 at the Martinie Segal Theater Center, the Great Center CUNY in Midtown Manhattan in New York. It's a sunny day, the town is filling up something we've missed last year, but now the streets are full, but still everybody seems to be wearing masks and we are all nervous of what the future will bring. And back with us is the great Anne Bogart, the wonderful and significant and influential American Theater Director and she will join us and we will talk about her new work, which is not a stage on the play, which she has done so, so, so many. It's one of her books and he wrote it in the last year in the time of Corona. And thank you, thank you for joining. Where are you and how are you? Thank you, Frank. It's great to be back with you. And I'm here in Brian Kulick's office at Columbia because I just finished teaching at class. And if there's noise outside, I might have to get up and tell people to be quiet. So thank you, tell me if it's too loud. But, you know, I'm delighted to see you and I'm gonna say again what I've said to you before because I mean it more this time than I did the last time, which was how many months into COVID, the pandemic is you are for me the Marina Abramovitz of what you do. The fact the artist is present, you know, the fact that you've been so present in your white blouse shirt, let's call it a shirt, and your white earbuds and your incredibly beautiful face and talking to so many people. I don't, can I ask you a question? Yes, please. Has this changed you? Go talking to so many people. Have you, what's happened to you? There's hundreds and hundreds, right? Yeah, yeah. I think it really, I think it did change me. I think it radically changed me. I think it will have a profound impact on my work also at the Siegel Center we will engage in a different way. Also with the city with others and the way I think about life and art and making art and the significance actually of it also in the time we live in through this international talk and to listening. And I just watched that documentary on CBGB that great music club and the guy who ran it said his mom would always say, who in a Jewish old age home gave him the money to put down the deposit. And he said, sometimes you have to listen to hear, you know, and I think something radically changed. And so thank you. And thank you, thank you for your kind words. But, and let's talk about- What is that documentary on CBGB? I wanna see it. It's a documentary or a film, I think. It's called CBGB and- It's called CBGB, okay. Yeah, and it's quite a beautiful story. Like a little red hole, you know, which became so significant and so important in a way, you know, also following up on what usually you do something with intention and openness and give space and also leave space. So that is of importance. So Ann- That's my old neighborhood, the CBGB neighborhood. Yeah, I believe all during the 80s, pretty much in the height, it was just like down the street. So I got to watch that film. So you saw many concerts there, I guess. I went in a few times and smelled the beer and, you know, got pushed to the back, but it was the atmosphere and the energy around that building that was such a magnet, you know, more than actually being in the building, just the fact of it existing, you know. Where is CBGBs now? You know, in terms of our 2021 CBGBs, what does that mean? Yeah, where do we have a place where more energy comes out and radiates energy than it comes in? So I read your book and thank you for sending it to me. And first of all, Ann is one of the few theater artists, especially in America, that also writes. In Europe, it's a bit more common, it's almost expected, but also people want to share what they do and what they think about here. People are still skeptical. People say something is academic and then it means it's something bad. But Ann is someone who reflects. She has written books and her new one, The Art of Resonance, I think, is a very beautiful reflection, a meta-reflection. And she is a theater philosopher in the way there are sports philosophers or music philosophers. And the closest I could think of is Patty Smith who writes about her work, about her life, about the time she was in, what's on her mind and transcends the field of music where she comes from and gives us some guidance, meanings beyond it. So that's something. And I wanted to say as a quote from your book, Saabubona, if I say that right, you write the Zulu tribes in South Africa say that instead of hello, it's I see you. So I do see you and so welcome on Segal talks. Thank you. And I can't think of a higher compliment than to be compared to Patty Smith who's just the greatest human being I can think of. So thank you for that. And I would also say just the books that I've written, the books of essays, I'll tell you the secret behind them is I love telling stories because I figure you can learn something better if you learn it in the way the person who learned it learned it. In other words, if I tell you the story of how I learned something, I'm actually telling you the theory rather than telling you the theory, like how it maybe changed me. So I started writing these books because I didn't wanna tell the same stories over and over again in rehearsal or in classes. And so I made a promise after my first book of essays which was called a director prepares, I made a promise that whatever I wrote about I would never be able to tell those stories again. And so then a whole new bunch of stories come up and I have to write those. I break the rule all the time because hey, a lot of people don't read the books and I can tell the same stories. But the books come out of experience and wanting to spend time trying to understand the experience, how it's changed me as I asked you how has this work that you've done in the last two years changed you and try to articulate what those changes are sort of a way to force into being an insight via a story of how I learned it. Yeah, so we learned a little bit about you. You're, I think it's more a reflection actually almost in a spiritual sense on being an artist in a floating world in the fleeting world where we are in. And we do know a little bit you're an army brat. I think it's your family. No, no, no, you've got it wrong. The Navy, the Navy. Thank you. Right, sorry, the Navy, yes, from the Navy. Anyone in the army or the Navy that they're the other they get really upset and you got it wrong. So you should be chastised for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the Navy. And so you moved around a lot very early on. You saw many places you also talk about what it means to speak in different languages having an awareness of different realities and as going back to Patty Smith and her horse's album you also, you loved horses, right? When you started out. Yeah, actually I come from not only a Navy family I come from a family for many, many generations of Navy. As a matter of fact, my great, great, great grandfather was captain of the Minutemen was the, yeah, that's how military my family is. And all of my uncles were naval officers, my father, my grandparents and all of the women in my family became naval officers wives. That's what you did. You didn't join the Navy if you're a woman you became a naval officers wives. So, and my grandfather whose name was Admiral Spruance he was in charge of the Pacific fleet during the Second World War and is generally known for winning the battle of Midway. I mean, that's how crazy my crazy Navy, my family is. So coming out of that background, yes I did not want to become a naval officers wife that was never appealing to me. I did fall in love with horses and I spent a lot of time training two year olds when I was 15 and 16 years old and showing horses as well. I was never great at it but I loved the communication that you had with a horse it was pretty spectacular which is related in some ways to communication a director has with actors. I don't mean to say that actors are horses but you communicate in ways that are not always with language. You communicate physically with each other even if you're not, if I'm off the stage I'm in a big house and they're on the stage they can feel the physicality of a director because I'm the first