 welcome everybody back to the Segal Talks. It's week five and my name is Frank Henschker and I'm the director of the Segal Center. We are here at the Graduate Center CUNY of the City University in New York City and it's been quite a journey around the world to hear voices from our fellow artists, from creators of theater and performance and we listen to them because we do think it is significant and important to to tune in and hear what the mood is, the atmosphere, thoughts, how moments are experienced and what consequences it might have for work and it is always important to listen to the artists. They are being on the right side of justice or right side of history, right side of progress and if one listens to them as I do think many complicated moments in history could have been avoided and now again it's a moment of crisis of deep consequences for the entire world. We are connected like we've never been connected before and as we wrote in our little statement in case you thought here we went back to the old bright sentence that new times meet new forms of theater and today we have a great ensemble with us, a great collective of artists or journalists, architects, social architects, social sculpturers. It is really a great remedy protocol from Germany and most of you might know about their work if not please do look it up. They have found new forms, they have found new ways of showing, creating and participating in performance in theater, site-specific street performances and I can't wait to hear from Helga Hauke and Stefan Keighley and Daniel Wenzel who are here with us. It's week five, we have tomorrow, Reggie Jr. from Haiti, Julius Miller will translate from NYU, Jalila Bakar from Tunisia is on Wednesday, Peter Sellers, the American great American director and opera director will be on Thursday and Oscar Eustis who runs the public theater will be there with Tony Torn who runs a 20-seat theater out of his house so we get an insight also from New York but first of all a welcome remedy protocol. Hello. Thank you. So you can all hear me and I hope all is well so maybe just tell me where are you guys at the moment maybe Helga, Daniel and Stefan where are you and what time is it? It's six o'clock in the evening and I'm back in Berlin. I spent a couple of weeks or yeah extended time in the countryside like close to Berlin but not in the city and in Brandenburg and now I'm back for a couple of days and there's been some new regulations in Berlin just starting this Monday like there are some schools open so my son goes to school again and there is the duty to wear masks in the public transport which changes a bit the atmosphere in the city. So everybody has masks in Berlin? Well no it's Kreuzberg where I live so not everybody definitely but in the public transport even there like people don't really not everybody's wearing them and it's okay it's accepted but the majority of the people now yeah and there's a fashion going on like which is the nicest mask. Yeah Stefan where are you? I'm in Switzerland, Lausanne where I was rehearsing until three days before the well actually three days before my opening of my new piece here in Teatro Vidi the lockdown interrupted our rehearsals and I decided to stay on this side of the border if I went back to Berlin I would have to spend two weeks in quarantine. Regulations here are a bit more loose I just come back from Lake of Geneva and I had a swim and there's quite some people without masks holding respectable distances but but still you kind of guess a certain multitude of people. Yeah did you swim with your mask on? No. No mask but also no surfboard it's hanging above me. Oh that's great yeah that's tough on this lake yeah yeah to surf that is that is great and Daniel where are you at the moment? I'm supposed to be in Greece but I ended up in Berlin like a few days before the curfew for the lockdown I just came with my daughter anyways and then we decided to stay because it went step by slice by slice they said that schools might open later again and so on so now we're here since already five weeks and it was the right decision because in Athens especially the I guess due to the smaller amount of intensive care beds and stations the regulations are really harsh and you can only go out by permission that you receive by SMS and now over greek eastern drones have been flying around everywhere and people would not be allowed to even drive with their cars you know so I think it's better for us here for life and work at the moment yeah but they're proud I mean in Greece almost nothing happens almost no casualties and really a very low rate of infections also in terms of per capita they're much better than even Germany that's a remarkable and yeah Easter is such a big holiday in Greece so that's quite something to have yeah the family of my daughter they were secretly meeting some days before Easter and not leave the house anymore because it was clear on Easter you can't drive so they locked them all themselves in of course breaking quite some regulations because they all met in the smaller group though but anyways yeah it was a very very different different so like early Christian communities people were meeting Easter and hideouts and in secrecy but how how how does it feel for you all you're such a in a way cosmopolitan global ensemble now you're in your homes um how do you guys feel yeah normally we would have been in New York so this feels bad like not um yeah to you would have been at BAM last week right yeah we're supposed to come to this ego tell us a bit about that yeah that's a show it's called 100 percent Brooklyn in this case so 100 city like the over title um and it's 100 people on stage at represent the city or the the district like it's the first time that we well they convinced us to focus on Brooklyn and to say Brooklyn as a city itself somehow and you get all the diversity that you want um that we normally are looking for because we try to invite like the whole city being represented by those 100 people um yeah and the casting was going on so they were already I don't know Stefan you know this better 94 people I think 92 94 people already were were subscribed to take part in this event and you know they are to be found in such a way that they exactly matched the statistics so there were 52 or that would have been