 Welcome everybody back to Seagal Talks here at the Markney Seagal Theater Center at the Graduate Center CUNY in Manhattan in New York City at the City University another day on planet Earth the sun shines outside but still the reality is stranger than fiction we live in a catastrophe movie here especially in the US where the situation is so dramatically different than what we just heard from our friends and colleagues from France or from from Germany and Susanne Kennedy said that she feels is almost over and but here over 40 states seeing rising numbers Florida had the highest number of cases of death ever and school systems are closing down for the entire fall the Los Angeles school system and also my university I think will cough completely online teaching as was with the possibility to do a hybrid courses we all very happy that our international students can stay it looked like they would be banned to enter the country a shocking proposal and reckless from from the Trump administration and we hope things will look better soon there are so many efforts by scientists around the world to find a cure and there are important news about the vaccination but we hope it will will be found never in the history of mankind so many scientists have worked together and as we hear the Russian hackers are trying to get it to every lab it was just the big news today and around the world to get the information so it is like it is really like an incredible catastrophe movie which which we are looking at and the voices of artists we feel strongly at the single see them we have always thought about this but now it becomes even clear the voices of artists are of significance now more than ever artists have been on the right side of social justice the right side on that complex struggle for freedom and liberties over centuries and and what they think what they anticipate how they feel the present is most significant and we need to listen to them more as we need to listen to scientists and our climate researchers but artists do know what we do need and what is missing and what they are right in what they say so this is why we continue our work to listen around the world we are now on week 15 or 16 incredible we didn't know it would be so long when we started five days a week we do a new program as far as we know we're the only theater institution in the US or even in in Europe have no programming every day connected to that is a small center where we are and today we have another artist with us who deserves our attention who is a significant force in the field whose work is emerging and it's Tiago Rodriguez so from Portugal Tiago thank you thank you thank you from for for joining us so many told me you should have him on and he hasn't been in the US in the bigger cities but even so as he said he was in Seattle and Cincinnati which is great news that these decentralized structure seems to be working and Tiago started out as an actor early on created his own company as a student at TG stand and then moved on to do create a new ensemble Mundo Perfeito if I understand it right in Belgium and he created a body of work that is stunning place works he created are the ones most known as by heart he teaches audience members Shakespeare's man on life it's about memory and history Anthony and Cleopatra Bovary the way she dies if I know sorry to Anna Karenina Karenina famous play that got a lot of attention so pro about the idea of the prompter woman who has to negotiate is for actors and words and memory and and and many many others he is mixing true real stories in Portage to Marx and fiction he is writing for and with actors which is interesting and and his ideas a poetic transformation of reality through theater he got a very big and significant award in 2018 not long ago the European prize for theatrical realities a very significant one the 15th I think he's the director of the Teatro Nacional de Maria in Lisbon in Portugal in 2015 and he also teaches I think in Anna Teresa de Crescent school for example which she runs as an answer so he is an educator also and a teacher so Tiago I hope you forgive my long introduction it is all about listening here but we have to give a little bit of context so first of all really I know how busy you are and that's taking the time for us is a means the world to us where are you now and what time is it well I'm in Lisbon I'm I'm home right now normally I should be at the national theater but we we had a turmoil this week we reopened the theater late in June the 20th of June we reopened the theater after three and a half months of closure because of the pandemic and and we've been performing in the theater but also open air in the city in other cities so we sort of put all our energy in following all the you know security guidelines and limited amounts of audience and social distance and masks and all the all the rules but we wanted to as soon as possible get back to the physical contact with the audience unfortunately after we did the last of our shows this sort of summer short summer season after the last one we had a case of COVID identified in our team of the national theater so last Monday we had to you know shut down all rehearsals shut down all works in the building and and everybody's been home until this morning so we we were we had a lot of people suspected of COVID everybody's been tested and fortunately this one case is an isolated case and the other 150 people that work at the national theater are now negative and are being followed and so I just got the news a short while ago it's it's five o'clock in the afternoon in Lisbon I just knew about it before we started our conversation so I didn't have time to go back to the theater but tomorrow morning I'll be back to the theater along with most of the team and and and sort of facing this this new set of rules of the game of of working in well of working that everybody is dealing with you know this sort of common danger but also in in Portugal I heard you describing at the beginning what's going on in the United States and we we are of course watching following the situation from from Portugal with a lot of concern because we feel that it's it's yeah it's really a catastrophe and we're very concerned with with with the American people and with everyone living in the United States and also with what seems to be a sort of clash of of interests between the safety of the people and and and other less significant and valuable interests so we watch also the political turmoil around the pandemic in the United States with a lot of concern the same with Brazil we're very concerned with Brazil I had been in Brazil I was in Brazil in March when the when the pandemic started and we rushed back to Portugal because most theaters were already closing in Sao Paulo and and we also watched with a lot of concern and and and yeah and worry not only at the at the human level because of the safety of the people but also the political evolution that we see concerning the pandemics in the position of administrations of the countries here in Portugal the situation was very under control for a long while we were a sort of a southern miracle in in Europe and now not so much so now what we have is a very controlled situation in most of the country but not in Lisbon and that's due in a way to the fact that after the confinement getting back to work in Lisbon you have the most amount of people you have the most density of of people but also you have the most people having to the commute going from the suburbs to to the center of the city and using public transportation and having absolutely to work for their for their you know for their survival and and then of course you watch that the labor conditions and the habitation conditions and working conditions of these people allow for for contamination so in Lisbon we are not so confident and safe anymore i think there is a big effort to to avoid going back to confinement but the numbers specifically in Lisbon are not are not very positive for the moment the rest of the country is quite under under control and quite safe so we're really dealing with that situation now but very eager to you know to be able to go back to rehearsals go back to preparing the next season we will open the season the second of this of september on on the national theater so we have sort of one month and a half of preparation until we reopen our our doors and we work daily with the presence of the audience so hopefully things will get better in the next six weeks and and we will be in a in a sort of kinder context incredible so what were you doing in brazil i think Milo Rao also happened to be in brazil versus project he was researching in in the amazon i was taking parts