 But perhaps what's changed has already changed. We just haven't seen it yet and we are moving, you know, towards a new time in theatre, performance, dramaturgy and the arts have always been very close to it. Actually, people study this to see because you're earlier on could notice what was the time really about. It manifests itself at what Adorno and so many others philosophers said, you know, that's why we are so close to the arts and artists have been on the right side of history. On the right side of change, they were the right side of the complex struggle for freedom and freedom of speech. And I think this is the same again. And this is why we listened since March to artists. Since September, we also opened the field and we at the Siegel thing, there is an enlarged understanding of theatre and performance and what art means, theatre arts and producers, dramaturgs, curators, literary managers, our artists, they are collaging, they're putting things together, they are part of the team, the collaborative work that has become, I think, much, much more important also as a mark of contemporary good theatre and dramaturgs have been at the forefront. It's such a big field, a complicated field, a tradition of hundreds of years, a shorter one in the US. And I personally always saw that they are the guider, the people who guide you like the stalkers in Tarkovsky's zone who bring you to the room. And then you have to choose if you get in or not, whether you are the director or the audience member, the sponsor or whoever. And with us today, we have two pioneering dramaturgs from the Americas here and see now, of course, it's the US and it's in New York City. And we have with us two great, great artists, a theatre artist, it is Sidney Mahone and Katanya. And I will say a few things about them. You will go right away into the discussion, but just so we have a little contact, we also have many international listeners and they have no idea what a Lincoln Centre Theatre is and if it's bigger or not, then St. Mark's Church Theatre. And so, and Katanya, first of all, thank you for being here. Sidney Mahone, thank you for coming. Thank you. And Katanya is the dramaturg of Lincoln Centre Theatre and many of us think it is if there is a national theatre in the United States, it's the closest perhaps in the way that we have. And she's the co-executive editor of the Lincoln Centre Theatre Review, a brilliant publication that is going on in the edition of Lessing's Theatre Blatter, the idea is that you give context to the complexity of the themes you show on the stage and she's the creator and head of the Tony Award-Owner-Nominated Lincoln Centre Theatre as directors, labs, thousands of artists from around the world as a global initiative have come to and who had made that possible on long nights to write applications and get grants to have theatre artists, young directors from the entire world come to Lincoln Centre for six weeks and to discuss the graph that has been enormously influential and it created an unparalleled network. I don't know anything that's compared to it. Close to it, perhaps the Royal Court, the international program by at least Dr. Zahn was not as grand in scope, I think, as the Lincoln Centre director, but still also very influential, but it was for playwriting. She was the recipient of the Literary Managers and Drama Talks first Lessing Award. Actually, she herself was president. I'm co-founder of that important American association of Drama Talks. She translated Bertolt Brecht, she translated Boto Strauss and many, many others, Ernst Jandel and she has taught theatre history for many years at Julliard and she is the winner of the significant Margot Jones Medal that she got, I think, if I remember right, Meryl Streep gave her. And so she has dedicated her life to playwriting, to producing theatre and to theatre everywhere. She is also the author of a book that's forthcoming, I think, next year most probably The Art of Drama Tourogy at Yale University Press, so it's perhaps too early to talk about it. She also got the 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and very early on and collaborated with Sidney Mahon and Ann said, you know, we need to have her. She's significant, she's important, her work should get the exposure it deserves and Sidney is an independent Drama Talk and the editor of two books, Moon Market and Touched by the Sun, Placed by African American Women and also with Aussie and Ruby, of course we know who she talks about in this life together. She was the Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. In 2019, she served as the guest editor of the Review, the Journal of Literary Managers and Drama Talks of the Americas, Lambda and her production credits is too long to name from Wilson Dove, Wolf, Shange, Lee, I mean, it's incredible, it's the who is who of theater she's close to, who she's fighting for and she is also a founding star producer of the Genesis Festival of New Voices. As you can see now, we have a lot of experience here, decades of work, so first off, all you guys, thank you for joining us and for taking the time out. I know how busy you all are in the times of Zoom and remote working, we have less time than before. And so Anne and Sidney, where are you right now? Sidney, where are you? I'm in Highland Park, New Jersey. Yeah, and Anne? I'm locked down in New York City. Since March. We've been closed since March and we're not reopening at least till April 1st next year, we don't know. So Lincoln Center might open in April, theoretically, you think? No, for the staff to get ready and then we would, I mean, it all depends, we don't know. But we're hoping to be able to rehearse to bring our, I mean, if you go to my office, to my theater, everyone's shoes are still on the floor in the dressing room, everyone's clothes are still hanging, it's sort of like snow white. You know, a spell came over the theater and the performance has stopped and so we have to revive them as soon as we're able to by law. But we have to rehearse them a little first to make sure that everybody remembers that they're blocking, but we're hoping, who knows, maybe in the call. Frank, I wanted to, I was saying to Sidney, I wanted to start because you're doing such a variety of hours on dramaturgy with a little bit about how Sidney and I know each other and really there's one credit you didn't mention that is, I think, the most important in terms of our relationship which was Sidney's association with the Crossroads Theater, a theater that's no longer in existence but was a hugely important theater for many, many years when we started. And you very kindly avoided using the word old but we have been doing this for a very long time. And I mentioned to you before but I thought it would be important to start this way. I think it's important for people who are younger or people who are from other countries to realize, and that's what we always do is dramaturgy, sort of situate things and sort of see where we're coming from, that America does not have a long theater tradition. It does have a theater tradition in New York starting with the American Revolution. English troops came over just like during Shakespeare's time they went to Germany and started theater in Germany. They're always traveling troops of players. You see them in Huckleberry, Finn, et cetera. And then in the 19th century, there were stars that came, Sarah Bernhard and Duzza and Oscar Wilde and they performed, of course, in New York at theaters that looked like English theaters. I mean, they went to Colorado and Seattle but it was basically imported material. And that's through the 19th century really. There's an exception to that that I really feel like I should mention. And it's quite interesting. There were a lot of almost what you would call native plays that were about folk