 We are going to take our cue from the live feed people. So we have to be prepared. That's your cue. Okay, here we go. Welcome everyone. I, Norman Frisch, I'm going to be moderating this session. I have absolutely nothing to do with the history that we are presenting, which is probably what qualifies me to, it was a guarantee that I wouldn't jump in with any stories on top of, you know, the hundred stories you're going to hear in the next 75 minutes. We are live streaming this event via HowlRound TV. And if there are people who are up at 9.15 in the morning, or 6.15, West Coast time, who are watching this live, they have an ability to text us questions and comments. So towards the end of the session, when we open up to questions, in addition to your questions, we will take some questions from the virtual audience. I'm going to remind everybody, as we do at every session, to please turn off your phones. Or if you're using your phone, which you were encouraged to do during the session, please be sure that the ringers are silenced. And lastly, I'm going to ask, when we do get to the, I'll remind you, but when we do get to the Q&As, I'm going to ask you to identify yourself when you stand up and present your question, just so that we have a kind of record, you know, a transcript of who asked what and so on. So, here we are. Ellen Lauren, Kay Robbins, they're biographies, they're printed in your programs, and because they're so extensive, that would really cut into our time. What I've done is to take a long list of questions that we hope to address in this session. I've distilled them down into three kind of question clumps, and I'm going to address them to the panelists and ask them each to respond in turn. The first really, let me say, the symposium has been organized in a sense chronologically. So what we're looking at this morning are the first contacts between American actors and teachers and the Scott Company and Suzuki and his work, and the training as it was developing in Japan, and then the training as it began developing over here. So my first question to each of you is how did that first encounter for you take place? Who led you there? What did you make of it when you first arrived? And what happened inside you as a result of that first contact? Ellen, to give some context, Ellen has been soliciting histories from various people who couldn't be here this weekend, and we thought we would read one which kind of gives a kind of historical framework for how some of this exchange was first set up. Ellen? Yes, this is an open letter from Tonan Sarah O'Connor, who was formerly Sarah O'Connor. She is now her official title, the resident priest emerita of the Milwaukee Zen Center. So she ran the Milwaukee Zen Center for many, many years after being a remarkable force in the regional theater scene and in particular at the Milwaukee Rep where I met her and was instrumental in this first bridge, and she wrote this beautiful letter and we decided we would read it to you. An open letter from Tonan Sarah O'Connor. This is my response to her request to write a personal message to honor the occasion of city's 25th anniversary at Skidmore relating what I remember of Scott and Tadashi Suzuki's extraordinary creative vision. When I think of Tadashi Suzuki, I don't think of his international renown or his justly earned fame. I think of the first time I heard feet pounding the floor in a rhythm that resounded like a pounding heart. I was standing in the auditorium of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee's theater as Suzuki's company moved across the stage in a rehearsal for that night's performance of the Trojan women. I only saw a rehearsal of one of Anne Bogart's pieces because I was waiting to meet with Ellen Lauren, a friend from her early days with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. Here too was a unique vision of movement, silence and speech that had reached inside and touched something primitive. So this is a celebration of these artists' years of brilliant creativity, yet for me personally it evokes memories of people. Without people and their relationships, the history would have been vastly different. That the Milwaukee Repertory Theater and the theater department of UWM, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, were the first to present Tadashi Suzuki's company in the U.S. was the result of these friendships. It begins with two people, Frank Tenney and Martha Cognet, with a little help from Kazuk Toll O'Hira. John Dillon, artistic director of the Rep, planned to present a translation of Kobo Abe's Friends and hope to meet with the author. I found a notice in the theater communications group, TCG, newsletter announcing the formation of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and my friendship with Frank Tenney began. Frank was one of the generation of Americans who had encountered Japan after World War II and fallen in love with him. Frank was no bureaucrat and a man who seriously desired to see cultural communication between our two nations. He readily funded an exploratory trip to see contemporary Japanese theater, about which we knew Zip. But we were told by folks in the State Department, Japanese society was nearly impenetrable and we'd get nowhere. This is when I turned to Martha Cognet, director of the International Theater Institute. Martha put me in touch with Kazuk Toll O'Hira, Toho's representative in New York, buying the rights to Broadway musicals. Mr. O'Hira was delighted that we were curious beyond Kabuki Anno, and he made calls and wrote letters that sent doors flying over. I was among those who made that trip, although I did not encounter Suzuki's work at that time. However, Sandy Rockets, head of the theater department program at UWM, did. The upshot of it all was that when Martha called with a frantic message that the Vasudasho Kekijo's first appearance in the U.S. had been canceled at the last moment, I called Sandy. He was enthusiastic, and thus we became the first to bring this amazing company to the U.S. It was on this occasion that I met another person who must be remembered. An honor, Ikuko Saito, one of the founders of Scott and its executive director for many years. All the explosive creativity was quietly, wisely enabled by this remarkable woman. Over the years we became friends of a