtown Manhattan. In New York City, it's a rainy day, a bit colder. We had, especially after the elections, incredible temperatures here, summer days where we were all celebrating was over 70 Fahrenheit, 23, 24, quite Celsius. And now reality, in a way, is setting in. We are still in the aftermath of the election. And today, many people say, for the first time, it was called a humanitarian crisis of the COVID situation here in the US. Doctors without borders are actually focusing on the US as a country in crisis. It's shocking, and also the loss, of course, of leadership or the non-existing one. And we are, as the Native American company, Spider Women, told us, we are in a creation myth where we have a mad leader. The country has the plague. There's wars going on around the world. And people are starving. And we have to find a way out of this. We have to find a way. We are condemned to hope, as Rabbi, our guest, said about Salah Banu's playwright. We hope this will work out. Vaccines information are good. But it is a time of uncertainty, a time that perhaps the West, as we know, it has never experienced or not in a long, long time since World War II, and it's a more serious moment. We do believe that in times like this, the work of artists and what they have to say to us is more important than ever. If it doesn't count now, when will it ever count? If it's not important now, when should we ever listen? So we do need to hear from artists next to the politicians and biologists and economic advisors because it is down to what our lives is all about, where we come from, where we are at the moment, where we are going to. We need better questions. We need to explore. We need to think. And this is why we have been talking since March to theater artists, and we have to listen to them. They are on the right side of history, as you always say, on the right side, on the complex struggle for freedom. And they have answers in their daily practices, and they are so connected, I think, to the moment, but also often anticipate a future and help us to create meaning and to get accustomed to it. With us today, we have one of the great artists in the world, in the field of theater performance, but also the visual arts. There's Rabi Muray, who is from Lebanon, living in Berlin at the moment, is a great honor to have him here with us. It's a big deal, and what he has to say is significant and it is important. And a co-host we have, for the first time I have one here, we have the great and brilliant Carol Martin from NYU, who is a professor of theater, her work on the theater of the real term she kind of created or reinforced, like Hans-Tis Lehmann's post-traumatic theater, she made a contribution to the field about an aspect of contemporary work in theater, important that is very, very significant, very important that I sing in the last decade, since the one that is growing as much perhaps a site, inside specific, but still I think it's something of perhaps even greater significance, the engagement with the real, the political, the search for truth and how theater and performance can be an arena of open discussions. So my name is Frank Henschka, I'm the director of the Segal Center and we would like to thank Hal Round again for hosting us, for making this happen and I'll hand over to Carol now. Carol will give us a short overview, a little bit on the field, on that term, the theater of the real, why it is significant, why we have to keep that in our mind and also for us to understand the reality we live in at the moment. And then she will talk a bit about Rabbi, but Rabbi first of all also says hi there in Berlin. I think it's six o'clock in the evening, somewhere there. So welcome and for our talks here and we'll come to you soon, but Carol, give us a little overview. So thank you, Frank, thank you very, very much and welcome Rebea, I'm so happy to be with you Rebea. I followed Rebea's work as much as possible. I have seen it in Warsaw and Paris and Berlin and the US and New York City. But first before I characterize a selection of his work because it's a vast body of work, both theater and installation, I just wanna make a few remarks about theater of the real. So the term or the phrase here, the real really signifies a variety of methods and a different nomenclature that describes ostensibly different methodology, documentary theater built from documents, verbatim theater built from verbatim interviews, reality based theater, more generally theater of fact, theater that aims to locate and perform facts, theater of witness that aims to state implicitly and explicitly we are here, we are watching, we've seen this tribunal theater, which is a kind of public legal reckoning in many instances, non-fiction theater. There are in the United States restored village performances which attempt to reenact different moments in history or different entire villages and war and battle reenactments and of course autobiographical theater and theater of the real I think is a umbrella term that embraces all of those and sees them in conversation with one another although in very, very different kinds of ways. So overall, I think there's been a shift from definitive representation of real events to representation that is somehow more indeterminate that doesn't complete the story that is told, that questions its own sources and ability to draw definite conclusions, theater that mixes fact and fiction or the real with the fiction. And this is where Rabie comes in since 1985 Rabie has making work that he calls semi-documentary and he's made a series of extraordinary theater works and installations, several of which have been in collaboration with Nina Sene and early work, three posters which I think was 2000, year 2000 was made in collaboration with the poet and essayist, Elias Gray. And three posters is a work about that uses the martyr video of Jamal Satie a combatant for the National Resistance Front in Lebanon. And so martyr videos are kind of determined genre which have a number of specific features and the same work also used a kind of facsimile of a martyr video played by Rabie. And it's this intermingling of fiction with reality, this work that in this particular work led the audience to question everything that followed in Rabie's words over the course of the performance. We hope to convince an audience that recognize the actor, hear their use of repetition especially of the sentence, quote, I am the martyr, those quote, that the performer could eventually be the martyr. And the work asks several questions but two in particular, how did the secular resistance against the Israeli occupation end up becoming a fundamentalist Islamic movement under the aegis of Hezbollah? And