audience member and so they need that presence. What was the exact moment when you said I want to do a theater that's my life? Well, you know, moving every year the longest place I lived growing up was in Japan for two and a half years. Most places were one year and I'd be plopped down into these big schools and what I found was that there was a place in these big schools where something called theater was being made and you get really close to a bunch of people I never wanted to act I was assisting or pulling up the curtain or what have you but you fall in love with a group of people you have a really intense experience and then it's over and that felt my life, like my life it felt like moving every year so I could find a place where I could have intense passionate relationships and then it would be over and I'd move on so that seemed fine but when I really, really decided that directing and I started directing as a in high school and I actually took over a production my French teacher was doing of the Ball Soprano by Eugenio Nesco in 1965 in a school in Rhode Island called Middletown High School which is a terrible high school to actually be doing a French absurdist play. I was assisting and my French teacher got sick and she called me and said you have to take over and so I had to figure out what I mean usually in high school we did plays like Charlie's Ant or Brigadune and it was really unusual to be doing a play by Eugenio Nesco especially in 1965 when nobody knew about the theater of the absurd I had to figure it out and all the right things happened so I had a crush on the boy who was playing his name was Jimmy Cometta who was playing Mr. Smith so that was good and it was a success even though it took place in a lunch room I don't know many people grow up in this country doing theater in lunch rooms because that's what high schools have they called it cafeteria and theater always smelled like lunch there was always one end of the cafeteria there was a curtain and a flag and you pull up the curtain there's a little stage and that's where we did theater and that's where I did theater but when I really decided was when I was 15 Adrian Hall had just taken over Trinity Repertory Theater in Providence, Rhode Island and I was out in Middletown, Rhode Island and he went to the NEA and asked for a million dollars which in 1967 was like about a hundred million dollars now to bring every school kid in Rhode Island in to see theater and so I was one of those school kids who was brought into Providence on a yellow school bus to see the Scottish play in a big auditorium and the set was by Eugene Lee and it was young then and Adrian Hall the director in this incredible company I didn't understand a word of it I didn't understand Shakespeare I'd never heard Shakespeare before and the witches were coming out of the ceiling it was an environmental production thousand school kids and at the end of that production I sat there and I said this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life whatever that is my whole body pointed towards the stage or the event of it and it was the first lesson I ever learned as a director from Adrian Hall although I didn't meet him till 25 years later which was don't talk down to your audience in other words, he could have taken that million dollars and done any kind of kid's schlock but he did a very complicated play and I didn't understand the language and my whole 15 year old body was reaching towards the stage trying to understand it and I realized in that moment and I've never forgotten it is that theater isn't about understanding necessarily it's about an experience of taking who you are at that time bringing it to the stage, meeting the stage and so that was the moment I decided that changed everything that was what I was gonna do for the rest of my life it was this thing called directing incredible, yeah, that's good that's quite sorry it reminds of that sentence someone said, you know, don't write what you know everybody tell it, write what you feel so and I guess they also, it's about what you feel and we forget everything but how people make you feel and that's what stays with us we might forget what they have said so, yeah, just very few sentences for all of our listeners also international listeners who might not know about and she's one of the three co-artistic directors of the city company a very significant part of the landscape in New York city and of American theater that is on the forefront, you know often, I know you don't like to be called experimental avant-garde director but still at the forefront of theater that ask questions and ask more questions and you have better questions after you saw it she co-founded with this significant great legendary Japanese theater director, Tadashi Suzuki in 92, she's a professor at Columbia University where she runs the graduate directing program and it's fair to say in the nation in the Americas and also North America, you know it will be looked at by many as the most significant school of where understanding takes place when one talks about theater directing and others she has, I think 50 productions at least so it's impossible to put them out but the Bacchai, Chakmi plays the Hotel Casupea, the Scottish play Noel Coward, Orestes and so many on also a lot of opera work as she talks about it also in the book and she wrote five books a director prepares the viewpoint book and this is something significant from the company the viewpoint idea which she took and put it into a new form and then your act conversations was and what's the story? So and in the time of Corona you wrote this book where we say what is artistic resonance and how can it be linked to one's life and one's art so tell us a bit. Yes, I used to think that the role of theater was to create memories when I understood that from neuroscience that memory is actually a protein in the brain that is created in the heat of experience or emotion so in other words, when we go to see a play I'm sure both of us and everybody listening has gone to a play and left and you don't remember anything it's just gone and it becomes an insignificant event but sometimes you go to see productions and there are moments that linger for a long time and what's happened in those moments is through emotion you create literally a protein in the brain that is memory and in order to access that there are synaptical activities that happen and as we learn that every time you access a memory you change it so long story to say that I thought that the theater was about creating memories and as a matter of fact, I used to think that if theater were a verb it would be to remember to put things back together again we remember people who've passed stories that have passed questions that are still important in our social system so I thought, oh, that's what the theater is until my colleague Leon Engelsrud who's the artistic director of City Company whose family was undergoing some issues with Alzheimer's he asked me a question he said, what about somebody who can't remember what is the theater for them? And that really stopped me in my tracks and I started thinking about books I read a lot, I love reading but sometimes I'll read books that profoundly change me and yet two weeks later I can't remember what it was or even the title somebody say, what was that book? And I can't remember the title of it but I realized that what matters is not what I remember but what happens in the moment of reading or the moment of experience when one is altered that beautiful word metanoia to be transformed by the experience of something and so I suddenly went, well maybe the theater is not so much about to remember but it's about resonance it's the resonance that occurs in the moment of the experience so those resonating moments when I was reading changed me I don't necessarily remember exactly what happened but those moments altered who I am so I decided because it was such a huge realization that the best thing to do would write a book about it which meant that then I had to study resonance on a scientific level, especially in music since resonance is so basic in music I had to reflect on it, think about it in relationship to one's life and