in the end 52 women on stage and only 48 um men and that would have been uh we already had I think two four six I'm just looking at the statistics here again eight under nine-year-old kids on stage four were still missing and there were a lot of different nationalities as you can guess if you know Brooklyn we had what was it 12 Asian performers like born in Asia and Hispanics was 19 and um more actually black American uh than white American and they were all to find these people uh BAM was already casting since what is it late November I think so it's really it's I mean we've had many cancellations of tours but this one was a particularly hard one because so much work was already done and so many people were eager to to make it happen yeah and just everything prepared and then it was clear like I actually got my like I went to the um consulate to get the visa which is quite a hard thing to do makes you apply for hours on online documents and so on and queue and get there and and that was the very morning when I said okay no like no uh Europeans allowed in the state at the moment so it was a bit absurd because we were just ready to go and do this show um yeah and it's always like it's always a very nice show to get to know a city as well like I mean we've been to New York and to Brooklyn as well and presented work there but it's like it's like um a bit like a space where you place questions in so the most part of the piece is consisting of questions that we asked the 100 people on stage and then have different modes to to answer the questions like either with yes and no going to one on the other side or with colored cardboards or different performative elements and that's always very exciting like if you start preparing for the city and then wonder what is what are the essential questions and what is really important to debate and what really needs to be displayed as well so it's an easy way to display all these contradictions of a society and obviously in such a situation it's so exactly the contrary of what's allowed now because it would have brought been brought how many more definitely more than 1000 people would have been sitting in the incredible BAM theater and they react to it as well because it exchanges a part of the audience um as these people that are most of them obviously not theater makers normally not going to an institution like BAM to see anything and now they will be there and now they will be bringing their people it's um one actually the only really piece that we have that really makes a huge amount of people gather and at the moment nobody knows when it's that's not possible yes and I think the idea is to have 100 people who represent statistically the city and as they said you know the majority African is a black color community and I'm the white Asian-Americans and others would have been fascinating to see that that new approach um for you for you all and maybe Daniel also you know would do you feel something is changing in your thinking or do you feel you are more or less you're saying yeah we always did something that dealt with such issues do you feel in your artistic work there's some reformatting going on on the hard drive in your brain well basically we're actually pretty busy still with preparing work that still might happen at some point later the year or next year but we are still able to kind of work and a lot of our work consists in of consists of writing contexts concepts a problem at the moment is to try to find co-produces because globally nobody's really sure when they can work the way they have used to be they used to work especially venues and cultural programs festivals and so on so there's a big insecurity that we can also feel because it's not so easy to speak about fundings at the moment but in terms of what we're developing there hasn't been a halt so far and yes okay then um perhaps uh let let the way the financial situation um it is a remarkable experience it is almost like being in the plot of some you know performance conceptualist or utopian to say everybody stay home for a moment uh for for for some weeks and and see what happens then you know it's in a way it's an amazing experiment this is how it feels from here I know that worldwide in many many many cases perhaps most of the cases it doesn't feel like just interesting but really really bad but this is how it looks from my end at the moment and then okay now is a big request for all kinds of interactive internet based voice over IP performance formats let's see whether there's a push to to new forms that that will be helpful and and create even once we're once we're able to move and join and meet the way we did before clearly theater is about coming together that's what um many people also stress whose works are being streamed now and so on they have been amazing numbers of clicks for certain lives uh no just streams of videos of performances that might have been on so I heard yesterday there was one streaming of a hamlet show in shall be noted they had 36 000 viewers which is far more than a theater could contain so this is this is amazing but also of course these actors would have preferred to you know perform in front of 700 people live instead because this is just essential essentially theater as we know it there are several aspects of it now there are there's one hand there's this not being allowed to come together which hurts really physically sometimes in the evening I'm at home and I'm normally in a theater in the evening but um there's also the not being able to travel that changes our life very strongly but that's something we've been a bit busy thinking anyway a lot in the last year we became 20 years old as a group not um per privately um and we started reflecting is this international touring by sending performances around and so many of our international tours now have been cancelled we just counted I think 37 tours productions events that we would have hold until the summer have been remarkable it's 37 until end of July yes but a bit of this one impossibility to travel it coincide it falls together with an an uncomfortability that we felt already last year discussing a lot about issues of climate change can there be formats of theater where maybe we don't need to travel where rather the idea travels where the conversation where the the interaction