 Welcome, everybody back to Segal Talks here at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at the Graduate Center CUNY in New York City. It's week five of Friday. I feel that everybody feels the weight of those weeks behind us, especially at the end of the week. We have days that are surprisingly full, surprisingly quiet. New York State and New York City is not doing well. There are suggestions that the actual death rate is over 20,000. We still don't have vaccinations. We don't have testings. Everything is closed. The city is closed. Artists out of work, lots of them for a year ahead, musicians, actors, dancers. So it's something we share with the world. Perhaps the first time we are really wildly connected in a sense we have never thought about. And it's a serious time, but it's also a time for reflection, a time to think about what we yesterday had on Peter Sellers, who shared with us his thoughts that he feels strongly things have to change. They have to be different. The environment is getting back to us and giving us a warning. And what we also should use this time to just listen. And this is what this talk is about. We really listen to the voices of artists, which we always do at the Segal Center, where we open bridge academia and professional, international and American theater. But they are significant voices, important voices, and they have been on the right side of history, on the right side of social justice, and on the right side of being on the right side today. We have the New York component of our week, most of the four of them are international global talks from everywhere from Egypt to Hong Kong, China, from Poland, Germany, Italy, and many, many more. But this is our New York segment. We have two representatives from the New York theater, seen two significant voices, the great Oscar Eustace, from the public theater, which he runs. The public theater, normally an institution with 250 people just working there, all doors are closed, Joe Papp get it, if I remember right out of the hand of it. It was a Jewish welfare organization, was a city building, and he had that vision and created what's called the public theater for the public. And now the public doesn't have a theater at the moment, it's closed, but the building is there. And this is the great Tony Torn, who is part of the landscape of the New York theater, seen especially the experimental one, going back to the ways of two days, his exceptional work, but also carrying on over decades his early work, and he hosts and runs one of the smallest, perhaps the smallest theater with 20 seats or 30 in his home, downtown, where he equates. So these are opposites in it, but somehow they are connected. So both of you welcome, thank you for taking the time, we know how much you work, how much you have on your mind, Oscar and Tony. So Oscar, so what's going on, how do you feel? How are you sitting at the desk looking at a screen and being asked to talk about the public? Yeah, it's a difficult time. It's a difficult time to talk about because it's a difficult time that we're all in, and we at the public have our particular set of pains and obstacles and, you know, suffering, but we're not exceptional in that. Everybody is going through variations on this theme, and we have the epidemiological crisis, but of course we also have the economic crisis that is right on its heels and is going to have an enormous impact on our work. So we are trying day by day to make the best decisions we can about that. So how do you feel? You're also an artist, you're a director, you're a dramaturg, one of the great ones, and how do you feel as a person at the moment? It's hard. It's complicated. I'm healthy. I had a bout with the thing, but I'm over it, and I feel good. I'm here with my wife and daughter. So you said you had the virus? Yeah. I didn't know that. I was hospitalized mid-March. You were hospitalized? I had no idea. And it was bad, but I recovered. I'm lucky. And I'm with my wife and daughter here in Brooklyn, and the fact that we're together is really great. So in that way, I feel very privileged and blessed, and on the other hand, I'm running the theater, which is facing enormous economic challenges, enormous artistic challenges, and I suspect like most of us, a lot of what I'm spending my time doing is trying to figure out what my responsibility is and what's the best possible way that I can live up to those responsibilities in this moment in planning for the moments to come. And it's hard, but that's my job. If possible, tell us a minute, how did you find out you had the virus and what happened? How many days were you in the hospital, and how did it feel like? I was in the hospital for four days, and I actually cannot promise you I had the virus, because of course, we're in New York and not an advanced country like South Korea, so we didn't have the test when I was in the hospital, but all signs indicate from both the symptoms and everything else that I had COVID-19. I was in bad shape for four days, but once I was released and seemed to be recovering within 10 days, two weeks, I was pretty much back to normal. So you had the fever and the muscle aches and the coughing. The intense muscle weakness, that was the most distinctive part about it. It was just sort of mind-blowing how weak I was. And then I was dying. I had some heart problems that is what they actually admitted before that stemmed from low potassium, which now, in these studies, suggests that low potassium is one of the indicators of COVID. My personal, I've had so much better. I know more of a privilege compared to so many others that I don't feel like I have anything to complain about in that regard. But still, your life was in danger. What did go through your mind? I was actually too tired to be worried, which is maybe a natural blessing that illness sometimes brings. I was so exhausted I had no anxiety at all. I just wanted to get some sleep and feel better. And the biggest worry, actually the biggest observation I had is that this is almost six weeks ago now. The hospital that I was in here in Brooklyn was overwhelmed at that point. And clearly you could feel that they were not able to keep up with, I spent the night in a hallway, they were not able to keep up with the flood of patients, and that was six weeks ago. So our frontline workers are heroic. Our government is shameful, particularly our federal government, for the lack of support that they've provided to the hospitals and the people who are actually bearing the brunt of this. And at seven o'clock every day, I'm out on the street cheering and applauding for the frontline workers in this health crisis, because they are taking risks they shouldn't have to be taking, and they're being selfless in an extraordinary way. Incredible. So you spent a night in the hallway of a Brooklyn hospital. Did you think at all about art, theater, did something come to your mind? Are you saying this was not, wasn't the moment? It was something that- Yeah, I mean, I thought about it. I