 Yesterday in the US it's a record number of people's like an entire World Trade Center attack in each day, over 100,000 hospitalizations and as some pointed out it might be the long history of the United States. These coming months are the toughest ones ever on record. So this is really, these are unprecedented times and the hardest and the most dangerous. So we made it so far but I hope we all will stay safe. It's been devastating to the theater community, the musicians, poets, dancers. It's already, it was so hard to carve out a living, to create space for what we think is so important, the imagination, the space for the symbolic but also for the real to be part of change but also to remind us that there's more to life than what the eye meets and what are the true values and the essence of it. Even so now we can remind it we are not essential workers and of course we think we aren't because we miss it so much. I think so many of us realize how important it is. So we listened to the voices of theater artists since March globally. It's the perhaps the only recording archive of a profession globally in this pandemic and in September we started again and opened our view in the idea of Joseph Boyd's of an enlarged understanding of the arts and the enlarged understanding of theater and performance. We include curators, producers, critics also in a way they are artists, they collage, they observe, they put things together, they create meaning, they edit and one of the other voices in New York City that is in our mind and it's been important that we have followed and also collaborated with is Helen Shaw. She is a theater critic and has observed for many years, decades, this scene. She works now for the great New York Magazine and Vulture where she can find her work or observations or notations, some people I think of critics like dance notation when people see what's happening on stage and then you try to, the symbols and words to figure it out and so you can go back what it really was and in 50 or 100 or 200 years it will be her writing where people say oh this was this all about at that time. She before was at the time of New York and four columns and she wrote for Art Forum, American Theater, The Guardian, Other America, New York Times, the Theater Forum, many, many others. She is an instructor at NYU, the school of drama and she comes out of Harvard University and has an MFA from the great, at that time at least, also a great ART theater under Rustin I guess and the Moscow Art Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard. This was before the TDM now, which we think highly of the initiative that's coming out of Harvard. It's not really connected to the ART but it shows signs of life. We also look at, so Helen, you are our first, what we say, theater critic and all of it is an important field and so welcome. Where are you normally? I say, where are you? What time is it? But my guess is I'm in Brooklyn. You can see a little hint of sunlight from behind me. I'm here in Brooklyn. Yeah. So Helen, what's going on? What are you doing these days? Well, coverage in a pandemic is a strange thing. It is looking for things out past the boundaries of what I normally look for. One of the great things about being a theater critic has always been in fact that you don't have to pay attention to everything in the culture at once. You have this very narrow band of work that you want to pay attention to and pandemic creation has blurred a lot of those boundaries, has sort of exploded a bunch of those silos and so it's actually just been a glut of trying to watch and understand things that are happening in all sorts of corners that now seem theatrical to me in gaming, in all kinds of live performance, in music, in film and so it has been, it has been exciting partially because it's always exciting to kind of go into realms where you are brand new and so that has been very instructive and then of course trying to write about what's actually happening. One of the other big changes in a pandemic is a theater critic turns into a theater reporter as almost all of us have and so old bright lines between critics and makers have been kind of dimming and now I see my job as being one which is more like journalism than art criticism and maybe that will go back to normalcy after this is all over but for right now that's what I'm up to. So it's almost like a little war journalism at the front line. So you think you feel it's closer to journalism. So what are your observations, what are you detecting? Well one thing that is something which you always sort of suspect but it's nice to see it actually happening in the world, actually borne out is that my interest, my personal interest in theater has almost always been in smaller productions, in smaller organizations more experimental but also pieces that are a little bit more woven into their communities or made by people who are actually working seven jobs at once and are getting paid in metro guards and my love of that form has often been because I see it as very resilient and right now that is definitely what we are seeing. We are seeing so much more mobility and innovation and activity from our smallest, smallest producers and that has been I think, I hope a real lesson to the larger sectors, to the more commercial parts of our ecology that there is a real protection in being small, there's protection in being in staying in constant contact with your artists and when you look at the different and why are they different ways that these small producers have stayed in contact with their artists. So in the case of PS 122 they raised money to house them. In the case of Soho Rep they are putting them on staff. In the case of Ars Nova they are putting out almost as much work as they were before and so there is this innovation and excitement and again as I say it's at the kind of quantum foam level of the theater ecology and I think that's for me that has been inspiring to see. You know that reminds me of our talk with Sebastian Kaiser from the Folk Spooner Berlin who said after the collapse of the Soviet Union theaters the big theaters were empty for a long time, there were even flea markets but the small theaters were alive and it is shocking to think that the billion dollar industry of the New York commercial theater, the places are closed, they are not used, they are not even given to companies, they don't produce masks, they don't deliver food, they don't you know as far as we know are not as strongly engaged in supporting the artists. What