with other continents happens in a way without being there so that's one project where for it's actually not so uninspiring to be in these times to develop this piece that is supposed to open next year without people traveling but but expanding very much the technical rider the instructions the the ways in which in a very local way things can happen that travel from far in a way instruction-based art there are some you know visual artists who works and they write 10 rules and then people do their own work their own performance or like a play it's been written but people do something with it and the writer is no longer there but even so as Daniel said maybe this all looks like a big remedy protocol experiment you know let's see what happens when the people have to stay at home like your famous experiments you restate the climate change debate in this theater you declared the main a shareholder meeting of Mercedes Benz as a performance and declared everybody as an actor you did the famous Wallenstein where you said we take the structure of the play of the good but we take people from real life who put it in is is there something where you think this crisis where we have to find new forms you know to go through is that something where you feel now you're thinking of things you haven't thought before or you say no actually what we did already in some ways had us prepared us for this well I mean technically I think we were prepared but she started very very early when Skype was still not really used by many people we had a project launched where a person in India in Kolkata is talking to a person wherever like mainly in Europe but in the US as well and like to establish this kind of situation to say first of all like it was just only the voice actually talking to a stranger and yeah starting a conversation about where am I and where are you and the reality and the situation the call center agents are actually in their in their yeah in the call center so what does it mean to serve in the back office of big companies that pretend that the call center is just in a neighborhood and to to go into this yeah in this theater in a way and be a performer have a have a different name than your personal name pretend you are in the same time zone pretend you know what the weather is like and so on and that's their normal reality and then to stage a play with them where we we've repeat the same situation like it's two people meeting on a skyline and then in a in the very end actually they only saw we had a moment where they would see each other and we realized that many people they really had very very deep conversations so it was nice actually to have this yeah intimate situation as well and to talk to a stranger and maybe use this situation to reveal something that you wouldn't reveal your neighbor or your friend or a family member so that's something that we worked with a lot and where it's clear like in a given situation there's always you can always turn it into something else and you can always create a play with it you can create a play with we are in a we are google world and and so on but still i mean what what dania mentioned is we normally do theater because we are interested in social interaction and that's that's really something i miss as well where sometimes like i i do radio plays for example where i really enjoy to be with me under my headphones for quite a while and or it's times where we do more writing and so on so that the situation i think everybody of us is familiar with as well like to have this personal lockdown for a given time and then a self set time maybe that's the difference so yes i think that's like it's now it's starting to develop that we think of forms so we think of yeah how to take advantage of the situation that's how to twist the situation to something that makes us not just experience the lack of something else so in a very concrete manner we talked about maybe picking up this connections that we have to Kolkata where those performers of the piece uh 12 14 years ago were sitting in a call center and and performing on one on a one-on-one basis to to hear and we just started discussing last week it wasn't at all a planned performance but we started discussing could it be maybe in an in-between situation where all the theaters are closed be an option to make what we call Kolkata at home so what if the call center operators do home office or actually they're not even call center operators anymore but now they would serve from their home we'll have to start to find out if their connectivities are good enough but if that would allow people because people do a lot of video conferencing everybody but normally they do it with their bubble and the incidental meeting in a theater foyer on the street is getting very difficult and much more so in a different country so maybe could it serve a purpose to put you in an intimate situation with with somebody in his Indian home which has obviously a different constellation all together but in a way is that I find quite fascinating when you talk about immersive scenographies in a way our homes these days are the scenographies of our life and if we want to talk in the very first instance at least two people in France and Italy and I guess in New York where you have this very strict lockdown rules then you talk about making theater for that very home. Yeah the call Kolkata in the box was I think it was a pioneering project and I think that we will find and have to perhaps find ways that perhaps digital presence in theaters will be not just in crisis times but perhaps it'll be always people will might have this opera ballet drama but perhaps there will be some things I'm kind of an online engagement I'm not just for crisis times or something that happened you have done the radio place the walks where audience members also followed your instructions silently as they saw something or not is a remedy protocol in a way it works if you prepare to say this that is this a year would you work from home would you create work would you create situations where people who as you said don't know each other or don't know what you know or someone else knows will you create something and be an instructor of games from online are you going to wait till your tour again no no no we well the the the Kolkata at home project is