sort, and one of the only pieces of jewelry I retained when I became a Zen priest is a medallion of Polish amber that she gave me, a memento of a company's tour to Poland. Frank Tenney continued to offer support funding a six-week trip to the U.S. for Suzuki so that he could observe American theater and a trip to the company's new home in Togomura that included Jewel Walker himself, an accomplished movement artist, as well as students of his who later became part of Suzuki's production of The Tale of Lear, a deconstruction and reassembly of the Shakespeare play within his own unique style. We have John Dylan's courage to thank the American version of The Tale of Lear, a style of performance unknown to our Milwaukee audience. The production eventually was performed at Togomura, and I learned a lot about obtaining visas for American actors in Japan. So when I think about this story, I remember connections, trust and hard work among a group of people dedicated to the support of creativity and international exchange. John Dylan, Martha Gogné, Hazato O'Hira, Frank Tenney, Sanford Robbins. I think of created minds, Tadashi Suzuki and Anne Bogart. I think of actors who gave their talent to the productions, Kaio Hoshiraishi, Tom Hewitt, Ellen Lorne. For me, this is a story of human connections and determination. I hope similar artistic friendships will carry us into the future despite the barriers raised today by growing nationalism and political extremism. Artists and those who support them must persevere and reach out to one another. Thank you for the opportunity to set down these thoughts. Conan Cerro-Connor, former managing director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. Grease, Emerita, Milwaukee's in the center. Before we jump in, I should just mention that the members of city company have been soliciting such memories and oral histories from people of that early generation of contact. And a lot of that material is in the archive room that is here on campus in the building across the way. So for those of us who are lucky enough to be here this weekend, there is a lot of that material on paper, on video, that you can spend time with around and between your other sessions. So if we're responding kind of chronologically, Sandy, were you really at this table the first point of contact? Yeah, I was. And I'll tell you about it. I'll just take two moments to say something else. And I won't say how moved and honored I am to be part of this, and that the context of it is for me one of the extraordinary accomplishments in the American theater, the city company's 25 years. It is such a remarkable thing that a group of artists have stayed together for that length of time and created work after work. And this conversation and this opportunity wouldn't be possible were it not for that remarkable accomplishment. And I am honored to be here in the presence of such an extraordinary gift to the entire American theater and the world theater. My hat is off to Anne Bogart and her colleagues. It's just a remarkable thing. So what Sarah said is so, Sarah was one of those driving forces managing directors without whom there would be no Lord theaters. And she called one day and said, would you like to go to Japan? And before she finished the second syllable, I had said yes. And she said, what would you do there? And I said that I would like to study the training of Kabuki and No and Boon Raku. And see as much of that as I could in a three-week period, knowing that that would introduce me to the surface of the surface of the surface, but it was sure a lot more than I would have found out otherwise. And so I went there. It was on my honeymoon, actually. And it was a great way to celebrate a marriage, really. And we were the guests of the Japan American Friendship Society, which had been put together with reparations money after the war. And anyhow, I did get to spend time with the masters of those three disciplines. And it was a life-altering experience. My host was a man from the Japan Foundation named Tamoso Yana. And I would ask every day, with this great tradition, there must be a contemporary avant-garde theater in response to this, because that is how it works. And he said, oh, no, no, no. He was, you understand, a functionary of that organization. He said, no, no, no, no. Hardly anything at all. And about the Boon Raku. And this persisted for the first two weeks of my visit. And it was an extraordinary visit, so I had no complaints. But I was really committed to discover as best I could what was happening in contemporary theater. So finally I devised a plot. My wife and I took Yana-san out for drinks after a day watching the fight master, the Kibukizawa. And I got a very large bottle of sake. And I kept pouring it with each shot, we'd say, Kampai, and I would say, where is the contemporary? And he would say, oh, no, no, no, no. And I'd say, good. And about 7 eighths of the bottle down. He said, well, there's something I think great, but it's in Wasuda. And I said, good, can we go there tomorrow? And he was just drunk enough to assent. And just honorable enough to honor his drunken assent. And so we went there and we went to this, I should say, I think memory is a completely unreliable, duplicitous device that the survival mechanism put together to make us think we're a person with qualities and states. And I don't trust it. And I worked very, very hard to do violence to the idea that I'm a thing with properties. All that said, here's my recollection, we went to this warehouse and on either the second or third floor of this warehouse, we walked in and there was what you all recognize as this training. They were on a short break and I sat down and when I stood up, my life was different an hour and a half later. You asked how it affected me and I'm unable to express that. I can tell you that it was like coming home in one way. It was something, you know, sometimes you find something you didn't know you were searching for. And that was my experience. I had been devoted to the idea of some balance to the bastardized Stanislasian approach that was so pervasive you couldn't breathe anything else. And here it was in a kind of glory that made the plays I most loved possible. And so that was my first encounter. Tom, when Sarah's letter was being read, I turned to you on the point