heroes like Davey Crockett and the American Yankee character, et cetera. These were not art plays, they weren't really that good but they're very interesting and they deal with a lot of contemporary current events. And Lynn Thompson, who was the later the dramaturg of Rent started an organization called America at Play which I think is still online, America at Play which brought these texts together with contemporary young writers who adapted them. So there was that, although you can't hold it up alongside Molière or Shakespeare or something like that but that's about all there was. And the first American playwright is of course O'Neill and he wrote 100 years ago. So our tradition is very new and it is not regional in scope and Lincoln Center Theater, which is a big organization dates from the late 1960s when the Ford Foundation for the Arts and Humanities started a very big brilliant program to build theaters around the country. So Lincoln Center was built, the Dallas Theater Center, Denver Theater Center, the Taper, the La Jolla, it spread the theater around the country. They had no idea what was gonna be performed in those theaters and at the time I think there was a statistic that only 3% of Americans had ever been in a theater because we're not a nation of, we're a nation of immigrants where people, we were descended from people who don't have an art going tradition. Certainly a theater going tradition. So it was kind of all new. So they built the theaters in the late 60s they were done and then everyone realized, oh, someone has to work there. And so they began to hire artistic directors and managing directors, but the staffing was very small. And then by some miracle chance that had nothing to do with any of us but there was a larger sign of fortune, this just coincided by sheer fate with perhaps the largest outpouring of playwrights that I've ever heard of. Maybe you'd have to go back to Elizabethans to find a similarly large group. And it was a group of playwrights maybe numbering 100, 200, none of whom had trained, none of whom had gone to school and all of them were writing about what they knew where they were from in very different styles. It wasn't a stylistic form of realism or some kind of other form of drama. It was extremely varied. So you had, if you talk about regional, you have the California school and we all know Sam Shepherd, let's say, or David Henry Wong who started out there or Chicago, you had David Mameter, Steve Tessage, people like that in the Midwest. You had Beth Henley in August Wilson and Landford Wilson writing about their world. A lot of writing which is very experimental. I mean, Fornes or M-Tazaki, Shange, Tina Howe started as a very experimental writer. So it was just an incredible upsurge of writers of, again, non-trained. And so what happened is because the theaters were there and nobody knew what to do with them, all these people started sending their plays to these theaters. There were no agents. I think there was one agent, Audrey Wood, who represented Tennessee Williams, but she was too grand for all of us. And so I think Sidney and I began because theaters just needed somebody to read a pile of manuscripts. And I recall, and I'll turn it over to you Sidney, I mean, I recall at the beginning of my career, which was in the late 70s, late 70s, having to read like 50 scripts a week. I mean, just so many plays were coming in. And it was an exciting time because of course, when you're reading that volume, you know, not all of them are very good, but some of them are just incredible. And so we would scout through them to find place for our theaters, but most importantly, and that's the reason we date back for so many, for so many decades, is that we would occasionally find a play and say, I can't get my artistic director to do this, but let me send this to Bonnie Marenka at the American Place or Morgan Janesse at the Public or Sidney Mahoney at Crossroads. I mean, there were so many people working. And so we would just send each other things and say, you know, this seems like it's right for your theater. My own theater at that time, the Phoenix Theater, was a theater that was devoted to new plays by both American and European writers, new play writers. So that's why I did those translations. So I wrote to Charles, I worked with Mustafa Mathura, who was from the West Indies, did a world premiere of his. We did some American world premieres. So it was a combination and Sidney was beginning to work at Crossroads, which had its own focus. So maybe I could turn this over to Sidney to pick up the story. Thank you. That's important. Thank you, Ann. And thank you, Frank, for hosting this and having you be a part of it. I'm struck, Annie, with the way the history comes forth. Sort of an alternate history is running parallel with what you described. And I think about the roots of what we now think of as Black theater, beginning during the period of slavery and the oldest known Black theater in the 1820s in the village and Greenwich Village, the African Grove Theater. So that was William Wells Brown's effort. And it seems to me that so much of Black theater has a certain reference point during this period because that was the beginning of what we now refer to as menstrual theater. And it was very much an improvisational act, but also a force of social critique because it involved the people who were enslaved, imitating White people who were imitating Black people in their rendering of what they understood as Black culture. And of course it was very much about ridicule and denigration and so forth. The Black people who were witnessing this and subject to it, it became a matter of them taking it into their own hands and reframing it so that it became a critique of White cruelty and White dismissal of the humanity of Black people. So that's interesting. And I think we're still fighting to... There's no effort to deny that because musical theaters are part of it as well, its roots are there. But this alternate positioning of Black performers as somehow outside of the mainstream is something that continues to challenge us. And now there's a discussion about how we incorporate Black artists and there's a great deal of crossing the boundaries, if you will, that has occurred such that it may seem that Black theater isn't even needed anymore because there are so many Black artists in all forms of performance. But this notion of dealing with race I think is perhaps the common denominator throughout the history of Black performance in America. And I think the great thing about it is that one of its tenets is that it always be new. There's no way to progress if you are doing what someone else did. So everyone has to really find a unique form and a unique voice in order to break through this great wall of Black stereotypes. So that was one thing that crossed my mind. But also when you speak about during the time that we met, yes, it was the mounds of scripts and the formation of literary departments in order to process this. And it was exciting. And there was a much smaller group of dramaturgs in the northeast anyway that really formed a family, it seemed to me. The thing that I was excited about is the opportunity to make different choices than places like the Lincoln Center or, you know, MacArthur Theater, any other regional theater of note or even the smaller theaters in New York. And that gave us an opportunity to introduce some new voices. And that was always the most exciting thing or to present new work from established writers such as Intuzaki Shange. The great thing about having a small network of dramaturgs at the time that I entered the field, I was in graduate school and really just running a playwriting competition that was held across roads. And there were so many scripts. And so it was out of that experience that we established