one we're just starting to develop might offer it because in Europe you have a lot of festivals now that are telling us well we have to cancel the show but can we have any kind of format that keeps us connected to our audiences because this is a a need that the theaters feel that the actors feel but also that the audience feels where is their community and some people you might know that go together with you to this theater but many others you just meet randomly a bit on the way and can it be a way to to to connect and do these things another thing I did kind of out of a desperation one day here I started writing a little audio tour for home apartments which now is kind of downloadable on our website it's a six minute piece that uses the stenography of the home of everybody's home not of a particular home for you to interact in a in a little in a little audio tour so more and more I guess of these ideas come up now because it finds it feels kind of hard to plan things for big audience spaces at the moment because it's so hard to even remember them they sound like a thing from the past almost yeah and the next question is is there something that we could invent which is not only involving like this situation you know in front of a computer equipped with a lot of technology and but maybe something else like your radio place one one example but is there I don't know I'm sometimes streaming of a little box that you just receive you know delivery and then there's um yeah you get involved into a play and maybe just you know get instructions what to do with your neighbors how to open the window and so on and yeah I think there are many playful approaches of doing this or any kind of balcony theater or there there's been balcony exhibitions in Berlin recently and so on so I think people invent of course as this is going on yeah and then there is a big question mark to a lot of people trying to guess when is the theater opening again when will be the audience is allowed in again and what politicians don't have in their vocabulary is that instead of saying okay 30 of July I think is right now or 30 first of August I think is in the moment the date when they say until then no theater is allowed um whatsoever inside theaters but on the other hand it's maybe a good moment to to think of not opening doors for the big masses and I'm not necessarily talking about leaving three meters of space between the audiences but still hold a frontal classical performance because in Switzerland here on the 7th of June exhibitions will be allowed to have audiences in I think in Berlin it's already next week or so um because obviously museums can have more space they can handle at least small audiences which will be then dealt with carefully I don't know with gloves and whatever must and why don't we use those theater spaces in a way as exhibition spaces then um so that's something I'm thinking a lot and I'm starting to develop something here with the theater vd in Lausanne where we thought maybe we could in a certain way an audience room as it empty as it is I now and then I actually now go to the theater and look at it it's so empty it's a ghost house and to think of it as an exhibition of the left behind emptiness I think this could be very productive for maybe an audio tour that we thought to develop in these spaces instead of just leaving them empty all the way it looks theater almost as a ruin a contemporary perfect shape ruin as an object and to inhabit in a in a different different way I think some theaters in France have actors on call a bit like not from Calcutta but in advance and people call in and ask them can they read a certain poem so they're on demand as on demand acting or residing and more of work colleagues from you guys we spoke to in Taiwan said that apps like Tinder or Friendster and others are encouraging users to use the platform not for dating about to just meet people to be out there so to open the definition of it which might be an idea in a way to say you know how can people connect but I think there still needs somehow a game game director an inventor game to make that in a performance way but as they say they it does work people people do to use this in a way of finding new connections but of course it's not in that remedy sense that you also experience something and learn something as a some form of a community by the way the Taiwanese government gave a lot of money to actually find new ways of forms and to also experiment with digital content so they get given a remarkable amount of money I think 160 million on top of already existing arts grants for artists to support them to create new ways and to really experiment and find something that they also globally want to share it might be of interest for you guys to to collaborate for one of your things and happy to make a connection but how is it for you do you get support now from the theaters or from the government if everything is canceled till august germany as far as I know says most probably till next summer there will be no soccer games live but there will be no big audience which means also opera's big theaters might be the same in poland they said uh here are servers that is so fun to be theaters and massage salons are on the first close and will be the last to open because it's about buddies about contact um so if it's really long how are you supported how does that work you're also freelancers and health insurance and all that how does how is that situation in germany well in the the specific situation of us is that we're funded our office is funded by the senate of belin so that means the the basic say the home base structure is sort of protected as it's funded by the city for a couple of years or how um yeah for a couple of years um I think it's a range of three years um which excludes us here at Stefan and me so we normally just you know live on what we're uh earning by the work that we're doing so that is where we're not we're not employees of our company or so however this is already quite a great situation in which we are because the structure that we need in order to communicate prepare the things that we're used to doing that is safe in a way then there was in germany in every county specific approach to how to protect freelancers in the arts but also in general from going bankrupt rather soon