at the same time more or less but it's a big distance when we say brazil it's a bit like saying yeah we were both in the states at the same time and then you realize someone was in florida and the other one in nebraska so what were you doing would you remember what happened how did you hear the news and yeah i was taking parts in a in a beautiful festival in san paulo meet it's uh it's one of the the most adventurous uh interesting uh and diverse performing arts festivals in brazil um it's it's spelled mit meet san paulo and um and it had a beautiful international programation and i was fortunate enough to be for this edition the focus artist so i i was performing more than one piece i was performing by hearts which is the solo you mentioned where i i share the stage with ten audience members that choose themselves to come on stage to learn a text by heart during the performance the Shakespeare sonnet sonnet 30 went to the sessions of sweet silent thoughts i summon up remembrance of things past and and and i was also performing sopro which would be performed for the first time in brazil i still performed the first three performances of uh the first three showings of uh by hearts but sopro we never managed to show it because uh the the problem started to happen also in san paulo theater started to close and uh in the meanwhile we were uh from the other side of the atlantic in contact with lisbon because we were about to uh be forced to close the national theater also in lisbon so this was mid march and we ended up not doing all the shows we want to do in in brazil and coming back to lisbon and and facing the fact that uh the we had closed already the national theater um and we were at that point still uh unaware of the huge dimension of this of this phenomenon of this pandemics and how it would affect us all we were hoping that it would be well a couple of weeks and things will will be sort of solved um and and uh and quickly when the we understood that was not the case and that uh um we were facing a sort of long-term phenomena that would have a deeper impact in our lives so then you went right away in confinement and how long was it and how for you how did you experience it how what did it mean to you well in in portugal we uh half march we entered immediately stated the emergency and that meant uh that the right of circulation was suppressed for health reasons it meant that people should stay home and only leave home for absolutely essential tasks um so that was the halt in in in the economy in the in you know in the work of people um and it was very violent for for the cultural sector um we don't have uh like uh in in many other countries i think also like in the states contrary to germany or france we don't have a very uh um uh developed social security plan for artists or uh culture or arts professionals and workers so uh we we knew that um social security would not would not work uh in favor of artists that could not work so they were not getting paid and they would not get any any support or very little support from from the state so our first decision when we closed the theater was to keep on paying everyone not only our team the fixed contracted uh uh higher team of the national theater but all independent artists all independent technicians and companies with whom we work we decided that as long as we would be closed we would pay full a hundred percent everyone as if uh work was being presented to the audience so that was that was a big strain in our budgets and at the same time it was a sort of political decision of assuming that the impact of this crisis should be collective and not individual that it they people should not feel the impact of this crisis at dinner table it should be the national theater uh feeling these collective impacts because uh we're a collective we're a democracy and we're a society so uh as long as we can we should you know take care of each other so i think the first reaction to the pandemics because i had to deal as a director of the national theater with this issue with uh with a very fragile prokaryos economical sector in the arts in portugal and the place of responsibility of a national theater was uh um in moderate amounts of solidarity was to say that the first answer we should give as uh citizens but also as human beings and artists to this pandemic should be in moderate amounts of solidarity when i say moderate amounts is because we live in in in systems in societies that are pretty much ruled by market rules and uh and they tell us that solidarity is okay but moderate solidarity like within the the boundaries of of reason and uh and i thought immediately and i was followed by the whole team of the national theater that in such a you know uh new crisis we should answer with the unreasonable amounts of solidarity and go as far as we could and beyond so that was the first thing and that really affected me because uh the first weeks of uh stated emergency and confinement i spent on on zoom meetings and phone calls with artists with technicians with partners with other theaters finding solutions to all the shows we had to cancel to all the tours we had to cancel all the rehearsals we had to cancel and the answer was always in moderate amounts of solidarity that's how to deal with it how can we do it just be you know very uh very uh um cooperative and and very generous generous and very uh and as fair as you can and and uh you know and and that was that was very beautiful to to live like that um so the fact that i was in a place of let's say political in the broader sense of the word responsibility for others uh and especially for artists and and the artistic theatrical landscape um forced me to react to the pandemics with some you know with some values with some philosophical stands and this was solidarity and that really gave me um gave me hope during the first weeks as an individual because of course when you do that you you feel that solidarity is also contagious so you feel that others theaters started to react upon that and say yeah yeah if you do that i'm gonna do it also and i want to i will use you the national theater as an example so that we also do the same and artists started to demand the same amounts of solidarity from other institutions from mother from the state itself and that was that was very positive for a for a long while until um another issue of the pandemics which was i felt very strongly which was the the way that the ability of imagining tomorrow or the future was stolen from us this sort of um huge piano that fell in our heads saying tomorrow doesn't belong to you you can't you can't put things in an agenda and really believe they're gonna happen um and and how that had also an artistic uh impact um i should say that i spent many many hours every day working as an artistic director dealing with calendars budgets ideas of other people's performances and and projects but i had myself to to write because i could not rehearse the piece i should be rehearsing so i i i said to myself well if you can't rehearse and meet the people at least you should write and i i must uh i must confess that for two months i wasn't able to write one line of dialogue for a play i was able to write articles on the pandemics articles on on cultural policy uh to debate a lot but really write a line for an actor to say on stage was not possible for me and then one day uh already in april two months later i was talking with this amazing poet from portugal and a louisa miral uh from the city of oporto and we were talking on the phone and i was sort of complaining a bit like oh this is awful i can't write i'm working like hell but there's nothing juicy really creative coming out of this it's just anguish um and and she said like well me too i it's been two months i'm closed at home you should say i would have written like you know an epic poem already and i i haven't written one single line of a of a poet um and then she reminded me of this beautiful quote of woodsworth the the romantic poets english poets who said that poetry um well this this won't be correct this quote but it could it will be closed um poetry is what we remember um it's the strong emotions we remember in uh in quiet times so this idea that's poetry of course is fed by the big events of our life of our collective history but it will only emerge in the quiet times when we reflect upon the the you know we don't write the poem in the roller coaster you write a poem later that day when your balance is back in place and you're not screaming anymore and she said like now you now we're screaming we have no tranquility no quietness for the poem to emerge so you know uh live this as good as you can and then start doing theater uh not