so a book about resonance seemed to be the right thing and then along came the pandemic and suddenly I had time to sit down and do that. I think I told you last time we were talking that I went to London to see my wife Rena Fogel who is hopefully listening right now we share a home in London and in New York I went to London for spring break on March 11th, 2020 with a small suitcase expecting to stay for a week and I stayed for a year and a half and did all of my work both with city company in Columbia on Zoom as we all have experienced at Nauseum I'm sure but and so it was time to actually put this book into action and so I was able to spend time writing and rewriting and rewriting and rethinking so that is thanks to the pandemic I would say. I really, I would say not enjoyed but it made an impression on me to an impact like sometimes there's like a printing idea like a metal plate gets a piece of paper there's some color in between and then something says so you are an impressionist in that sense and in this kind of philosophical spiritual writing in a way that goes beyond just this thing itself you quote Einstein who says everything in life is vibration you talk about energy the idea of energy and you say my job as a director is to awaken resonant channels to others so it does feel it's a discovery you made as you not just said to start it right in the book but what else what surprised you in your time and you wrote when you started rewriting? Well you know in rehearsal in city company we have a technique which is called this you start working on something and then you say yeah but what is it really? And just as you think that you realize what it really is somebody will say in a very annoying way but necessary way will say yeah, yeah, yeah but what is it really? And then you work and you solve that I guess it's called the hermeneutic process you know and you finally reach a resolution and then you say yes but what is it what are you really trying to say? And that process certainly happened writing this book which is you have to bring all the strands of your life so you say there's spiritual strands or there's philosophical strands or scientific strands so these are things that interest me and so as in each topic or each chapter or even each paragraph I have to say can I take it deeper? I think this is what it means but what is it really? And that technique can make good theater I know which is a group attempting to constantly ask oh this is fine we discovered this yesterday but what is it really? I remember watching a documentary of the German painter famous German painter big washes the color. Richter wonderful have you seen that documentary? And it's so fascinating because he comes into the studio every day and he looks at what he did the day before and then he obliterates it. You think how wait that was great what you just did and then he paints over it and then something glorious happens then he leaves comes back the next day and you watch him looking at the canvas and then he calls for the paint and he just goes at it again and that way of constantly asking what is it the root of this? What are you getting at or what is it really? And certainly studying resonance does require study because it's not something I had studied before. So there's many people who write or speak about resonance from different points of view. So I tried to bring all of those together into a book that's about the theater. I don't know if you have your book close by maybe now or later maybe read us a paragraph of it. I don't know if you have something with you. Well, you emailed me at the last minute so I pulled the book up and I just pulled it to the end. So I have a couple of things they come from the end of the book if you'd like me to read. Yeah, read something so we hear your voice and your words. All right, I'll have two then. One is a little before the end and then I'm gonna read the end. But really this is a little bit random Frank but I hope it's okay. So this is in a chapter called dedication. I found that the greatest obstacle to dedication turns out to be myself. My fear of losing myself. My fear of failure or of things falling apart. How can I surrender myself when myself is perhaps simply the biological urge to hold on, to cling, to cling to life, to continue to survive. But by clinging to myself, I may strangle myself. I believe that an effective artist must have a huge ego and no ego simultaneously. The ego is meant to drive a stake into the ground and stay the course, stay committed, stay dedicated. But then no ego allows the music to flow and freeze up actions that are in concert. Ooh, that are in concert. Sorry, somebody rang me. That are in concert. Here we are. But then no ego allows the music to flow and freeze up actions that are in concert with the universe. In cultivating dedication, here's what I tell myself. Plunge headlong into what you're doing. Erase the boundaries, let go. Start before you're ready. Starting creates momentum. There's always a reason not to begin, not to start, not to pull the trigger. But starting allows me to encounter the obstacles that will ultimately help me get out of my own way. Send whatever comes your way back out. Send it back out again, actively, muscularily, and with feeling, dedicate. So that's a little excerpt. Yeah, and we can hear from you that it's almost like an old instructional, no family writings, it touches actually on life itself and goes beyond the field. Well, I try to, Frank, to write from my own frailties and not from my strengths. In other words, if I write from my strengths, I sound pompous, but I try to get in touch with where I'm really not terribly sure where I go wrong. I embarrass myself. And to write from that space, as opposed to pompously spouting theory, which I think is hard to read. So something is more readable if it's more personal, usually, I think. Yeah, and it's very, very open. And I mean, there are so many ideas that come up almost in kind of small paragraphs or aphorism or reflections, daily reflections you have. But one also you point out the resonance and dissonance, you know, the relation. What, how do you see the relation between those? Well, you can't really, I learned this. You cannot create or create the conditions for resonance without dissonance. In other words, you know, I love the German word, you'll have to translate it properly, which is Auseinande Zetzung. It's perfectly said. Which if, you know, not correct my pronunciation, but rather it's hard to define. If you look the word Auseinande Zetzung up in a dictionary, it would say disagreement or something or argument. But in fact, the disease in the American theater is the disease of agreement where there is no dissonance. We think a good rehearsal is one where everybody agrees with each other, which I think is wrong. That the word in German, Auseinande Zetzung, which means to set yourself apart from each other in order to create. You don't create by collapsing into each other. And so it's this dissonance among people, which actually has the creative spark. So that misunderstanding the idea that if everybody's in agreement and everybody's happy, then something will happen. Resonance will not arise without dissonance. And so dissonance is like the, you know, the sand in the oyster. It's what creates the pearl. It's the irritation. It's the things that are not quite right, that are wrong. You know, the pottery that's beautiful because in the Japanese tradition, it has a flaw in it. And the flaw or the dissonance is what creates the beauty. So in writing a book on resonance, you have to include dissonance. So dissonance is part of the ingredients to create or to create the conditions for resonance. And I say create the conditions for resonance rather than creating resonance. Because I don't think you can create resonance. You have to be create the conditions in which resonance might occur where the right in music, that the right notes counter to each other, create the condition for resonance. So dissonance is key and I'm glad you brought it up, Frank. Yeah, I think also you quote John Cage, who like conversation, but not the idea of a debate, right? Yeah, and conversation is key. And he talks two things