and in belin there was because there's so much work and labor dependent connected to cultural work um the cultural senate for senator for cultures he even joined the financial hearings and pushed himself in a bit and said this is so important but then you can't excuse me so he um he made quite a good deal for freelancers in the cultural sector for four starts so there was like a um a rather unbureaucratic donation to everyone in the first round and now the situation is a bit different you can borrow money from the city but only to cover your professional costs that means if you have structures that you have to kind of maintain in terms of paying rent or insurance or the company stuff like that but as a private as a person yourself um for on that level it's not clear um how a continuation would be managed so that is that is yet to come there debates there has been a federal minister of cultures who didn't really raise her voice in that respect and uh is rather also on hold and wait how the situation develops and um how soon things could get back to say semi normal also so we're all kind of waiting a bit and see how long this takes i guess important is actually what you mentioned before like that the appointments for the future are hard to to make and that's a bit more tragic like um because now of course we we think of or we we are in the process of applications and funding and so on and there after Easter like i i really felt like the situation had changed from in the beginning where every like our partners they would say yeah that's a crisis we we keep on going and so on and and suddenly i think they probably received other like um signs or messages as well like from from the government to to to um yeah to not make too many appointments for the future and um so that's that's bad i think like that's really tragic in a way because otherwise now we could yeah we could go actually for for making concepts and and trying to prepare for work that could happen like as soon as venues and theaters are open again and there i feel like now everybody and it's especially i mean we are we are it's we collect the fringe of the off-scene or free a free group um and our structure like we are safe on that side like the office and so on but we can't produce a single project without any additional money that we have to make applications for so if that like chain or this food chain is is interrupted it's it's it will be really difficult really a tough um situation where where you see the difference in a very harsh way suddenly between the whole city theater system which in Germany is very you know almost 200 uh state theaters that have a big amount of fixed employees all from carpet to shop until actors and management and so on and for these theaters obviously it's a crisis they miss their audience they don't get applause and so on and they can't work now but they are sure that next year whenever the curtain is able to rise again they can just keep working because they don't need to go through all these application processes and the fringe scene which in especially in city like Berlin has been so much encouraged to take their own initiative to develop new formats and so on a lot of these people that are working also in a loose connection with us scenographers dramaturgs technicians they feel a bit left alone by the situation because suddenly oh oh they realize being independent really when it comes hard on hard it kind of you have no insurance for what's going on but I guess it's the case for theater makers in many many countries around the world yeah so in a way it's not existential in the moment as it is a tragic it's been the moment in India or in Egypt uh in Lebanon as we hear but still also in Germany artists who as you say are part of the free scene what about the definition is of the fringe um hard to imagine that you think of yourself as remedy at the fringe you know we think it's such a great company that is um that has contributed so much to a global dialogue more than perhaps some of the higher funded um theaters even of course they do a different than also great work in theater but um do you feel do you detect something in the mood on the streets if you go out or in talks is there a political change happening is there um um talk that issues that perhaps were not always um on the forefront like you know workers healthcare workers or the situation for artists um on the not being part of a state theater is there something where you feel there's a movement happening there something in the air where you feel something is changing in society I think generally in politics um the acknowledgement that um this century is also century where care um healthcare but also for elder for elderly has to be acknowledged in a total different way this is something that you can read now a lot so for this say um field of labor um this is a phase where um yeah of of reconsideration also in terms of uh what are the values of this work and what are time you know time slots that a person needs from somebody who cares for nurses and so on um apparently there seems this could be a push towards an understanding that this is an essential uh layer of society in 21st century um that has been not acknowledged uh enough um when it comes to other political themes here in Berlin at least it's very very um present slogans all over when it comes to evacuating the camps in in Greece uh which which are camps and this might not be really on the on the not so present in the US but refugee refugee camps well yeah there there are camps of overloaded by several hundred percent as in camps that they were made for 3000 people max and they're 40 000 minimum and now um due to political constructions they're not they're not permitted to leave the islands partly they're people who have been born there and they are now seven eight years old you know and they don't know don't know anything else than these camps totally provisoric any aid comes from not the greek government but private organizations who withdrew now most of their workers and uh it's a time bound in terms of uh the virus because the the only way the greek government so far reacts is trying to evacuate evacuate some of the people but mainly they keep the line of not permitting them to quit the camps or um and the um overall atmosphere on the island has very