do you make of that? What does it mean for New York City? Well I'm afraid that though you know there is not, I'm enough of a cynic that I'm not sure that we are seeing a sea change in that. I don't necessarily think that in six months we will see a kind of a great conversion on the part of commercial theater in New York towards being more like these smaller more community invested, more artist invested you know nonprofit formats. I don't believe that for a second. What I do think is going to happen is that it is going to strengthen those small theaters that they will have more strings to their bow. For instance we know that all across the country small theaters, small producers are becoming more involved in government advocacy and lobbying in having their senator on speed dial and as opposed to sitting back and letting umbrella organizations or letting the sort of marquee names take the lead on that kind of thing and so I think that strengthening is hopefully something that will stay with us because as we know in this country the awful draining away of state support which was never that strong to begin with can only be countered by vigorous citizen artist advocacy and and that's what we're seeing. I mean that is I don't want to talk about silver linings because as you say thousands of people are dying every day that's something that blacks out the sun there's no room for silver lining with that but when I look at what next year might look like in the years after that I think that you will see as I would say more fully integrated production ethic which is that a theater like silver rep for instance is now has had a chance to sit back and to think what is our mission how is it that we serve artists and how can we be more sustainable going forward and and that strength I think I hope will be the thing that survives this apocalypse. Yeah that's interesting that not only what we are doing is important but how do we do it how do we produce how do we connect how do we treat our own communities of artists or people that perhaps it will be become more and more important as it as it should do you think there will be something like the golden you know the 20s like which also was after an academic that there was an outburst of energy after an academic after the pandemic of what then was referred to the Spanish flow even so we know it came from North America actually from I think to pick farms that mixed European swines with American ones and it created a virus that became so deadly and do you think there will be a research and Jay from the scoreball said Jay Wegman nothing will happen before the fall most probably there will be no productions no big productions in New York City so we will have to wait till next year October September October November to see anything what do you see what do you what do you what does your instinct tell you. Well one thing that this has obviously been doing is it has been radically reshaping what we understand as size so when we say a big production what we have normally meant is a expensive production in a large house with a big audience that sells a lot of tickets. And now I think that we because so much of performances online is available online we're now talking about bigness as as reach so if thousands of people see your show even if it is for instance one of my favorite shows of the lockdown which was Celine Song's version of the seagull which he staged in a video game in the Sims she had thousands of people have watched it thousands and that is a big production it's a it has reached people all over the world have seen it it is going to change the form it's changing the conversation that's a big production and it doesn't actually need to wait for a vaccine so what's big and what's small is also something I think that's changing and will there be a sort of an explosion of of creativity and so forth. Well it's difficult because you know I feel as though I've already lived through a golden age in the theater we've had two since I've been in New York one which was the golden age of company production so when I came in 2002 this was when we were having it seems everywhere you looked you were looking at Dan Safer's small company you were looking at the debate society you were looking at the young Jean Lee theater company you were there was this explosion in small group production the team Rachel Chavkin's the team and that these groups were the output was incredibly high they were often doing a show a year two shows a year and there was this there was this very thrilling ferment downtown now that has become less possible as New York has become less livable it's harder to put together an ensemble who can be in New York all the time because no one can really afford to live here so then what happened is we had a second boom shockingly as we had a second golden age of playwrights we had any Baker bring Jacobs Jenkins we've I mean think of the playwrights that we have right now we are so lucky will you know Jackie Sibley's Drury these are major writers and when you read theater history you think usually you get like a Tennessee Williams and you have to wait for a while I mean we were just you could not swing a cat in this town without hitting a world-changing writer so will we have that on the other side and I think we will have a third golden age I think golden ages are you know devalued but I don't think it will be either of those things probably my I don't know I obviously it's important impossible to predict but my my hope is that we will take these lessons of digital production and we will see a kind of a swelling of this digital media digital theatrical innovation continuing that spurred by the crisis but once the crisis lifts and the depression that is is is destroying all of us at least maybe I'm speaking only for myself hopefully that you know that that match has already been struck and then when oxygen runs back into the room and we can actually be together I think it will just roar across the form we might have a roaring 20s again in some way yeah I think there is a lot of it might be true and also I mean it's the first time I have ever seen big flags apartments for rent space for rent I when I walk through the streets of New York people are moving out offices are moving out gigantic garbage trucks take you know beautiful office furniture throws it away people in the mini vans packing up and leaving lots of artists are leaving so I think the city is changing midtown every second store really almost is closed barricaded out of