forgetting what happened to you during this period that's uh that's that's uh that's quite significant so poetry is to remember in the quiet time yeah yeah I you know one thing that happens and I was at the beginning I was always talking about you know budgeting calendar we would just want it to save everyone put everyone on the on the raft and you know get through the storm and uh after a while I started thinking but what about you know the artistic uh substance of what we're living and I started asking you know a company who is going to uh you know stage top girls by carol churchell or another company who's going to stage uh death of a salesman by arthur miller or or another company who's going to stage uh I don't know the title in english praça dos eros the tomas pernards um the the square of heroes by tomas pernards yeah um and and um and I started asking them well now that this is happening you know you had this idea back in january or even in 19 but now that this is happening do you still want to do these shows later this year or in the beginning of 21 and everybody every single artist and company I was working with portuguese french you know german swiss uh they all said the same thing of course I do I will just do it differently um and I find this very beautiful I had to think of uh you know the indian writer arondati roy she says uh that we always go back to the the great stories the myths we don't go back for them to be different because we know them already like in in in the greek tragedy but we go back to see what details have changed because it's in the details that your time and your singularity and your vision might be expressed it's not the fact that antigone dies or doesn't at the end of suffocles tragedy that will be the sign of our times you know the side guys won't be in saving antigone it will be in how does she die this time around and and uh I had to think of that that all these artists wanted to even people who are writing new texts or who are not working with texts with devised theater but they all wanted to keep their concepts they just assured me that the storytelling would be different details would be different um and this I found very very inspiring I think that these pandemics didn't change the world uh what's what's happening is that it might allow us through all the suffering which is you know catastrophic but it might allow us to look at it differently and thus talk about it differently and and and I had this sort of reassurance from artists when they say well I I still want to do carol church who I think it's still relevant I will just tell the story differently now so did you do you feel something in you changed in this time or was it is it reinforcing what you think about see it alive poetry we have a um a great Portuguese poet uh who is also he's a cardinal also and he's the archivist of the library of the Vatican is an amazing figure and during the you know the heights of the confinement in Portugal he wrote uh that's the pandemic the virus uh um raises the veil it allows us to look with more clarity at problems so it the virus didn't create inequality but it allows us to look at it more clearly to shed light upon inequality but it also allows us to shed light upon collective hope um and the ability to cooperate for instance but whatever we find through the virus is not new it's just enhanced by the the urgency or the despair or the hope of our times and the fact that the virus does this this kind of tabula rasa that unites us all in in for better or for worse like in marriages so so in a way there's this sense of of community that I feel now for instance with the American people when I see the news or I read the news I I um there's this sense of shared suffering I know what exactly what people are going through because we're all going through the same thing um and I and I think this will allow us for combative enough to find new tools for a more just society it will also allow you know it will pave the way for an even more savage capitalism and more exploitation of of people but uh but I think uh it will also allow for a more clear vision of of the inequalities in our society and I think that's that's one of the consequences the raising the sort of veil that sometimes allowed us to look the other way um from from injustice so so and I think that's that's the main thing in this phenomena it's Bruno Latour the the French thinker he also talked about a general rehearsal I find it's very beautiful that he says this because it's a very theatrical approach to looking at the pandemic it this is a general rehearsal of the of the performances yet to come provoked by climate change of course this is not immediately connected but there's this idea that it is a global catastrophe um and this is preparing us maybe uh giving us this one shot in this rehearsal to learn the lessons we need for for the opening of the show when we when we will face more of this phenomena provoked by climate change which are unfortunately appear to be inevitable so this idea of raising the veil or general rehearsal for me they they talk a lot about past and future raising the veil for me it's about same problems that were already there but through the pandemics we look at them anew and and uh and general rehearsal because it's this sort of global mutation it's this feeling that's for the first time um at least in our generations for those who are alive because no doubts that's you know similar global problems have uh uh happened uh already in the past but not in a past where we had the ability to talk on zoom between new york and lisbon um for free i'm not even paying to talk with you frank yeah so so we never had a pandemic a global pandemic in this time when this is possible this sort of communication so for sure this pandemic is very different from the spanish flu or from the you know the plague in in in the 17th century or you know uh it's it's very new and at the same time it's it's uh it's inaugurating um a historical era of global catastrophe now i look very very pessimistic but but in a way it's what Bruno Latour is is is pointing to and telling us also that it this this will allow or or give us the chance to to make uh simple yet radical changes in our lifestyles in our collective organizations in our institutions um because a general rehearsal is like a lesson we can learn before the opening yeah and maybe that is um when you start a rehearsal when will it end well how will it at the end look like but you try your best but it's it's a serious uh most serious uh a matter and Latour's idea also that the virus is an actor right and uh interacts with that that we are no longer at the center of the ecosphere that we are part of it and we are refusing to understand it and that this is a big big lesson that it's now all of a sudden almost like in theatre like an ensemble plays no longer the star actors it's no longer the written performance is something that is created together yeah yeah it's it's um you know i'm i must say that sometimes when i when i hear myself talking about this um i think sometimes people might misunderstand me and and say well once again here's a guy saying that this catastrophe might be an opportunity um well i'm totally allergic to this sort of you know neoliberal speech of crisis as an opportunity we have lived in austerity in Portugal for almost a decade with heavy heavy problems uh in the economical problems but also with with um with a very uh harsh uh um policy towards social issues and and that changed politically uh fortunately in the last in the last five years um and and i must say i'm i'm i'm uh i'm happy it did uh in the sense that uh the idea that you know this sort of neoliberal mantra of crisis as an opportunity it always sounds to me as um you know as a as an excuse for the states not to uh protect citizens um and and it opens the door for me for this sort of entrepreneur capitalistic behavior um that that uh many times is you know supported or illustrated with this um lie of the american dream um uh that that uh you know that that I think is is sort of perpetuating inequality uh in injustice and exploitation um on the other hand I always have you know there's this there's this very interesting story that slowvin philosopher Slavoj Žižek he quotes Žižek in one of these books in a book called violence at a certain point he likes anecdotes a lot Žižek and he tells this little story which is during the, how was it called this time? I don't remember anymore. The time when, you know, in the 20s when drinking or selling. Prohibition. Prohibition. Prohibition times. Yeah. In the United States, during the prohibition in the 20s, there's this anecdote about the journalists that asks a politician