 It's academic and it's theater. It's the place where they both meet. We have bloggers and participants very well. We can actually practice and start a practice. It's a couple of questions. Examples of women sharing what it is they need to share and how they need to do that. There's no way you can ignore what I couldn't say anymore. What time is it now? It starts out about different people and about different things. A whole scene of a banana, theater for everybody. Yes, everybody. Let's get what can be done. I have to do it completely. And indeed you might understand your life, relationships, and all the other things. They might have been. First of all, welcome everybody to the Martini Theater Center here at the Graduate Center Cunions. Thank you for watching a bit of our propaganda before we go over to Andrzej. We steal a little bit of the light that comes from him as the old sailors on the ships when they navigated the ocean, they looked up to the stars where to go and they were somewhere brighter and less but everybody knew how to navigate the oceans and the oceans of life of theater and Andrzej with his work for sure is one of the stars. We all orient our little ships and so Andrzej, thank you so much first of all for coming and joining us here at the Segal Center. Thank you for inviting me. He spent six hours, I said earlier today when we shot the film, six or seven hours in a plane yesterday in Berlin and then the plane did not leave. They did not leave them out so we had to go back, we went to an hotel, came back to the airport and just arrived I think three or four hours ago at Newark Airport and so it is quite an accomplishment. Andrzej just celebrated his 90th birthday in Berlin a couple of weeks ago. So I'm Frank Hinschkamp from the Segal Theater Center here, the director. We do bridge academia and professional theater, international and American theater. I do focus on theater and performance and my work here also would not have been thinkable if I hadn't been one of the students of Andrzej at that what we heard in the afternoon, our legendary Giesen Theater Institute. So it's kind of a circle as we sit here in a circle or a homecoming. Part of the video we showed also was filmed here in the space. So Pavel did a great job I think to combine some threads. And so when I heard that Andrzej would be coming visiting New York and South Carolina I said we really have to get him here, invite him here, him speak, his thoughts and I said there will be an audience so really thank you so much for coming and joining and I see many friends and compatriots or comrades in arms from over six, seven decades where Andrzej Wirt has followed theater. He's one who has seen Mother Courage directed by Brecht in Warsaw who has seen the openings of Krotowski, of Tadeusz Kantor, of Marge. Someone who has translated Brecht and Frisch and Dürinmatt, someone who went as a little kid in a tram through the Warsaw ghetto who was part of an underground school, had to leave it. So the horrors of the Warsaw uprising are new about it. There was this father who was a minister, Polish minister in exile in London and then went on and saw the American avant-garde very early on, Richard Forman, Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk and so many others, but especially the work of Robert Wilson. And he then created that school, the Giesens School of Ungewandte Theaterwissenschaft, applied studies that really was even, as some said, the end of the German theater was written in the German FAZ magazines. There was such a military institution designed to end German theater, as some critics wrote. And great people came out. I saw in the program Remini Protocol, he sheep of Gottsquad, Hans-Werner Krözinger, I had an old man, an endless number of linear polish very early on. So this is all the Giesens School and the Giesens influence that Andrzej has put together. It's also really a great, great honor to have him back here. Also Andrzej, next to all his teachings at Stanford and Harvard and Yale, also taught at CUNY and was a professor, I think at Lehman and City College. I think Bonnie Moranka, who was a student. Who else? I saw Eleanor Fuchs, but she couldn't make it, I think, tonight. So he also has formed a generation. Eleanor St. Calpe, I think, went to see him when he was in Berlin and did Johanna Muller studies, who's also a teacher here at CUNY. So it's really, he spent decades in continents. So Andrzej, the evening tonight will be an open conversation about theater. And first of all, how does it feel to be back in New York City? Well, the question comes too early. I actually was not prepared to... I was actually ready to come yesterday. I also had some confusion and being very tired, of course. It was not pleasant what happened before. But just to be in Manhattan made me again happy. And the idea for this trip is actually that I will go to the south where I was once there, actually ready for happy retirement. And it happened before the call from Germany. I'm talking about early 80s. About 80s, I thought that my academic career was actually closed. And then came this call from Germany. And a country which is very bureaucratically ruled. And it was an age problem that they could actually call me a