business and it often that like in Berlin it was you know after the opening of the wall these were times where things were happening so the question is you know when when will they be in what form will it take you said the lessons we learned in the digital time let's say you know we often say here like that our bright road for the children of the technological age but now maybe we do see their performance for the children of the digital age children who grew up was a digital device in their hands absolutely very very different and they are hitting the universities kids who grew up with screens so what are the lessons what do you when you say I this we're going to what what what do you see what are those lessons what is exciting or what do you felt is the new innovation well I think first of all I think there's going to be a kind of authorial decentralization which which reminds me a little bit of that of that boom and devised theater that I was talking about in the 2000s and late 1990s which is that after you know we work in waves so after this gorgeous wave of well we're not after it these are all writers who are still writing but but as that as the wave of sort of powerful clear individual voices rolls back slightly I think what we're going to find is decentralized authorship which has been made possible by digital collaboration I know I harp on about this seagull production but it was really exciting to be working on this seagull with saline song because there was of course this parallel column while her work was being streamed of the chat and so everyone in the chat was chiming in and asking her to do certain things and making jokes and suggesting lines and because she is a very confident playwright she actually was able to very casually very confidently incorporate all of that input into something which was still a shaped evening so I think that I think one thing we will see is this is this kind of ease with audience as co-creator the second thing is that we understand things about attention now that we did not know before and we have I have it has become very difficult for me during the pandemic to read which and I don't know if this is a symptom of this kind of awful malaise this depression isolation but that my the way that my attention functions is now is now quite radically different from what it was like in February and I think that in a lot of ways though it's an acceleration of the digital attention span that neurologically the amount of time we spend in screens the amount of time that we're sort of ceding our private mind to the public space of the Internet has meant that we are really changing and so for those of us who are not digital natives I'm not a digital native I'm in my 40s we are we are we're starting to kind of put our foot in the water of what it is like to be truly online to truly have an online mind and that I think that kind of understanding how attention has to be marshaled in a noisy mind is something that I have seen the most successful digital production is do sometimes they do that by multiplying the number of channels that you have to interact with the show on so circle jerk which I've written about a ton perhaps too much I love one of the things that was exciting about it was that you were simultaneously experiencing this overwhelming amount of dialogue that was happening on the screen it was very very very quick and but at the same time you were often interacting with it on Twitter at the same time which was creating its own again kind of paratheatrical experience and so I think we that that's a lesson that we have learned the amount that we have to control people's attention and that we are now dealing with brains that function very differently from the brains that say Ipsons theater was made for so I actually think that we have new aesthetic strategies we have new we have new dramaturgy dramaturgical levers that artists are using in order to exploit and enjoy the digital as opposed to simply kind of tipping the hat to it which I think is what we have done in the past what are other examples the seagull you mentioned a circle jerk what have you seen I mean it's now almost six months or more and for someone like you who most probably more or less went every night to the theater and so what did you see online we say that was interesting so um when it comes to uh again every time something makes me pay attention I pay attention so because I feel so scattered one thing that I've noticed is um radical intimacy so uh there are productions which are devised for one performer and one audience member uh either on the telephone or in the zoom call in which we have this one-on-one experience and of course we know of Christine Jones's experiments that she has been making in New York where she would build these small theaters that you would go into and again have a one-on-one experience with people that was I don't mean to diminish this in any way because I think that that Cedar for one is very is was very interesting when it was physically manifest but it was also a a a folly I mean it was in the same way that you know like a like a little stone pantheon in your garden as a folly that it was it was charming and interesting but it didn't um it it wasn't a place of worship whereas you have a theater for one going online and suddenly again the reach this the reach turns into something that we could not have imagined before and so there's no longer um you still have that terrifying sensation of of meeting the eyes of the performer through the screen but now you can be doing this without having to uh be one of the 15 people who can leave work and and go to Times Square and walk into one of these little boxes uh other things that I've seen that have been interesting um I like very much what's been happening in the world of audio drama there are some things which I will not mention by name but I think are kind of retro ideas of audio drama they are plays done as radio plays and not a lot of adjustment has been made and I I think they're pretty thin but things which have been born in audio out of sort of minds that were beginning to think about audio in an actually generative and exciting way I think have been quite exciting Heather Christian who else um there's a wonderful website called Category Other which is run by Ben Williams who has been a sound designer and performer in New York for many many years and he curates a spectacular series of audio works which are feel extremely dramatic because they I can't actually generalize because all the