because there was a reference to the precise point in time where you entered the picture. Is that right? There was. I entered the picture as a student at UWM. The program at Sandy found it in Milwaukee. We were in the middle of our second year of a three-year program. I believe it was 1979 or 1980. So the program was, with a classical emphasis, a very physical program, a lot of movement and vocal training. I recall at the time, we knew that Mr. Suzuki was coming with three of his actors. We were going to do this training method. At the time, we were being rulfed. Deep tissue massage, rulfing. You know, and the rulfer was using my pictures before and after pictures as great success. I was getting great results. And, you know, feeling sort of loose and, you know, hips apart or torso. And I'm leaning all this kind of thing up my nose. And it was remarkable. And I remember feeling so resentful to have to go into the next room and do what seemed to me character walks to Japanese elevator music. I thought, no, how could this possibly apply to anything I was ever going to do ever in my life? My physiognomy, my physical makeup, was not at all conducive to the physical training. I have a short torso. We're relatively long legs. I felt clumsy. Mr. Suzuki would often point me out. Look at spider legs here. Like, don't do it like Tom. Then, after we did those physical exercises for a while, we started incorporating a scene from The Bop Guy. No. George and Winner. Suddenly, we were doing scenes from The George and Winner. With Mr. Suzuki's actors, we would speak in English and they would respond to us in Japanese. And Mr. Suzuki would, you know, with Mr. Suzuki with them. And they were remarkable. Blew us off the stage every time. And at that moment, I knew I wanted what they had. Something I had never seen anything like that before in my life. And I wanted it. Myself, actor named John Rensenhouse, Jewel Walker, Marge Walker, the late Larry Shoe, wonderful playwright and actor. Sharon Ott and John Dillon. We traveled to Japan and trained with Mr. Suzuki's company for the summer. And then things got really awesome. Because I got to see the company in context. I got to see the entire company perform and train. And that was a very transformative thing. We then worked on production of The Bop Guy. That was going to be a bilingual production with members of Mr. Suzuki's company and students at UWM. So we rehearsed that. We came back the next year. We did a fully-mounted production at the university with the bi-racial bilingual cast. And then the next summer, returned to Toga, performed in Toga and in Tokyo. And that started for what was, for me, was to be a 13-year relationship with Mr. Suzuki. I performed periodically with his company during that time in productions of The Bop Guy, a piece he called Klaidim Nestra and The Tale of Lear, which I did with the Japanese company, and also an all-American, all-male cast. So that was remarkable. I recall Mr. Suzuki saying several times, using the fray, you need to be fictional on the stage. And that really captured my imagination. He would say things like, in the early days before Eatley on Ingle's Rood, translation was very academic. So we would get direction like, okay, Tom, as you rise, please try to stop the rotation of the earth. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So, you know, things like that, that were really powerful. I was also at the time, I became a member of the company, Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. So I was performing back and forth. I would go to Japan or, you know, Greece or wherever. And then I'd come back to the United States and, you know, the crucible. Or, you know, the man who came to dinner. Now Arena Stage is an arena. So I was really having to shift my sensibilities back and forth, which was challenging and kind of wonderful at the same time. Mr. Suzuki allows, there's a lot of power in being still with Mr. Suzuki. And so that was very beneficial for me at Arena Stage. But there were things like, when you work with Mr. Suzuki, there's a wonderful thing. I'll give you a ground plan, basically. Get back in my day anyway. You come on, you know, both actors come from the side of the stage. You circle each other. You stop. You continue to circle and you leave the circle. That was sort of the ground plan. And then you're sort of left on your own. You get, like, you know, informal rehearsals with the company. And they were just really wonderful. So you rehearsed, you rehearsed that way. And then there were formal rehearsals with Mr. Suzuki. So you really, you know, really solid on your material and what you're doing, basically giving him a performance from the get-go. So I sort of adapted that method of working. And so I would show up to the first day of rehearsal of, like, you know, measure for measure with my lines learned. And, you know, there's the Duke and I'm Lucho. And so, you know, I learned my lines and I sort of made a ground plan. And the first day of rehearsal, and I did it and the director was like, well, that's pretty good. Let's move on. And the guy playing the Duke was, like, he came up to me after and said, you know, that was great. But, you know, we could have worked on that together. We could have developed that together. And I was like, oh, okay. So, you know, there are little sort of challenges like that for me. So I have, oh, my time's up. So maybe I'll get a question later on. No, no, take my time. Oh, no, no, I can't. I can't yet. So my, okay, I'll make it really quick. I'll make it really quick. So as far as giving context to the work in America, you know, I was such a young actor and it was such a part of my development. I was, you know, 21, 22 years old when I first met him. He became a really, really important part of my life and I cannot separate most, what I can't separate. It's just part of me. I know that I use it specifically on occasions. I know that it shaped my career. This whole idea of being fictitious on the stage, I play, I've never been, I don't like, I'm not drawn to naturalism. I play, like, evil lions and Dracula and alien transvestites. And I love that. I love that sort of being other, being fictitious on the stage. I love that idea and it shaped my career. It's allowed me to work with Anne and I remember, I have to tell a quick story about, I