why did the resistance of the left thing up? So I, at least from an outside vantage point, understand these questions of being questions of a younger generation asking what's happened to our culture, what's happened to our society, what's happened to our country. And this particular work is, I think, instrumental conceptually to Rabie's subsequent work. It poses questions within the work itself. It poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. It perhaps proposes that playing a role is related to becoming a role that the rehearsals of theater have real world consequences. And I think we've seen some of this and some of Milo Rao's thinking about theater and the way he stages his works, that theatricality itself can be an inquiry into political reality. And the very, very, very important question of sanctioned sources of information. And I think Rabie was one of the first, did not be the very first artist to really to call into question the kind of, what the internet, how the internet and the omnipresence and proliferation of endless flurries of information is shaping and unshaping the realities in which we live. Looking for a missing employee, the missing employee, 2005 is the story of the civil servant Rafat Suman, who went missing. This is Rabie and Lina Sene's work. They use half lies, invent truth, newspaper clips, diary entries, found objects in propaganda to make a work that is exactly about how the flurries are reported to convey truth and never create a definitive picture. So certainly everyone today is familiar with that. The pixelated revolution is an amazing forensic analysis of the images that Syrian protesters uploaded to the internet and provocative commentary on the aesthetics of post-911 warfare and revolution. And that was performed in New York in 2012 as part of the Coyle Festival. And I believe the BAU were brought here on the occasion of having won the Yoko Ono Award. So that was, I think, one of the only times that you've performed in New York. And then I just want to mention that installation work, which is different than the others, 33 rounds per minute and then some, which I actually saw in Warsaw, is an installation performance about the final days of Dia Mute, a young man living in Berlin. So there are no actors in this work. On stage is a table, two chairs, a television and answering machine, a mobile phone, a computer open to a Facebook page. This is such, I love this work. It's such a fabulous work. And all these devices shape and vibrate and announce things about Ya Mute, who has apparently committed suicide. So this is someone's personal room. It's a table and all their digital devices, they're gone, but they live on in this vibrating digital reality. So overall, I think the work reveals some of the reverberations of post-Arab Spring. And the most clear utterance of this is when the host of an investigative show that's on the television in Ya Mute's room asks, starting with Bozizi and Tunis, who decided to emulate himself, is there connection with Ya Mute's actions? Is there a stand against whom? Close quote, that's from the work. And by implication going forward, should we all understand all suicides in the Arab world as acts against the state, the work act? So Rabia's work is profoundly political, profoundly strategic and is also an inquiry into theater itself, what it does, what it can't do, a critique of the very notion of documentary, a call to ask for very sophisticated relationships to information and to technology. So I think I personally would characterize Rabia's interpretive intentions as being much less about literal truth, proving what happened, actually not about that specifically at all, and more about the kind of self-conscious use of materials to question the conventions of representation, conventions of theater to make us rethink how we come to know and understand things in very profound ways. So on a little bit lighter note, so I have to say also that Rabia is a consummate actor, Lola Arias called him the master of the performed lecture form, but he is also really a fabulous actor. And he did star in a film, this always kind of thrills me with Catherine Deneuve and the title of the film is I Want to See in which they go on a journey in the Lebanese landscape and the film like the rest of Rabia's work is a cross between documentary and it shows the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon War. So even though Rabia's passion and subject is Lebanon, there he takes that subject and kind of makes a, I don't know, a geodesic dome out of it and spins it and we all have to keep looking both out Lebanon and about how particularly events in Lebanon are refracted in the rest of the world. So Frank, I'll let you ask the first question. Yeah, let me thank you first for this. It's really so touching. Thank you so much, Carol and Frank also for inviting me to be with you. No, no, no, for first question. Where are you now and what time is it? Me? Yeah. I'm in Berlin now and it's six something. I don't know, we start with that six time, Berlin time. Six o'clock in Berlin, yeah, yeah, yeah. So really thank you for being here with us and the work on the trauma of the Middle East on war is so such an engaging dialogue, research of it. In the very beginning of your work, you know, you talked or connected to the Hakavati, the Arab storytelling where people also sit on a chair or stand and tell stories. You do your lectures, often you say it's not a performance, it's a lecture. Are you a storyteller in that tradition? Often people say there's no theater anywhere in the Arab world. Of course, it's such a complete misunderstanding. We at the Segal Center have published so many Arab plays. We're actually the largest publisher of Arab plays and Marvin Carlson often has pointed that out, you know, that this history goes back for thousands of years. So are you a Hakavati storyteller of the 21st century? This is, I don't know. Maybe yes and no at the same time. Just to say like a few words about the traditional Hakavati that we knew about since the late century and before is that there's a big difference actually. I'm just out tuning myself to this. Hakavati, let's say like theater is like almost relatively is a new medium in the Arab world. It started in the late 19th century, like relatively new accordingly to relatively to the Europe to other countries where like there is traditional theater like India or whatever. And we always struggling all the theorists and theater makers are struggling to find other forms of theatrical tendencies just before, before like in the ancient times to prove that we have theater, but in a different way. And Hakavati is one of these forms, one of these structures. It