objects on Category Other are really really different from from one another but they are things that use that space between your ears that your binaural headphones create in a genuinely dramatic way they build a little stage there um I've also you know as always site specific work has you know is beautiful and always has its own glamour which the pandemic has increased you know I've seen many shows at this point in the Greenwood Cemetery and because it's one of the few places that is both private and public that is both beautiful but calm and it has been every time that I've seen something there it has been completely overwhelming partially just because the audience includes the dead and you know I I think that I will say so I teach this class and we recently were thinking about a play by Brenda Jacobs Jenkins called Everybody and Everybody is a play which is a modern sort of rift on every man and it has essentially the same plot which is that every man finds out he's going to die he's told he can bring one person with him to this judgment to death and he looks throughout his his world and he finds that nothing will go with him kinship will not go with him friendship will not go with him good works nothing will go with him at the edge of the grave and for those who know the conditions in which Jacobs Jenkins wrote that play it was it was stimulated by the actual impending death of Jim Houghton the artistic director of signature theater who asked the theater makers at signature when he was when he knew that he was dying shortly he asked them to write plays about death because he felt that artists were the people who could imagine beyond the the born past which no travel returns and so he said please show me what is going to happen please write about death and will you know wrote him a play and Brandon Jacobs Jenkins wrote him a play and I think now and will you know his play from that series is wakey wakey in both cases these are very very beautiful plays and we have suddenly had this kind of parallel commissioning from the universe which was looking to artists and saying write about death we are experiencing a period of mass death we are experiencing a period of of you know for anyone who is in New York in March and April the constant sound of sirens that that it is death around you all of the time driving past your door and that that my hope is that playwrights artists makers will hear that in the same way that Jacobs Jenkins heard Jim Houghton and write something that helps us understand what it means to be journeying and so close to death all of the time yeah yeah that's quite a quite a significant comment I mean the sound of the sirens is taking up I think in New York we hear them more you know it's really and it is actually going back and we can feel that young cut the great Polish leader critics said you know theater always has been that thin line between the living and the dead you know someone living represents a dead person Julius Caesar you know or someone dies on stage but he's of course alive he pretends to be dead and so it's always dealt with that question we have mentioned here to Heino Mueller said the German playwright the great everybody thinks it's about the live audience you know that what creates the liveness he said actually what's important is that the audience member could die it could be the last thing he or she sees you know that put the potential death of the audience so what you do with the meaning of what you show is of is of significance so so yeah this is a quite quite a time to to be do you feel that your toolbox so let's say before the pandemic I don't know maybe 10 15 years I don't know how long you worked in your profession also paid you know which is rare in New York City is your toolbox equipped to deal with these online screening or is it a classical music concert quitting all of a sudden is going to a rock concert I don't know what they have different instruments they don't wear you know outfit that I know what this is terrible all the other way around you know so what about how does that work did you have to adjust well this is a strange thing to admit in public but one of the great infusing energizing components of this work is that you are constantly appearing in front of or sitting at shows that you are not qualified to write about and either it is written out of an experience that you do not share assumes a cultural literacy that you do not have and and I cannot count the number of times that I've been sitting in an audience knowing that I was going to write about something and thought I'm not qualified to do this I recently you know joined New York magazine and for the 15 years before that I was writing as you said for four columns and for time out and my work there was very much at time out I was the third string critic I was writing about generally writing about either small or weird productions sometimes larger but almost always weird at four columns I did begin to write long form pieces about about Broadway but it was a pretty recent development in my in my work so when I came to New York magazine I again was sitting in audiences where I was looking at the stage thinking I'm not qualified to cover this and the the the answer that I have had in the past every time is well you know qualifications are something that you that you speak about when you're talking about a job and criticism despite the fact that I am paid for it is not a job it is it is an action and a task and a calling and so it doesn't matter if I'm qualified it just matters that I'm honest and work hard and so in each of those cases trying to write about something that I am not qualified to write about has taught me so much about the form and about expanding and this to me is the most important thing is expanding the types of pleasure that I take in work that I take in art and I think that as a writer as a critic I think that that is that's the task is charting for people charting for readers how you are finding pleasure in what you are watching and how much you want them to share that pleasure as well so watching this online work as I say as I said at the beginning you know it used to be that if you were a theater critic you didn't you had a lot of you lived through a lot of FOMO because you couldn't get to every show in New York but at least I didn't mind if I was missing a movie I mean I I still felt that I was literate in my own field and now that the field has expanded to include basically anything that can happen in front of your eyes it is