much changed from support they're being very supportive i'm talking about the inhabitants of the islands to an increase of racism and just an atmosphere of uh it's enough why don't these people understand that there's no point in coming to us uh because they can't proceed they can't go any further because europe uh locked the iron fence and even accepted Greece to break uh human rights and also um rights that are granted within the EU as in freedom of uh where you where you want to move and the freedom to apply for asylum and things like that um but uh the debate about on the other hand for example culture as being an essential instrument of education and social exchange of an essential platform where also you can deal with different concepts and you know experiences within uh society other than on a political level um this debate has not started yet but i'm i guess is is very needed to come because who knows what will be uh on the bill that we're all gonna pay for all these tremendous amounts of billions that have been just you know thrown into the european and market as well as just within every country so that the thing keeps going um but this is a bill that we're gonna have to pay all and um there will be surely a lot of debates about how essential has been the work that we all have been doing within the cultural section what's needed what what what does it help and um so there is also about defending the freedom of art because as soon as you can explain as soon as an politician can explain what this piece was good for this might be easier for him or her to also kind of explain why there was a funding for it so to be completely integrated in the pedagogical context um arts however are not uh an extension of uh of teaching you know there must be a freedom that has been had been uh protected quite well at least here in uh in germany where i guess there will be needed to defend it at some point soon inside europe uh we've seen now borders appear very strongly even within germany there were for some time borders between certain regions where here in switzerland there have been certain regions that have been asked because they're in the countryside for people not to come and visit those regions for people that have been houses so these are struggles about suddenly that have been a challenge to the to the utopian project of the european union or or actually quite pragmatical um project to to to improve the situations um on on a european level so these will be big questions in the aftermath as well to talk about and i'm particularly afraid like what's going to be happening if some countries start having less impacted people sooner than others will they how long will then will they keep those borders closed and in the end it's the same thing about the territories in the cities as well we from the moment on which is not yet a situation in york but in in germany in the last weeks we've been starting the oldest discussions about what to open first and when and as long as it was about closing i think we there was quite a solidarity in the air between all the political parties but now as soon as it's about opening it's very much about lobbyism so there have been certain regions where the car shops were the first ones to open because they're important for the in other places the furniture shops were the ones that had apparently the strongest connection to politicians in other uh places they were in mistonia i think that the restaurants seem to for whatever reason still open or partly open and they seem to have a good connection and in this race obviously theater is seems to have a very bad connection to politics because in germany nobody mentions really that outside of the feuilleton discussions and how is the mood what do you feel about the among artists of the theater theater community you hang you hang out with is it people say it's going to be a just a break it's a pause button or um you know people feel it's going to be a real seizure in in u.s. they are prediction that a third of all nonprofits will close whether they're theater communities or also arts community projects but also supporters foundations will mostly not be able to to refund and going out so um it is in germany there any any sense of doom or do people feel we're going to rebuild this a chance we can actually make it better than before that'll be nice if we could hear this um yeah it's it there there are not many official voices about this like um like if you talk to like fellow artists of course like at first everybody was like coping with the situation and there was this kind of special first aid program which i think comforted everybody a little bit because everybody had the feeling okay you can apply very easily and we get some drops of water um without a big like bureaucratic burden um and it's more in the long run i think um where we can yeah where we have to talk about now and um there are no answers yet and i'm it i think it will have a severe impact of um many things like um as well like the economic situation as well as of um yeah of content like what will be shown when we open the theaters again and um who will get support and so on and there is yeah there's hardly like outside the theater outside the cultural field it's not really mentioned it was mentioned in the beginning like oh what a pity the theaters are closing and whoa oh what a pity like the festivals are closed um but now it's all about cons cons consume actually it's about how do we get people back to buy products and you know to to serve the economy but nothing more a little bit education i mean a bit that's the discussion too like how do we deal with the situation of the students of course and uh in schools um and that's it's very chaotic i feel um but culture is really yeah massage studio and culture as you said it's maybe um what we call like this discussion about being system relevant or not and it doesn't seem to be this in there through the official glasses it could be for the theater scene also a bit a chance to say we might look at other spaces again i've seen site specific work quite a bit disappearing in berlin for instance if you apply for money you need to have what they call a speech that's a kind of a paper that says okay the house theater or the sofi and zehlia or another theater is your partner in this and then