was actually in the hospital over the period of time when we shut down the theater. I was admitted on the 10th of March and we shut down the theater as all theaters shut down on the 12th, 13th of March. So I was actually not available to make that decision. Although there was not much of a decision to be made, we were just doing what was necessary. But I came out of the hospital in this strange new world where not only did we have to shut down all of our operations, but the entire community I'm part of, and essentially I live my life as a member of the New York theater community, everyone who was not connected to an institution was instantly unemployed. And of course, for most of the colleagues that I worked with, they were not only unemployed from the theater, but their side gigs in restaurants and bars also shut down. So the level of anxiety and economic trouble that is flowing through the Maratheta community right now is enormous. And one of the things that, again, I spend a lot of time thinking about is what can we as an institution do to try to buffer that or support those people or not just keep our own institution alive, but keep the rainforest, the ecology of the Maratheta community alive because we all live in that ecology and no institution can survive if that entire ecosystem doesn't survive. Yeah, and incredible how your personal life and then the life of the theater you work in, but also the life of the city kind of intertwined is one of the flagships of American theater, certainly also of New York, theater, also next to Lincoln Center Theater, is the big institution. And I can only imagine what it means to be responsible for, as you said, 200 to 250 people and for sure it will not be able to have everybody on for the next year. Tony, how is it for you? How did when did you hear first about it? When did it hit you that it will change your life as an artist? Well, I was very aware of what was going on, of course. And I was I was traveling to Boston every week. I was teaching up there at MIT. So I was taking Amtrak right through the corridor where all the cases were first showing up. So when we shut down there, I was actually getting ready to go and join, join my brother and sister at a celebration for my father, Rip Torn in Mexico in that morning when I was passed away, right last year, as we last year. And so we were I was about to head out there was packing to go to the airport and I just felt terrible. And so I canceled the trip and I stayed at home for three weeks in New York. I actually managed to get a test because I'd been staying with an elderly friend while I was in Boston. I really wanted to make sure that she was safe. So I was able to convince my doctor to sign me up on the first test that were available. And I tested negative, but it took me a week and a half to find out. So I thought, well, I have plenty of time to have caught the virus since. But anyway, I'm doing fine. I'm here with my family and very, very grateful to be healthy and safe, you know, and looking forward to the future and seeing what comes next for all of us. New York City is a special, as you said, tone, Oscar say, ecosystem in a way, Galapagos Island where things develop. They don't develop in other islands. And it is an island after all in Manhattan. What do you all think? What will it mean for New York Theatre? What are we going through now? Tony, you want to take first crab? Yeah, sure. You know, it's New York, you know, happens to be a very, very special community center for theater makers. And, you know, Oscar's Theatre and what I do, I mean, Oscar's the public theater, so beautifully called the public theater is, you know, great institution for the public that can see it up to a thousand people a night. I do private events in a private space for 30 people or less. But what connects them is they're both community places. The public theater has always been really at the forefront of making their theater community space for everybody. And that's what torn pages. We have lots of different communities. There's poetry communities, theater communities, filmmaking communities, all moving through our little place where they can share work with people. And so that's that's the that's the flow. That's what it's all about. It's about community. And right now we're trying to figure out a way to keep the communities connected when you can't be in the same space. And, you know, things will change. There will be an evolution in the way we do things. We will be able to gather again in some way in the future. But we don't know what that will be. You don't know how soon that will be. And there's lots of things we're all working on to keep creative and keep connected. A lot of us have been doing work on Zoom. And I just watched the beautiful piece that during at the public, the Richard Nelson piece of what we need to talk about. It's a gorgeous example of how actors can contribute into sort of a new form, the sort of Zoom performance thing that a lot of us have been involved with. But it's interesting. It's it's it's a great thing to have while we're waiting for theater to return. But is it theater? I'm not sure. So I'm looking forward to how theater will reemerge the very essential aspect of theater, which is the live people in a room together. So that's something to evolve towards. But we're all doing our best to keep connected. And I think that's the main thing is to try to keep the communities moving forward. You know, I'd say I can't see. I agree with everything that Tony said. And actually, let me jump off of one thing you said, Tony, because the notion of the community and our awareness of the role we play within a community, I think is also the big delta about which direction the whole culture goes, because in this kind of crisis and this time of economic crisis and medical crisis, ecological crisis, we either are going to continue the lurch towards authoritarianism, nationalism, xenophobia, wall building that the world has really been caught up for the last few years from the United States to Great Britain, to Russia, to Hungary, to India, all of the world, nationals, and xenophobes have taken control of governments. And we're either going to continue in that direction, which means that. A humanity will be doomed. And I'm fairly fairly sure that if humanity is doomed, it won't be good for the theater. And or we are going to go in another direction, which is a direction of understanding our responsibilities to each other, a community impulse that is broader and deeper than we have previously had. I don't think things are going to stay the same. We've already seen reactions from the federal government from Congress anyway, with the Payroll Protection Plan that is the most aggressive intervention in just providing jobs and wages for people that we've had since the Great Depression. And like the period of the Great Depression, what we saw then was the world split into those who on the one hand went towards an authoritarian nationalist route and those who on the other