has like a sort of performativity and the theater, but let's say like theater is like the baby or like the born of the cities. And the Hakavati is not with the cities, the Hakavati, the traditional Hakavati. It's actually like all, most of the Hakavates are coming from a communitarian, familial, tribunal society. And usually they always talk about heroic stories, heroic people about victories and mainly also they attack the cities. The city is something that is danger for the family, for the gathering, for the community. So the city is like, it's where the viruses are coming, where the disease is coming against the community. So like in this sense, I'm for sure I'm not Hakavati in this sense, I'm the child of the city. I'm from the city, I born in the city and I believe in the individuals, in the civil rights. I'm not so much with the blood relations. So in this sense, like I am Hakavati, I tell stories, but actually to make my audience not one mass, not a community, actually to try to accentuate individualism, to make them individuals, to make each one of the audience, to think and have, has hair or his opinion and hair or his intervention. So it's not about uniting the community or like the society or the... So in this sense, no, I'm not Hakavati and at the same time I'm Hakavati because sometimes, yeah, it's the same format or yeah, it has the same format in a way, but in a different way, like the story is different. I talk about our failures, I talk about our doubts, about our defeats, I don't talk about victories. We don't have victories in our region. We all the time facing a wall, like facing something that is blocking our visions. So how come we talk about victories? It's like Hezbollah talks about victories, religious talks about victories, communities, tribals. Thank you. So how do you move from that notion of failure, of doubt, of defeat to making theater, which even when the subject matter is tragic, it is maybe, I'd have to think more about this, but inherently it's a positive enterprise. It says that, look, we can look at this, we can do this and we will have a positive outcome in doing that even when we're looking closely at something tragic. Yeah, actually, one of the things that we faced immediately, it was during and immediately after the Civil War ended, the fighting ended of the Civil War in 1990, is that we were like, we were like facing a lot of problematics, one of them, a lot of journalists, a lot of curators, theater directors, that they want us to tell them about the war, about what we experienced. So they wanted us actually to tell the horror of the wars, what our suffers was. And to be honest, there was like a bunch of artists that are like friends, we were meeting a lot together and others, we did not meet with them, but we were like conscious about this problem that actually we should not fell into this trap to tell what happens to us, because this actually calls sympathy, calls like people to be pity with us and we don't need this. What we need actually a reflection is to think about what we have passed to analyze, to auto criticize what we have done during these years. So all the artworks, what we have done was focused on thinking about the war, not telling the war. And this is actually shift the whole concept of what and how to do an artwork or a theater piece. When you say like, I want to think about the war, not to tell the war, it's completely different issue. And this is actually something that demand from the artist and from the theater maker capacity to provoke oneself, to attack and to criticize yourself, not the audience, not the others, and to demand from yourself a lot of things. So this was the main key of how to shift from drama or theater that tells the suffering and the horror into a theater which analyze and think and reflect upon sensitive topics like, for example, the one that you mentioned three posters about the martyrdom and martyrs from the communist party. Right, how did audiences respond initially to this? It's freezing. How did, oh, sorry. Sorry, it was freezing? A little bit. Now we're fine. Okay. Yeah. So how did audiences respond initially to this invitation to think, to analyze, to take responsibility? I think it was, with my experience, it was amazingly very good because like it put the people in a position to think of each one greatly and to have it in conversation dialogue. So it's not something that you say and you tell and then you need like an agreement or a disagreement. So it's not about this. It's not posing a questions that needs an answer of yes or no, it's not about this. It's about doubts, about, as you mentioned, it's about unfinished stories, a story that is full of gaps, a story that is non-linear, that you have to put it in your mind, representations that are done by words which makes each one of the audience responsible to create her or his image in his imagination or her imagination in your mind. So it gives like a lot of freedom to interpretate, a lot of freedom to put your input, to put in your intervention. This is actually what's successfully good in my experience in Lebanon and outside Lebanon, even outside Lebanon because the questions becomes like not necessarily specifically addressed to the local situation, even like if the foreign audience will miss nuances from our history, but even though they can make associations with their own histories and try with their own experience and try to reflect upon this from their point of view from their own experience. And this was really great. And we never heard like something like sympathy, like someone like say like, oh, I feel with you, I'm in solidarity with you. No, no, it's not about solidarity. It's not about sympathy. It's not about pity. It's not about like gaining voices. I'm not, we are not making elections to gain more voices and voting. Like, you know what I mean? So it's something that I share with the audience, we share with the audience ideas, thoughts, doubts, uncertainties, questions that they have to think about with us. So we think all together and this is the important. Are you Frank? We cannot hear you, Frank. Oh, sorry. Just as a question, you use the internet, spits from it, you collect photos, you take photos. You take found materials. Why don't you write a play? Why do you think this is not working and apply why to choose to also have an installation or drawings as part of it? What is, why do you make these choices? I'm sorry, I wrote a lot of plays. I always write plays. It's my, no, no. It's like Carol mentioned a lot of them. They are based on events and true events, the difference actually between like, let's say like a play in the classical way of writing or like when I'm