you know that I have this sense of scrambling to catch up constantly, constantly scrambling you know and occasionally my techniques in figuring out how to catch up include embarrassing things like asking my students to say saying what's the most important thing you saw on YouTube you know just again frantically trying to kind of gain this cultural literacy and so the toolkit that you bring to it I think I hope that all critics have is is curiosity and I am I am curious so I and I am happy to write about that curiosity and to share that curiosity that's and that's where I've had to leave it I think that I don't have imposter syndrome I think that I have a frank understanding of how little I know but I'm comfortable with that or perhaps in the younger sense you know Carl Jung always would say we've met the patient if we can compare it with the stage but it had to be a white you could not use anything what you used before because it would not be right for for what he's experiencing now actually you had to forget everything I think while your writing was is so good and absurdly I think you also have that ability to look at it at the moment and also fast to make up your mind often make a joke and say this is how the show this stand-up critic and because you could do it so fast and so precise in a short time what does theater mean to you why do you think it is important in that time you live in this digital age or second digital age we have the romantic digital age already behind us you know where we thought you little max cues or whatever would turn us into a better world and the internet would be the paradise of equality or rather equality but now we learn of course it's controlled by forces that are no longer have the same interest as souls who created it so well in this world we live in what do you think what do you look for what do you think theater should do what does it mean to you well as a consumer of theater I don't think in terms of importance or not importance I feel that that's a kind of pernicious way that we that we approach things that have obvious value that we have to rank them somehow and so I I don't think that theater is important I don't think theater is not important I think theater and performance are inevitable and and so you you can live a rich and full life never going to see a show it is not something which will you know improve your lung capacity or feed your children so as an art form I think it is more it's more but you can also do the same thing without ever seeing a mountain range you know you a mountain range will increase your lung capacity either so you have this you have a thing which is inevitable it exists and what's important is that the attention that we pay to it is the fact that we that it is that its inevitability gives us something to to to look at to observe to think about to enjoy to add to the sweetness of life to make burdens lighter I mean it you know it is it has that value but I don't I think importance is sort of too weighty a term to put on it when it comes to what does theater mean organizationally I think that it is a valuable model for a functioning society which is that you have this opportunity to rehearse again and again with a group of people a a a a working group which lives its values which is what has been so exciting about this summer where values which were not talked about are now being talked about and and must be dissected and discussed at every level from the artistic directors to the boards to directors to actors to designers to the people who are who are hauling out the sound equipment and so I think that it is an exciting form because you get to make this little microcosm you get to say well is just as possible let's just take this one building in New York and see if we can make the life that goes on inside it just and that as you work out the practices in those rehearsals you can actually take them out into the world where citizenship resides so you know I think that it is it also has value in that way which is that it it is it allows us to be utopians who are who are practical the question of what is essential and what is not essential is I think so misleading because as you said at the beginning we miss it so much and so it feels as though it is essential but that is not we don't just miss things that are essential and and I so I I think I kind of struggle with that on social media very much that's constantly people's rallying and cries you know artists are essential and I think well artists are valuable artists are are mysteries artists are miracles I don't know if essential is the right framework for for this art yeah I mean I see that book an ideal theater probably from Todd London a great book I think over 10 or 15 years he he created manifestos you know of theaters who are they're founding ideas which also I think had a big evening about it what what do you think what would be an ideal theater now in New York if you ran the zoo well one thing I mean if I really you know if you're giving me power yes the first thing I would do I'm afraid is that the largest theaters would invite the smallest theaters in one of my you know you know the awful disease of nostalgia for a time you didn't live in well I have that for the Joseph Pap era a man I nope did not overlap at all you know so I'm having sort of fond memories of a time I didn't experience however one of the things that he did at the public which was part of this great decentralizing project that I think is going to be happening in the art form but I think should also be happening in the in the administrative structure of how we run theater is that he would not just say oh let us produce this artist's work he would bring in an entire company and say I will support you here is the space let us you know new federal theater project Woody King jr please come into this theater come and make the work here because this house is a tent it is not a building and I think that kind of the permeable wall is something that I keep hoping for when I look at our larger nonprofits many of which are have beautiful missions and not always not always running with the reddest and freshest blood and I wonder if they too could make a shelter for theaters that are that are like little organelles that could come and live inside the bigger organization the mint theater for instance I don't know you know probably the person who runs the mint is going to send me hate mail for even saying something like this because they absolutely stand on their own two feet and they