the literary department. And the fact that the winner of that contest was George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum was a thrilling moment for all of us because it was extraordinary in its innovation in terms of form. Even as it harkened back to the evolving tradition of black theater, it did have elements of the minstrel tradition and the Bard-Billion experience. But that let us know that there were many more new plays to come in that same way that The Colored Museum came for. So I was happy to begin that process. And the other thing that was important to me was really finding and supporting developing women writers. And that became one of my major efforts. And I think there were three, Crossroads started in 1978. And I think there had been three writers, three women writers by the time I'd come in the early 80s. And it was my goal to increase those numbers substantially. And we did. So I was happy about that. I'll stop there. Well, I wanted to just jump off of what you were saying at the beginning. You know, it's, because I've become very interested in this since I've been locked in my apartment for eight months, eight months. It's very interesting today. Most people now, young people come out of colleges and that's their training. I mean, we did go to college, but there was no dramaturgy in college. We certainly didn't learn anything about it. But I've been surprised when you talk about the African Grove Theater. I'm surprised how few people know the history of things. And if we talk about African market theater, that's, that's one subject, but there are other subjects you can add as well. I mean, where was it part of place? Who worked in it? You know, do people know about the Astro Place riots? I have been, I should just say this now to all the hundreds or thousands of people listening to this. I have been trying to get somebody, and it's probably going to have to end up being me. I, to, to interview Arthur French, a man who has a mind that is so sharp and Arthur French has, has gone through the entire history of black theater. I mean, I mean, back to Langston Hughes. I don't even know if he, I don't think he knew Zorro, but, you know, and the, and the, and the whole history started in churches, you know, and the Hadley players. And, you know, do people know those organizations? I just did an interview in American theater last month with Steve Carter right before he passed. Oh, wonderful. And that's where everybody at the Negro Ensemble Company started. They met each other doing something in the basement of a church and her alum. And I don't know that that's ever been documented. And, and Arthur, who, who has worked, who started there, but then has worked with everyone. I mean, he's worked in every show. It's unbelievable his career. I mean, if I could find somebody to just help me record, I actually emailed him and, you know, we talked and I said, would you do this? He said, yes, but I don't, some young bright person who was looking for a dissertation topic should just interview Arthur French and you would have the whole history of theater. Maybe it's going to have to end up being me. I hope it isn't because they're probably younger, smarter people who could do it. But it's funny that, that history has, you see it vanishing, you know. Yes, yes. And at the same time, you know, there, there were anthologies that black theater USA that captures some of this history, sort of like the beginning. That was James V hatches collection and he made it to volumes. I think it is more closely held and honored in African American studies departments, but it's not a required part of, you know, the history module that you have to go through to get a degree in theater. And so even in academia, the African American tradition is run on a parallel track. It's something outside of the mainstream that's not required. It's an elective or something that you actually have to fight to get into the curriculum. And once you do, it's a dynamic and powerful experience because the, and you can never properly cover even a quarter of it in the time that you have. But I think that it's, it's beginning to, I guess we're recognizing that we need to recover and restore this and I think that's a great invitation you sent out. There are so many other people who have bits of Woody King is a tremendous font of knowledge and history. But it was in the 70s, 60s and 70s that the small black theaters came into existence and a lot of the black playwrights were able to come through there, like Pernumbra, August Wilson coming through Pernumbra and Woody's new federal. There's so many, I'm sorry, I'm not able to just name them at the moment, my mind is racing so full of issues that are raised with this topic. But all I can say is that, yes, there's yet much to recover and to place into the canon in a respectable way. And I am definitely inspired by all that you're doing and to just even capture what dramaturgy has wrought in this country. And it's a great clue to what so many of us can do in this time where we're not able to make new theater, but we can certainly take some space and record what we have done. Because even as the 19th century and 20th century has yet to be fully unearthed, this period that we came through is also not documented in a comprehensive way. And I've often thought of it as something that is in my wheelhouse because of course I've thought often about just crossroads and that in itself has an incredible arc of evolution in the writers that were produced there. Just in my own experience it started with George C. Wolfe and ended with August Wilson and Rita Dove and a whole lot of variation in between there, the comedic writers, the hip hop writers. So there's so much to just capture, preserve and lift up. Yeah, and Cindy, I think not only just building on that, I think what's interesting now, if we're talking together in 2020 about where we are and what people know and what people don't, what's interesting to me is how little people who are entering the field know about so many things in our past. So you've talked just now very eloquently about your own experience, but I know, I'm involved in this thing called the sustaining legacy project, which is a new initiative that the Dramatis Guild Foundation is overseeing, which there are so many recognized award-winning, popular with audiences, playwrights still alive, who have just vanished into obscurity. And maybe they were ahead of their time. I mean, they were popular, but young people don't seem to know their work. So we're giving out awards, National New Play Network is joining us. They're going to be touring, you know, offering these writers productions. I can't tell you who the first winners are because we haven't announced them yet. Right. I'll keep getting put off, but you'll know who they are. They're very interesting. So people should look for that. But Martian Norman has started an initiative which was kind of shocking to me of all the women playwrights that we work with who've also been forgotten. And this is just a 20th century phenomenon. I mean, this isn't just since the 1970s. I mean, if you go back into, so I'm very into the classics and Shakespeare and stuff. If you go back to, you know, writers like Margaret Cavendish who wrote in, I don't even remember when 1680 or something. Nobody knows who she is. So, so there are, there are a lot of amazing writers who have been forgotten, who haven't been brought to life or et cetera. And that to me seems as I gradually leave the field that people, you know, you don't have to constantly reinvent the wheel. Of course you will reinvent the wheel because you have your own sensibility, but there are things to be mined. There are things that can be adapted. There are things that can be brought back because ultimately what you, what you have to have, which we