was doing Frankenfurter and the Rocky Horror Show and Mr. Suzuki came to see the show. He came, he came backstage after the show. Is this in Japan? No, it's in Guadalupe. And so he's come backstage. He's got like the participation kits whose weren't a little further boa. And I got to say to him, you know, never in my life have I ever used the specifics of the Suzuki training more than I have playing this role. I'm in the high heels. And with Suzuki, you know, you got, the feet and legs are the primary focus. So I'm like, right now I feel kind of at home with this. Like my being expressive with my feet and legs and I was like, thank you so much, Mr. Suzuki because his training is really, really helping me to like, I've never used this since. And how ironic that I'm playing an alien transvestite. And so the proudest moment of my life is when Mr. Suzuki in an article for American Theater Magazine excited me as, now there's a smart American actor using my training playing an alien transvestite. Proudest moment of my life. Ellen is the hardest person to follow. But right now, she's in the position that we're all usually in. Oh, she wouldn't mind. That's fantastic. I mean, in some sense, it was also not only encountering Suzuki and his company, it was encountering Tom and Kelly and Bondo and Leon. And we were just on fire and training all day and soaking our feet in the river and then training again and then cleaning dorms and cooking 10,000 eggs every morning for everybody and it was the whole value system in the ethos. I was at the time a very young actor at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. I had always been interested in ensemble and company, ended up there. And my partner at the time was sent by TCG to go over to TOGA and came back and simply said, you just got to go. You got to figure out how to get over there the next summer. And so I did with the help of the Friendship Commission and John Dylan. And there were people already there. This table is very small. Some of them in this room, Kelly, there, Bondo, studying and I did go over and I was just absolutely knocked out and as I said, it's the training, yes. It's the fact that you see this company and they grab your luggage and then suddenly they're in the office. How'd they get in the office? Oh, they're in the theater rehearsing. They're up in the flies, hanging the lights. Wait a minute, you're serving my meal. How did you get from... And maybe there's a tool belt under their costume or they're running with, at that time, thermal faxes in their hands to Suzuki. But they did everything and they did everything with such grace and such friendship and it was infectious. And then there's the physical environment of TOGA which maybe you saw a little bit of in the films and some of you perhaps have been there too. So it was... I came from an athletic background. I came from any kind of artistic background before I gravitated towards the theater. I had a military upbringing and I was an equestrian. I was a competitive equestrian. And when I got into the theater, it was, it was great fun doing plays and doing plays and feeling and meaning it. And then when I met this training, something in me, the fact that I could ask of my body to also become a creative, expressive part of the ride up on the stage and in rehearsal just made so much sense. And I spent the last almost 40 years trying to really speak articulately well about it and you can see that I can't still. It's such a feeling. It's just something that had transformed and changed me and I watched the people around me being changed by it. I went on, Kelly and I were put up on stage one day in a double duel and we didn't know what that was about and we fought it out to the end sweating and getting pushed and getting yelled at in the best sense. And afterwards I was like oh, me and Bondo said, you know, oh, thank you. You got to work up there and go through that. We didn't realize at the time as we were being auditioned for the roles in Dionysus and I was to replace the actor playing Agave in his production of the Bacchai which is entitled to Dionysus. We went on, we premiered in Mito, Japan and for many reasons and I did not appreciate it at the time as a young, tall, loud, all engine not a lot of breaks at that time actor, American actor holding the head of Penteous in a Japanese ensemble and if you know what Agave has to do is she has to look at what she's done and come to the realization that she's murdered her son and ripped his hand off. This political context for an American looking at what they've done to Japan I didn't understand at the time but I later did. We went on to tour that play approximately 18 years all over the world and subsequently I entered into the company on a regular basis and divided my time as best I could somewhere over the Pacific Ocean would put on my city t-shirt and put it in my Scott t-shirt So that's a little bit of the story. I'm a tight, I gave my time to talk So at that time as people got bit by this bug what you had to do was get over there for the summer and then a moment arrived for the next generation of people where they did not have to go over there Sandy, maybe you're the best hood Can you talk about what was that tipping point and then how did the spread of the training in the U.S. occur? After that day in that warehouse I resolved two things that it was imperative to me that this was available in the training programs the major ones, the country and it was imperative to me that the professional theater was at the very least exposed to I mean, we're so insular and we're so American centric that we're just unaware of almost anything and here was something that could make such an extraordinary contribution to what people I loved were giving their lives to and falling so short of what was possible But can I ask you, indelically how old were you at that time? I was 26 So wasn't that just crazy? Yeah, but you see when you're 26 you know everything and you are quite sure that you know everything and therefore I was unstoppable about it I flew to New York and spent an afternoon with Michael Langham and I had this videocassette of the Trojan women Explain to people who might not remember Michael had a videocassette A videocassette, yeah Bummer it track Anyway, Michael had been the artistic director of Guthrie and