professor and the director of Institute. Of course I wasn't interested to be a game professor. But the invitation went together with the offer to create a new Institute. And I was 54. I was 54 and I was in Carolina with a young wife, with a young child. And I was reading for pleasure going through this time. In the local, taking... I was the first reader who took the books of going through this time from my people's library in Georgetown, South Carolina. I would check now, I suppose, that I am still the only one reader. It might be there where you put them. Of the books. But it also changed my life to Littlestan in the late 70s and early 80s. And only many years afterwards I was told, I would never think about it, that there is a colleague, a scholar in Copenhagen, named Annalisa Schultz. And he came to my various authentic publications in Germany on Goethe-Western. They were the first which actually opened the reception of Goethe-Western in Germany. And she published in this country a book last year about that. And so I was very pleased at this, actually this work which was very much connected with this genius Lothi, being in the South. And reading also the novels of Spine, which are building with the South. And this is also behind my interest to come so long as I can to see after many years. It's already, I haven't been since early 80s in South Carolina, where I also built the house. It will be really a trip. Yes, I told you this. One of my secret things, if I would have second life, I would like to be an architect. Well, this is good. And you tell us, what is your very first memory of theater? What is the first thing you remember ever seeing in the theater? Well, actually I'm totally unqualified to say anything valid about theater in the view of my biography. Because I was born in this operetta state, Poland, between two worlds, which existed only 20 years. And then from 1939, the terrible terror and the universal, and of course, no possibility to see theater. Paradoxically, I profited. But I see it only now, looking back, that Poles were reduced by Germans, by slaves, and all education was forbidden. But it had a perverse advantage, because in a conspiracy in the underground, and I was a teenager at that time, I was in gymnasium, but I had university professors who taught me, because universities were closed. So it was a paradox of a terrorized city, and with a dangerous clandestine education, because of a danger of gatherings, only three students could meet with a professor. But basically, I think later on I could become a professor and teach, and learn languages, and learn Latin, and already as a teenager, later on, during the Stalinist period, I translated, look at Yuzer Alunatruva, and he still lives with me. I also dream of them in Latin. And I do get it fixed, so me don't move and survive. As you said, you knew the young Pope and his girlfriend at the time, when he wasn't a Pope yet from Poland. A theater place. You know, Oxford, similar tutoring in a terrorized city. So one of these things, and about theater, back to your question, film was forbidden, and theater, of course, was also forbidden. So basically this is my thought that I am totally unqualified to talk about theater, and that this enormous arrogance to try to build our own biography on theater. You know, they're saying that some of the crew haven't seen Hamlet at 17, shouldn't actually talk about theater. I haven't seen Hamlet at 17. I couldn't. So I'm totally unqualified to talk about theater. How did you meet Brecht? How come that you didn't meet Brecht? What was the connection? How did that start? Well, this is also a prehistory, almost. This is not enough now, although I wrote about that. Actually the first publications, after my landing in the States in 1966, was an accident. I came here for the first time, invited by the Literary Group 47 to Princeton, and my intention, indeed, was not to stay. Anyway, I was married, I had a child, and I had also a position as editor in Poland. But as I came to America, I had, of course, contact with American scholars because of my interest in German expressionism. I made friends only by correspondence with Walter Zocali in Stanford and met with Ruby Kohn because of Beckett. So I had scholarly contacts in the United States, which then were very helpful as I was stranded suddenly. I think you wrote about Brecht, your dissertation. I know that you applied to be at the Berlin Ensemble. Yes, what is not known, that Brecht, of course, is a very nice thing to say, but this really had said, it's only seven years Brecht's activity in Berlin, in Berlin-Armsam, and this is explainable only through the fact that he came from emigration with the whole drawers full of places which were not staged. And the whole Brecht canon was actually in seven years. It's actually a phenomenon of intensity in seven years in Berlin-Armsam, the place which was. And in this context your question is that Brecht was also subject matter to political restriction of the regime, although he was very careful not to criticize and wrote a lot of fanatics about GDR out of gratitude that he got this theater. But what is not known is that in the 50s he was under political restrictions in the GDR and the only country in which Berlin-Armsam visited was permitted to visit was Poland, People's Republic of Poland. It was in 52 and 54, so please do note how early it happened. 