know from our own experience is you have to have a joyful group of collaborators who love each other and are free and really like the work. And then you have to have an audience. Yeah. If you just have six people who are your friends who like the same thing, it's not going to go anywhere. You've got to find work. So you start with somebody you like, like George Wolf. And then an awful lot of people like that work. And there begins a whole story. And so that seems to me harder to do when you cut off the tradition from the past, because you just don't know it. Right. Right. The tradition is so important. For some reason I'm thinking of Morgan, you and Morgan were like my big sisters when I came in because you all had already established your departments and the processes to make it work. Sort of the protocols, if you will. And, um, from the response letters to play rights or, uh, the calls, We answered them all. Yes. Yes. Well, I tried. I'm, you know, it got ahead of me, but, um, And we should, we should add Morgan. Janice was the dramaturg at the public theater. She was. Yes. Yeah. She was on single talks. Yeah. And so that, uh, network just continued to expand. But the, the point I guess I want to make is that. There's the process of making the work that we are now challenged to reinvent at this moment in history. How do you make work that whose future is unknown at this time. And then there's the process of preserving what has been done. Both things are important, but they seem to be two different, uh, Initiatives, if you will, and I'm concerned about both. But as you say, Annie, um, as we kind of see the exits for our, our careers, it's very important that we preserve what. What happened on our watch, if you will. What was your journey from both of you? How did you get to become a dramaturg? And do you want to start? Not particularly. I, I, you know, I've just written this book. Um, and I obviously have to, have to deal with it. And I actually don't really know. I mean, I had, I, I had lived when I was young and like a 16 year old. I lived in Germany. Um, I had no, I mean, I, I went to the theater, but I had no interest in theater. I've never been interested in acting or whatever. I went to concerts. I did all kinds of other things, but I had no particular interest. So maybe I knew something about it from then. I don't know. Um, I, I knew I didn't want to act as I always say, there are two kinds of people in the theater. The people who will do anything to get on a stage and the people who will do anything to get off the stage. I was definitely in the latter category. Um, and so I didn't really know what to do. Uh, and you know, I, I wrote criticism and I, I did a little directing. I was a very good scene stress. I did a lot of work in costume shops. That's always very useful. You learn everything about a theater when you just keep your head down at the costume shop, you know everything that's going on. Um, but, uh, you know, and I did a little directing, but you know, finding myself in midnight, taking a phone call from an actor and hearing myself saying, but you're wonderful at the show. I thought, you know what, I think I'll let somebody else do this. So I think it really just came down to, I taught for a while. Um, I got a job, you know, like you did, you know, you find yourself in a job and then there were all these scripts to be read. And then I started realizing, Oh, I like doing this. I like finding people. And I've always liked recommending people. And you know, as you remember calling up and saying, you have to read this play or just telling a playwright, you have to send your script. In fact, when I was, we started this organization that's now very established Lambda literary managers and drama tricks in America. I ended up calling it of the Americas because there were Canadian dramaturgs, Mexican dramaturgs. This has made it complicated. But, um, we used to send out the script exchange. Do you remember this? Yes. Email this, you know, in other words, you know, I would find plays that I loved. Some of them I could get on at my theater. This is back at the Phoenix way before I was at Lincoln Center. Um, and others I just could not talk and then to doing for one reason or another. We all were in the same boat. So we would type up, you know, every, I think it went out like five times a year. Five or six drama tricks to type up here are three or four plays that I cannot get my artistic director to do, but I think they're really great. And here's why I love them. And then we would put the home address and phone number of the, of the playwright. And, and say three women, two men, you know, two sets, because you know, there were a lot of small theaters that that was important. That's another thing we should mention for anyone listening who's not American is we have no theater subsidy in America. There's no national subsidy. So we have to hustle in a different way. It's, it's a good thing. Now, because when all the money has disappeared, we're totally at home. We're not used to having money. Um, but if you look at theaters in Europe who have these lavish subsidies, we've always been in a different situation. We have to earn our money at the box office or through donations. By our tax system allows you to lower your tax rate. If you donate, but we have no government subsidy. I was once at a, I became friends with the literary manager at the comedy from says a very grand theater, lovely guy. Yeah. We did a press conference together and they were asking us about funding and he said, Oh, the comedy process, which had a budget sort of like Lincoln centers. It's 99% of its operating budget. Every year on January 1st. What about Lincoln center? And I said, Lincoln center theater, which is one of the largest not for proper theaters in America. It's less than 1% of its budget. From city, state and federal sources combined. I think it's less than one half of 1%. It's such a completely different situation where you, where you are kind of going back to the roots of theater. Where you, where you have to kind of. You know, devise strategies to find plays that you love and your actors love and your audiences will love. It's a different situation than a very structured theater, which is what other other countries are used to. And we're jealous of that now when we see, you know, bills and London for bailing out. London theaters for 2 billion Euro. I mean, can you imagine? Well, this is a really powerful. Point to bring to light because I think it definitely points to the problem that we're having right now. The model for the financial model is not working is no longer applicable in a moment like this. And it's, yes, people are making all kinds of efforts to find alternative ways to make theater in this moment, but without a way to. I don't know. Meet capitalism. It's really shattered. The way we can even. Think about how to go forward. And I think it's, it's really a time for transformation because the. Multi-million dollar. Blockbuster Broadway musical is not going to just come back, you know, after a week of restoration rehearsal. How, I mean, it's not just the health issue that prevents us from all gathering in a space. It's also the financial model. And, um, I can only hope that this forces us to reexamine how that, how that functions because that's also a large part of why certain people are excluded. From it. When. Crossroads, for example. Hit financial problems. There were no major donors because it's the private sector that basically supports. Commercial theater and really regional theater as well. There was no. You know, large donor to bail them out. And so things took a turn. For the worst there for a moment. They have recovered and are back in action. But I mean, it was a big deal that Penumbra got $1 million of. Whatever the new grant. Source was just recently