about supporting or not the prohibition. And the politician is always trying to evade the answer. And at a certain point, the journalist says, please tell me, do you support or not the prohibition, for instance, of wine, of selling wine? And then the politician answers this beautiful legendary answer, which is if you're talking about the wine that destroys marriages, turns men into animals and vicious beings that, you know, hit each other and steal and go against any civil rule. I'm, of course, in favor of the prohibition. But if you're talking about the wine that makes every dinner a marvelous experience and that has an amazing taste and reminds us that life is a sort of a trip of pleasure, then I'm totally against prohibition. And that's when people talk about the opportunity in the crisis, that's a bit where I stand. If you're talking about the opportunity that will keep on, you know, perpetuating inequality, of course, I'm against the opportunity. If you're talking about the crisis as this historical event that reveals or underlines important issues and might push us into different ways of living together in a more just society, then yeah, let's go for the opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see how will the theater react and how should it react. I mean, you also found answers in very complex, somewhat totally complex texts and writing like in your Anthony and Cleopatra way and the simplicity and the beauty of the staging, but also part of your work. I think you talked about burning the flag or that Vino festival on project, Katarina and the beauty of killing fascists, you know, which is a very, very clear political play. Maybe talk a little bit. How do you, what is that politics and what do we need? Well, I think, I think it's, I mean, I can only talk for myself. Yeah. Or as an artist, I'm very doubtful of any dogmas on these issues in the arts. I can't avoid the political views I have, or let's even say political questions because I have more questions than views when it comes to politics, but I can't avoid that they're somehow present in my work in different degrees, sometimes in a very invisible, you know, second, third level of understanding of a play and sometimes more explicitly. But they're always somehow present. But the same thing with poetry. I cannot do a play. For instance, I was never able to do a real documentary theater piece, even when I thought of doing one, because halfway I always felt it was way too dry in the sense that it missed manipulation and fiction and playfulness. And, you know, for a couple of years, I worked as a journalist. And the reason I abandoned journalism, besides the fact that I was not great at it, was the tendency to being objective, which is never the case I realized later. I could have stayed in journalism. They're never objective. But back then I thought that was one of the aims of journalism. And I didn't want that for my life. I wanted to be tremendously subjective. And so I started, you know, choosing more theater over journalism. But I still use a lot of tools of journalism when I'm preparing or doing a piece. I research like a journalist. I have my sources. I meet with people. I try to learn about issues and make costs, learn about issues they didn't know. And we have lessons together. And, you know, we approach creating a piece as a small degree on a certain subject or several subjects. But then I need the subjective, mysterious approach that arts allows better than other human activities. This percentage of mystery that you can never really explain in a piece, I'm very seduced by it and being part of that. This being said, I think, like in current times, one of the things that is really, you know, passionate for me in coming back to theater after a few months without being able to really rehearse or present performances is that I also think, but this is very, very, very personal. I don't want to extend this to any other artist, but I think that the audiences might need complexity right now and might need ambiguous approaches to things or codes. I think for a few months, but it feels almost like years already. We were hit with, you know, black and white numbers, concrete numbers unable to know what tomorrow would look like. And tomorrow, again, was translated in numbers of victims, of infected people, of recoveries, of potential cases. And everything became so concrete and so plain, so dry that I think people are, you know, desperate for ambiguity and complexity and codes. So in that sense, I think that's one of the things I want to develop the most in theater right now is ambiguity, complexity. So even in a play like the one we're rehearsing now, Katarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, that seems to have a very explicit title. We're looking for dilemmas to offer the audience for difficult topics and difficult choices for the audience to face. It's not necessarily a pamphlet or a manifesto or a political standpoint that has to be like, you know, propelled in an evangelical way. Not at all. We're dealing with very hard questions. We're asking questions about their old questions, but I think we have to ask them today and you questions like how should, you know, a tolerant democracy deal with intolerance? Should we be intolerant towards intolerance, thus preserving democracy, or should we be, you know, consequence and be tolerant even with those who will ultimately corrupt democracy and destroy it from within, because them being intolerant, they have, you know, the open highway to the power. So these are questions that people like, you know, from Malcolm X to Rousseau to, I don't know, to so many people. Hannah Hardin asks, I think it's questions we should ask again when we're facing the, you know, the raise to power or even the being in power of, you know, extreme radical white ring, extreme right-wing radical populist movements. I will not go as far as to call them fascists in a debate because then I will be quoted as an objective statement, but I can call them fascist in a play because then it will be ambiguous and subjective and maybe wrong, but still interesting to debate. So, you know, what is interesting is that if I understood the story, this is a family that since generation has killed fascists and the young daughter now has to do her first killing and so it's basically making her high school diploma and she has problems with it. She has moral ethical questions and the idea, as you said, that things are not black and white. Actually the people who tell you things are right and black and white, they are lying. And I think the idea in a way to say we show up to show complexity, you know, helps us to understand and deal with the world that is complex, full of contradictions. I think Breitzeb, small-minded people, the hallmark is they are not able to think or live in a contradiction. It has to be this or this, but it's not how life is. So, but how did you combine this kind of fictional story of the family that has that proud tradition and a real case? So what is maybe tell a bit of your, this unique thing that you take existing stories like Bovary, Anna Karenina or Anthony Cleopatra and now how do you work? What is your traumaturgical idea? Yeah, well, I think I'm very attached to the social gathering in theater. So actually things pretty much come out of conversations with actors, with light designers, with, you know, set designers, and I have the privilege of being surrounded by these people in my daily life. So from these conversations, projects and ideas start to arise. And then I do, I don't have like a method, but I always work in collaboration, which means that for each performance, I try to plan a way of building the performance that is customized for that constellation of people. If I have these three actors, which I know already and this fourth actor, which I don't know yet, but I sort of remember him from these plays and we have this thing together and this light designer, then we're going to work in a certain way. I'll give you an example like Anthony Cleopatra I wanted to work with Vito Ruiz and Sofia Diaz. There are a couple of choreographers and dancers in Portugal who do their own work as authors and they're amazing. I'm a big fan of their work and it had been a long time, we had this sort of flirt, this artistic flirt of we should do something together one day. And I had a sort of carte blanche from a cultural center in Lisbon who said like, come here, do a play, do a play, whatever you want. And we had a little budget and I said to Vito and Sofia I would like to do the play with you. And they said, yeah, we would love to do the play with you but we don't want it to be authors. We want to do a Thiago Rodriguez theater