52 and 54, yes, Brecht was in theater. He was totally forgotten. He's a great name from the pre-war time. And all major plays, Mother Carriage, Berserk, Brochen and Kruk, Caucasian cry-de-cries were shown in Poland. Brecht was twice in Poland. And on the second visit he gave me also, and this is in a reception of Brecht without precedence, he gave me rights to translate his play, Schweig and Schweig based on Hasek, of course, known, known. Politically very naive play, showing that the fact that he was an emigre, he had, with all innocence, he had no idea about the cruelty. No, that's not well formulated. I would say he had no idea about the possibility of resistance. The possibility of resistance in World War I, the paradigm of Hasek, was not applicable to the situation in the Second World. However, politically, no, politically is a great play. And I was ever a translator of poetry, of German poetry, another German, and one of the, to my mind, the most beautiful theatrical poetry of Brecht, is in Schweig and Schweig. I know that, I think you once also, Kristina's here, you gave the talk at Yale, where you said Poland all of a sudden became, for ten years, a world power, and was that also Brecht's impulse, was that changing the scene, or do you think it was a homegrown theme that came out, the intensity that came from Poland, as contribution to World Theatre, was that already there, or was that also initiated by Brecht? You mean the impulse of Brecht on Polish theatre, not just in reverse, it was still domination of so-called leftist critics. Brecht was from the official state criticism in Poland, received very critically, as a pacifist, and so it was just actually the Soviet line, of course, of criticism, pacifist post-expressionists and so on. So it was not easy to fight for Brecht, and that shows my story. I wrote very early this dissertation about something which I wanted to be a dissertation, no chances to be put officially on the universities could it become a publication? No, could it become a vulgar Marxism, yes. So I wrote very early this, actually, this pterometric look-tool was written with intention to be a doctor dissertation, but then it was no chance to publish it in Poland, the reason for that. I started, my university started after the war, and there were two first years of the university in Poland after the war, which were still like a pre-war university. That is to say the Polish strong position in the logistics and the links with Wittgenstein and Schlick and Karnap of my professors, yes. And this was my education, yes, by Kotorinski, Kotor Kielicz, and people who were connected to Wittgenstein's logistics. This was interesting. It was very bad comment. This was possible to study first years after the war, but after that it was no more kosher. So I wrote my would-be dissertation into a drawer, and only by chance it was published in Germany after Brexit in a very widely-read magazine Zinlhorn as this telemetric structure. And it was the best thing that happened to me because the peace was noticed, of course, because of Brexit. But I was criticized in the East and he praised in the West how come that suddenly from this restricted Poland comes such a voice. So I was lucky, but it was... And then I couldn't publish it in Poland until 1966, and then in 1966 it was published in Breslau, in Wroclaw. We heard today in the documentary Hans-Tis Lehmann, who, and we will talk a bit later about post-traumatic theatre, said also your great contribution to theatres, the idea of the Leerstück or the theatre without audience, and I know you also directed Fazer and Kapo and a couple of universities. So you always said this is perhaps the centre of Brecht's work that had been overlooked. So I don't know how very well known it is. But do you still feel that the theatre and the audience perhaps was Brecht's greatest contribution on the formal level? Well, that's his well-taken point. I got it from Brecht. Of course it was already forgotten, but I didn't make an ideological point of it. I had said that it opens a new vista if you think about theatre without an audience. And about, I mean, that Brecht of course. Tell us a bit about your Fazer experiments and the idea behind it that we saw also in the workshops. Fazer was a funny story. Thank you for asking, because... Fazer is kind of an unfinished work by Brecht. It's a collection of material he worked on for over decades of soldiers lost in World War I. What happened after Brecht's death? Brecht's early death, he was 56, as you know, very early. He died and Helena Weikel became the director. And also his daughter and her husband, Eckhart Schoen, had a voice over the archive. And of course material interests are successors also to a big income from the productions of Brecht around the world. And obviously, this is not only with Brecht. Usually the inheritors are very busy to tell the outside world that there is still something hidden, that not everything is out. And we knew with Mr. Brecht's foreshore about Fazer. Fazer was a play which he started as a show trick as a drama actually. And