writing, which some people would love to name it, label it as semi-documentary or documentary theater or whatever. For me, I write theater. I play write and I write theater plays. And like the difference is like it's a genre. It's you choose the genre. Like there is a different genre in art or in theater or in movies. So documentary is one of the genres. But what I do all the time is that I reveal a lot of things. As Carol mentioned in her amazing introduction about my work is that I actually, I'm always mixing fiction and real together. So the facts and the fiction are intermingled together. And it's not about cheating the audience. It's just like to underline what is history? How we write history? And what is also fiction? What is fiction? Fiction also inside the fiction, whatever fiction, the science fictions, those like related to the space or whatever, they are based also on real experiences, on real stories, but they are hidden. Fiction take from real life and they hide them. They hide their material. Documentary, they reveal their materials, but they actually have a pretentious sometimes to say that we are based on a true facts and what we say is really true and we are objective. Fiction, they say no, we are fiction, et cetera, but they are hiding their sources in a way. What I do actually, I use both in a simple word. I have no, I don't prefer this on that like or rather this or that. I depends on the work and I do the work on this, but I always reveal my mechanisms. I reveal the ways you do things, you reveal it, you give hints to the audience that, okay, now I'm showing you videos from the Syrian Revolution, for example, but I'm going to be constructed and then I put myself. So be careful, this is something that I'm dealing with it in my experience. So it's mixed, huh? So in this sense, it's not about cheating the audience again to tell them that, oh, fiction, this is not fiction, this is real, this is real, oh, this is fiction, not real, no, it's to tell that history actually is constructed, is written out of subjectivity and objectivity, out of fiction and reality together. And we have actually to take it on ensemble. It's very dangerous when we try to distinguish what is true and what is untrue. What is fiction and what is non-fiction? It's really very dangerous. I think it's more relevant and more interesting to analyze a phenomena or like something like Trump as a reality by itself, not to say like he's saying lies or like he is a madman or whatever, whatever. No, to say like, why he is saying like this? What is behind this? I want to believe him, but why he is saying this and now? And then we can understand a lot of the discourse, the political discourse, his agenda, what is behind this? And he is very clever, I think he is using this as a strategy to gain also people because like it's also his ways to do politics. So instead of refusing and say like he's mad or like he's lying or like he's like this conspiracy theory playing in his mind, et cetera, instead of says, let's say like, okay, he's telling the truth. He is, but what is behind this? Why he is telling this? Let's analyze this, let's listen to him and see what he wants to tell us behind this. And then we will discover a lot of things. And this is my proposition. So first of all, I love the, I think I write theater is more accurate than I write plays because if I write plays, who notes a playwright in a room writing a text with then actors elsewhere have some kind of loyalty to that you are writing theater. And we've published some of those texts in TBR and you can read them and understand them as theater. But deep in the writing is or married to the writing is the theatricality of how they're going to be staged. So I love that phrase, going forward, I write theater. But this is so what you just described is what I was, what I've been thinking about for a long time that the difference between creating a work that says this is what really happened or creating a work that has all this indeterminacy in it. At the same time, if there is perhaps a danger in saying, well, no, we don't really know what's true. Because then, and we can't know what the truth is, then don't even become more vulnerable to dictators and people who are master manipulators of the media. We never can, if we're convinced that the truth is somehow not able to be located unknown, then don't become very vulnerable in our daily and political realities. Yeah, I agree with you about this matter. But I have to insist that art is not a place, it's not a platform for political agendas. This means that activism is not in the artwork. If I want to activate something, it's just like to activate people to think with me. And this is a big issue. It's not to convince my audience in my theater pieces about any political idea, about any even philosophical idea except of let's think and think and think and think. And that's it. Of course, like when I'm insisting on thinking, it doesn't mean that we don't feel at the same time. We cannot also separate feeling from thinking. It's like come also together. But what I mean that when I say like in my theater, I answer, I put questions. It means that it's a question that I don't have answers for them. Really, I don't have answers. Otherwise, they are not questioned. They are like subliminal messages or like the answer is under the table and I'm like manipulating the audience to answer the answer that I would love to hear. And this is actually the role of the politicians, of activists and I'm not against politics to be clear. I'm not against activism. I'm an activist in my life, but not in my theater work, not in my artworks. This is, I can separate them. In my artwork, in my theater, I have to attack myself, my beliefs. I have to provoke myself. I have to attack my beliefs to put myself into questions. And this is something not easy. I'm saying it, but it's not easy. And I don't say that I'm succeeding in doing this. I'm just, I say, this is my ambition. I want to betray myself in my theater pieces, to betray my beliefs. Even the artistic tendencies, I want to betray them. Like I don't want to have a methodology in my artwork or in my theater to follow. I want, each time I do a theater piece, I would love to betray it and to break it and to go to something else. And this is, to be honest, not easy, but I fight for this. And this is why also in my artworks, in my theater, I don't hide my political position. I say it clearly. I say like, I'm from this political side, but this is not the issue. It's not, I'm not here to convince you of this. I'm here because I have something else to share with you questions. And this is what is important for me. So I hope I answer this thing