are strong in and of themselves but when I think about how the mint theater and how our signature theater have such similar mission statements which is recovering the great bounty of the American playwriting tradition how is it that one of them cannot be sheltered or supported by the other you know there are these collisions of mission which I think when I when I think about how desperate and frightening it's going to be to try to get together the funds to start up again next fall I just hope that more of these horses stop running alone and more of them start running in harness so so for me that would be what I would what I would do is what I would hope for is is see if that if those sorts of hybrid relationships temporary perhaps could could begin um yeah I you know I also though think that there is you see how quickly I stopped talking about the commercial theater because those are pressures that you can bring to bear those are proposals you can offer to something like a board or an artistic director that does not happen on our commercial stages and I do not actually see a way to link the concerns of commercial theater to non-commercial theater in New York and I wish I did and I I know that smarter minds than mine are working on it but that is something that is that would that's I think would actually create genuine strength genuine progress is if we could work out how to do that you know that a company like the play company that really produces brilliant international plays they have to fight to find a space went it why don't they get whatever three play deal you know in in a big space once every year or two times do whatever you want and and we trust you and we have so many when those things happen they are so productive and exciting think about the relationship between theater for a new audience and so-called rep when an octaroon move from solo rep and clearly on a brand of jacob's jenkins kick today but I just taught him in class so he's all i'm thinking about but when an octaroon move from solo rep to theater for a new audience it felt like it felt like the city was a repertory company and you thought i see these silver lines stretching from walker street down to brooklyn yes that's what we need we need and those citywide networks could also become part of the northeast corridor so many of the people who are running important regional theaters now stephanie barra maria goyanas and nataki garret these are people who are who sorry i get quite excited about this you know is is if there were more collaboration more participation between these more secure organizations with their very deep pocketed boards and the the smaller organizations that are all around them in kind of a satellite relationship if those things could be formalized and stabilized we might be able to see people getting paid in a way that allows them to live and have children um one of the things that we really are missing in our current theater landscape number one artists who don't have degrees we need artists that don't have degrees we we should absolutely make it possible to be a thriving artist without an mfa not that i don't love education i teach but it should be it should not be the price of admission anymore and it has become that way in the last 10 years you know i i think there's a anyway a conversation for another time but there is um i just read this wonderful interview with susan lory parks in the paris review conducted you will not be surprised by brandon jakebs jankins today's theme and he she says she remembers being thinking she was going to become a playwright and looking at the brochure for yale and thinking to herself that it that is a domesticization of the form and i think how much beauty and value has come out of yale absolutely take that as red but our wildness we have gone through a year of wildness of of of being in the desert and one thing i hope that we have coming out of it is is a growing interest in refusing that taming impulse refusing that institutionalizing impulse making it possible for someone to to come in off the street with a strong play and no recommendations that's what i want yeah now that's interesting and catania was here on the show and she talked about the time in the 70s 80s where she kind of was one of the first working dramaturgs and she said the fort foundation gave money to create linkedin center theater the gathry so many others and she said there are over a hundred playwrights doing really great work and nobody went went to a school she said you know the august wilson's of the world um and so there is something student you also learn she said the mentorship that there's an old apprenticeship model you know where you go through stages and you're in your work in it in the theater and that's how you learn the craft and you know maybe a good symbiosis of both but as you say that has that should exist next to each other when it comes to themes what would you think we had here peter ackerson from that kind of dramaturgical conversation he said it has to be about the planet the climate bruno la tour and friderica tweet tweet from france and others who said you know this is this is the big theme we are this is a general rehearsal covet you know we should not screw that up anyway but this is nothing compared to what we might be facing on this planet the entire species is endangered so but what do you think what is what are themes what what do we have to focus on what would you like to see the issue of the planet is uh is I don't know how to say this um theater is not a mass art form and the uh an issue like the climate is something which needs to be addressed in mass art forms because it is going to require mass organization do I think that that kind of work comes out of the theater I honestly don't I don't I the theater has subtle and um devious ways into your mind but it is not great at getting your hand on the voting lever and the other thing is that a great way to crush artistic spirit is to say you must write about this or you must write about that it's so important how could you not write about it um so for me when it comes to content um I hope that we see you know things that we don't expect I mean I know that I'm not alone in hoping that I do not have to watch a whole bunch of plays about COVID I am very very very eager not to watch plays about COVID and I have no doubt that I'm going to watch quite a few and out of those will come some masterpiece you know something some gorgeous collision of mind and topic so when I think of what do I hope