play. We want to perform in one of your plays. And I said like, okay, great. So you want to do a theater and I want to work with you. What shall we do? And I just, you know, Vito and Sofia, they're an artistic couple but they're also a couple in real life. So we were having a coffee nearby my house and I was telling them about, you know, artistic couples and I thought of one of the artistic couples I really love because it was like high pressure it's Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Also because they had amazing artistic results from that, you know, from that love couple. And I was telling them about Anthony and Cleopatra about Mankiewicz film, the Cleopatra and how it almost bankrupt or did bankrupt 20th century Fox. And, you know, we were just talking about these couples and then I said Anthony and Cleopatra is actually my favorite Shakespeare tragedy because it's such a strange, crazy play. It's so difficult. It has 40 characters. It's a tragedy but it takes three years to happen and there's Alexandria and Rome and, you know and he has this writing which is very filmic which I adore because it's the first time that Shakespeare writes scenes that happen at the same time in different places. So there's a scene happening in Alexandria which should happen at the same time as a scene in Rome and this sort of thinking in narrative really baffles me. And they said, okay, let's read the piece and they read the piece but very clearly it's an extremely theatrical piece for two dance performers even if they're great with texts to handle. I mean, it really asks for trained classical actors if you want to do the Shakespeare tragedy. But what I like about them is that they're really about music and sort of mathematics of language on stage. They're very playful with repetition of words in their own work. They're about, you know, building games out of words. They take four words and they do a song with a choreography and it's always very playful and joyful. And then I thought, okay, now that we read the Shakespeare tragedy let's meet tomorrow and tomorrow you're going to tell me everything you remember from the reading of today. And then when they told me what they remembered they would do instinctively what they do on stage which was like intertwine their thoughts and trying to remember together. And I said like, okay, we have a piece. So I'm going to try to write the texts that it's a theater text that I would only write for you for your kind of speech on stage with a lot of repetition like a mantra of memory of the story of Anthony and Cleopatra. And because you're a couple let's try to have Anthony and Cleopatra telling the story of the whole thing as if they can see all the characters but the other characters aren't there as if they're remembering themselves. And then we started little by little to sort of develop a language for this piece, a way of writing, a way of performing, a decor, a way of moving on stage that could only be possible for these two guys. I would never write Anthony and Cleopatra that way if I would be left alone in my cabinet like Eric Ibsen imagining the whole play with all its details all alone. But actually whenever I try to write something alone it's really boring. It's like a school play very badly written. I'm not able to write something that I really appreciate unless I'm in the studio and working with actors. So that's how the poetry let's say the grammar of the stage discourse is developed. And many times there are previous documents. They might be fictional documents like novels that are being adapted or real events. In the case of Bovary for instance while I was researching to do an adaptation of the novel of Flaubert I found the notes like the transcriptions of the trial of Flaubert when he first published the novel in a magazine in chapters he was accused of immorality and a tense or attack to the religion and the good morals etc. So he was being trialed and the trial was amazing. The trial was for four days you had two lawyers that would read from the book and then comment. Directors would comment their own film in the extras. So they would just go like Flaubert, Flaubert, Flaubert. Now what does he mean about this? He thinks that he will convince us that he juxtaposes the hate of the state and adultery thus saying that adultery is revolutionary and then the defense would say the same thing. And historically this happened. It was lawyers reading a novel out loud and then trying to interpret and I thought like wow this is a very theatrical thing it's like they're actors but they're outspoken about the subtext of the way they're reading and then I thought okay I'm not gonna adapt the novel I'm adapting the trial because within the trial we have the reading of the novel and then we can have scenes of the novel emerging but actually the whole context is the trial so in that case the trial the historical event the frame within which the novel, the fiction emerges and another example is Sopro which you mentioned before Yeah, Sopro was well I met Cristina Vidal ten years ago when I first worked as an invited artist at the National Theatre in Lisbon it was far from any of my dreams that I would once be the director of that theatre and when I was rehearsing there a play for the small venue upstairs for the studio sometimes I would peek into the big venue where the company of the National Theatre was rehearsing and it was the first time I saw a prompter working I had heard about prompters and I knew there was still a couple of them working at the National Theatre but I knew it was an almost extinct job in theatre so for me it was a bit like watching a living fossil or a dinosaur crossing the street, it was like wow so I watched this rehearsal secretly and instead of looking at the actors I could only look at Cristina the prompt that would whisper the text, move very quietly behind the actors to whisper without bothering, you know following everything, taking notes in her scripts I was really seduced by it and I introduced myself to her that day and later in that day I told her I would like to write a play for her and she really dismissed me with a very paternalistic laughter and saying like you know it's crazy, I will never do that you're just crazy, you just met me and so we met several times after that and every time I would say as a joke one day I will convince you to go on stage in 2015 I was invited to run the National Theatre so the first time I crossed Cristina in the halls I said like now I'm your director you will have to accept to do a play on stage and she said like well you might as well fire me because I will never do it and then we started working together she would be prompting in my pieces in the pieces I did at the National Theatre and I really then realized the richness of the work of the actors it's not only about whispering the text when an actor forgets it's about knowing the rhythm of each actor helping them to memorize giving them cues taking notes of all their movements so it's a sort of living archive of each performance it's like a secretary an advocate of the author of the text but also a confident very important human social presence in a theatre group and it's also a very old job that feels like anachronic and at the same time it's the sort of craftsmanship that we have to preserve because there's this sort of knowledge the good tradition kept in these jobs transmission that can only happen with human contacts that we cannot lose we can't do it through academics or readings or visiting a museum it's not that sort of knowledge someone has to share it live it to be able to keep on transmitting so I was very seduced by her and when the festival invited me to do a presentation for the festival I thought well this is if she's not going to accept to premiere in front of an audience after 40 years of theatre in the backstage in the shadows if she's not going to accept to be under the lights for the first time at the festival d'Avignon I will never be able to convince her again and after a few hours I was able to convince her and then where we tell the stories of a prompter which are also the stories of a theatrical building an old theatre very inspired by the national theatre like this fictional prompter is very inspired by the real prompter which is Cristina so she was on stage and she's prompting the whole text of the play which is her personal stories and she needs actors to tell her story because that's the convention she cannot ever address the audience directly so she will whisper to actors all these different stories of her past and these stories are real stories from the backstage of theatre but they're mixed messed up with fictional stories so you have the story