about John Cage and also dissonance. One is, I think this one is fun, is that, you know, he lived on Sixth Avenue, moved into Sixth Avenue. I don't remember what floor it was, around 14th Street, I think. And the traffic really annoyed him, the sounds of traffic, because it was really loud on Sixth Avenue, until he decided to change the way he listened to the traffic. And he decided then that traffic was more beautiful than Mozart. So it has to do with how you allow dissonance into your life. But the conversation part, as opposed to the debate, is very key in my own life, I think. I mean, we're having a conversation. And it means, etymologically, to turn with. Con is with, vers, versos, to turn with. So you and I are having a conversation. I hope at the end of the conversation, we've switched roles, that we've turned around each other. And that we have, we aren't debating. You and I are not debating. We're not saying I have this point of view, I have this one. We're together turning and attempting to create a resonant condition, which is sacred, actually. And that's John Cage. Thank you very much for bringing him up. Yeah, and in a way, connected. I always say, when in doubt, when in doubt, John Cage. That's what I say. Yeah, good. So what would John Cage think, right? What would John Cage think? Yeah. Like Billy Wilder, the movie director, as well as we had, what would Alan Slubich do? He was on his big, over his door. And yeah, but I think what you talk about this. Apparently, Bill T. Jones once went into a rehearsal. I think it was her spring awakening. And he was trying to figure out how to work on the choreography. And he said out loud, he said, what would Bill T. Jones do? Yeah, that's even that is even better. But what you describe that idea of the conversation is also what theater is about, that you have this agonism. You have a competitive parallel stream of arguments to understand the complexity of the world. But you debate it and you leave also things open. I mean, you talk about the void. But what does that mean, the void, the silence in the way philosophically for you, but also in your theater work? You know, there was, I work a lot. We've worked with a group called Rachel's. The Rachel's, they don't exist anymore as a music group before. They work with a city company a lot. And one of the musicians, Christian Fredericksson, is a wonderful violist and also just composer. He plays music during the viewpoint sessions with us. And at one point I asked him, I said, how do you know when to enter? How do you know when to join when there's maybe 15 actors on the stage? And how do you know what sounds to interject? And he said, I look for the empty spaces. I look for where there's not something. And I think that in general, the void, we tend to want to fill the void, but to actually not, is to look for the spaces where there isn't something. And to also, the void means making space for the audience. In other words, we tend to in the theater to want to do everything for the audience. But if you start saying, what is the audience's job, you have to create space for them, which is a kind of void. You have to create space in the staging so that you do the least you can do so that the audience does the most. And the void is about realizing that in the creation of resonance, it's not just about filling space, it's also creating a void inside of space, inside of the moments of being. And that in those spaces, when you can stop together, that's again, to use that over years word is sacred. It's a sacred moment when the audience and the actors come together in a moment and everything stops. And it's only created by an attention to the void in any moment of rehearsal. Sometimes also, if I'm working on a scene as a director and there's a particular actor who has a very, very big monologue or something, I will pay attention to everything but that actor to give them space, to put a void around them so they can do their work. So I'll spend a lot of time, if you were watching me direct, you're saying, why isn't Anne paying attention to the actor who's doing the big monologue? She's paying attention to like how the three people around that person are holding a stick or something, whatever it is. But it's because I'm trying to create space. If I'm micromanaging, then there's no void, there's no space. Actors have to make space for each other too, looking for the void, looking for the space where there's not. Creating empty spaces is as important as creating things. Yeah, you talk about the present moment, the moment of being you quote Virginia Woolf or Harold Bloom, the privileged moment, which is so true in theater. But your idea of the privileged moment, how it will transfer it from poetry. Yeah, it's so interesting that you bring that up because we live in a time where the word privilege is very suspect and for good reason. In other words, to be privileged is something that we all need to be aware of, the privilege of being able to speak. So I had an issue with that, I love that phrase, which is the privileged moment, which, as you say, both Harold Bloom and the glorious and one singular Virginia Woolf used that phrase. The privileged moment is a moment that is unlike anything else. I remember the first time when I was a teenager, I read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. And I'll never forget the experience because it informed this idea of the privileged moment and pretty much everything I do as a director, which is you read To the Lighthouse, you're reading about this family and this trip to the lighthouse and it gathers, the story gathers and gathers with her incredible Virginia Woolf's extraordinary language. And she takes you to a place and she took me as a 15 or 16 year old to a place. She lifted me up like this and then she let go of me. And I had this experience of falling and she brought me there through words. And whatever that experience was, is what I've been looking for my entire life in the theater, that sense of coming to a place with an audience and then letting it go and just the sense of time and space changes. There's no future, there's no past, there's the present. It always comes down to what is the least you can do? Can you get to a moment where you do almost nothing on the stage and the audience is doing it all? I'm thinking of an example of the Peter Brooks production of Carmen, the opera which he turned into a chamber opera. Well, you remember the last moment is Don José is going to kill Carmen and he lifts and he lifts, there's been no blackouts or anything for the whole time. He lifts the dagger and he makes a gesture and the first blackout and the end of the experience happens with this gesture, with just that and the lights go out. So what happens is he never stabs her, but the audience does it. That moment where you bring it over that you let go of controlling the stage and the imagination flows and time flows. And I don't know if you remember that moment, Frank, but yeah, I do. It was a beautiful circle also with such new actors, so it was truly a magical thing to do. I mean, you write about it in your book where you say, actually, as your introduction, you said it's not about creating a memory, about communicating something, you say art sobers and quiets the mind and you open it up to perhaps have this kind of divine realization or an influence that you will have that moment. You talk that it's bigger than all of us, but it's so connected to our lives and it rarely happens. Sometimes it does in sports, where something you cannot believe what's had just happened, but it makes us alive, understand life, the complexities of it. And you really drive that home and I think this is such an important lesson. What is it all about really? And isn't that what you just described worth an entire life of research to find that moment or find those moments? That is what one, for me, to dedicate oneself to that is enough. That's quite extraordinary. We're right now in rehearsal up at the Fisher Center at Bard, we're doing a production of, and nobody can believe it when I say it, we're doing a Christmas Carol. I know every time I say that people roll their eyes, but it's radio Christmas Carol. And this is