in the 20s and not finished it as a drama. And those were the years where he got ideas about Brecht and started a new version which also is not finished of Fazer as Fazer is the name of a soldier who deserted from the World War I together with three other colleagues and who went into the conspiracy in the underground expecting the Red Revolution to happen. And anyway, an almost volume of material not finished not finished as a show trick, not finished as a drama. And it was seated in Berlin, an ensemble Brecht archive. And all requests of my German colleagues to see it were refused by Helena Weigel and a daughter of Brecht. And I knew a Brecht's strategy as a writer. He was extremely clever. In these terms extremely clever. A situation he went to, he knew that he was manipulated by the East regime for the gift of having a theater. But he didn't want to be slaves to this manipulation. And he did a very clever thing. He gave the rights to his place also to Zurich am Verlach editing house in West Germany. So the first rights were to Alba Verlach in East Germany and the Western. So they said to say, this was a regulative thing. It was impossible to go away from Canon. Yes, if there was East Germanization of Brecht parallel by Alba Verlach or Western addition by Zurich am Verlach. Anyway, this matter, a lot of my German colleagues tried to get it. And I also tried to get it. And of course, we get permission. And then as I came to the States, I remember Brecht's tactics that I knew. I don't know why my German colleagues didn't use it because they could use this door which was still open. The Brecht sent to the Houghton Library in Harvard film roles with his whole, the same old-fox strategy to have it. But for some reason nobody in Germany took advantage of it. And as I came to America, I went to Stefan Brecht, the son, and asked him for permission to read the films in Houghton Library in Harvard. They were real film roles. And I read it on the old-fashioned machine. He saw page after page and copied it and translated it. Of course, I was not enough skillful to trust my ability to translate from Germany to English. So I did together with Lacey Wilson, professor of German in Texas, Austin. Wonderful. So then you made also the jump from Brecht, and of course after all your Polish theater makers, to the American avant-garde, especially to Robert Wilson, your most well-known also in Germany for your big defense of Robert Wilson's D&D1 destruction, which was hated by most German theater critics. The actors loved it, the audience loved it. But he really encountered great resistance. And Andrzej wrote in Teatro Houghton an article saying, you know, the connections of who has to spandau, explain the work, and also that inspired, and also Hanor Muller, who included, then went to see and opened up his reception. He came to that friendship between Wilson and Hanor Muller that created this unique work. To talk about Wilson, you just went last week to see the Hoffman's Tale. So tell us a bit, nobody here in the room has seen it. So we talked about your earliest memory. So your last one is seeing a Wilson production. So tell us a little bit what you saw there, and how you have observed him over the decades. Well, actually to assume that Bob Rhett as a Hoffman, this would be a crazy idea. He doesn't inspire himself from readings, but particularly of such a esoteric author of the show, romanticism, et al. But Teatro in Gisseldorf approached him with a project. And I am forgetting now the name. I gave you the program. And I also haven't seen it, haven't heard it. There is a young British girl who came with two albums as a singer and a guitarist. Calvi, I think. I gave you this program. And this inspired him, actually. And I think it will be a very big hit. It is not sold for global circulation as all pieces of Wilson produce the Berlin Ensemble in the direction of Weimar, because Weimar is no more the director of the Gisseldorf season of the Berlin Ensemble. But I am sure it will be a global success. I am not informed what kind of deals were made. Because this is a radical musical. This is the vicinity of Blackrider, actually. And I talked to some, you know, Ravisch-Holzhausen last week where the premiere took place. And I was very skeptical that he would do something based on Etai Hoffmann. Hoffmann's tales, you know, the opera, the guitar. Yeah, show romantic, yeah. Then I changed my mind. I didn't know anything about this young artist from England. And the idea is... I talked to Bob afterwards. He said... He said that Scott Influenstein, in this piece, is still having a Müller humlet machine, a man's machine, which actually is not Müller's idea because, as you know, expressionist had also this idea German expressionist, man's machine. And in what terms, the figures are totally artificial because this is a young dance ensemble, also dancers. And the voice is given by singers. So they're artificial figures. It's not novel, of course, but the whole aesthetic is based on this. And I think it's an enormous hit because one thing that I thought, Bob, because as usual, what do you think? He said, well, it must be a success. And the reason for that is that it does not require a sustained attention. It's