of an actor that suddenly we don't know anymore if this actor is a real person or from the three sisters by Chekhov because the stories are mixed because of course in the memory of a prompter the real stories are always mixed with fiction, with theatre and it's sort of this ghostly visits to the past of a prompter, to the past of theatre but also a sort of an exercise of memory in a theatre in ruins as if things are soon to be over and we have to use the last minutes of memory to remember everything Thank you for sharing I'm sure you had to tell it so many times but we haven't seen it in the US and I think that idea of theatre as a theme of itself the idea of a complex story dramaturgically dense written in collaboration that is theatrical but then also that simple stage design from what I could see just the chair of the table or a becker where actually the play also happens in the mind of the audience it's not that what we see so often here is a realistic representation of it living where everything could be filmed for TV and so it is quite a poetic combination what you found and do you think for we call it TAC for the time after COVID will you find an adaptation for this will you think it will be smaller spaces, bigger spaces do you think I want to get back in the pixie are you going to go outside are there things you detected change in the way Portugal or Lisbon will present theatre to the people I think a few things are changing but the real changes are still happening so what I mean is that I was faced a lot with the question either by journalists or colleagues during the confinement and even now how do you think this changes theatre my prophecies are quite useless I could share them but they're useless because we will only really be able to think about that when we are back doing theatre because we cannot imagine this change without an audience we have to imagine it in theatre and that's for me one of the huge differences with the performing arts is that I think the huge change in visual arts will be already be operating right now in literature for sure but in the performing arts it will have to be invented still when we can share with an audience however a space and for a while we will be reinventing this connection one thing I realized is that people at least right now they're eager to be sharing a physical space however you know however strange the mask and the distance which are imperative might feel however we miss the freedom of connection that we are used to in a theatre building I think people are valuing a lot the physical presence in the same space that's something I witnessed already as an actor sharing a theatre venue with an audience there's this sort of militant excitement of being there as if being there is already an artistic political event which I think always was but right now it's underlined I don't know how long this boost of energy will last but I think it will last for a while as long as it's difficult to be together we will appreciate being together on the other hand I think that theatres, directors producers we're all thinking differently in the sense that we always think of a plan B before we had plan A and it could go well or bad it could be a success or not appreciated or not good reviews a happy artistic working process or not and right now it might not happen and you need a plan B what will happen if you can't do it how will you do it if you can't do it so it's this interesting thing of if you can't do what you're what you're planning how will you do it anyway and I think we're becoming a plan B species maybe again we always were ready to adapt to the human being is almost limitless but now it's from the roots whenever we have an idea we start immediately working in the plan B for that idea in this I find, I must say interesting because sometimes the plan B is better than plan A and so I think of course open air performance small audiences site specific they will gain a new meaning now and I think they might become even more mainstream than before I think we will have more big venue artists considering site specific circuits and other formats for their work I was raised in the lack of conditions to work so I'm very much passionate about big buildings and big stages because for a long time I could not work in those so if I can keep on working in big buildings I'm happy to do that but I'm also I did pieces in facades of buildings in gardens in warehouses and I'm happy to go back to those places or find new places they allow me to do theater I think yeah I think this the the range of options is as wide as always but I think more people are considering more artistic options and frames where to build their performances than before because they were forced to let's say that right now it's harder to be a typical Italian theater director or a typical site specific director or I think people will consider more options right now and won't let architecture condition so much what their artistic style or options or aesthetics or ethics are so they will be like more like rabbits running over the field in different places and the hedgehog who goes very deep down into one thing what's your idea about the digital theater zoom for the Isaiah Burley comparison of the hedgehog and the fox I was always for the fox always for the fox I think theater people are foxes in general I think people who write 1,000 pages novels like James Joyce or David Foster Wallace they're the hedgehogs we work for a couple of months if we're lucky if we have that time in a performance which we will perform as much as possible while we create the next one so I think in theater we're pretty much foxes. We are foxes, yeah rather than you're right but the digital world as we're saying now we have the children of the digital age and no longer the technological one what do you think about screen and performance computers laptops projections at home I think oh that's a difficult question Frank because I've been building a lot with screen of course as many of us I think all over the world in Portugal I could witness it also when the confinement started for many of us performing arts artists theater artists jumped in their computers and kept on trying I think most of this trying is has a very common banal maybe even artistic results but it comes from something which I think is very beautiful which is this sort of immediate response an attempt and I'm a big fan of imperfect attempts I like drawings with pencil better than the huge painting already produced after years the drawing it has this imperfectness, this roughness of life of theater of the attempts I always more seduced by it as a spectator but also as an artist than by the perfect sublime sometimes but perfect obedience to the perfect way to do it I think theater allows for mistake every time it happens and trying to hide the potential of mistake is not the most interesting thing I think the interesting thing is always remind ourselves that the mistake is there and probably we did it already in the next minute of performance so this danger is what I'm very seduced about in theater and the performing arts so I think somehow although I most of my work is also pretty much based and pointing with a big neon flashlight arrow to physical presence in the same space and that paramount for my work I was also very surprised with very interesting things that emerged from the huge sort of avalanche of digital online attempts that we saw during the confinement but I think we cannot confound we cannot mix up serious artistic researches with digital tools with the sort of desperate, beautiful, crazy maybe very fragile, precarious attempts of some artists that's closed at home and takes a skull and goes for a Shakespearean monologue online on zoom with all his books and things behind him so I think there are very good ideas that were already being developed in the border between theater and digital arts and online platforms before the pandemics I think they will evolve more urgently now and I think a lot of artists like with the spaces where to present will turn their intention to digital tools while before they didn't feel that need I think means of production and historical context always pushes us into creative solutions so if now digital might be a life saver for sure more artists will turn to it I must confess personally, although I understand that I am less and less interested in digital possibilities for my work I'm very interested for instance in the problem of very little audience this I like very much if you want to do physical share the same space you will have to work for 20-30 people I want to explore that potential more than going digital and having the possibility of a very democratic