that the theater deals with another thing that I don't like a word I don't really like when we use it around the theater so one of them is essential and the other one is the word about what's this play about what a boring crappy idea that is I mean even the word itself acknowledges that it doesn't get to the core of the thing and the theater is wild naughty transgressive theater is civic theater is persuasive but also coercive theater is not a place to write about a thing and it is a place to engage in a thing and so I I think that there is some subtler idea that we will probably see being explored in the theater it has something to do with bodies and bodies in presence with each other because we must now actually deeply grapple with bodies in presence with each other what are they capable of doing that we have not been capable of these last six months we've been capable of a lot of things these last six months that we didn't think we could do for instance making all of the output of a national theater for instance and accessible to people who cannot leave their homes that's that's a major accessibility radical change and it's thrilling so look at the thing we can do when we don't worry about bodies being in presence with each other but we have also learned about the cost and we are about to confront the incredible mental health care crisis which we are going to head into after the vaccine when we realize the cost of this loneliness and so my hope is that the theater will be um will make arguments about through for under but not about um embodiment and presence yeah that's that's true in the representation you know the body and then it's represented on screen already often in productions but now it's just on our screens you know I see you but I see part of you it's a compartmentalized and what does it all mean in those performances and productions who when we are confronted by by by by screen so this is a this is a quite a quite significant what you are saying and and I think it's a lot to really really um think think through in your years of watching plays performances with an open mind and with the good idea of the one where you say I don't know yet you know what this is about which is a good thing so um of course you know so much but um what did you learn what what do you think what is there something you would like could say to theater artists or young artists who are now listening perhaps struggling what should I do or what should I know what did you learn what makes what makes this theater a theater you you as a person enjoy what is there something where you can say this is what I feel works and that doesn't know so for some long vanished birthday um someone bought me a notebook and wrote in the front of it helens big thoughts about theater this was meant to basically strong arm me into writing a book and I was supposed to write down all of my big thoughts about theater and then I would turn these into a book you will notice that there is no book and I wrote one thought down in this book I managed to have a single big thought about theater um and I had come home from a show and I had written down I don't know what show it was and I said theater is supposed to be a wonder and um I think and I've gone back over that I first of all I'm appalled that I would write supposed to be because I thought I wasn't very prescriptive but apparently in the in the wee hours of the morning I am prescriptive and um what did I mean by wonder and I I think that the thing that art does for us and I don't limit this to theater but that it overwhelms us that we are very braced against the world because we are uh flabby creatures in a stiff wind and so we are constantly braced against uh misfortune other people's ideas um correction embarrassment uh all of those things that buffet us and art overwhelms those things it dissolves us and I think that if you are dissolved by the thing that you are making then you are making something that's art that's theatrical so I realize that's terribly terribly vague um but when Lin-Manuel Miranda sent his songs off to Stephen Sondheim when he was writing Hamilton and he said what advice can you give me and Sondheim said surprise us every time and that I think and look what he made so I I think that's the the I am a person who only exclusively all I do is do things with words as a critic I either say them or write them or read them and that the reason I'm going to the theater every night the reason I'm watching something online every night is because I want to see something which I can't describe which goes beyond the ability of words to capture it and that's the standard that's that's the um that should be the baseline well that's a very strong strong statement even so if you say it is vagueness but I don't I think it's quite quite quite defense so who else who do you respect is it's critical voices if you may say who do you follow also or who are your mentors or in that world for you know when it comes to theater criticism oh gosh I mean I don't I mean I would name everyone I've ever read I mean um you know right now I'm reading you can see on the shelf behind me everything that I started and then the kind of halfway through so I'm reading Imani Perry and I'm reading Peter Scheldahl and I'm reading Brooks Atkinson's and I'm reading Bart's and I'm reading what else is on the top here so those are the people who are kind of bullying my brain around the block at the moment um you know uh other writers who I think are I will say that the person who got a head start on all of us because her writing has always been interested in breaking down these silos is Soraya McDonald because she writes about opera and theater and sport and film and I think that that means that she's gone into this period with a mind already flexible enough to handle this massive changing genre that we're all living through um someone else that I uh you know really enjoy reading partially because it annoys me very deeply that I'm not as good as Vincent Cunningham um at the New Yorker uh he's a very irritating way of writing perfect sentences um I've been reading um Jess Barbagallo has been writing for Art Forum and each of his pieces has been an invitation to a party you read it and you think god what an not just what an active and brilliant mind coming into collision with some art object or some event or some show or some book in the most recent case but also if I could think that quickly what a party he is inviting me to and that you know that's that's thrilling and activating