went towards what the New Deal became, which is a way of trying to become a more egalitarian society. I think that theater has a really crucial role to play in that. I think the theater's role in advocating for that greater sense of community responsibility is going to be very important. And I also think the theater will only thrive if that's the direction the culture leans in response to this in response to this crisis that we agree that we're in a shared journey, a shared burden, and we need to share both the burdens and the joys of what has come. I'm sorry, that's kind of high fluid and grandiose, but I really believe it. I don't think the theater will look the same way when we're done with this. I think that either we will be more inclusive or we will be less relevant. I know it's maybe too early to ask, but if you say more inclusive, you already are so inclusive also of the outreach with Joe Spopp and Shakespeare in the park, Shakespeare Mobile Park. What would be more inclusive? Are things going through your mind? Yeah, I mean, one of the things Tony referenced Richard Nelson's play, what do we need to talk about? Which we it's our first completely quarantine created production, Richard wrote the play in the last month. We rehearsed it and put it on Thursday night. And we've had 25,000 viewers in the last 36 hours, which is extraordinary for us. So part of me thinks that this this being forced into this digital sphere might have some discoveries and blessings and positive matters. We might find ways that the work of the public can extend over a broader geographical reach. I know that when we come back, it's going to be into the time of some economic deprivation. There's no question that kind of means I kind of magically bounce back. We're going to have serious unemployment issues. We're going to have serious economic issues. And at that moment, resources will be scarcer. And if the theater is going to thrive, the theater is going to have to. And I particularly count my kind of theater, which is supposed to be a big, broad, populous theater. We have to make the case for why we matter. We have to make the case for why we're improving people's lives in a very powerful and direct way. Or I think we won't deserve to thrive in the coming world. So, you know, for us, it's both about, you know, possible digital outreach. It's about we have a mobile unit, but I think everything we do needs to become mobile. I think we start me to start moving outside of our building on a very regular basis. As we know, we have the numbers and the metrics that the only programs we do where the audience exactly matches the demographics of New York City are our mobile unit productions. When we go to where people are, we're reaching everybody. When we expect them to come to our building, we're immediately diminishing the number of people we reach. We had started a national outreach program, the National Mobile Project, where we toured last year, and not just swept through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota in world communities. I think we're going to need to continue that. I think we need to, you know, whether the public is a big theater that's supposed to have a big, populous audience, Tony's is a much more intimate community. But for whatever community we're serving, I think we have to demonstrate what's necessary about us. And we have to look at ourselves deeply and say, do we actually have something to offer to here to offer right now? And if we don't, maybe we should shut up. But if we do, how do we offer it in a way that's most effective? If someone would talk to both of you, they say, why are we needed? But what do you feel is the real reason why is theater needed? Why is art needed for when New York will coming back? Besides, of course, everybody, what is what is your deep conviction inside of you, why we have to be present? Well, just think about what we are missing right now, what we're missing right now in social isolation, social distancing, lockdown. You know, we have these, you know, in terms of people who who art is like nourishment, is like food. We have, you know, we can see amazing films on, you know, from the history of cinema. We can read books. We can engage in this strange new beast of Zoom performance, which is something with very interesting individual aspects, which you might get into later. But what are we missing? We're missing, we're missing being in a room with people. And, you know, let's not forget the essential beauty of that and the essential nourishment we get from being in a natural community. And there are some people think that we may never be able to do that again, which I think is we I think that there is a need for human beings to connect with others outside of a mediated realm. And that's what theater offers, you know, for I love multimedia theater, but it, you know, in the end, I think the important thing is not to try to recreate a like a film experience or a sort of a sculptural experience, though if you want to use those things to enhance the live aspect, fine. But the main thing about theater is you're actually in the room. It's actually happening now. And there are aspects of that that can be borrowed by something like the Zoom experience. But I think that we're going to come out of this hungry, thirsty, starving to be in that live connected experience. So we just have to find a way forward to be able to offer that to people again. And I think that there is just a holistic aspect of theater that is unmatched by any other life, by any other art form. And, you know, on top of that, everything that Oscar says about our mission, our social mission is 100 percent true. But that's on top of what I think is the spiritual need of theater is to be connected in real time with real people in a real place. That's that's beautifully said, Tony. And the only thing I'd add to it is the other thing that the theater provides in a civic way is it's the only place where routinely groups of strangers come together who don't necessarily agree already on any ideology and watch stories that are profound and deep, celebratory, painful, all of the different gamut of what the theater can cover. The churches or other gathering sites, those are people who are preselected that they agree with each other. But the theater, when you come together, you don't have to agree with the people next to you. You can completely disagree with them. They can be completely different than you. But then together you watch a story and the act of being live and Tony's episode, nothing replaces it, means that your laughter is more satisfying if 30 or 100 or a thousand people are laughing with you. Your tears are more moving if you hear other people crying with your nuts or if everybody's dead silent, not wanting to miss what's going to happen next. What happens in that collective audience thing is that we are reminded on a visceral level of how much we have in common with each other. We are we actually experience the sense that what I find funny, so do a lot