because I agree with you. It's like, we cannot be like in the world, like in this lost like, and we don't know what is true and what is not true. But I say like in art, it's the place where we have to discuss, where we have to put this trial, the perpetrator and the victims and put them like really in an equal level. And this is very hard, very harsh, unacceptable sometimes. And to give the voice for each of them. And this is what I try to do. And I don't know if I'll do it well or not, but I try to do it well. You do do it well. So after it was looking for the missing employee that you performed as part of Lola Arias' share your documents in the spring. And after that, you sent me this beautiful work in progress very, very short about a family appearing and disappearing. So I'm wondering, are you working on that now? What are you thinking about now? Where are you going with your ideas at this moment in time? Like there's a lot of ideas about today what we are going through. But to be honest, it's something that we are, we were already thinking about before the corona crisis, before we had it. We have this and we worked on it. We had, we have all the questions. It started with the social media, with the new technologies, the development of it, which was really very fast. And we were trying to catch what's going on with the technologies today. Especially with the social media, this platform that like permitted for everyone to participate and to be journalists, to be artists, to be a tweet writer, tweet whatever, like you publish, you do whatever you want in the internet. And this is amazing. And these are questions that really started to come to me very, very long, long time ago. So what happened today in the corona time actually is that it was, it pushed us to the extreme, all the world. We were all pushed to the extreme and we were also in the corner now and we were obliged to think about it, but it was before. We were in a way, living in solitudes or loneliness before, before now. We were like all the time spending a lot of time with our little screens and the smartphones on the laptop, on the iPads, spending a lot of time of every day, like in daily basis. So like the corona pushed us to the extreme and put us into questioning this, especially performing arts and dance, theater, music and other things. So one of the questions that comes to us is that what about the body now? How we go out? Like now we go out without our bodies. Actually now, instead of preparing my body, instead of doing exercises to be like on the stage with a good form, now actually I prepare my image. And this is what I was doing now. I was preparing my image. So we go out with an image of our bodies, with an image. Now we prepare our image to go out. And when we go out, it's the image of part of our body. Also our body is fragmented. So it's like, it's a part of our body. So all these are questions to think about, like what that means. And this is a question that came to me long time before Corona, how we do theater with the absence of the body. So the body is not dead, it's absent. And there's a difference between when we talk about the absence of the body or the death of the body. It's not the death of the body. It's not the death of theater. It's the absence of theater. And the absence of theater, it means that it's invisible or it is here, but we cannot see it. And this is actually the whole concept of absence. The absent is someone invisible, but liable to come back. And the absent is someone who, or something that will allow us to imagine, to create and to put fictions and to imagine and to do a lot of things. But it's always liable to come back. It's the promise to come back. And this is very important. So now there is the absence of the body and how we can do theater with the absence of the body. One of the experiences that we have done is 33 RPM and a few seconds where like we did a theater piece and I'm sorry Carol, I insist that it's a theater piece, not installation performance. Instillation, okay. It's a theater piece proposing that we can do theater without actors or with the absence of actors. So the actor promising to come back. It's not that we should do theater without actors, but it's a possibility opens to us. And Corona pushes us now to think about all these issues today, like about these issues. Like to talk about also to think about our senses because now all what we've seen, all what we touch, what we hear, what we sense, everything, all the senses are artificial. Like I see you through a medium. I hear you through a medium. It's not your belly. The voice is not coming from your belly. It's coming through a speaker. You, your face coming through a screen. So everything is artificial. What does it mean? It's not a refusal. It's not to refuse. It's actually to think about what and how we can do theater today when this is finished. How we can benefit out of this. Not to come back, but how we can use this to do something else with theater on stage with real audience, with physical audience, not virtual. Right? Yeah, I think this is a fundamental question. The theater is about the physical representation of the body on stage. And your work, over all the decades, was about the images that represent bodies, even dead bodies, bodies from war. And now, as you pointed out, you're so clearly, you know, where we all thought cyberspace is not real. Now it's the only kind of real thing in a way what we have, because what we do now, the moment the second is real. But as you said, it's representations of representations. So your voice is not your voice. It's a modified version of it. So the question is, yeah, what does that really mean? Is that fundamentally changing? This is a moment where something pivots change, revolves, revolution. Is this a moment that has a radical change that we understand better what you talked about and what will happen? I'm, as I said, like these questions were before in my mind and I was all the time trying to do representations through mediums, even in the theater. Like when we talk about 33 RPM or like three posters looking for a missing employee, who's afraid of representations, auto-joy, all these theater works, the actors were on stage, but they were addressing the audience who were also present in the theater addressing them through a mediator, which was the camera and the screen. And it was always questioning this idea, questioning what does it mean to do a live streaming? What does it mean? Like we go for a live streaming in our apartments. We want to see life. What does it mean that when we saw the Gulf War on live streaming on the TV? Where is the event? Is it there? Is it on the image in the TV? If I'm not on the TV, do