in response to the, the social reckoning that we're have the racial reckoning. For social justice. I mean, that should not be extraordinary. Given the whole economy of professional theater. In this country, but we're happy that it happened and hopefully it will. Create a new way forward. I totally agree with you. And I think in some regards. You know, I'm using the time that I'm sitting in my apartment to really rethink a lot of things. Because I think it's a good. Somebody said, this is what change feels like. It's this difficult. It's this. Yeah. Traumatic. I mean, certainly is traumatic. But you're absolutely right about that. I mean, I, I had cited that statistic that when, when the regional theaters were built, 3% of Americans had ever been in a theater. But actually, you know, a while ago, let's say 2015 or something. More Americans had gone to theater than we're going to theater every year that we're going to professional football games. I mean, wow, people like that theater and we have seen regional theaters really grow in many different communities. And, and when you have a city, a smaller city, not New York, say, you know, you want to forward thinking industry. You want a university. You want some, some, you want some culture, you want restaurants, you want a good theater, you know, people, people like it. And I think for all of us, my, my own, well, I won't be part of this, but you know, what we've witnessed is when we met each other, the theaters really had a distinct identity. They had very specific groups of writers. They were serving, I mean, many audience members went to many theaters. They were just into it, but that's gotten to be much more uniform now. And I think it's, because my own feeling is that because a lot of theaters, you know, the building was big and more people got hired and boards of directors know what a marketing director is. And they know what a press age, but what is a dramaturge? You know, or, I mean, there's a lot of theater, you know, and then gradually they got, well, why are we doing this? You know, that last play wasn't as good as we had hoped. They got moved out. And you began to notice in, um, publications like American theater, which used to print the repetition of, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, so, you know, back in the 80's, they put like funny stories, like from the theater, which used to print the repertory of every theater around the country, you could see what was going on in Santa Fe or Denver. It used to be very varied. And then over a period of like, let's say in the 90s into the, into the 2000s. plays would be done like 50 times as opposed to 50 plays being done you know and it became more conservative and Broadway too you know you know you have just endless you know it's like Disneyland, jukebox musicals and yeah Disney stuff and the kind of plays that you could see there and there were quite a few varied ones even on Broadway have a such a hard time now yeah I mean you couldn't you couldn't get a theater for Seraphina now you know oh my god so you know that's something that that needs to change and also as I always say to my directors and this is something I'll end with for now and then Frank ask us a question you know it's important I think for young people I always say to my directors think about your aunt and your uncle you you know what play you want to go see but think about other people besides yourself what would they see you know I mean could you talk them into going to see the play that you're working on or that your friends are working out so that the theater is not a rarefied elitist space that only people who have gone to graduate school and theater want to attend it it lives in the community you should have your your the mayor of your town come to the opening nights of your shows you should you part like crossroads was a part of New Brunswick it was important you know and fitting into a community did your roommates if you went to college did your roommates from college who went into whatever law or something are they supporting you you know so that just doesn't become like a little niche thing that isn't really about what's going on in the community that seems to be something that's changed well I think your model for practicing dramaturgy is just extraordinary because in the past few moments you've mentioned the director's lab now directing is not dramaturgy you know in a in a formal sense and yet the fact that you had the vision to assemble directors and match them with writers is dramaturgy at the next level not working on a script it's creating the infrastructure the architecture for new work to happen I think that is still a challenge that we face even more dramatically in this moment I mean that's one thing that a lot of us have been interested in that's a good thing about being a dramaturg in America no one knows what the hell it is so you can do whatever you want but Frank and I have talked often about international work and and the I realized as I was writing some copy for the website and Lincoln Center's website if you go to the director's lab it should be up this program has been going for 25 years because I'm only 40 and it is it is the largest most diverse most international most diverse in every possible way I've accepted more women than men in the program since 1995 and and I gather them and then I leave the room and they're there day and night they were 10 hours a day every three weeks and so when you have somebody from from you know Panama talking to somebody from Atlanta talking to somebody from you know Kenya talking from somebody from Uzbekistan and they're saying or somebody from Rome and they're saying well this kind of theater and it's really important and the other ones say well what is that kind of theater you know you really begin to get you know and I'm not privy to those conversations I'm cooking dinner managers are running in but but then they you know they work from 10 to 10 and the 10 they go out to a bar and they keep talking yeah as people really want that exchange of ideas and different traditions and different you know and I'm very interested in people from different parts of the US I mean there's so much you know theaters that are starting in Alaska or in Santa Fe New Mexico or Hawaii I love people who direct in churches I love people in drama ministries I love people that record cruise ships you know I mean what are those experiences like right it's fun to put everything together you know that's been a joy well we mentioned the international dimension I think that was also important to Rick Connelly Richardson the founders of Crossroads theater company because there is such a thing known as the African diaspora and so when you mentioned and Rick is from Trinidad so there was a connection there naturally but also the opportunity to so when you mentioned Mustafa Mathura I'm pretty sure that that was how he also came to us at Crossroads actually and then Sara Fina was something that just completely thrilled the theater community the arts community and was so dynamic this combination of ensemble and improvisation and precise choreography and precise text I mean it was it was phenomenal and so then that in a sense led to our opportunity to work on Sheila's day was focused on women domestic workers in both the US and South Africa and Johannesburg and we had a cast of African-American and South African actors who worked with Mungadian Gamer and Duma Lovo to create a piece that was taking advantage of both traditional forms of theater and also bringing it up to the contemporary moment it's interesting you know in my in my little bio I mentioned that it's I have been with John Quare the executive editor of the Lincoln Center theater review issue number 77 for years it's a literary review okay how did that start before my time at Lincoln