of other people, what I find moving so to a lot of other people. And by doing that, I think it reinforces the idea that again, we have more in common with each other than we have distinct from each other. And that in this age when the social media is letting people silo their experiences in the pre-selected echo chambers, where all may hear opinions they already agree with, I think that's going to be more important than effort to have, to let this kind of storytelling remind us of what we have in common. Yeah, I think it's like a fast thing in a way you don't eat, but you think constantly about what I do every week, every year and it's healthy and it tastes differently, it smells differently. But it's an argument that New York politicians will have to go through. Do I give money to the nothing unit? Will I give it to care for pregnant women or for what's needed, midwives getting health insurance or we say we give it for production, for the opera, for musicals and things. So these are really big questions that we really have to ask ourselves, you know, what is it really good for what we do? And especially in New York City, often lots of people do say it wasn't really great before yet. There's some things weren't working. Is it a chance to rebuild, repair something or reconnect or do something new? Well, if I could just jump in because, Frank, I would not phrase the question that politicians have to decide whether to give money to nursing facilities or to the theater. That's the way the right wing wants us to pose the question. Exactly. Yeah. But what the real question is, is are we going to make a commitment as a society to fund the things that are good for everybody? And that includes hospitals and that includes theaters. Or are we going to let the rich keep their privately held money close to themselves? That's the question is, are we a society devoted to the common good? Are we a society devoted to the accumulation of individual wealth and the knocking down of any restrictions or redistribution that may come to them? And that I think if we weigh in on the side of we have to become more inclusive, we have to become more egalitarian, we have to treat and think more of the common good as a society that will have implications and everything from taxation to social policy. And I don't want to let us get pitted in a competition with hospitals as if it's a zero sum game. It's not a zero sum game. Yeah, access to education, the arts and health, basic human rights. And they have to coexist and actually connect to each other. They are given. It's a great society. They are indicators. But Tony, I interrupted you. Yeah, no, I don't know if anybody read Gabriel Hamilton's article about the closing of Prune Restaurant in the Times. It was a really amazing article because what was really very clear and deep about the article. So she sort of revealed what the economic situation was before covid hit that made the entire industry so fragile and that the whole thing was riding on such all these different restaurants. She talks about other people who ran restaurants kind of all saying, oh, yeah, we're doing great. But when the time comes that the bottom fell out, nobody had any savings. Every everybody was riding on such a very thin margin. And I think that's really true for many arts institutions as well. You know, we got used to the fact and torn pages, no exception, because we don't have any endowment. I don't have a trust fund. I run it out of. We all basically hand to mouth every month just trying to keep the lights on. And, you know, it's because of the way the economy works. Everybody's used to the fact that you just have to pay a very high level for to keep the everything open and the real estate so expensive. And so, you know, when something like this comes, it just, you know, when the bottom falls out, there's no infrastructure to please take care of things. This economy that, you know, our president was so proud of was economy where they completely dismantled the safety net. So now they're scrambling to try to put something back together. Of course, the people who are getting the first handouts of the people who already have everything. So, yeah, I think covid has revealed that, you know, the curtain has moved up and we see just how our society has been structured not to take care of people. And, you know, the government's taking care of the people who have the most first. So how do we move forward? You know, it's a lot of it is, you know, once again, the community thing, you know, we have to continue making our case. We have to keep reaching out. And we have to, you know, just say that we're here not because we're expressing our own sort of egos. Because we have a community and we have people that we that we come together. And there are other people who come to watch what that community puts on. And it's it's not about individuals, but it's about all of us. How do you feel the support has been for the theater and the performing arts in New York City? Is it was it structured right? Is it workable if there's no covid? Or do you already feel something should change, should have been changed? Well, from our perspective, which is unique, as we are one of, as you said, one of the largest cultural institutions in the city and certainly one of the two largest theaters, the city does a really excellent job of supporting us, the cultural institutions group. They are landlord both at the Delacorte and at 425 Lafayette. We pay a token rent for both of those. They cover our utilities at 425 Lafayette. And my expense and expense much of my life in other cities is that New York is the one city in the United States that understands that the arts are central to its identity in the broadest sense. When people come to visit New York, they go to the theater, even if they never go to the theater where they're from, because they know going to the theater is one of the things you do in New York. It's part of New York's identity. So I feel like we're very lucky in terms of city support. At the same time, we get negligent support from the state and from nothing, really, from the federal government. And we don't live in a society that as a whole is committed to egalitarian values. So we are always having to push against the tide to do anything for free. We're having to push against the tide to reach audiences that can't pay for it, that don't think of the theater as a commodity. But rather as an experience to be had. And so in that way, I don't blame city government. I don't blame the way the city is structured. I blame the way capitalists are structured. I blame the values of the society as a whole, which within which I think New York City is an oasis, not an oasis with enough water, but at least it has a different point of view than much of the rest of the country. There's a big difference, of course, between the way institutions are supported in America's and other parts of the world. The idea, you know, federal support for the arts was pretty much dismantled by, you know, the