upon completing that job he became the head of the Juilliard drama division and I had apprentice with him and knew him and anyway I did my very best to explain why I thought it was so essential that the Juilliard have this company and Juilliard institute this training and he couldn't have been more polite and more gracious and less interested and then I went to Yale and had a similar meeting with Bob Bruce Dean and you know I had all my relationship chips when you're 26 you can get away with some things based on knowing people and they were polite I was a very poor communicator I think of what was possible and none of the places I went I had much interest I had the speech teacher from Juilliard was a man named Timothy Monick and Tim had been a classmate of mine at Carnegie and a colleague when we both taught there and I arranged for him to do a master class for two weeks at our school and I made sure it was the two weeks this was my plot when Suzuki-san and his actors were in residence that was a couple years later at that point we'd send our whole class to Toga in the summer each time and anyhow Tim responded exactly as I knew anyone would if they actually got a chance to be in the presence of the thing instead of a VHS of the thing and then he arranged for it to for Suzuki-san to work a little bit at Juilliard and then Yale kind of had to and then NYU sort of had to and then there was and then Peter Zeisler I invited Peter to come to Milwaukee to see the Trojan women which he couldn't because we only had a couple of performances but he did come and see the training and he got really excited about what was possible and Anne spoke last night about that trip that she was invited to Toga and Peter was like a lot of the people who made this stuff happen you say a force of nature like Katrina a force of nature wipe out all paradigms and perspectives with a single remark this man who had started the Guthrie Theater who had started TCG and brought this I mean just anyhow so at that point I had kind of gotten that ball rolling and it had a life of its own and then people like Kelly Ellen many members of the city company at Mark became they had Mr. Suzuki's permission and more than that his empowerment to teach others and then it really became the first time I was auditioning for a production I was directing at the alley and I got a resume and it said Suzuki training next to juggling God knows what actors put on those things and I was so startled because I've been this you know and at that point I knew well that's good if it's now a special skill that people have right next to juggling I know this has a future along those lines when it was first introduced to Juilliard, Yale, NYU and so on what was the nature of that was that like sort of you know a four week workshop in January less than four weeks I think it was an initial week at Juilliard and I think the same at Yale I think and Suzuki came he had been with us in Milwaukee and then so it wasn't so very far to go from Milwaukee to New York it was a lot less than toga to anywhere and why did he need to come for that for a one week introductory you'd have to ask him here's my interpretation and guess I think he always his vision is so large and the contribution he intends to make is so large I think he was always seeking an opportunity not for fame or for any of that but for an opportunity to influence and have a dialogue between cultures and so when those opportunities were made available to him I've never seen him say no you know Alan said last night about the yes when he was invited here doesn't surprise me at all you know I asked him when we moved our training program from the University of Wisconsin University of Delaware I asked him would he come and direct the first play there and he said yes I think that's a combination of a large vision that wants to be available and something that I don't hear when people talk about him but it's very deeply my experience a remarkable kindness a life altering generosity that reaches into you beyond rationality and touches something so human and so basic by its sheer big heartedness and I think that's why he did all this so at this point of time it was a regular part of your program semester after semester but were there other schools not to that extent initially then ultimately yes but not for quite a while and what were the first next one University of California San Diego a very gifted former student of ours named Steve Pearson and his partner now wife Robin Hunt went there got the possibility I think and got very committed to bringing it there and I believe that was the next training program where it became intrinsic and now where what are the training programs where it's intrinsic in the US are there any I don't know some of you may represent them out there I teach at the Juilliard School and have now for 18 years and it's hard to skip the beat when you say that I know that and they thoroughly embraced it along with their classical European approach UCLA great thank you University of Washington yeah and I'm sure the University of South Carolina where's Steve and Robin where does Kelly teach that's great Carnegie Mellon I'm talking about sort of it's not just we're going to do this for two weeks really part of the training fantastic so it's definitely Johnny Apple seed around the country and certainly the city company has over the last 25 years seeded many many communities all over the world and have consistent relationships with the National Theater and Helsinki and other programs Tom you don't teach I don't exactly I only act I'm very selfish with the training I recently read a quote by Dag Hammers all that said maturity is the sort of willingness to share your knowledge and you know maybe it's time for me to share my knowledge anybody's looking for an instructor Megan mentioned but Ellen can you talk for a few minutes about how the new city conservatory is a maybe kind of a next stage in I will for one minute though say that when when I'll speak for myself when I came back I was still a member of the Milwaukee Rep and I was a member of the regional theater system I would go every summer train and come back and do a season of plays which always included Christmas Carol so what motivated us to teach or at that time we didn't call it teaching it was just showing people what we