about subjects that we're embarrassed to talk about, redemption, the change, the character like Scrooge, who's been so tight-fisted and isolated who turns towards the light, changes life. I forgot how I got onto this. What were you just talking about, Frank? Well, that's a divine moment, that moment of a realization, of a bigger truth, or of each which cannot be expressed in words in a way and even in a painting. Yeah, exactly. And there is, there's the beautiful word that I learned recently called, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, which is metanoia, which means to change direction. And it's those moments you have that you just described when you're reading or experiencing a play or a piece of music where everything just opens up. And it means to turn towards the light, in a sense. It's, and it's different. And I think Scrooge goes through it. It's not repentance. Repentance is something quite else where you say, oh, I was bad, but no, you turn and suddenly you see everything in a new light. That moment, that little turn is to use the word for the third time in this hour, sacred. It's a sacred moment, I think. Yeah, and I like also how you connected that idea of the energy, that moment also to sports. And you say, acting is a sport, you said. There's a quality to an energy. I know you did Aikido and you did Tai Chi and that taught you to be present, but not to do. To do, you know. To do the not to do, my Tai Chi master used to say, to do the not to do, do the nevermind. Do the good job, to actively not do, which is a whole art in itself. But also, as you say, acting, there's, it's been proven scientifically that an actor speaking a monologue in front of an audience is under more stress than an Olympic high jumper just before jumping. That it is such a stressful moment to be in front of an audience, to line oneself up in that way. So in that sense, it is athletic and it requires a great deal of training and practice and dedication. And so in that sense, there are these alignments between what athletes do and certainly what actors do, particularly in the theater, on a stage, on a big stage with a big audience, which is extraordinary. Yeah, and how strong these actors really, really are and you compare them to quarterbacks actually, you know, who decide again, have to hold attention and have to all the company. Also, as you say, Suzuki said that you don't be a role model outside, you know, as we expect to be a leader of the field. And when you're at it, there is something magical, you know, in sports, you have a little white line and people sit on the bench and wait and then they you're up and then they go in and then they're present, you know, they play. And then if they get caught off, they cross the line and then they go back in their normal lives, you know, like in theater too, you kind of, you jump in there and you share. And as you say, it's so vulnerable, you're open to failure and everybody makes such a big fuss about a touchdown or this and that, which I like. But what actors do, what directors do to prepare them, it is really beyond a graft, it is an art, as you said. You also said, you know, theater's only as good as its execution, which I also like, it's not good enough that you have the idea and you explain it, you know, you have to do it. Yeah, I've always loved something Picasso said, which has given me a great deal of agency. So I hope it's useful to anybody who's listening. It's such a freeing notion. He said that the first stroke on the canvas is always a mistake. And the rest of the work on the canvas is to fix that mistake. I find that absolutely freeing. What keeps us from actually putting a stroke on the canvas is we feel like we don't know, we don't know enough or how can we possibly make a staging decision or something. But if we understand that it's gonna be a mistake, whatever we do, no matter how long we've prepared, it's gonna be a big fat mistake. And then we just work on it and work on it and keep bringing ourselves back to it. And so in that sense, it is execution and it requires courage to act without knowing the answer, to act without having a psychological reason that this thing should happen. To do, you know, I was really surprised. Years ago, Richard Foreman came to speak to my directing students. And Richard Foreman, who in my mind is the most, and you know, you've done talks with him, Frank, but he's one of the most intellectual directors on the planet, I think. And he said to the students, to the directing students, he said, directing is 100% intuitive. And here from him to say that was very freeing. And so I feel like study is important before and after a rehearsal. But in rehearsal, it has no place. Say, if I spend two months preparing to direct a play, that preparation only allows, gives me the permission to go in the door to the rehearsal and shut the rehearsal door. From then on, it's intuitive. After rehearsal, I am obliged to think and study and use my rational brain. But in rehearsal, you can't drag your research into rehearsal. So it becomes about execution. It comes about painting or making decisions that are based on the feelings, rather than the intellect. I think you're buoyed by your study. And certainly it's in there, but you can't bring it in and say, this is why you should cross stage left. No, that's not right. It is execution. And execution is a violent word, a very violent word. But I think making art is somewhat violent anyway. Cause once you make a decision about something, you've cut out 362 other possible decisions. And it's a very violent thing to do. Or if an actor has a beautiful moment and you as a director, you come up and say, that was great, keep that. It's like I've got a dagger and I'm stabbing that actor. Like keep it. Cause they know the next time they do it, it's gonna suck. They know that they have to resurrect what has been set. That's why actors for me are heroes. That you execute their decision by saying their choice by saying, keep that choice. And then they have to go through a process of resurrecting what's been killed. And then it starts to become art. Yeah, the violence you just mentioned. I remember the passage in your work where you said, I was once involved in Berlin in an exercise and was at three parts, we were blindfolded. And then we, you know, once we were put around, someone guided me, then someone was beaten, you know, who the blindfolded and then you were comforted. Oh, the Germans. The Germans, yeah, this kind of, you know, thing that they say it was surprised, you know, what's inside us, the dark. You say, you quote Carl Jung and say, no tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. And I didn't know that. And this goes with what you say the actor who, you know, in a way, it's a violent, a sport, you know, what we see on stage. And people forget. It's not about, as you point out, and I like that in your book, you say, this is not about entertainment or just entertainment. It's not about communicating. You want to disrupt, you want to destabilize, you investigate your research, and you want transformation and reorganization. I'll quote you from that, that's your quote. Which is a very significant and important statement, especially in America. You know, it was, I was at a holiday party for a city company with board and company a number of years ago and one of our board members who's was, he's not on our board anymore, but his specialty is PR and branding. And he kept saying to me, and if you could put what you're doing in the theater into like a phrase that I could tell my friends, maybe they'd come and see your shows. You know, like, give me something. And I kept saying, I don't remember what I said, but it was unsatisfying to him. Like I would say, you know, I don't remember what I first said, but when I finally said, Jason, it's a gym for the soul. And he said, oh, I get that, that's great. And I think it is, it's a place that we go to work out, but it's a gym for the soul. Not necessarily one for the body, but it's for the soul to spar and play and try out ideas and try things on for audiences. It's a gym for the soul. Yeah, that's a beautiful, beautiful image. Also, it means you have to constantly do it, right? You have to go back to the gym. It's not that you went once and then it's done. You go for the actors, but also for audiences, you know, like in sports where people go and watch plays. And I couldn't, when I didn't know anything about baseball and then I would be in Yankee Stadium, people say, oh, that's a curve ball. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. Like you're like so far away, but they know, you know, and the beauty of it or something goes wrong. And it also, it's okay that it go, not every game is great. Sport people don't have any problems with it, but sometimes there's the great play, the great game and the great moment and that lives forever in memory. I like that. But that's so interesting though, right? I mean, what does that mean? It's so important, theater comes out of high school theater, you know, out of amateur theater, out of people entertaining each other. And it's so interesting when you bring up that we have to practice it all the time. And if we fall out of practice, you know, why are we so ill at ease right now in the world? Because after the pandemic, after so much lockdown and isolation, it's awkward to be with one another. We have to practice being together and practice the art of performance and the art of being an audience. And it's so interesting and it starts as a kid, you know, it started for me being taken on a bus to see theater. Every school kid in Rhode Island brought to see theater in Providence, you know, that practice, if it's not instilled early, is hard to pick up on. You have to be in the flow of it. Yeah, it's really true. And it has to be early on that it's significant. Everybody we speak to was in a high school production or a school production or parents took them and the significance of it. And but I also like what you wrote about that you say, where you are is okay, replace where you are, cast down your bucket, you know, think about, you know, how can you do best? You talk about your colleagues and you, you know, it was not easy and we have heard that from Emily Mann and Kari Perlov, Emily Mann especially, you know, who was pushed up against the wall and yelled that you're a housewife and you will never be a director. And they said women, she was a directing student and her instructors all male, not one woman would say, you know, you can do children's theater. Why do you even study here? You know, so I know you also, you created ways to the back door. You said, you have to put down your bucket and was that easy for you? How did you, when was the moment when you said, I cast down my bucket, this is what I'm gonna do to the company or when was that? Yeah, well, you know, I'll get right to that. But let me start by saying, I realized this cast down your bucket thing when I was on a panel in Maryland after doing our show Room, which is about Virginia Woolf and I was on a panel with Molly Smith who is the artistic director of the arena stage and Tina Packer who founded the Shakespearean company in Western Massachusetts and me. And I realized the three of us sitting on the stage had all gone through the back door to get to the front. Tina Packer had been part of the Royal Shakespeare Company which was a boys club and she couldn't stand it. She left the UK, came to the States and founded Shakespearean Company which is now a very successful obviously company in Western Massachusetts. Molly similarly, she finished studying directing in Washington and she went up to Alaska where nobody had theater in Juneau, Alaska and from nothing she started the Perseverance Theater which is the most successful theater in Alaska and with her appetite. And I realized for myself to answer your question, I came to New York, downtown New York around the corner from CBGVs and that area. And so I was very much a downtown person and I knew that the corporate ladder was not for women. It was for men at the time and there was a corporate ladder for directing that I could not bear the thought of even trying to go up it because for reasons that Emily Mann described because it was not done. And so I just started making theater in where I lived and I tried for a long time to get a theater to let me come and I just had a college resume of theater production. You went to Bard College, right? I went to four undergraduates. I had Bard was my last and my happiest. That's a whole nother story, Frank, that could take an hour. But anyway, then I came to New York so I started doing work since I couldn't get a theater in streets and lofts and rooftops. And it was by putting my bucket down where I am which sounds contradictory about going through the back door to get to the front. But both Tina Packer and Molly Smith and I all put our buckets down and in the back door we started working and all three of us moved to the front door that way as opposed to trying to knock on a door that was inaccessible to all three of us. And so for me, that just meant make your work, get an audience to come and see it and just make another one and then make another one. And for years, I kept thinking to myself as I had the weirdest, I had many odd jobs before I started teaching at NYU, which was great at the experimental theater wing and I started in 79 in my 20s. That was very helpful because I started to use my paychecks to produce the shows. But every year I would think I can't self-produce anymore. I just can't do it anymore. But that's the way it happened. And I think it's because of that that whatever the kind of work I do has substance because I didn't try to go up the corporate ladder. I just made work where I was and started letting the influences, which as you know, Frank, I was very influenced by the theater in Germany in the 80s, had a huge influence. I mean, I tried to take those ideas and put them where I was. Yeah, very much so. And Stein, of course, and Bondi and all those people, Gruber the most. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's fuck right, yeah. Yeah. Oh, did you see that? His production? I saw it on video once, yeah. Yeah, I saw it on video too. Yeah, yeah. No, I did not. I wish, I really wish I had seen that. Incredible production and what it means. And that's, talk about inscrutable. I mean, I only saw the video that I've seen many of Gruber's work before he died, but that video of the Bacchai, talk about inscrutable. Nobody knows what it means. You can't say, you can't really analyze that production, but it's unforgettable. And I find with his work in general, every show that I saw is indelibly, memories are planted in me, deep, deep, deep memories. And I don't know what it is he did. Yeah, I remember once I saw, just for fun, I guess, he took a farce, a very simple play, and just say, let me show you what you, and he, it wasn't the show, Gruber, and it was the most mysterious thing he pulled out of it, something under it, between the words. It was spellbinding. Amazing. I don't believe your eyes or your ears. This is what's happening, you know, and the distance between what he did and what he remixed in kind of new forms. And I think you talk about this. I like that your whole chapter on the power of threes in a way, the triads, you call them. And one is, which I think is important for everybody also to listen to. And to hear it also from someone like you, the idea of copy, transform, and combine, you know. So I think that's an important lesson. That is one, I think, I'm so glad you brought it up, Frank, because it is a really important lesson. And it comes from a guy whose name I forgot, it's in the book, who's... Kirby Ferguson, as thank you. Thank you. Who is involved in all kinds of techno making and certainly music. And his idea is that you create through a three-part process. First you copy, then you transform what you copy, and then you combine it with other things. So I think, who was the author who actually copied the Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald so that he could learn how to write a book? So you copy, and then you enter into what you've copied. Apparently, a typewriter was created from a piano. You copy something, then you transform it, and then you take all the other things that you've been working on and you combine it, and suddenly you have something