boom, boom, boom. The whole aesthetic is for short attention span. We are box, box, box, box, box, box. Because I'm not from this generation, but I understood. I tried to understand the mechanism. It must be a success because for two hours you are bang, bang, bang, bang. So, yeah, you brought a lot of the avant-garde to Giesa, and it was Richard Shackner, Bob Wilson, Molly Davis, John Jasun came, and many, many others. And this idea, you used first the term in 1984 already of the post-traumatic theater was your invention and then put it to a comprehensive system by Hansi Sleiman. But you still continue to watch and say even this term does no longer grab what theater is about now. So what are your reflections on global theater and this kind of, you know, turbo-capitalism, as we say, in the contemporary global world we live in? What is the place of theater? What is it saying, and what should it be saying from your point of view? I think what I'm saying in Germany also is that the ensemble, this Auslaufen, this model, meaning that ensemble theater is a model which is Auslaufen. Which is no longer in fashion, it's an outgoing model. Outgoing model, yes. Ensemble is globally, actually. Just remember that Menuschkin and Broek and Strailer, just name them, yes. There are all historical names. We don't have them now. It's time to reflect why. We don't have more, the theater became more like a Kino. Kino means movies, theater became more like movies. Yes, and a big example is the Chauvin, the former ensemble theater of Peter Stein, in which you mentioned the scandal with Wilson, the DD&D, in which I... It's very interesting that actually Stein, 79, still director of probably the biggest, the most important European theaters, ensemble theaters of the Chauvin, invited Robert Wilson. Robert Wilson stage does destruction, destroyed the classic, 79. And this became the end of the Chauvin, because Stein got a suspicion that Stein, the leftist, and Zabs Ganant, the communist, thought that this is some powerless eye. Yes, which Wilson put in his leftist theater. And it was a big scandal, especially after Stein's actors, after working with Wilson, started to revolt against the director, Stein. And it was a famous exchange between... I obtained for my students the internal protocols from the rehearsals with Stein, and the big tragic actress edit clever. In exchange, during internal exchange with Stein, complained, he said, you, Peter Stein, you never told me that what this Yankee told me. I said, what he told me? He came to me and said, edit, you are a star. So this, you may laugh that's what the actors want to hear. Yes, as Peter Stein had this military, authoritarian style, yes. Actually very brutal, also, with actors. It was the end of Peter Stein, and now, under the director from the former Isabelline of St. Mayer, Chauvin had become a kind of a Kino. Movie theater. Movie theater, yes. There is a young, for the first time in German theater, there is a young audience. There is a young audience, and the habit of going to theater is as it is among young people who are going to movies because it's dark there, yes. And indeed, it's just also the tempo and big presence because the educational theater in Germany had no young people in classical theater. And now you have, for the first time, young people in theater. Just I know more about that because I would like to know the reason being that the slime mobility became limited that the Chauvin had happened to be around my house. So I go through the street to the Chauvin. Before we open up to perhaps a couple of questions, you said that perhaps that idea of post-traumatic theater no longer really grabs the current theater, contemporary theater, or as Brecht said, we need new times, we need new forms of theater. What would you describe then what the zeitgeist? What is the era we live in? Is there a term, one could grab, that I always remember you said theater is a model for something, that's why it's so interesting that something happens on this stage that perhaps then also could happen in a reality, in a society, in a home. But what are you saying, is there a term or is there a description, an atmosphere one could use to describe what theater at the moment is about or should be about? It's very eclectic. It's very sensation-oriented. It's very much like a journalist's discourse about disinformation and so on. Something which usually is very publicistic. Publishing. Yes, something like a political part of a magazine. And very often that strict, that's why a play is no more a model. It could be open reading, it could be everything but not necessarily for children of the Dharma. Yelinek is an example of that. Yelinek's work. Yeah, so maybe Brad and Michael, we put a little bit of light up in the audience. We do have a microphone if you have maybe a question or a comment. And again, thank you for joining us after spending a day in an airplane and having an overnight flight and having just arrived for a couple of hours in most most kind and generous of you, not to bail on us. So are there any comments or questions or remarks? So maybe about the film in case you saw it this afternoon. Thank you, Andrzej, for being here. Wonderful. I would like to maybe relate to that