I exist? Or I'm not, I don't exist. So it's all these questions that coming. So on stage, if I am both an image and physically there, who is the most strong, the stronger in the presence? Is it my image or me physically there? Where is the event is really happening? Is it where I'm standing physically or where I'm broadcasted live? It's the image. So these are questions and there's no really, there's no answers. It's such questions just to make us think and be aware of all what's happening today, what we are going through today. And it's at the end you do choices and you keep on your mind all of this in your background here. But what I want to say is that when we do theater online, it is theater because one of the main, or it's a performance or it's music, whatever, like it is because one of the main essential things that makes theater or like live performances is that it is now and here. So what's happening is now and here. Now we are doing it, this talk is doing it now and here, but still the now is much more complex than before because the now is like, it's different timing between all of us. I'm in Berlin, you are in New York, someone in Beirut or whatever. And the here also, it's a complex. It's not also simple as it was before. The here is now is the virtual world, but it's here in my place where I'm doing this talk and it's here where you are sitting and where Carol's sitting and where some people are listening to us. So it is much more interesting to think about the here and about the now, but it's still here and now, but how we can define the here and now accordingly to this situation. And this is an interesting question to think about. You know, so in 33 RPM, there are no actors on stage, but you're right. Anticipation of the presence of someone and there's the physical options of his presence, but in the audience, we are together and that's fundamentally different than what we're experiencing now because the liveness of the fellow spectators becomes an important mediating reality in terms of how we receive this thing on stage, even without actors. So, you know, the felt presence of someone breathing, whether or not you know them, the movement through the theater environment to get to one seat, the warmth of the bodies next to one. So it could make me cry, all the things we miss, that this is such a deep and not yet fully analyzed part of the theatrical experience that I don't know, I don't know what we can do with the lonely spectator now or the alone spectator in relationship to the, you know, artistic inventions in this new medium. I think like the Zoom or like the online theater performances or performances emancipate the audience a lot. This is my, okay, we miss the temperature of the mass that we are all together, we miss it, but at the same time, it's liberate the audience because now you can stand up whenever you want while watching something live going on and you can sleep or you can lie or you can, even you can go to the toilet and you don't bother anyone and you are there and you are watching and you can eat, you can drink. So there are a lot of restrictions and rules that are forbidden in theater when we are all together as audience. Now we are like free to do them. And of course, like when you know that it's here and now and you are not able to see it online next day, it's completely different. And this is really, really, this is really good. Then you have to make a decision, you stay with the performance online or you leave it. It's like in theater also, you can also say like, I don't want to go on with this performance, I want to leave the theater, you leave, but you are not allowed to come back. In online, you can leave and come out whenever you want. Nobody can control you. There's no control on the audience. I get your point, but it kind of makes viewing theater than just like the rest of one's daily waking reality. It's definitely, you have more options as a spectator where you can leave or come back or eat a sandwich, but that's just like everything else. Then viewing theater becomes like looking at one's cell phone, becomes so close to all one's other daily waking activities. It doesn't that change our whole reception point of view? I mean, the restrictions in a theater function somehow. I mean, that we experienced the house, those of us together, which is different from the stage and there's some kind of aisle or divide between them. Granted, that's an older theatrical reality, but it still has something to offer us. Yeah, I think, yeah, we win something, we lose something. I think, you know, things go hand in hand, but of course we do miss the liveness and the bodies synchronizing their heartbeats and looking at something. Why I think Robbie's work is also so significant and so important is what he said, you know, that we really, for at least a short moment question, are we, there's an irritation or an uncomfortable, uncomfortable moment where we don't know what's he saying, what is real, what is not real, that, you know, why do we trust voices from a microphone or from a speaker more when we do events at our Seagal Center, when our participants speak over the mic, the body mic, it has more authority. We take it off, the sound is still there, the human talk, so yeah, that's so interesting too, but it sounds different. The same is, why is the camera of CNN that's anchored in concrete, you know, you believe it, but something's shaking and less quality, all the same thing, yeah, it's not so, who knows if that's true. You know, so what are we processing? How have we been conditioned? And I think your work makes clear that we also construct our reality, as you said earlier, was that Trump really, whatever, so that Richard Foreman once was at the Seagal and he said, isn't it strange that we normally don't see our heads? If you walk around in the city of New York, you see everything, you also see your body in your hands, you don't see your head, but it's your head that processes everything and our heads are VR sets. We, through our complex system of eyes and brain cells, we see colors, we see structures, and we combine it super fast together, a human supercomputer, the most dense protein structures in the known universe, in our brains and the eyes especially, so we create something, but we think it's real, how we see it. The butterflies see colors already 15 times or a hundred times better than we do, so we cannot or a thousand. We don't, and I think what Ravi's work does and what this theater of the real does, I think is, it perhaps for a moment slows down our process of reception that we realize we are processing things in the way we process, of course, it has something to do with how we see reality and that