NEA for stuff. There's the fact that every year, the federal government, you know, they try to present a budget that completely dissolves the, you know, the endowment for the arts and all that stuff. It's becoming this sort of this political statement that we arts have to sink or swim by a capitalist model. That what? You can't you can't you can't make a profit at it. Well, then it's worthless. You know, if you can't make a profit at it, then you're you're a loser and you should shut you shut your shop. You know, it's just something to think about. I mean, there's there's advantages to the American model, you know, when institutions have a great deal of support. Say, you know, I talk to friends who work in Europe, who feel sometimes that they just that there's kind of a like an unconscious sort of towing the line that that's the way of they receive a certain amount of support. But, you know, I'm very jealous, very jealous of the fact that there seems to be, you know, more support in different cultures. And meanwhile, here in this country, it's become a political division. You know, it turns out that it seems that caring for people in a pandemic is a progressive issue and the economy is a conservative issue. This is just another case of them trying to divide and conquer. I mean, they're both important issues for everybody. You know, we've got to take care of our people. You know, you can't you can't take care of people in the society if the hospitals are overwhelmed. On the other hand, we've got to take care of each other just, you know, bread and roses. So that's where we are. There are some positive, you know, steps going forward. And one thing we have to see is, you know, there's lots of states that are kind of rushing to reopen. You'll be we'll get a lot of information pretty soon about whether that's you know, whether that's going to be a disastrous move or not. Well, that's going to depend on, you know, what happens. And then it's going to affect what the future is for live performance. But, you know, you know, live performance in other places, you know, if they don't have a lot of cases, I could see people talking about it. But we are the epicenter of the covid epidemic in the world currently, and we're also the epicenter of theatrical work in America. This is Broadway. This is off Broadway. These are places from the public theater to my space. And so the question is, when when does Broadway reopen? When is the public reopen? When are people going to feel comfortable gathering large numbers again? It's a real serious issue. And I, you know, I want to be optimistic about it. But, you know, a lot of this, a lot of the problem looking forward is just the fact that nobody knows this is a lot is a lot we don't know yet. And nobody wants to kind of project a future without knowing how it's actually going to go down. Sky, any thoughts about the fall? Will we do you think there's a chance even? Or I don't know. Sure. Sure, there's a chance. But, you know, in this, we're all in the same boat. I don't have any higher insight into when we're going to be able to reopen. What I know is that we will reopen when it is medically, legally and ethically possible for us to reopen. Personally, I don't know that socially distanced theater is going to take place. I don't, in any significant way, people are going to come and gather a lot of theater until they are no longer scared that they're going to catch a deadly disease by doing so. And so I don't think I mean, I applaud Barrington Stage, who are this summer removing every other row and doing solo shows and doing all these many, many factors, but I don't believe it's going to be a successful model once there's a cure, once there's a vaccine, once there's, you know, absolutely excellent and easily available testing. One of those things is going to have to happen or herd immunity. One of those things is going to have to happen before the theater can really come back. And those things will happen. We just don't know when. We just don't know what the time will be. When those things happen, the theater will be back. And right now, I think our job is something you were saying earlier on, Frank. It's twofold. And the one thing is during this period to provide all the value we can, as I think you were doing, Frank, with these seagull talks, which are great. And Tony, the one thing I'd slightly take a different perspective on is I think the presence of a live audience in the same room is an absolutely core component of the theater, but also the experience that I've had with the ample family play. And now, even with this right now, this is an event that's happening. It's an event with an audience. It's an event that's happening live between us. We're not physically present, but it hasn't been stripped of all theatrical power. It hasn't been stripped of all the community power. And one of the things that, you know, I've been able to tell from some very rare experience online, if you can have a sense of community, it's different. It's not as satisfying. It's not as good as what we normally do. But still, it's there and it's real and figuring out ways to pierce our bubbles and to to make us less isolated while under quarantine is a noble and worthy thing for us to do. But then for an institution like ours, the other thing I have to do is I have to plan, not plan calendar, because I can't control the counter, but plan activity, plan art, develop develop art that's ready to go so that when the moment comes when we can come back, that we can come back vigorously and powerfully and, you know, spreading the value of theater and demonstrating the necessity of theater as broadly as we can. How is the mood around the community of public theater artists? What what I'm sure you have your ear very, very close to their hearts. How is the mood at the moment? I don't think it's that different from the rest of the world. Everybody is doing the best they can within a very scary situation. The there are not there are some people there are not many people right now within our community who are experiencing immediate emergency economic situations and we're figuring out ways and people are figuring out ways to keep their heads above water for right now. The scary thing is the cliff that's coming, that it is going to come a point where the I know some people in terrible trouble right now, but there's going to come a point soon where a lot of people in economic trouble. And that's where I think we have to try to mobilize a society to help everybody. You know, part of, you know, telling you think about the the PPP is, you know, a federal program to keep people employed. We did that with the WPA in the 1930s. In the 1930s, we had federal jobs programs directed at artists, not because they were artists, but because they were workers who needed jobs. And the federal government understood that keeping people working was a value in and of itself separate from any profit they made. And so I'm hoping that we've got the thin edge of the wedge into the national