were doing so that we could keep doing it and we went down in the spaces that were available in these regional theater buildings they were cement basements and we built platforms with the old lumber from sets I mean this sounds like you had to kill what you ate but yeah kind of and put on three pairs of socks and went down and one time we had the upper floor above a bank that they gave us the building but we could only use it from 6am to 9pm so before a full day of rehearsal and performance at night we went every train from 7.15 to 8.15 or something like that every morning in Milwaukee and little by little more and more people particularly the intern company at that time and then suddenly we were in charge of the intern company and then suddenly and then I moved to the east coast and we ran a full young company at that time so there was a natural progression this way I moved into New York and began teaching also along the road Suzuki was turning to me and saying you're going to teach this and the first time I taught in front of the company was in the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy in front of my teachers and he said I want the skinny American girl and the audience was so disappointed you know they really really every time I get off an airplane to teach on behalf of Scott they were waiting for Yoda you know they want to go the staff and the long beard this chick got off the plane like what kind of money do you use and then we would teach because the underlying message there is of course the uniqueness of the vocabulary and that it is a personal encounter with something and if well laid out and Suzuki felt as I progressed that I was able to do that and bridge being inside of Scott and bridge something to the outside so to speak world as any world is outside of a company and I became very much in charge of that on his behalf and it was super fun and it's only as Tom said it's only through articulating what it is you're experiencing that you learn what you're experiencing and then meeting my colleagues and we formed and continued to this day to be in each other's classes and go wow I never thought of it that way over 40 years so that's a little bit apart which leads me to the answer to your question which is the city conservatory which was formed a dream quite a while ago maybe seven years ago where we were getting frustrated and thinking there was something beyond the seven week encounter with an artist the four week intensive and we wanted a longer term relationship and we took the plunge and we created a conservatory program that lasts for nine months and in the spirit of Scott it continues to be as does this summer intensive a reckoning and a place to come a gathering place for international artists to exchange, to drink together to sit together, to eat together to argue together and ultimately to make work together that is unique and could not happen in any other realm and it is only through meeting the other that you again transform the self so the conservatory was formed we just completed our third every other year it kicks the lights out of us in some way but it is also our way of renewing ourselves city hasn't gone on to up to this point bring in younger members we are always asked about that you will probably ask us later about that so the conservatory was the start of answering that question well we perhaps won't make a city 2.0 but what we are doing is we are planting gardens all over the world through our contact with these artists and it is profoundly changing us because we continue to run our company and tour and make new work and perform and teach other residencies so it is a tall order but again we have this model of these people that were how can you be building that set over there and you just cook for my dinner and now you are playing and drama key how is that working why are you vacuuming my room stop that do that and that I mean if you even felt the essence of those cats walking around the campus it is just their goodness, their kindness who comes down from their remarkable Suzuki Tadashi leading them that is a little bit about the city conservatory let me just inject I saw on I am not in any way part of this history but I saw last night on social media Donny was it you who posted about an American who was part of this history and there was a memorial gathering Charles and and do you want to talk about him for a minute and people like that who sort of came into this orbit of Americans who were performing in the productions at various stages he was in Lear with you he was Charles Tatel sorry we were in a production of Tadashi Suzuki's tale of Lear which is a kind of a deconstruction and recompilation of King Lear and Charles was my beautiful and very heavy Cordelia really really sweet man and his passing is a shock but I'll speak briefly about that production it was an all-male production Suzuki first produced it with an all-male cast it was kind of a remarkable and history-making production in the United States Mark Kirkens was also in the production all American and all of the actors represented different regional theaters and helped me with this Mark stage west in Springfield arena stage in Washington DC the Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Milwaukee Repertory Theater is that correct so all of us represented those theaters and we had when was this approximately about 1980 1988 yeah 30 years old at playing Lear so we had residences we started in Milwaukee and then moved we were there for part of their subscription series and we moved to Berkeley and stage west and Washington DC so they're all work contracts like the first co-pro I think Charles was part of that and part of that kind of historical thing and it was the first time in all American production I've been done in the United States had all of those people trained in Japan? yes to varying degrees we all came to Japan and trained and rehearsed the show there yeah the loss of Charles was pretty significant and we are still a little bit in shock did any of you know Charles around the Actors Center recently again like Tom like colleagues in the city company these incredibly warm people that found one another and went that I need you in my life I need to work with you and Suzuki made that possible and set us up many of us met of city were together in Hoga