Center as Sara Fina was beginning to gather its forces and get organized I came when it was running already the theater tried to get some press on Sara Fina and it was before Nelson Mandela was released and no one would cover the show no one would cover the show and that should never be a problem for a drama and it wasn't a problem for John Quare he said screw it let's start our own magazine so we started the Lincoln Center theater review he started it and did an interview with Duma and did an interview with Bongani and did a whole thing you know conversation with the South African playwrights and then when Mandela was released suddenly everybody was like wow you know and then we just had this amazing amazing run this is before we move the show down to Broadway to the court where you realize the theater was changing history I mean you know Bishop Tutu came I mean it was just absolutely incredible and then all all the kids in the show and it finally closed there was a movie made and toured Europe they all went into the Lion King mm-hmm that was just starting at that time and the assistant directors were in the directors lab and they were looking for actors and they actually have a casting office in Sawejo and my just to end this story my favorite thing is I was in South Africa because I did I put together two South African theater festivals after that of younger writers that we did at the Lincoln Center Festival very good work and so I went to South Africa with with John Rockwell who was running the festival and to be in Sawejo on a Sunday morning with Duma and you and I know Duma in this purple BMW or whatever the hell he was driving you know it was very quiet we were we were driving you know turn the corner in in Sawejo and there were guys you know standing outside of Sabine drinking and this purple car pulls up and the whole corner goes Lincoln Center oh that's phenomenal that reminds me of a story that Ruby and I see told in their memoir about I see play pearly victorious going to Broadway and both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King attended the performance and it was a you know a satire that was a little bit that made people uncomfortable but the fact that they both came and encouraged or just celebrated the fact that artists have a different role in the struggle for for justice and freedom and humanity and that there is a way to prick the conscience of your community by even making them uncomfortable or pushing buttons that force them to stand against stand against their own resistance I guess because eventually you give in if it's good art you're going to give in but the the issue I also wanted to say this about Sheila's day which came after Seraphina so Mungani and Duma were big stars then but by the time they got to theater to crossroads it was an ensemble of women and there was an effort that was successful for the women to also be acknowledged as co-creators of this work so that would include Ebony Joanne Dooley Dooley Duma Joanne my god I love Sheila's day is about cleaners she works yeah they were called Sheila in South Africa but it was interesting they both had Thursdays off both in South Africa and in the US there's so many and some of the music was common because the Christian tradition was also part of it but I just wanted to throw one tidbit about how I became a dramaturge I think it begins with me as a young person in my church and but the by the time I got to college I understood that the theater I was interested in had more to do with the church than the circus this notion of ritual this notion of healing through movement music and ideas could alter your your way of being and that became a kind of fundamental concept for the kind of theater that I tried to advance Frank that's it you can't talk that thank you for having us thank you really really true and I think once here the philosopher said you know we have to create civil ceremonies that do not reproduce the ones of the religion of the monarchs you know the dictators of the marches you know these are civil ceremonies in theater that reflects the complexity of the world we live in includes communities looks back as you guys did reinforces new voices and creates this part of the change but my question pioneers of dramaturgy in America it didn't exist you couldn't study it even now it's hard to maybe you don't even need to study it there's also a good a good thing but what is your definition of you would say this is what dramaturgy is about what is it about for you why is it so important in this theater I'm going to let Sidney start to answer that we only have two minutes left but I'm gonna go get my manuscript and read you we have a multiple time it doesn't have to be just enough so I'm gonna go I'm gonna go read you get the great drama trick of the Guthrie theater Michael Lupo made a definition that's so brilliant I put it in my book okay you'll get it well for me dramaturgy is the process of developing and fulfilling the playwright's vision involves facilitating collaboration because quite often the playwright loses status as the other collaborators come into the process the director has the control of the actors and of the clock and there may be moments where we need to make this decision make this change just to make it work in the moment but it may not be in keeping with the playwright's vision so fulfilling the playwright's vision sometimes involves this collaborative facilitation and other times it involves pushing the playwright to remain true to the vision that inspired the play or to remain true to the process that lets them know how to evolve through the play how to change the play there's so there are other dimensions to but when I when I think of dramaturgy I see myself in the rehearsal room observing the process that brings this project from an idea to a fully realized performance and the challenge of communicating with an audience in the way that the writer intends to is is part of my concern that it be conveyed in the way that they intended and sometimes it can be misconstrued or confused or the writer thinks they're doing something that's not actually on the page those kinds of questions are always fascinating because they bring out something that even I asking the question had no way to imagine how it would be answered and those answers are often the dynamic discoveries that we all want to make as artists and as audience Annie's back let's hear it okay this is Michael loopoo recently passed who is at the Guthrie theater for many years and he said to limit the definition of dramaturgy to research and gathering of relevant background information is to leave out its true vitality and creativity dramaturgy functions as a sort of monitoring device meant to keep the process on course whether a barely audible yet persistent whisper or a vocally assertive and persuasive argument dramaturgy does not emanate exclusively from one individual who qualifies as dramaturgy rather it forms the underpinning of all intuitive or deliberate choices thoughts debates and nurtures the passionate search for artistic truth on stage very well said yeah he's pretty smart for the artistic search for truth on stage yeah and and what do you what what goes through your mind I mean that was his but what do you think I couldn't say it better than that and and and I think you know the the the wonderful part of it is is all the relationships you form on the way I mean one of the one of the few places on earth we're certainly living through this right now where people have to learn to get along is the theater maybe sports you know but but the theater deals with very dark subjects it's not a happy play the Greek plays aren't you know I mean there's some comedies but you know they're about very Shakespeare whatever so it's not like we're avoiding difficult subjects we're plunging