brand new. We don't create from nothing. We create from what we've been given, from what we've been exposed to, what we've heard, what we've read, what we've seen. And the freedom to copy and then transform and then combine is a beautiful formula, and I think should be talked about more, which is why I wrote about it. Yeah, and also encourage that it's nothing bad, it's nothing wrong to take in a... The German painters went to Italy to be inspired. The German then performance artists went to New York to learn from the Wooster, from your work and everyone and then you transform, and you say, you call Jasper Jones, take an object, do something to it, and do something else to it, you know? Yeah, Jasper Jones. To really change it. I think this is something of significance. In the creation, I had a friend, also he was a teacher of screenwriting in Bakonsfielder, most probably the most significant UK school where it is really also connected to the business. And he said to his first-class students also, he said, well, I want you to just type up some screenplays. They would all come in with their ideas, and he said, well, I want you to type up a Billy Wilder or, you know, a Lutski or something. That's so great. And they were upset. And I said, no, you see how it is at the moment, copy, you learn the technique, how does it look like, the spacing, and it's going to teach you something. It slows you down, which you also actually also talk about the idea, you know, of slowing down. I remember in our Segal 12, you said, slow the fuck down, everyone. And that's what we are doing now. You work in London, I guess, writing this beautiful. I think that came out of the question, question, what have you learned? And what I learned was slow the fuck down, yeah. Did you slow down? No, I did. I mean, I was on far too much Zoom because of teaching and working with city company was all on Zoom, which was brain-frying as I can only imagine you know better than anybody in the world. But I was able to slow down and be with Rina and with our dog Mabel and take walks in Kensington Gardens every day. And it was great. It was important. I just hope we don't lose that. Did it inform your book? Would it have been besides the fact that you had the time, of course you said that, but do you feel there is something in it of that time of Corona? I do. I can't say exactly how, although because spending so much time with my wife, Rina, who's really a wonderful writer and editor, she would look at what I wrote and she would always say to me, what is it really? I mean, she has an intolerant dissonance influence in my writing. Being with her and so close to her and her being impatient when I get cliche or pompous or anything like that was very helpful. I think the answer is yes, I can't say exactly how. I certainly, when you mentioned it, I can feel that year of being there in London and being in lockdown. I feel it. I feel what that was like. I guess something came on the bank accounts of being with oneself. And there's a question, I mean, the Tai Chi, the Aikido, the directing act, is in a way also very personal experience. How do you combine it with the civic duties of the arts? How do you say, what is the responsible at the moment? What do you think? Where's the place for art and theater at the moment? Probably more significant than ever before. First of all, for me, the study, particularly now of Tai Chi and in the past of Aikido and martial arts, certainly. And you have to have a platform to stand on, which is a personal one. That is something that happens daily that you stand upon. So for me, it's a physical practice. Practice of breathing properly once that's established, then you say, I have something to stand on. But I think the importance of theater people, myself and others, to stand up straight, to speak full sentences, to articulate in the face of all of the ambiguity we're living through, to be very clear in the face of ambiguity and to be also clear about our role in the world. I think that we've inherited due to political reasons that date back to the founding of this country and also the McCarthy era. We have been turned as artists into people with bad postures who are ashamed and asking for alms with shame. We actually need to develop our posture to be articulate as we can, to finish our sentences and to be able to point to and say why the theater is pivotal and why, as we were speaking earlier, that high schools need theater, that theater is a pivotal part of being human. The act of being an audience or being an actor, the act of participating on the world stage is key. And I think we need to take responsibility for our place in the world. But you have to have a platform to stand on, a personal one, I think. Yeah, I like to combine that, yeah. But I like that you pointed out that there is, and you call it intentional civics, that it has to be intentional, but you have to participate in the civilized world and that it's work by actors, directors, custom-makers, the light designers, everybody is in a way participating. And if theater, I also think always, if it's great, because it's a model for something, it's a place where people really do talk, really do talk to each other. Yeah, yeah. And they do come to agreements in a very diverse group, perhaps, and Katanya pointed it out in her book, you talked about sports groups, and maybe at universities are as diverse, but it's only theater, although next to it, where people come together and create something what you can watch and share. And that there is a civic duty. And I love the, I do like the combination of the words intentional civics, which I didn't come up with. Yeah, I've never heard that, yeah. Yeah, actually, I was talking about politics, I was talking to a group pre-COVID of undergraduates at the new school, and I kept talking about theater and politics when this young man stood up, and he said, you should use the words intentional civics. And I was scops-macked, and I said, what do you mean by that? He said, intentional civics is where you pay attention not so much to the people, but to the space in between them. I found that profound, that you pay attention to the whole, you pay attention to the space in between, and what I like about intentional civics, it can exist on a very large scale, but it can exist on how you move through the day, that your intentional civics of how you pass somebody on the street, or how you encounter someone, or how you go to the grocery store, you can practice intentional civics every day in every waking moment, actually. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful notion. I asked him if he had invented the term, he said, yes. And I asked him what he was gonna do after he graduated, he was senior. He said, I was gonna go to grad school, but he wanted to take intentional civics further. And I said, you're gonna have to invent it yourself. So I hope he has, yeah. He has to cast down his own bucket, yeah. Bucket where he is, yeah. I mean, that is amazing, you know, and that civic duty and the closeness to it, like in the old Greek, at least, or our fantasy of the Greek theater, what it was, and you so often quote them as your defenders and role models, you know, that the actor actually is like the goat that's being sacrificed as the military. If something happens in front of you, they do the sacrifice, that the audience gets back, that the court arses can happen and that there is a role for it to play this ancient. It has been with us for thousands of years, and as long as the years exist, it will be part of it. It's perhaps the most human art form, older perhaps, you know, who knows, then painting, books, definitely, and many other forms. Just one question, yeah. Can I add, when you say many other forms, I have to say that through the pandemic, you have created a forum to keep things going in the theater. I think what you're doing in terms of conversations, I just have to throw that in there. Oh, that's really, really great. But yeah, theater is such an old art form. I once read an interview with Umberto Ekko and they asked him, what do you think about? You're the Kindle and the iPads and this isn't that against the book. And he says, yeah, it's something