consciousness about that, and that we'll be able to keep pushing on that. Yeah, compared to, for example, Germany, where artists have health insurance, a special artist's health insurance, depending on the income you make, you pay or you make a lot, you pay more, if not, you pay much less. But there is some kind of a basic payment. I think the city of Berlin with over a weekend handed out 5,000 euros to artists. Of course, it's all organized differently. But as Oscar also said, these are also systematic decisions that have been made to represent values and values. I think this is what it shows have to change. It is not working how it is working now. It is not serving the people and the people who also go to the public theater and they're the first hit who artists and other ones who were shut down first and perhaps the last ones to open. Our Hungarian or Polish friends of Tia Warsaw said, theater and massage salons were closed right away and it's written down and they're going to open class. You know, it's interesting something with that. Yeah, with the body, you know, to do. We have to throw a spasolini, so we have to throw our bodies into life. So Oscar, do you think, Tony, will there be an online existence of theaters? Like, you know, we have the big houses, opera, dance, drama. What's happening now? Will there be, you know, will you be teaching at MIT Zoom theater? Will it become an independent part? Because 25,000 is a super big number, you know, to listen to. And these people will go to see the live show also, like this music bands. You'll love to see the concert. Are you still by the DVD or the CD or the music cassette? However far you went back. So will there be other plans for you, Tony or Oscar? Are you thinking about having that to be prepared, let's say, even for the next virus? Well, you know, it's happening now. I mean, we all, all the people who are teaching classes went online. You know, there's a big little bit of a question about intradacting. How do you do that when you're not in the room with the students? But, you know, we all did it. We're I think it's going well. The students I can tell are very, very happy to be able to engage, to not be able not have to lose their contact with their fellow students or the we had to change the focus a little bit. And, you know, a week into the shutdown, I found myself playing Falstaff in an adaption of Henry the 4th, part one that plan Shakespeare is doing. And I was like, wow, this is great. I've always wanted to play Falstaff. I didn't expect to be on Zoom, but here it is. And then I was I was directing a zoom piece. This Heather Woodbury thing while the gold lobe warms. And I found I find it a very interesting beast, aesthetically. You know, it's a medium of close ups. So, you know, these interlocking close ups, and it's really beautiful in the Nelson piece, but it can be done in very other ways. And we spent a lot of our time in rehearsals talking about what the eye lines do. One of the strange things about video chatting is the idea that eye contact is very strange. Like right now I'm looking at Oscar. I'm looking at Frank, looking at the camera. Where do you look when you're trying to communicate now? These are very fast. It's actually very fascinating medium. So when I say sometimes I don't know if I want to call it theater, it's not to downgrade it. I actually think it's, you know, right now we've got lots of actors who can't gather in rooms and it's hard to gather a big film production. Those film productions, you know, but using this technology to these home cameras, there is kind of a new aesthetic. And there's lots of amazing work being done in this field. So I'm very grateful for that. So, you know, we're all evolving, you know, you know, artists have to create. And those of us who are used to creating in live rooms with other people, we're just using the materials that we have at our fingertips and, you know, having fun with the new puzzles. And I'm having a great time working in the medium and watching work in the medium. So it's happening. I think one thing would be really exciting about the future of these things is when we start moving to a more sort of live television aesthetic. I think it's going to be a return to the glory days of the fifties. So how can we move? How can we kind of re-institute a thing where maybe theater is being filmed and maybe they'll get to a point where we're able to have actors in a room together, but they still, you know, broadcast to an audience. And maybe that's something that just becomes regular, even when the theaters are back on, even if something at the public theater is playing for an audience of 300 people, maybe they'll also be live streamed. So there's there's things about the current situation. You know, those of us who like a challenge, we're all taking the challenge to try to keep producing work and sharing with our communities. Now, I completely agree with Tony. We're discovering there are certain things that work very well on Zoom or online. Teaching is one of them, the classes that I'm teaching in certain cases are better online than the one person. For example, as a class that I teach online now, and I don't know why, but since we've moved to Zoom from the classroom, class participation has gone way up. Everybody speaks now, whereas actually in the room, it tended to be much more dominated by a few people. Why is that? We can all have a theory about it. But I'm actually having the experience of that's what happens. So certain things we're learning that way. There's Susan Lee Parks Watch Me Work works brilliantly online. It's a wonderful thing to do online, thanks to HowlRound for that, too. Richard Nelson is the first instance we have of a play that is written for Zoom, about Zoom times about quarantine. And that's really worked. And that was what, 48 hours ago, less than 48 hours ago, 36 hours ago. So we're still trying to figure out what to learn from that. In fact, we have had 25,000 views in 36 hours from, you know, it was the watching live over and over and it was 16 different countries. That's something the public's never had before. So what does that say to us? We have to recalculate that. I will be shocked if that learning doesn't go into the post-COVID world, if we're not taking some things that we learn in this time and it is changing our practice without, again, believing that the fundamental practice we have of bringing live audiences together with live actors to tell stories, that's still the fundamental business we're going to be in. But I think there's some very exciting possibilities of expansion. Yeah, so can people download now? Can they still look at it? Is it on the website? Yes, it will be streaming on the public theater's website until Sunday and Sunday at a certain time or any time. Any time you want, any time you want from now till Sunday. Then we, according to our union agreement, have to take it down. But it has been so popular that we are an actor engaged with the union in discussions to be able to keep