into the most difficult subjects the plays we've talked about just now on the last hour or examples of that but some somehow we as a tribe of theater people know how to deal with our egos to contribute collectively to that and that for if you're able to do that it's a joy and to have lived a life in those circles has been a joy well can I just add one last thing this conversation is such a wonderful gift for me today and I think it's at the core the very thing that all of us have to challenge ourselves to engage and you speak about it in the context of making the play but how else are we going to understand this moment that we're in right now if we don't continue to have conversations that are meaningful and difficult and even with questions that are unanswerable but we have to have the courage to come to the screen the table the phone the six feet apart the gathering that will allow us to have a conversation it's got to be in there sounds so simple and somewhat I don't know just too basic to be real but there's no other way to understand the self or the relationship that we now have to this drastically changing world thank you Frank thank you very much not so not so super fast can it be taught I mean Sydney you are the great Iowa writers workshop and I know also that the university know they have a drama to do but you didn't go to us what is the idea can that be taught how should a drama to a G you think look like how should it be how should it be communicated how should it be the knowledge transferred to a next generation or a new generation well it absolutely can be taught but that is the foundational knowledge base can be taught but the practice of it requires that you be in the room and gather and gain the experience of trying to bring a play into existence with integrity and with ethical ethical I don't know what the word is but the the history is important the documentation is important the research for the particular project is important and these are skills that can be taught maybe it's writing playbill notes or interviewing the writer those things that can be taught the part that cannot be taught goes directly to what am was discussing about the relationships that is something that has to be lived built you have to be in the room and it's something that if you are interested in theater if you're interested in literature as as I have always been the thing that you love will will continue to lead you because you know what it is that made you fall in love with the play and you are there to in a sense protect that and elevate that frame it in a way that allows it to deliver its full message so I think it can be taught and it should be taught and at the same time it continues to be redefined because for people who are serving as drama to say and dance or in curating art exhibits it may play a slightly different function but basically I feel like you're led by the thing you love and that's art vision and wisdom insight transformation and I would just add to that that that certainly in my experience I'm sure it's the same with you is that the really best experiences are when you are working with all kinds of people if you if you only work with people who totally agree with you or you totally agree with them then it's dull it's when you are working with you know I mean how difficult are the brilliant writers we've worked with but but you gather in a room people with very powerful instincts and strong opinions and different takes etc and and theater people know how to find common ground and that's what makes it interesting if everybody comes in having the same opinion no one is going to want to see it it's it's about it's about sorting it out like we would think about a country sorting something out which is definitely not what we're seeing right now going on around us I mean I would I've come to the feeling and put this in my book but I've come to the feeling that I did a production at Lincoln Center when I first came of measure for measure which is such an interesting play and so relevant today well they're all relevant today and it was the most interesting cast and it was a pretty straight production straight-up production Mark Lamas directed it and it included you know Lorraine Toussaint and included Jack Weston the great comic actor from from Broadway and and Hollywood it included Reggie Montgomery and included Campbell Scott Brad Whitford you know I mean it was Thomas Acadia Ethel Eichelberger who was a denizen of the downtown theater gay theater it was a really diverse cast and it was taking place um Lynn Carey you who who was the first person you know he was Sweeney Todd he was the first person to sing all those songtime songs I mean it was such it was not only diverse and ethically it was diverse in terms of you know the downtown theater and the Broadway theater and you know whatever um and we will and we all loved each other and it was set sort of in a period in New York like now it was during the kind of decline of New York when things were really rough remember the headline forge in New York drop dead bonfire of the vanities by Thomas Wolfe you know and that was kind of what that play was about to some degree so we didn't really have to do much with it we just had to you know a lot of hypocrites in that play a lot of dissembling it mirrors what's going on outside the theater so we did it very simply and it was very interesting very relevant um but but so and we used to all have dinner we would I would cook dinner for everybody or somebody else would cook and you know we we were a company although a really disparate company um and it was interesting when we we would talk that everybody in the cast who was over the age of 50 like Leonard or Jack Weston had not gone to college they had trained as actors uh Len was at Stratford Ontario he was a spear carrier and had come up the ranks just like you do in shakes first time and and Len had been at I mean uh Jack Weston had been at the Cleveland Playhouse and when you hit the the actors and Reggie was the first black clown and Ringling Brothers burned in Bailey's you know but when you hit the you know age 40 and under everyone had gone to college and to some some degree I think you know we may be at a point I don't know I have no way of knowing this I mean it's so expensive to go to college now and and if you come into the theater thinking that you're going to make money you're a fool because you have to come into the theater because you can't do anything else and you love it and that's what your destiny is if you come in with two thousand two hundred thousand dollars with a debt you're just carrying a load and at the same time the regional theaters are are struggling and and when the theaters were founded a lot of the labor the spear carrying you know the giving lines to actors the piecework that I did at this costume shop you know was done by people who were interested in becoming part of the theater so it was kind of a trade-off of experience for labor to some degree just as you would have in shakes first time when you had it and you know the apprentices and the company who would start out and gradually play big small roles and but they would take care of things so I wonder you know if that may not happen and that the training goes back into conservatories goes back you go to Louisville like you used to in the old days learn about theater there which would help the theaters because I just don't I think it's it's too expensive sometimes now right the whole model since the whole the training and the producing of theaters all too expensive yeah I just wanted to add one quick thing about dramaturgy in some ways our conversation has it highlights the finest moments of dramaturgy and yet there is this other dynamic that has to do with conflict dealing with conflict within the rehearsal room or between