across the board 5000 people all over the world watching my work it's not a political thing, I really admire people who tend to digital and feel that they're free to do their work it's just not exciting me it's like it's I love beckets but I'm not excited performing or staging beckets and I also love Racine and Racine really excited me and makes me want to go on stage that's what I have with online or a very small basement if you give me the choice I will always prefer the small basement for 10 people or an apartment or a kitchen then going online although for instance forced entertainment from the UK they've been doing beautiful amazing stuff online great performances online Dutch company Kassies they're doing beautiful things online I'm sure that we mentioned Milo Rauw earlier I'm sure that Milo will be able to do great things but also open air or I think that many artists will will inaugurate experiences because of the risk of not being able to be in a theater venue I think there's a lot of people thinking of that but it's true that if we're going online we have to wish to go online and that's the thing we can't be online out of trends or just the need to express ourselves you can do that a couple of times but if you want to use the digital tools seriously you have to desire to be online and I'm very happy to be online now with you for instance but if I'm if I'm fantasizing about a piece I'm always fantasizing about unknown people in the same room while we try to do theater we're coming a bit closer to the end but I would like to know then from you if you say this is not what inspired me but what is theater good for? what do you think about theater? what does it do? why do we need it? what is it all about? well I think first of all I mean this is like a common place don't take me wrong I'm trying to be to be pretentious but I think theater is period I understand the problem of trying to understand what is it good for but that's not a problem for theater so I can answer that question from the point of view of someone who loves theater and who sees a point in it but as an artist I don't think I have to justify why theater is good for I'm just doing theater if you come and watch it and you're sort of occupied with this question what is it good for then it's your question for me as a spectator as a citizen or even as an artist I'm I'm very touched by the human assembly in it I'm the fact that we're together in the same space and that we're facing somehow a mystery which I think a work of art always is but it's a mystery that we have to take part in as a spectator as much as the artists on stage we have to sort of contribute with our presence for the mystery to exist I find this very powerful it's something that really changed my life the fact that I saw theater it made me closer to the humankind the fact that I could share this space and I don't think that theater itself is a political tool although it's a political space but I think it's a sort of anti-chamber a sort of haul towards politics and action and change I don't think that it's within the piece that change happens that a piece can lead to even very microscopic changes in the world and when they happen and when you witness them happening however small they are for me it's I could work in theater for 50 years of my life if I would be sure that one of these microscopic changes would take place so in that sense the idea that you do this useless thing apparently useless and that change happens however small but that does happen because of this useless thing I find incredible it's like smiling and suddenly something changed I find this very strong there's this beautiful story about Russian poets Anna Matova she was her husband had been shot by the Stalinist regime and her son had been arrested and he was sort of a teenager he was 17 or something and she tried to visit him every day but she had not always succeeded because very long lines of thousands of women Anna Matova called them the 3,000 women lines because they were so long and one day she was in a line actually she wrote this at the end of the day and so beginning of quote I was in one of these 3,000 women line everybody was whispering about in one of these lines suddenly someone whispered that's the poet Anna Matova a woman came to me and clearly she didn't know who I was but she asked me will you will you write will you describe what we're living here in one of your poems and I answered yes I will and then a smile appeared in what once was a face end of quote this idea that a poet promises a poem and a smile appears in what once was a face for me Anna Matova could stop her amazing body of work in poetry that day with this little story so I yeah it's I'm inspired by the possibility of change and the usefulness of what apparently is useless and the power of what's invisible and you know the strength of mystery and also the fact that it's such fun to the theater you know Jean-Jacques Rousseau the philosopher of the theater he thought it was superfluous but in a famous letter to D'Alembert one of the authors of the Assycopédia with D'Itero Rousseau writes that although it has all the vices in the world or the problems all the hateful things and vain things of theater I have to admit it has one big advantage it's a civic party but it's a civic party and this idea this sort of political and playful moment that theater might be this human assembly very Greek, very Athens the party mixed with politics is for me I think it's still what I look for when I do a piece trying to mix the politics with the party amazing yeah this is all the piece like Portugal right, poetry, politics and a party and a prom tour yeah that's that is amazing and yeah so we will so you think you will go back tomorrow if this is now over today tomorrow you will make new plans again how to rehearse, how to get back to theater everything you know one thing we were talking about that during the rehearsals of Catarina and the beauty of killing fascists the other day which is sometimes artists that work with me actors and specially set designers and light designers and costume designers they go a bit they stress a bit with my ability to procrastinate so I deeply believe that you should never take a creative decision unless you really have to so unless you're way beyond the deadline you should never take the decision oh what like this or this can we still wait until tomorrow yes but it will be late but we can wait then tomorrow so I always do this and I always say this is about the research I'm not really into the business of making the right choice I'm in the business of living the dilemma and sometimes if you let a problem alone enough time someone will solve it for you the collective will solve it for you so right now we have a text in this piece which is very controversial because it's a fragment I wrote a sort of fascist speech for a character but it's a long speech and it's really fascist I mean I did my research and it's this sort of the idea was to uncover the fascism within the populist speeches so I was inspired I saw like dozens of speeches by Trump, Bolsonaro Victor Orban from Hungary Salvini in Italy Marine Le Pen in France Portuguese extreme right wing which I will not name because I don't think they deserve yet to be named and I tried to mix all this and make this sort of perfect fascist speech but not really fascist because it's fascist under the veil of populism and when we read it the actors were really shocked and some of them were like I'm not sure I can do a performance where this text is and I said like yeah but you could do a performance where someone would historically say anti-Nazi speech as long as if it's clear that the play is anti-Nazi well clearly but here this is so today and it's so dangerous because people are appealed by this speech and I said like yeah but people have the same appeal for Hitler so we have to deal with this and we were discussing it a lot and now we still don't know if it will be in the play and people are getting very nervous about it there are probably some of them are listening to our conversation and they're very nervous about it will it be on the piece won't it be and of course for me it's always a collective decision I won't have text in the piece that actors do not engage with so we're debating about this but I'm just postponing as much as possible because it's not so much that the text will be there but the dilemma that we're living now what can you do how far can you go as an author or as a collective of artists taking such speech on stage for such a long time when it comes to extreme right-wing we're only used to the soundbites but we don't spend half an hour listening to them well I did and it's really