and encountering Charles and having friendships with them and then city came after that so there was a time although you were only in your mid 20s but when you were encountering and teaching younger people and old men you were saying to them Hoga and we made it what do you think now we paid for it and covered it but the the highway at that time was you have to get yourself over there what form does mentorship take now where do you send people I don't have a conservatory so I tell people to come to the city company and but I'm not asked that frequently because I'm just not in that business but you come in contact with young people I do increasingly everybody is in that category where do I go what do I do and I'm thrilled to know about this conservatory because the only thing I want to say to people other than going to Togonara is to come here in summer to Skidmore I think that's a giant opportunity to be able to be with you for nine months it's unprecedented and you must talk to young actors a lot as people are raising their hands Broadway con fight I'm realizing as I sit here how often people say what have you done I see Suzuki on my resume and say I know the training it happens all the time it's astonishing rarely do I meet young actors fresh from conservatories have not encountered Mr. Suzuki's training and he does and reinstated there was a break there for a while I taught his summer program for many years and then there was a break and then he reinstated it and there is two and a half weeks two and a half weeks in Togonara a pretty rigorous selection process but he's reinstated that to bring not just actors certainly he's very very interested in directors and feels that training directors is a critical purpose right now of that program and it is two different things young when we train people we're training in New York in our studio which is a New York studio it's limited view out the window and the light leaves by noon and it has its parameters when you train in Toga your body your sensibilities are experiencing a whole different aspect the magnitude of what that training is and the sense of fiction born of an intensity we rarely see and when we see it we rarely see actors who can control it except for the extraordinary gypsies on Broadway that kind of mastery of their energy but in a place such as King Lear or in a place such as a check off play where the intensity is so outside of a daily understanding of how to project that outside of a psychological reality we don't know what to do with that and Suzuki's inquiry into that certainly does not come strictly out of being a Japanese artist but any means is completely unique phenomenon in the world and this is important to continue to lead young Americans into and show them the opportunity you so beautifully talked about you went in you stood up you were different and you suddenly saw a way of doing the plays you'd always wanted to do and didn't know how to do them because a psychological realistic approach doesn't answer those questions thoroughly not that it is in place up simply that the container is able to run at a pretty high RPM and get it out with a ferocity to the audience that were missing in the vitality of it we have 15 minutes we have 15 minutes left and I want to use that time for your questions Ali have we had any online okay then in the room let me just ask for the purposes of the live feed can people just stand up and shout will the question get picked up or do we need to repeat it okay yes hi Ellen I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about the focus that Suzuki has on training directors well I think he certainly believes that director vision it's obvious the connections and the value for an actor's body and spirit voice it's an integrated training system as you know body voice metaphysical physical but that that for a director to understand the range that an artist can go the level of discourse that a director can have with a performance the ability to conceive of a fictional space and a structure to that space as Tom said his structure is really very simple he gives it to you my first reversal was he gave me a mannequin head and a giant 40 foot costume and shut me in a sound room where people practice violin for 8 hours alone and I was like oh make agave that he had the fortitude because his understanding of the structure and his own mise-en-scene and the criteria that he was setting up is so clear and it's never wavered off point that's the other thing I think Sebastian talks so beautifully about it in the dot though it's a compass and wherever you go that compass young directors understand that it's that compass point that they can develop and must through their vision through their their discipline and their command of their own aesthetic that the training then gives them a language to create that into time and space it gives them a way of communicating it gives them a broader sense of the definition of what theatre can be that we really in some ways directors are the gateway for the actor to do what it is that we need to do to as Anne would say direct our role and the director needs to direct the event Ellen was referring in passing to a video that's been a documentary video on the sort of life of the company at Tolga and which we viewed yesterday and I think is available to people online either I believe Scott has a YouTube channel and of course they also have a website and I think that video which was produced by them is available in those places and it's certainly something that people and this is relatively new yes it is it is so it's not the old one that people may have seen in years past yes that's the other thing Sandy just reminded me there is also another thing Suzuki among the many things that he's just constantly innovating and really putting his force behind the young generation to understand at least in Japan the regional theater system did not really exist at all until Mr Suzuki came to understand the system in the United States partly through people like Sanford Robbins and Sarah Tonin O'Connor went back and began to seed and create these theaters all over Japan that were a replica model of regional theaters he now has created a directors festival in Toga where he selects three different scripts the directors select that script they do one of the three they