it's normally happening inside those spaces and um if those spaces in their way in their architonic constellations are dangerous maybe not only this year but even next year i'd be curious to see if if if theater makers that are kind of in the end organizers of the social coming together can then if that public space theater is not available um work outside i've been part of a beautiful rehearsal here of massimo furlanz new pieces with spaced artists and he's creating a walk in the night through the forest which is obviously a piece that totally can happen we have in berlin and in santiago de chile a piece that is a nap basically where you listen to stories that were of people that in the 70s and 80s have had to deal with surveillance and dictatorship um in particular places and and you can listen to these pieces out in the city and that's actually in the moment in as far as i know the only theater piece if you want to call it a theater piece in berlin totally visible you can download the app now and you can go for a walk and listen to these testimonies so these forms of of site specific works will probably be a way also to connect with the the needs of people to to be out there again once they're allowed to and how are you guys spend spend your days do you look at online performances do you look at the virtual gallery walkthrough you look at colleagues who put up some content fast or something they already had how how what do you think of all of it um yeah i follow it a little bit but i at first i had the feeling okay i was such a rush in just you know going into the digital world and all those streamings and all those um yeah this like the the transfer into this into the screens which i didn't really enjoy like i think like from a scientific perspective of course it's interesting like to look at documents and to see even like especially the the ones yeah the older like documents that came popped up and so on that's interesting but um i don't really enjoy it so i was trying to look more at the trees and the sky so but now of course maybe it's good to to find this kind of arrangement and see a little bit like what yeah what has been done and um to kind of come up with new ideas as well i watched claus michael grübers winter reise which for example the empty uh olympic stadium yeah but that's one of those old documents and suddenly you see it that's fantastic i think uh to to get them like like open the archives it's interesting um yeah but i also saw quite a good life experiment by the kamerspiele um i think you had to shiki okada in your seattle talk some weeks ago and they did an experimental version where they didn't show at all the recording of the piece but the actors performed on zoom as we are talking right now the text which is talking about people that are back in their home not talking a lot about sex but not having it and so it totally the way may total sense because i don't know how many singles are out there maybe not being able to use tinder anymore to connect and yeah i think okada who also said um he does some try to do some directing work and now he works with about monologues which he always does he said well he found it interesting that all of a sudden the actor shares the same space on his screen and then he does as the director you know normally the actor listens more or is you know not a tool but you know he let fulfills the the vision of the director but all of a sudden they are at the same size my screen and the same voice and you don't talk over each other you have to listen so he feels something in a way it was something interesting and um and of course there's the old japanese idea anyway of the screen you know the screen that's painted that hides something that's not there so um but of course he he can't wait to to um to get back so are you guys reading material do you really box or something or you listen to something you also read this cover up then you also maybe you say about something about uh what do you watch or not and um yeah i i enjoy literature a lot at the moment and also reading to each other this is something that uh but this is private you know that there's not so much time normally and now you can use it more for this and um also i benefit from i guess we all that we're not alone so there's just we can just focus more on what normally is maybe not so so much in the center as in time together and what can we do together what do we want to speak about and it's just great i mean there it is for me this is a fantastic time that personally that could really um you know continue to be like that a bit um and yeah also books are fantastic performances pictures are fantastic pieces if you just spend time with them so i'm also i don't think that um that there's too much the need of kind of replacing uh the the or trying to you know kind of recreate the the notion of being together on huge 100 200 people zoom phase parties i mean that's fantastic as an experience once but it's not it's not it's not um it doesn't replace to be in the same space together um i think one thing that um there has been all this debate about bubbles social bubbles and media bubbles and where we get our information from from who about who do we know how they are and what they think um so one chance could be to um to develop new technologies perhaps outside tender or perhaps i don't know i've never used it but where where you would come across somebody perhaps also with other questions than dating um as in how what what people might want to share i'm talking about the global audience that is globally also a performer because we're many many at least um uh globally are capable to you know meet you on this level so why should i care about the performance artists in Berlin as i normally do you know i can speak to someone in i could use the time uh that way i'm trying that in in seminars that i'm giving at the moment um to encourage people and also myself to just you know house that's called reach out or you know find just get out of this bubble of who you could contact anyway and to just make personal encounters that are independent from from the space as we're normally very much related to where we are and that is with who we speak you know and whose work we're watching so in in a way it's a liberation of or a flattening um of what what the global global the