there are different angles we always do say and I think it's something that works and that really opens up also this irritation and most probably in an audience setting when people sit together and can talk afterwards or meet the artist, perhaps it is even stronger, but there is also, I guess, I think it has a function to work like this on the screen, so that would be my question to Ravi, do you think that your work is as effective if you design it, if it comes on a Zoom performance? As if it is in a setting, as Carol says, even without actors, is that, oh, don't you need bodies watching? Is the effect, that Brechen effect of distancing, social distancing, the distancing, is that, do you need that or do you think it would work the same on screen? I don't have like a definitive answer about this, but I would say like with the experience with the Zoom, with the online thing, we had like audience more than in theater where we do, which is like really unbelievable, like, come on, what is this? And really it's really great in a way, but also you miss something but at the same time, as you said, like you gain something at the same time, but for me, it's like always, it's something conceptually in my thinking, in my work, in art and in theater, is that we should be very light in a way that we can adapt whatever situation, whatever case to do theater and art. And this is something that I learned to be honest by force or by a need because I started during, at the end of the Civil War in Lebanon, I started to produce my own work and till now anyway, like our government, our state, they don't have money for culture at all. Maybe they have money but they steal it or they don't put it for culture. Anyway, we have, if we want to do theater or art, it's like something volunteer, we are all volunteers, we are all amateur in this sense, we are not professionals because we cannot live out from our theater or our artwork in Lebanon. So we all, most of the theater makers, the actors, all of them, most of them, they have another work beside to earn their life, to continue their life. So this has actually learned me how to produce work in a very low budget all the time. And I was producing my own works really with nothing. And I was so happy with this because it gives me freedom with all my choices, freedoms from the market, from any authority. And I can do works wherever. I sometimes, I did theater in the living room in my apartment because I couldn't afford, or like some people, they want to see a theater piece and I cannot play it anymore. So I invite them and I do an adaptation and I do it there. So it's this lightness, this flexibility to do theater, to do art with no borders, to go on whatever is the case and whatever are the conditions. And this is, for me, is important. So now we do on Zoom online, okay, but this is not the end, it's like a period, we go through it, but then we will go back to some, or like we go to something new. And we do things. I carry myself and I go on and I see where. I don't know, it sounded very optimistic. I'm not a man optimistic. Go on to something new. I'm trying to think like, hmm, sounds good, but. Oh, so did you have anything you wanted to show us? You chatted a bit about your assembling some photographs of your work. Maybe I would like to show you something. How, wait a minute, where is the share screen? Okay, I'm not allowed to share the screen. The host is able to, so you have to, I cannot do it. Is Andy a, yeah? Can you? Yeah, Andy has to. Yeah, can you enable Rabie to share the screen? Of course. Okay, good. She's gonna enable you. Yes, so, no, not yet. So what I want to show you is just like to go through, I prepared something to go through very quickly, the scenography of my works, how it developed through the years. Yeah, just to share. Okay, now you see my, right? So you see my desktop, right? Yes. Yeah, it's all good. Okay, so this is the early works. You can see like it's not about, so it's like very classical way of thing, like the audience are here, and here are the theater, the stage, and here are the performers. This is how it was. And then in 1998, I did this piece called, Enter Ser, We Are Waiting For You Outside. Actually, I put a wall here, sorry. I put a wall here, this is a wall, to block the perspective, the depth of the stage, because I wanted to do a flat theater, a 2D theater. And there was a camera here, as you see. The performers were sitting on chairs, and the image is going through the camera, through a monitor, and then we talk to the audience. Through the screen. And then in three posters, I was behind the wall, and the camera is behind the wall, and the audience cannot see me, as you see. Then I speak to them through the monitor. So this is how it was. And then here it becomes like this. So they cannot see me, and then we open the door, they see me behind, but. And then looking for a missing employee, I jumped, and I sit within the audience, and the camera with me, and then my image is transmitted here, broadcasted here, and people see me sitting here, but I'm also sitting with them. And then in 2008, I was supposed to go to Japan, but I could not make it. So we decided to do it through Skype, and they agreed. So I was in Beirut, sitting in Beirut, and it was screened on a screen here, projected on the screen, and audience are still in the theater watching me, all together, but I was in Beirut. And then in 2020, we did this, make me stop smoking. So the theater, as you see, it's empty now, all empty, and I'm at home in Berlin, and the audience all together alone, as you put it, Carol, alone together, everywhere. So just like this is to go through it very quickly with this. Yeah, it's quite stunning. So if you would like, maybe I would like to show one thing. It's just like a video, which I would love to show to you. It's a very old work. It's just about forgetting and remembering, and about telling. So just like, watch this one minute or something like this. Okay, thank you. So good, thank you so much. Yeah. The last film clip that you showed, what work is that from? The old house, it's from Make Me Stop Smoking, but it was also shown as a separate work, as one channel installation in exhibitions, which I like to show it to give an introduction or a key to the works that people will see afterward. Right, right, right. Thank you so much, Riviera. This has been truly amazing. And do you have any closing comments, Frank, or Riviera? I'm just kind of, like after I see your work, it's so provocative, and the brain space that it makes is really marvelous as part of the deep experience of work. Thank you. A question to Rami. What inspires you at the moment? What do you look at? What do you