it up online. So it's and I got to say also in this time, the unions that we deal with, Actress Equity, 802, IAZI, have been fantastic about their flexibility. They've been really great partners because, of course, we're all on the same side. We're trying to figure out how to get work for artistic workers. And that's been, that's been a delight. So something also might finally change in the when it comes to screens and things. Yeah, it is true. It's a chance also for our Segal talks. If we understand right for our talk with Milo Rao, we had over 5,000 listeners in 36 countries that's unheard of for one hour talk that's just announced a week before. And and there seems to be something we can connect to. I think it's in a way like communicating. You can write a handwritten letter. You can write an Instagram. You can write an email. You can send a text message or you write an email. So there will be variations. Of course, the handwritten letter is a wonderful, precious thing. I love to read books. Yes, I have an electronic device. But when I have a book, I enjoy it when I sing the same. We'll also be in a way, hopefully, for Cedar, but we need new forms for the new times as a bright set who is behind you on one of the three Eastern China plays. Oscar, what do you think? What would bright say about America, about the political social situation? What needs to be done? It would be absolutely appalled at the continued ravages of commodity capitalism, as indeed any Marxist is. The capitalism's ability to absorb almost anything and turn it into a commodity, its ability to turn all human relationships into transactional relationships is awe inspiring. Capitalism, as as Marx knew when he wrote the manifesto, is this force unlike anything in history. And it has produced value and has produced immense destruction. What if I can quote another philosopher, Michael Sundell from Harvard, said, we used to be a market economy. And in the last 40 years, we become a market society where not just the economy, but everything in society is judged by its price tag. We believe that we can put metrics on everything we can believe. We can turn everything into a number. And that, I mean, Brecht would have been appalled about that. And I say as if I know, but that's what I assume. What I know is that he also said, we have to make theater not based on the good old days, but based on the bad new days. It makes no sense to long for some other circumstance and wish we were in that circumstance. It's hard. We don't choose the times we're going into. We don't choose the challenges we're facing. The only choice we have is how we face them, what we do about it. And we're in era, you were talking about Peter Sellers, evocation of the planet and ecology. So if we stop using ecology as a metaphor for the theater community, but think of ecology in terms of the actual physical ecology of the planet we live on. Climate change is a perfect example of a problem that capitalism is unable to deal with. There is nothing within the market model that would incentivize, allow or even permit climate change to be actually co-created. It can only be coped with by collective action that's devoted to saving the planet, not to maximizing shareholder profit. And so that if we are going to save the planet, it is going to force us to adopt a different set of values. And that's that's what I think we have to look at right now, is where are we being driven into a moment in history where the incredibly creative, destructive forces of capitalism are about to run their course. They're going to cease being creative and only be destructive. And that's when we have to come up with some different models of social organization. And hopefully the theater can be part of that. Yeah, I think I can't. And covid also shows the situation that capitalism is just very bad and handling. You know, that's a thing. So, you know, there's two lessons to be taken from this. People will either come out and say, it's not worth it. It's not worth the economic disruption to keep people safe. That's one point of view. The other point of view is that if we can see that there are some things that can't be dealt with through a typical business capitalist privatization response, we have to acknowledge finally that there are some things that have to have a collective response. Covid is one of the is a perfect example of this. You know, the society that was that we built and the one that's become even more leaning towards a purely capitalist model in the last four years can handle this. So maybe the lesson we can take is that we need to build a society that can handle things like this and can handle the even larger eventual collapse that will come if climate change goes unchecked. Yeah, the world has come to a stop a full break, like a high speed car. And normally we all know you slow down before you stop, you know, you learn. You think it was no no time, no break. And now things are things are unpredictable. Perhaps it might be the end of the oil industry. Finally, who knows, it will be there will be serious serious changes that come up. And and as always, that's why Cedar and the arts are so significant. You know, they are mirrors. They are shaping our time, but also they do mirror it. So it will be important what you do, because whatever you do at the torn page or at the public, it will reflect a new thinking, a new way of doing things. And this is why it is so significant. What you guys are doing, what solutions you will be finding. And one day people will study that. This is what artists did during or after. Oscar, but also Tony, are you commissioning work now? Do you keep artists afloat? Do you have a like a round table as they did after the opening of the wall? But they said people from all walks of East Germany, they should come together. Do you have specialist team or do you are you so busy? I can only imagine how much work it is to run from from from a far organization. But do you what do you do at the moment? Yes, we are commissioning and we're developing the work all the time. We, along with our colleagues at Baltimore Center Stage, Willie Mammoth in D.C. and Long Wharf in New Haven, we've created this play at home project where we have each commissioned a couple of dozen writers to write 10 to 15 minute plays intended to be printed out and produced at home by individual people who are supposed to do their own plays rather than wait for us to do it. We've had almost 10,000 downloads by now. That's been a really, really successful program. We've done things like Richard Nelson's play, which was driven by Richard's own idea and now that that has been so successful, we are aggressive with commissioning a number of other plays in order to speak to the time of COVID in order to talk during and from this time. And we hope to get those up quickly. And finally, it's worth mentioning that we are really actively scratching our heads and looking at how we can do Shakespeare in the Park this summer or if not do Shakespeare in the Park because we can't