globe is and where with who i speak you know it just depends on time zones so i think this is a potential that perhaps can be explored more as with as we're less traveling and moving that could also change the you know the scope of where we are this global notion um of we all have the same problem because everyone has to kind of defend against uh the potential affection and has to be solidarity with those who then would suffer a lot from it um it it will like it already started in Germany also globally it started to split up again into nations and more nations other than this trump is saying us first we need the vaccine first you know and so there's a counter movement to to this global notion um that makes it maybe even more important to cross borders on this level of one-to-one communication or small group communications and other other strategies and exchanging other things than um how are you you know yeah that's just we have that and seven what are you listening to a reading what are the books you are look what's your um input you are getting well i was i was really diving into um audio um recordings that i did like i'm starting in november um when i made a series of um interviews with um ambassadors like on the question and other experts on the question how does a country celebrate it's like country how do you celebrate um your country so i was totally busy and um yeah like like transcribing those uh recordings and creating those yeah creating the script actually so no further input uh from my side um i mean i i tend to listen to to radio and feature a lot anyway like uh while taking a shower or while while riding the bicycle or whatsoever so there's a lot of like on this like audio input there's there's a lot but i learned how to well there i know i i don't know the word like um pikirin what is the english word for pikirin tomaten pikirin oh spike to spike plants yes there's always like an experiment each day i do a little experiment in what like how to yeah learn a new like thing and spike spike to make something or spicy i don't know yeah splicing maybe you connect different plans to each other and uh no no no i'm not not connecting but i'm like when they grow a little you plant them in new pots oh yes yes yes yes so you do gardening work yeah great yes i i i started to enter the universe of thomas pension i don't know if the curfew will be long enough for this but but he requires time good so what are you are you are you immersing in the in in book literature or do you experience the moment you're in your room with her uh yes i'm mostly through a book that helgard recommended to me last summer which is julia z his um book about uh hunter leuten it's called it's a very german thing i don't think this is translated into other languages about life on a countryside and how it's intervened by windmills set up a wind power energy generators but we're also finding quite some uh good time now which is a good thing to to revise our uh own book which we're we've been i think for seven years now uh struggling to to publish our book about all our works and so on and it's it's being delayed and delayed and delayed again and now i think we're really on we're close to i think in june it it should be fantastic that is a fantastic idea so we hear from him and the remony protocol where the situation is serious but not existential um the company is open for business as we hear so if any great theaters are listening you know this might be a good time to catch them but you sometimes couldn't it's uh also a bit uh it's stunning to hear that your great companies are successful these are such an impact on the scene is so deeply worried uh so also up for your lives and for your livelihood and to also you know pay your wages and care for your families and i hope that germany and city of Berlin will you know recognize for you but also for your colleagues that the enormous contribution you have made to world theater and and perhaps who knows maybe we'll see one day a tinder remony protocol project you know or as something else where you where you um and do something where you kind of a speed lighter an instructor of people and getting together you're such masters in it but always with a social political and historical context so thank you for joining and perhaps who knows how long this goes in we might we we check in again and here an update of your situation it's great that all three of you could make it it's a big honor i really so sad that the brooklyn 100 percent did not happen everybody has been waiting in new york city for this because you have done it over 30 cities and it's stunning that it didn't happen in new york as in the philadelphia version was out there to the credit of them they got you in there so it's a it's a big loss for the city actually just one thing i could just came to my um all these theaters in germany they're announcing their live streaming or their streaming of old pieces but actually for whoever wants to see a hundred percent piece or any other of our performances on our website um most of our performances are all the time free available for people who love watching theater on the screen um some of them are quite well documented or there's a bit less there's so a lot of radio plays for germans because german listeners um all for free so yeah maybe you could also do a schedule and formally have during the week and this and this and one of you is there and introduces it so you have a little uh streaming like the like the show but but yes it's a tremendous resource you're very open with your work you share it you know it's all available it's often unsinkable in the united states with all the complications of recording artwork and um so thank you and i hope your listeners will be able to join us for dirige jr from haley jalia bakar to nisha we're gonna have peter sellers the great director and and oska ustes and tony torn um thanks you for listening we know how busy these days are we need great theater and performance we also need a great audience a participating audience so it means a lot for us that you took the time and you guys i hope you have a good dinner and wherever you are in berlin and then the reserve and um i can't wait the day that you come back and we have a single evening this year in new york city thank you very much friends thanks everybody