we have to think about, but let's be honest, it's not so old the invention of the book, you know? You have to see it in perspective, you know? So of course it will change, but I had a question because it kind of said with me, you say, I don't like masks, you said. You talked about Greek theory, you say, so I found that interesting comment. So tell a little bit about it. Why, since someone who also interprets and reawakens and resonates with the Greeks, why not? I understand why people love masks. I understand it in terms of what the Greeks were doing. You know, the fact that Dionysus had a mask, a smiling mask, which seemed friendly at the first, but by the end it's terrifying. I understand that. I also understand why actors love doing mask work because it frees their bodies. I love the human face. I think it's the most beautiful thing and I don't like to hide it. I think on the stage it's such a gorgeous place to go to. So I am a little intolerant of masks. I didn't go sleep no more because I don't want to wear a mask. I just don't like masks. There's two things I really abhor. One is chewing gum and the other is masks. Wow, that's quite interesting. It's visceral. How do you deal then wearing a mask? How do you do it in rehearsals and with students at the moment? How is that all over? I don't. I don't come anywhere near masks. No masks. No masks. Maybe it's an intolerance I have to look at. I don't know. I just love the human face. I like to see faces. Yeah. You quote Suzuki who says the good face, right? Yeah, the good face. Which is also the Buddha's that way too, right? Which has a little smile, which means a completely relaxed face. Before you, as an actor, you put on a face. You have to relax it. And then from the emotions or whatever's coming through the body, the face makes, does something. It's not imposed upon it. And so it's a beautiful face. If you think of Pina Boucher's company, don't you remember that they all seem to have this little smile? It's so engaging. It's from a relaxed being, a little smile comes. That's where the Buddha gets the smile. From a relaxed state, a little smile occurs. I love that smile. Yeah. And sometimes it transfers to the audience. Even so, it's such a rigorous and often then violent experience. That's quite a paradox and interesting. And as you say, it's part of the unexplainable and all good art in a way is unexplainable because if you would explain it, why do it? You just tell someone or you write it down. That's incredible. I mean, there's so much we haven't talked about it. The Buddha's concept. But can I say, I'm so grateful that you read the book so clearly, so well. So thank you for your amazing question. No, it was really inspiring, you know, that, how you call this, Kanda, you know, the ideas, you know, of Abhisabha, Leonard Cohn's cracks and the pottery, you know, Voltaire's the enemy of the good is the perfection, you know. And so many, many others. But I think we touched here on the essence of it and we can only give an idea for the real experience of it as En said, as she read books and in that moment of reading, when you also read a word, it's, let's say, tree, what you talk about when you have to decide yourself, well, how does the tree look like? As the reader, right? Yeah, it's work. But something happens in that moment and you transform the book into something and you're part of the transformation you come out. And I think that happened with me also reading your beautiful reflections, your philosophical reflections and life affirming one and also wonderful that as a member of our trade, you know, of our field, you know, that books like these emerge and it's a great testimony. I think you also quote Ariane Nuschkin who says, you know, to our actors before performances, tonight could be someone in the audience who sees a play for the very first time, could be the 15 year old and can also be someone who will never ever see a play again, maybe the last time and keep it in mind. And I think your whole book shows the respect towards your field, your craft in the art of theater resonating, you know, that you say so much goes into it and then you produce something that comes out and how important that is for you to really shine. So really, thank you, thank you. And I know we got you out of rehearsal. You could eat a few potato chips in between sessions. So thank you. And it's great that Rena could watch us and so we didn't see your dog this time. That's too bad. And I think it was truly a talk where understanding took place and we know a little bit more than we knew before we really learned something or I did. And for our audiences, a chapter, her introduction actually is on our Google Drive. If you got the invitation by mail, we have from all our writers a chapter for free. You know, in there you can look around and read from N. Catanio and Bonnie Merranca and Alexis Green and Teresa Smalig about Ron Water on the Wooster Group and all of it. And so there's something beautiful that I really would encourage you to go out and support writers, authors. These are important books. Go to your local bookstore, the drama bookshop and engage and compare to a bed salad which you sometimes get in New York. The book you will have, if you like it, you will have it forever. We're going to continue this week with Avra, Cyr de Loupolu and Frank Radatz. They are both from Greece and Germany and they talk about staging 21st century tragedies, like the tragedies we are going through. How do we stage them? Are they contemporary plays? Do we go to the Greeks? If we do, how do we connect to it? And Avra worked with 25 theater artists and they all wrote essays. It's a fantastic book. And Frank Radatz from the Rumbolt-Odipas University will talk about his new center, which he created at that new age which he feels we are entering in. And then Aiko will talk about her experience, a buddy in Fukushima. She took photos over years, went back many, many times with her photographer and she wrote small essays and reflections on a landscape that will be devastated for the next 800 years. And where does the buddy come in? Performance and theater and art in the face of it. And so we will hear from you. She's in Japan. As I said, we already heard from Bonnie Moranka, Teresa Smalek, Alexis Green-Emily Mann, Carrie Pearl Love about her work with Pinto and Stoppard and 30 years in San Francisco and in Catano last week with the art, the Moff drama trilogy, also a very significant book where she actually thanked you and said you helped her to connect to a publisher for her work. So again, thanks to Hallround for hosting us, Vijay and Sia. This is really a great honor and privilege, a privilege moment, I would say, in the sense and talked about for us to have such conversations. And of course, to our audiences, I know how much is out there, how busy life got again, but we know people are listening to it all around the world actually. And it is important to read books, important to write books and it's important with intention then also to take actions and be inspired. So Anne, I hope you will have now time for something to it, or are you going to direct right away now? How is your day gonna look? I'm finishing my class, final class at Columbia that I'm running back up to Bard College to finish your center to rehearse, so. Incredible, incredible, that's a long day. So when will the day be over for you tonight? When are you gonna go home? Tonight, 10 o'clock. Incredible, incredible. Well, it just shows how much really goes in it. So thank you again and being so generous for sharing your time, also the excerpt from your book and really we have our highest respect for your work in the theater for the field. So of decades, you know, you have put in and we are very, you know, I think we all are privileged to, to hear your thoughts and reflections and then you should hear them. But it's important enough for you to sit down, write it, edit it. I know what it takes to make a book. So really thank you and have a great holiday. Thank you, Frank. Same to you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for sharing. Bye-bye. Bye. Everybody stay safe and join us on Wednesday with Abra and Fritz. Fritz Fratz, thank you. Bye-bye.