question about young people in the theater because what you said about theater as politically minded, like publicistic, like a discussion engaging people because when I saw Oster Mayer's here, the enemy of the people, then I was surprised to what extent the whole audience, I don't know, you must have seen that production, whole audience was engaged. I had never ever seen everybody asking questions. So in your term, do you consider this, that this is theater without the audience when the audience becomes a part of the whole theater production? That's one thing. And in the same manner in Poland, when I saw, let's say, Dajota Masłowska's, No Matter How Hard We Try, the interaction between very many young people that surprised me, interaction between the audience and whatever was happening on stage was again so emotional that it just, again, I was thinking about theater without the audience when the audience becomes a part of the whole production. Thank you. So what do you think about it? Difficult question. I can say only anecdote because it sounds unbelievable, but as illustration to my thesis about the show, that theater becomes as a movie, as atmosphere, I'm still seeing almost everything because I'm getting also free tickets and I'm sitting still, although I'm not making any theater criticism in journalistic terms. And in the seventh row it's dark and I was in one play and suddenly I feel a pressure on my right arm looking a little behind and I think that there is a young lady who put her leg on my arm. So, of course, it's not unpleasant. And what I would hate to appear are all the gentlemen who protest. So I only make a small movement of her head and she saw obviously only black figure and after some seconds I feel the pressure on another arm. So, well, my colleagues won't believe about that. They say, this is Andrzej's fantasy. No, this is not a fantasy. And it happened. Another thing, this is a new, I'm for sure not proved, but some things still seeing from the premiere and still being in generation who remembers the ritual of the premiere and sitting in the seventh row behind me there are young people in jeans and we know that the backside of jeans is not an erotic place. You can show like in a zoo. So, I see three persons leaning upon and they cannot stop us as an agent provocateur whom I'm as you know. So, I said, too much information. Don't understand what I'm saying. Too much information. But this is the atmosphere and this is exactly what I have heard on the column now. Changing audiences is all complication. Thank you. Do you have a question? Yeah, we will watch the documentary just now and I was really, really moved by something I heard. It says like we came for the ocean but we got shallow waters instead. It happens a lot of times in many cases and I hope it was not what you feel like to say about what the theater has done over the decades. So, as also a theater researcher I wonder what would you like to say or what would you see the promises of doing theater itself and doing theater research. Thank you. Do you think theater also is becoming shallow and shallow? Is it worth the research? What should one research? Well, it depends where you think where theater happens. Happens if theater happens on the stage or if the theater happens in the audience or maybe theater happens in a discourse, in a written critical discourse which it provokes or not provokes. So it's an interesting question you are posing but I would say it happens differently. You did say on Jay that, and I agree with you that, if I understand you correctly, that a lot of the work that we see is very journalistic. A lot of the contemporary theater is very journalistic in a sense because it's on the level of magazine writing and we have very good investigative reporting, very good journalism and magazine writing. I love journalism but it's not as artistic perhaps because we're used to getting a lot of contemporary stories from radio and magazines and even online journalism. So I've wondered myself for many years what will theater do with itself. I've recently been thinking that I'd like to see you return to the writer because I feel that these times need a much more philosophic, poetic, rigorously intellectual way of understanding the contemporary world beyond this journalistic way. I've recently felt that one area that I found this has been in the recent work of Carol Churchill who I feel is creating a new dramatic language and creating new forms and I find her work extraordinary and one of the really few people in the theater who has really created new forms and new languages for our time. A totally different kind of language, a dystopian language in the way that the Russians and the general expressionists and the KVG, even the Poles created language in the period between the wars, but it is a kind of catastrophic imagination and a lot of people don't want to go in that place. But I'm saying I found this newer vision at least in writing in Carol Churchill's recent work which is very difficult but very brilliant her last few plays. So it's one alternative to a lot of the spectacle in media and journalistic work that is not reaching that level, I feel. I'm so moved to listening to Bonnie and I have to tell you