present it in front of a panel of critics and scholars and academics so that they get feedback and then the winner is announced at the end of the summer and what they win is a full support of their next productions it's just so humane and brilliant that you get to sit down after your show and have a beer and get feedback and you're in Toga learning and doing your work it's an amazing system so again his investment into not only actors but directors and writers is boundless maybe boundless John Gillespie in New York City I've been interested in intercultural warring for years I take it from another culture and in every case that I've looked into there is the borrowing and there's a period of awkwardness that doesn't really seek like the original and then there's an internalizing it making it your own and there's some changes along the way so questions to you folks what's your opinion has Suzuki training been modified by its long use now in the United States ending back in the rest of the world? I wonder if the question is right non-intentionally that's what I'm asking but as you say it's inevitable but I believe that people do their utmost to prevent that phenomenon in the face of the fact that it's inevitable so I don't know that we're so very aware of that I'm not in any way I think one of the things is each culture is so unique to itself and perhaps Suzuki would talk about it he did a little bit over at the Martin Siegel Center which is many different cultures carry their bodies and their center of gravities in a different relationship to the earth be them from an agrarian culture or not highly technical culture such as our own and that's a different use of the body and we do in the United States have a strong in our theater training European tradition and frankly he loved that he loved that collision that happened and encouraged it and encourages the Russian company that to this day is doing that training and performing King Lear and the Moscow art that they personalize it and that artistic maturation really comes from personalizing the training that doesn't mean that the guiding principles of it the core and he's gone on very recently to really articulate the six kind of core exercises that remain constant so that you can fluctuate and move around but the criteria is very, very firmly set out so I would say yes it does change it changes for every single body in this room that does it and it should feature your own individual uniqueness it doesn't mean that the criteria changes it doesn't change and that just makes us fail again and fail better so to speak Samuel Beckett at the back and then I'll come to you alright so thank you all for being here because I've seen so many people use training in so many different places and certainly there are times in which the rigor that seems central to me starts to drop away for a very specific purpose oh this is going to be useful to see or something and I can pull my hair up but I want to consider what the core essence that needs to be there as the work is translated and if can anybody talk to these are the absolute essentials that need to go with the work control of your center of gravity control of an excessive amount of energy and control of your breathing those kind of three criteria which are necessary to function in daily life are necessary for expressive purposes on the stage in daily life you can't think about those three things or you'll go bonkers on the stage but we have to train ourselves to bring those to the forefront so that they become instinctual that those are the three things that you are really looking at out of which stems the self and transformation that's as quick as that and then you know see me in about 45 minutes but I think you understand what I think Mr. Suzuki and I don't like speaking for him but what I think he would encourage is that what creeps him out and skeezes him a little bit is when he sees it when he sees outside of his own company people trying to replicate I don't even know how to say this the cosmetics of it an exoticizing of the work and a hanging onto the Japanese aspect of it and really trying to be that and there's a roughness to it that's mistaken and a sort of hierarchy a hierarchical structure in the room that's a little mistaken often times and a tone that he's like what are you doing there you know his work, his relationship with his actors is what they do what they created together and is a contract that nobody in here including myself thoroughly understands it's theirs and that is so often the container of it is so often mistaken and simply taken and placed rather than the content in the essence of that we have five minutes left maybe this is our last question maybe not how do you start in a new place this legacy I mean in South America we are a field that we are coming here and going to Toaga how is the responsible way to start and also I hope that alone there with other actors is it clear my question? wonderfully you get a pair of Tobi and you invite someone who is sufficiently masterful to support you and you don't stop until what you are after has been achieved and it never will be so you won't stop ok well maybe that's perfect place to end thank you all this is for people who are watching online this is the first session of two and a half very full days some of these sessions will be live streamed and the next one of those is coming up tomorrow but meanwhile just so you are aware there are training sessions going on here which of course are not going to be live streamed but that's what we will be doing between now and the next time we see you online and then this weekend Friday and Saturday nights there are performances here in Saratoga Springs New York of the Scott companies Trojan women which is a production that is now 40 years old something that we in the states rarely, rarely get to see you a repertory company that has held a production in intact for 40 years that still has the power that it had at any point along the route so if you are within train or car or any kind of distance from Saratoga Springs New York and you can get here this weekend on Friday or Saturday nights and I don't know how long you will have to line up to try to get into that theater it's not a big theater but you should try to do it okay thank you right now a lot of history in this this is