every time yeah I suppose those have been my three big ones this week no no no that's great and you know we commend us a bit to the end of our talk and for also our listeners in New York around through how around in the U.S. also international listeners who do you feel who should we pay attention to in the New York theater scene I know it's a big question unfair question but still uh you cannot mention everybody but someone who comes to your mind at the moment what who do you think are artists who feel these are ones you know watch out for them um of New York artists I have to pick one no a couple you know whatever you know so um so I'm a big fan of sort of moving through uh groups sort of sideways so when you figure out writers who are in communication with each other you often sort of find like the school that they are in I don't mean their literal school I mean the school of thought um and so I you know that Segal I was talking about one of the delightful things about it was that Celine song had several of her friends who are also playwrights call in and it was C.A. Johnson it was uh Jeremy O'Harris it was Alicia Harris uh and Celine song and who else called in I think there was someone else as well and and it was so interesting to hear them in discussion with each other because you realize oh of course their plays are in discussion their plays are in communication with each other and that reading them as a school just in the same way that you would read a philosophical school is actually more illuminating than even reading them or watching them one at a time I I am the shows that I've been fascinated by in shutdown um have not also always been by people who are young you know I mean Adrienne Kennedy is still writing and there is a festival on right now I think at the MacArthur um and so one of the one of the other things that this lockdown gives us is a period of study and that what is new young and fresh is something that we're also preoccupied by but in fact it is also a chance to listen to to kind of return to the library you know what was I watching last night Shasta goes pop was did something through the shed which I thought was really gorgeous I think that's a mind who is sort of really thriving and active um theater in quarantine which you of course know about uh just did a show through NYU so I saw it because some of my students were involved and it was dramaturg by Nikki Douglas who I think is a is a is a maker who was about to have kind of this sort of most smashing year of her life uh programming wise and then the shutdown happened um but you could see her sort of mischievous intellect working in this production that was um really quite beautiful it was a riff on every man not the brand of Jacobs Jenkins riff but a different one so version yeah yeah sorry I should have no no listen really really um thank you for um you know opening and your mind and being so so so courageous you know it's very complex for of course also for theater create to talk about this about theater companies artists it's a very different ballgame for you then you know in a way far really thank you when we are we know we really respect your engagement your support in us for your love um for this theater which I always felt and this is something that is of importance in that sense of the miracle the wonder you know which once in a while comes like in sports you know you watch a lot of games and and there's the great game but you watch all the you like the sports you know it's all part of it to to come in there and um and so help thank you for helping us so you know to understand put it into form and also honor the work you know of um of the artist which you do um through your writing so I hope one day there will be a book um of uh of Helen Shaw you should maybe not just your or Kole or collected works but also I think it is important you know to uh put it perhaps you know into a context so I hope one day we will do we'll see it and I hope that you will be out sooner in next year um without mask and and and and again hearing the the chatter and the lobby before a play opening right how much do we miss that or celebration afterwards or the discussions about it but of course it's a also a way for us to get together and think about life and what is love and tragedy and what's a stone and what's a tear so this is how we what teaches us later in the moment or what's a something to to to to consider which is on our mind and we haven't perhaps quite thought it through and someone else helped us to to do it so really really thank you for taking the time it's so eloquent how you put it all out there and so so well um well spoken so really thank you thank you and um and maybe we'll continue and have also other voices you know from from your field in our conversations it is an important contribution that you make to the theater and we highly respect it and tomorrow we Bertie Ferdman with us who is a teacher also at the university was also an actor and then director or xp girls but and now also wrote some books from one of them on onside as you said the idea of producing on on sides to this new idea of you know enjoying and like the space you are in and really engaging with it so it will be interesting to see what she will have to say and um and that's it for today so really thank you thank you and uh i hope to see you soon in person and um uh all the way best to to the whole school of thoughts and playwright you're reading looking to and the mac wellman school of course you know it's part of the universe and um and and and so much so much else so thank you all thanks for howl around for hosting um this discussion and um and we will have you know next uh next week on drama tojui we'll have the leaders from lmda on drama tojui with us by leo gandner will talk to us hillary miller about the new york city when it was the dead city in the 70s or was declared an art game out again out of that kind of yeah some of part of it partially ruined so um we will continue the conversation but this was an important reminder and to reflect on this so thank you and thanks to our listeners for taking out time we know how much is out there and uh and that we are so busy in this big critique of screens and listening so it's a lot for everyone who takes the time to listen to us and um and thanks to howl around for being their vj and the great seah and for making this possible thank you and to everybody bye bye stay safe and really do wear a mask and then i hope soon we will be we'll be over this bye bye