the playwright and the director or between the dramaturge and the other collaborators and figuring out how to let somebody else take the lead on something or realizing that you may not always be right or you may not have the answer I've seen my role primarily is having the right question rather than the right answer but there's that artistic conflict that also calls for a dramaturge to mediate I think there's a bit of diplomacy involved in it and we have to cross all the borders of of each each medium that comes to work in the theater we have to know all the languages and be able to foreground the thing that is important but this the training how I'm baffled by this moment if somebody is like trying to just start college to be a set designer or something the whole environment has been dismantled in a way that makes makes us have to start from the ground up and that perhaps will be the blessing of it we have to rethink yeah amazing that there were also the dramaturge it's not just the references but also the referee is the last question then are we going to go um what inspires you at the moment what do you look at what gives you hope what you read what you listen to what inspiring thoughts you have and what maybe a piece of advice to someone who's listening who wants to be a director a playwright a dramaturg a piece of advice so what's inspiring you and what what would you say to a young person um well I'll finish I mean I just wanted to say thank you to Sidney because that that piece of advice that you just said was so brilliant I mean thank you if you if you have the answer I mean sometimes you do have the answer but but it's rare that you have the answer but if you ask the question somebody will have the answer right and and and that that has happened to me hundreds of times in my career and I you you feel something isn't quite but it turned and it'll turn out to be the strangest person you know I mean it'll be it'll be a supporting actor who said just to the main actor what about if you try it this way play it as a joke and then suddenly uh huh and even the playwright didn't know that yes yes yeah that's very smart it's certainly not having the answer it's just knowing what question to to ask um I don't know I mean I think I think uh you know what Sidney said earlier is um there's so much change happening right now and and I think um the the desperate urge we all feel to be back together um to be in a room to be connecting to nothing more nothing more wonderful than to watch an actor at work and to read a great play you know I I don't think that's ever going to go away it's never gone away um and and it will come back um and and I think we we we will see a different kind of theater whatever that is and that will be the result of the disruptions that we will have gone through and I think that's good I think change is always good um and we'll have to I mean it's really ultimately in here up to the writers you know they got to write their home writing yeah keep them writing you know because they they will they have the eyes to see and then we've got to be out there reading so we can say here it is you know let's let's send this to this director let's send this to this theater or let's do this because uh it's important so I think change is good and uh interesting to see what comes forward well I think uh you're right because the right play is going to energize like Ella just bring a certain group of people to a new level of action if it's the right play the thing that has uh inspired me is as well as just being always open to the new writing is the fact that Kenosha Wisconsin is my hometown and the event that happened there a few months ago regarding the shooting of an unarmed black man has kind of taken a certain focus um that none of the previous events have taken for me and one of the things that happened in the aftermath is that my brother Tim Mahon uh who runs a foundation there and is very much connected to the corporate and business and uh political community much in the way that my mother was he runs the foundation name for my parents Mary Lou and Arthur at my home he ran the town hall with president elect Biden and my sister I heard it's my home who works in the school system uh as a parent liaison parent teacher liaison she got the kids to paint murals over the boarded up walls or boarded up windows that were necessary to try to protect the businesses so I say this because this moment of racial reckoning is something that inspires me in the sense that I know the artists have a particular role to play I would often um because my mother was a social worker activist um I would always feel guilty about being in the arts because she was trying to get people food and keep their lights on and clothing and essentials to survive and in the course of this I have come to realize yeah artists are essential workers too we're not going to make it without this other dynamic that allows us to imagine and to yearn and to root for and to get up and exercise our own uh will to to survive and that to me is where the art and where theater comes in it's a real stretch but that's what people that's what I'm hoping the writers are doing and that's the writing I want to do that's amazing and significant and all what you said is truly is so profound even as you might say it sounds simple but it's the significance ask questions don't have the answers think about your uncle and aunt don't have everybody who has the same opinion you in the room but be a referee try to get people together reinforce voices you select you find something help them and also connect to communities who need a voice who need a place diverse ones what what they did and and yeah to paint you know paint on the walls in our minds and our lives and so this is so significant to so many others what you said and a great call also to take dramaturgy serious it's important I think it was Edmonds who said you want to go on a mountain you want to have the best team with you you know you want to know where you're going and to find out when react to the scene the weather this thing everything changing roads after landslides or whatever so it is something essential of course we do think and we encourage everybody also who's even take this as a as a reminder you know or question why wouldn't you have a dramaturg you know so logical thinking for your life for your city for your family for the art piece you're working on whether as Sydney said in the gallery whether it's in a film or that's for theater so this is all a very very significant really really thank you for we went a bit over time but I thought that was important also here in both of you seeing the friendship and love you have for each other also but also for your work for the theater but also for life itself this is as significant and tomorrow we have my colleague professor Peter Ackersall who writes on contemporary performance in that idea of the post-traumatic dance and the installation and the art comes in also like this idea of a again and a kind of a new thinking about that what still perhaps is not even there and it's always about that that's not there yet whether it's the law or whether it's democracy whether it's justice it's all about we are getting there and I think this is a big contribution really both thank you thanks for howl around again for hosting us and VJ and Sia Andy from The Seedles and of course for you who are listening but I think if you listen closely what both of them said there's something significant in there also for our lives for our work wherever you are and take let's take that really serious so bye bye and really really really thank you and also for taking this conversation so serious and I think that's what we need in this complicated time where we really don't know where we are going so this was an important conversation