very efficient what they do half an hour of one of these populist talking can really really convince you and of course I always think that the audience is as smart or smarter than me so I think we can expose them to this because I exposed myself and I was not converted I just appreciate the efficiency and the you know ability of the rhetoric even when they're not very good even when they're not eloquent they're amazing I mean Trump is a good example he's really not eloquent but he's so efficient he's amazing his performance is crazy like the linear style films are incredibly effective absolutely listen but I was telling you just to finish one of the things they you know people were very stressed with was this my sort of tranquility towards you know time being passing and not taking decisions about the experience let's leave the problem let's not find the solution too soon because I mean when it comes to the arts the solution sometimes it's just like the extreme end of the problem and then you show the problem to the audience instead of solving it and hiding it and now with the pandemics everything is so uncertain that all the actors are like when I say like let's not decide yet if we have this speech or not we'll see later we still have time we always have time even after the opening of the show we can change stuff and actors are really like yeah of course this is just about the process it's not about the result let's leave the problem and I think a lot of people lost their obsession with efficiency and production at least in the arts in the context where I deal with because of these pandemics they sort of accepted that we have to you know seize the moment when it comes to creation we live today's problem and believe that it's in us in our skills, in our technical skills in our creativity that a work of art will emerge that will translate this problem instead of solving it way too early and hiding it from the audience so time the feeling of time I think the use of time I think it changed for many artists at least those who surround me I really feel that I feel more company in the frame of mind of let's just leave the problem and arts is about translating our problems not about solving them actors and directors in a way they are translators of great great text and it's a great idea about my change and someone said that came me here in New York from the London Mark project I collaborated we do all this but now we say you know on the centre which we didn't ask before we nobody did it was changing we are so close to it we've been over time but that was so significant what you had to say if there is something for young artists or the young Tiago who is starting out and just creating his company what do you say to artists what should they do what do you think is of essence what's essential the attempt just don't wait for the big canvas and the big opportunity and having all the different colours in your palettes and being able to draw perfectly do a hundred drawings in a napkin just go for it take a broken pencil from the floor that someone forgot and do your thing so I think in theatre this means find the text, learn it by heart during the evening and just go for it and find someone's kitchen where you can present your work to three people but don't wait for the big canvas to be ready to you know don't wait for invitations just take whatever you have around you and if you feel the urge and the desire just practice do as much as possible I this isn't, it has nothing to do with the present time it's the only thing that I always you know that I always learned you should fail as much as possible and just you know it sounds like a night commercial just do it but night stole it from artists and revolutionaries it's you should accept how imperfect our attempts at art are we will never touch the heights of Sophocles we will never touch the heights of Shakespeare or Racine and that's liberating we will only be noise we will surely only be noise and for a very short time so let's profit from the party and the civic side of it and do a political party noisy one and not wait for posterity or to be legitimized by critics or massive audiences just take all the napkins lots of pencils that you can use and keep on drawing your little attempts be it in theater, literature, film and things will follow or not that's a significant great series and deep deep advice of a broken pencil idea I like that instead of this broken window what police people say you have one broken window and the neighborhood goes down they say someone will go in someone will break and drugs the neighbors will sell the house but you say take a broken pencil everything will change I like very much what you said for your rehearsals to say live the experience and don't have the immediate solution and this is what we have now this is a time when you are right we have to live this where we are in now and it's a time where we look for change, we have to change authentically but also be ready or as you said that chamber before the change and the activism maybe that is a great description incubation period, I think Susanna Kennedy talked about that that it's something incubates and shows it I think most of us don't create much so I think we have to accept that and you know know that if you are moved by desire and urgency then you will like Rilke said to the young poets you will write you don't need my approval to do so if you can live without writing then quit but if you need writing poems to live it won't be me Rilke or you Frank or any other person that will stop an artist with its urgency and desire however bad an artist he or she might be they won't be stopped by our warnings so just go for it because I did lousy pieces of theatre in my life really things that I'm ashamed I'm very honest and now I'm a bit better so not all of us can be like Antereza de Quezmar can do historical play at the age of 23 with the rosas and change the landscape of global contemporary dance very few artists are that amazing and such genius at such young age and throughout their lives like Antereza always was with dance I mean most of us are not that great and some of us get a little bit better with time but if you have the urge and the desire just make some noise it's like I think it's that Fernando Pessoa poem which we sing there's always a beginning about certainty there's a beginning of certainty you have to go further and a certainty that you will be interrupted you will finish it and then you have to make something out of it in the later part of it really really really thank you this was a a significant contribution it's for us also important to hear you as a European theatre artist and the way you think and connect the poetry, the literature the art world so this is a great reminder about what theatre really in a way is about or can do and we hope one day you will come to New York stay in touch and do the good work and really it was a significant contribution and I hope for our listeners and thank you for taking your time we went a little bit over time but it's really worse that there might be something that changes your life Tiago told about that little change what he said was very significant also for our lives and to take action and to maybe see theatre as a chamber where you as audience members think about and make connection and then you create something it's not about the theatre it's about what you see and how you connect it to your life and hopefully contribute to a change it's a stunning work you're doing really congratulations and thank you for sharing tomorrow we have carried out switch well with us she will talk about the Latino Latina community here in New York City she's a playwright translator essayist and has a watch that seems also created many many symposia and and convened since what's the right word gathering self of artists and where we now struggle with and we have to all pay more attention on the black lives matter and that all communities of colors need more attention and we really look forward to hear what carried out you will have to say so thank you for joining us all thanks for howl around for hosting us again Vijay and Sia and Travis Seidel team is Andy and Sanyang and Tiago Helper so lucky us we had you that you didn't have to go back to the theatre today so we were happy to have you in the last day of lockdown and really thank you I can really only imagine how busy you are and so it's a big compliment that you took the time so it was a big pleasure thank you so much Frank and thank you to everyone watching and and hopefully we'll be able to meet again and exchange ideas and cross our paths in the future and hopefully in person and save our time so okay thank you Tiago bye