do it live. Find other ways to provide to the city what Shakespeare in the Park has provided in the past and those will by necessity be digital ways of doing it and they won't bomb a lot of artists. So, yeah, we're trying to keep working at the same time, developing the shows that we have been in the pipeline that we've been developing for years that we will present in old fashioned theater when we can do that again. So you can use funds that perhaps you artistic funds, you can use to keep artists working with things and you don't have production. Even so, it is one of the smallest parts, I'm sure of the budget, but you are able to redistribute that to keep artists. That's that's that. Let me let me do a slight correction, Frank. We're going to lose right now in this fiscal year between ten and twenty million dollars. We are taking an enormous economic hit from this. All earned revenue has just stopped dead, of course, as of March 12th, including all of our revenue from Hamilton and from the various hamlet companies around the world and our contributed revenue has in the short run taken a huge hit. That's not only because of the lack of activities, because of what's happened in the stock market. So we are putting together a special fundraising campaign, an emergency fundraising campaign, which will announce within the next few weeks, which is both to raise money just to support the infrastructure, the theater to raise money to support the staff and artists who work at the theater. And finally, we'll also include a significant component that is for the freelance folks, artists, technicians, running crews, designers who are part of our broader field. We can't do all of that, but we hope if we do some of that, it will be exemplary for other people to step up and try and support that broader community as well. Incredibly, I hope you are successful. Ten to twenty million in losses sounds like a death sentence. Normally, I'm really admire you that you will keep this up and we know the doors will open one day. But also once your doors open in New York City, we will know things are back to normal. This is why it is so significant that you keep it. Tony, are you are you? Yeah, since you don't have any money, are you commissioning someone without any money? Or or do you know the time of we wait and do we have to move forward? You know, we're looking for ways to produce the shows of the community members that were canceled, like the cold hearts and John Reed's La Pussell. We're going to move forward with work that can be seen online. Nancy Mullin's production of Pinter's The Dumbwater that I'm performing in with with Rolls-Andres. We're going to do that in June and Emily King has written a piece about Dorothy Parker fighting words we're going to be developing. And, you know, because we're like in our own small way, totally on our heels like the public is for the first time, we've got a fundraising link on our website. So go to tornpage.org and, you know, everybody needs support right now. I think everybody is basic right now. Everybody's just trying to figure out who of the many, many people they know, who do they support? Well, you know, we need support as much as anybody else. So if anybody wants to donate to keep our lights on, we really appreciate it. And stay, stay tuned. We're going to be presenting work in June. I'm really excited. Yeah. And anybody who listens from city, government, federal government, you know, the institutions like the public, the other icons, they are like the Empire State Building in the theater community. They do need support. They need the infrastructure that these buildings have. This is a significant, if not more, because it produces imagination. And if anything that is changing us is imagination. It is a failure, actually, of imagination. A lot of the problems we do experience in this rise of nationalism and xenophobic thinking. What are you guys reading at the moment or you're listening to? Are you just covering something that you haven't thought of before, something exciting, what you. And Frank, I'm very sorry that I'm going to have to jump after this just because I'm so crowded. But I'm rereading Watchman, which is even better 30 years later than it was when I first read it. I'm taking advantage of all this empty hours to read Thomas Piketty's Capitalism and Ideology, which weighing in about 1300 pages. I might have not started quite as quickly had I've been working at my full time job. And my wife and I are just finished Plot Against America, which I think is an adaptation of Philip Ross, which I think is just amazing. It's a big, big, big Tony to be coming to an end. What do you I've actually been reading a book I've always wanted to look in into Lottie Eisner's book, The Haunted Screen, about the German, you know, expressionist cinema. I mean, it's been really getting into that. You know, I always love the work of Fritz Langson. I'm digging deeper into like things like Pops Faust. And it's such an amazing universe. And it's kind of great sort of time traveling to to think about these artists basically building the film grammar in the 20s. So I'm loving that. And I'm reading a book about the Carter family, the great country. And pioneers, country, amazing, amazing. Yeah, the Nosferatu's are coming out. And it's I think, Antonio Kramschi said they are when the old hasn't gone yet and the new hasn't arrived in this gray area, the monsters are coming out. And this is something we have to fight and beauty, can and poetry. And I hope you will join us next week. We have an all week lineup with artists, women artists from around the world. It will be from Hungary to hear about this complex situation from Anna Lengel and Andrea Tompa. We will hear from Lula Arias from Argentina. Mikaela Dragan, a Roma actress and performer together with Mikaela will come and to talk about the situation there. So Leha Alana from India will talk again. We have a second part. It was such a heartbreaking call when we heard from the situation there. Abhishek, who said he was cooking for families in need. And he had a list of a thousand people where he could deliver whatever he did in his home. And then we have Stephanie Monceau from the family circus here in New York and the double edge theater outside on a farm doing their work. What does it mean for those communities? So we will really hear from them. Those of you guys, thank you very, very much for taking the time to listen to it. It's important also for our international listeners to know what is going on. And and thank you for our audience. Thank you for taking the time to listen. We know how much you also have to do or we keep ourselves busy with. So it means a lot to us. We need good theater and performance, but we also need a great audience. That's what also makes theater. That's what we see. And there's no audience. There's also no theater. So thank you for tuning in and to how rounded Emerson College, as the Travis and the VJ and to the Seagal scene here at the Martin Seagal Theater Center.