read? What do you listen to? Or what artists do you follow? Who do you feel has something to say? No specific things. Actually, I'm in a phase where I'm trying actually to capture what we are going on through now, to think about, I'm much more now to go into video works. Now, I think it's a medium that might be good for sharing with audience online, better than doing theater online. For now, for me, I don't know, to do videos, and that can be played whenever you want, wherever, at any time. But also, I'm still interested in this idea how to do things with a very low budget. It's something very essential for me to get out from this capitalist, from this also liberal system, and the market that are like, it's like, it's burden on us, even like if you want to apply for funds from the state or from wherever, like you have to go through a long process with administrations, et cetera, which take all your energy. So how can you skip all this and just go to the essence, to go to the core and do the work, and how we can do this? And this is a question. So I'm still insisting on, I'm struggling to go with this idea. And I don't believe that, oh, I don't have money now. So I don't, I cannot work. I cannot realize my ideas because I don't have the budget. I, we have to find a way, all of us to achieve our ideas, even if we don't have the budget that we dream of. This is an important, I think also closing statement. This is for young artists and students. I know many of them listen here, what he said about, he said, I'm an amateur in a way, but not because his work is not brilliant. It's because it's not paid for it. And then amateur, which came from the Latin of Amara, Amor. You do something out of love because you love to do it. Yes. And professional means, you know, you're paid to do it on Broadway. You know, you're whatever, you're paid. And then people say, you're a professional actor. But who's, again, who's the real actor? Who's the real theater artist? When it comes to real love, we all want to think we are loved because out of love and not because it's professional, that you pay someone to make love to you or be in love. And actually we would be horrified, you know? And so I think this is an important statement. Yeah. No, just like a few men here, maybe like just to say like, and a very, very good example is you talks what you're doing is like a very good example, which I think like it's very, very, very low budget and you do a very amazing thing. Actually it's a zero budget or what? Yeah. I don't know. And we do something. And I think this is important to do your work and to do your art and not to wait. I think Susan Sontag says society kisses you on the forehead and institutions accept you and you are paid professionally and then you're an artist and now you say, I do work. And I think Morgan Jeunesse once said in the seat of talk, people ask me, but how do I become a director? And she says, you know, the only thing is you wake up one morning, you say I'm a director, you have to work hard. Exactly. And you have to be good. This is how you do art. And I think this is something what you show us in all the complexity of the work, it is some something that can be done and Corona now forces us. There is normally no space, no money in New York City, but now there is no money and we don't have the space, even if we had access to it, we can't get into it. But this is something to really think about why we do this and why we are motivated to find ways to adapt to a situation like an actor in a scene of a play adapts to the scene he or she is in, you know, in that moment. And now we are in a special moment and your work, it really is so brilliant and I hope one day you will come back to New York, we can see your work, have a drink, also have a seat or talk where you'll be with Carol and NYU. It is of real importance so really, really thank you for taking our talk so serious. That's important. Thank you so much. To hear from you and to listen to you. Carol, maybe say a bit about tomorrow with Nick. Well, we're meeting with him tomorrow afternoon and Nick is standing behind a lot of the verbatim theater in the UK which has historically had its own unique approach to understanding political events, especially in the UK and kind of reformulating them into theatrical terms. And Nick has also been an incredibly creative producer. So I, I, you know, this particular moment in time, I think, you know, one thing that Lola Arias did is seek out new models of production of producing work and that all the collaboration between the theaters in Germany to produce the work of producer series online becomes a very important model. I mean, I know that I understand it's important to create no matter what one faces. At the same time, I just want to add that, you know, we, we value the thought of philosophers. We value the thought novelists and part of the way at least in a capitalist society value is recognized for sustained. Let's take it out and that we sustain what we value is by enabling it to live and enabling it to live means in part giving it sustenance. So I'm not talking about surplus value. I'm talking about, you know, enabling artists and the thought that is so that they produce that's so important to our society to live and in the invention of new forms of producing hopefully going forward will take us to new places. Yeah, that's true. We need to support art and they need to be able to, to, to pay the life. So thank you so much again tomorrow. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. From the tricycle theater in London, next week we will focus on drama trilogy with Peter Ackersall, my colleague and also a drama tour was working on a new book on drama trilogy right now. He's going to tell us about writing these in the process of doing one and Katanio from Lincoln Center Theater just finished on his own. And, and then we will have Sebastian Kaiser who was Frank Astor of the drama talk at the Volksbühne Berlin. So we look at that part of theater but again, this was a brilliant conversation because of what you said, Robbie and thank you for taking your time sharing with us. Carol, really thank you. And thanks to Hallround and everybody stay safe stay tuned in and we hope to, to, to have you with us tomorrow and next week. So thank you to Berlin and hope you're going to have a good dinner tonight and really our gratitude to, to, for you to share your work. And now we know it's complicated. It's online, it's life, you know, as you say, so but I think it's something very special for everybody. It helps us to to understand better where we are in and this kind of shared suffering which we all have experience at the moment. So thank you and bye-bye. Bye-bye.