the anecdote that you have to say that if it's true or not. I remember us the crisis started in the city university in 76-77 and we lost a lot of graduate students due to financial difficulties and Bonnie and Gautam Das Gupta were students of mine at that time and they came to me and asked what to do and you remember I told you you should make a serious, profound theatre magazine. Yes, you asked what to do, what you did of course and I had said it will be something novel in the context of theatre publication in the 70s and indeed a PhD played this role. It's totally new to have a journal of this ambition and this quality which opens now and persecuted by people who are saying that they are my oldest students and who is my oldest student and still somebody else comes and now there is a black scholar very well known and also he necessarily later on biography may be not totally different as mine Klaus Furker who was also founder of Ernst Busch Schule, a prominent school of acting in Berlin and he claims to be my oldest student. Sure, someone else. Maybe we will have a little reception here so you can ask additional questions but is there one more, maybe a comment? Peter, yes please. I was just interested in this photograph or two photographs with the no mask. Did you have a relationship to Japanese theatre at all in your career and I don't know whether you've seen it. You were asking about the mask, I think there's Daniel. Oh yes, okay. What is the history of the photo? Oh yes, interesting that you're asking but because it is also necessary to say here it's for me personally very moving. This was done last autumn montage done in Germany, in Berlin on the occasion of some... Golanfestspieler. A day with Angebert here. This was one day with... Angebert here. We have in Germany now under the new direction of the theatre Ferspiele, we have now something which is called One Day With and they arrange for me one day with ATW. And there are these two pictures. The one is... Is Yadriga here? No. One is the original No Mask from 66 and this is the mask which is still in the apartment of Yadriga Gerald here on the 66th Street in New York which a friend of mine and a former colleague here in a graduate school, Daniel Gerald a great translator of Witkiewicz brought from Korea I think the mask is Japanese, original law and it happened as I thought I landed without planning it in America and my first position was in Stanford and then I rented an apartment from Daniel Gerald professor of the San Francisco State College and in his apartment I discovered this No Mask and it shows me from 66 with the mask of No and the later picture is I don't know unfortunately the original No Mask but a Japanese friend gave me a replica which is actually a replica of No this is not original mask very expensive, very difficult to get and I had this idea to make a composition out of it it is not my two days face which you can see and this is a very good No Mask but not original and the No Mask from 66 is original No Mask may I put it on my paper? Yeah, so it certainly as an image does signify decades and time and memory and ghosting and a transition of time so I think you we looked a little bit behind the mask of Anjivirt tonight and normally it could go on for much longer and a bit more but in respect also to your long journey long days journey home and I also heard you had a little whiskey in your hotel, is that true? Yeah, so we come to and I hope you can stay around a little bit and say hello to our friends and some of your friends who came here we really would like to say thank you and pay our respect for an extraordinary life in the landscape of theater in the landscape of world theater and the great contributions you have made and it's really a model even you might say there are no models on stage but still here is a model for what a life in theater can do or can do and can inspire so thank you for coming Can I say something next? Thank you I think I should say something about Frank who is my student from the I used to speak to say that the relationship between me and the former student Frank is Socratic in these terms I learned a lot from him from Frank I learned not to make an empty compliment he brought he forced me to learn computer and I am the only one in my generation I don't nominate I would not say your name but the very famous colleague of mine Younger who has a very significant institute for performing arts and big institute and she organizes international conference of performers to which young people are coming with their computers with laptops on which they play like Ruben Stein but the great Professor Ressa writes with Kugelscheiner writes with she is younger as I am and I have to think about so part of the biography that hopefully will also come out in English soon we are trying to help with the translation I think Richard Grom on performance research will also publish in London so it will be available in English fleeing forward writing like Brett would say in his songs as he gives a motto anybody who reads German and wants to have this we have a couple of books here and otherwise you would have to wait a little bit but again I think a big applause a big applause applause thank you thank you thank you