 Welcome, everybody, back to Siegel talks here at the Martinie Siegel Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY. This is our third week where we hear from artists and actually listen to them and their voices in this time of corona, this time where the reality is truly stranger than fiction and within a very, very short time, things have moved in directions nobody ever could have thought. The last time we all saw each other here in New York, we had participants from all over the world, from Lebanon and Egypt, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, from Germany and Italy and everywhere. And so we're taking the temperature to see, you know, how does it feel like being at home for an artist, for theater artists, how is this mood and the streets and the city, what is on artist's mind, theater artists' mind, we hear so much from politicians and economic advisors and neurologists, but this is a time whenever we need to hear from the arts, I feel it is now and often, very, very often, theater artists and artists are the ones who are right when it comes to history and so we get an update now from New York City, New York has over 10,000 dead people, has more, New York State of New York, so we have more dead people than most countries, every country in the world, of course five and a half million people, you have used the subway every day, 3,000 people coming out of Penn Station, people living close to each other and here in New York we do love to go out and party and create work together and talk and communicate and this time this all works in a way against us and so with us we have today two groups who are the bedrock in a way, also of New York City's theater of the experimental scene, of the scene that really is creating work that doesn't replicate what's already there, that doesn't do adaptations of what we already know about, they have been disruptors, they have created things that are new and we always use that old brash quote to say new times, new forms of theater and I guess we all live in a new time, like there was before and after World War II, before and after Golden Vault, opened perhaps before and after of 9-11 and now we have this, so theater people normally we do complain there's no space, we don't have money that's not possible to do work now, there is really no space to do work, there is really no money for a long time but still we are with us and we are always inside the same that's what Gertrude Stein said from early age on we are actually who we are, so I would love to hear from you and maybe we start with NEB, how are you and how is NEB doing? The choreographer and the co-director and co-founder of Big Dance Theater and who have here with us with Paul Azar and of course you know Kelly Cooper and Pavel form the great nature of theater of Oklahoma but any what's going on? Oh gosh, well I suppose I'm a little speechless because you know the issue there's a lot of language that's come up around this this experience that we're having that's new or is very choreographic and and because so much is going on you know and is emphasized in this tragedy between the about the haves and the haves not so I feel a little hesitant to speak informal informal terms really but but because that's my business it does occur to me every day that there's a lot of choreographic language flying around a lot of body awareness, spatial awareness, issues of presence, you know six feet for instance, distance where people are getting really good at that and as a choreographer you know of course I find that interesting it's one of my really favorite proxymities I find that really elegant six feet. You know issues of the body in space distancing separation these are all choreographic ideas that everybody's now having to deal with so you know and I do feel funny talking about formal structural things in the face of so much suffering but you know on a personal level I'm lucky to be fine I turned down a lot of teaching work in order to get in a room with some sweaty bodies and recurs which obviously is happening so you know it's okay I feel like it's okay not to generate tons of quick videos and stuff and just you know kind of be here now. So where are you now in your apartment where is it in New York City? We're in Brooklyn yeah where? I live in Coble Hill and it's you know pretty much I guess like everywhere else you know people walking out to take walks and then coming out at 7 p.m. to do the most beautiful art piece ever met political art piece art piece of compassion the group clap. So you participate in it and yeah every night we really look forward to it. Yeah yeah so how is the mood on the street in Brooklyn? What do you see? Well people don't don't I feel like pay enough attention to the protocols that are being suggested or implemented supposed to be implemented by the mayor you see like 50% of people wearing masks people dodging each other that dance of getting around each other is happening a little bit but I wish it was happening more and it's pretty quiet and the air I mean the silver lining is the air is beautiful. Yeah no cars. No cars, no industry. No no no pollution yeah Kelly where are you now and how does it feel for you? I'm out in Long Island City in Queens so the place where we live is kind of more of an industrial area so I noticed the I can hear birds and things like that. Yeah so that's nice and it's funny I didn't think so much about the body spacing and things like that and people having to be aware of other bodies in space but I really for me I can't stay on the masks I just I miss being able to read faces I find I don't really know I don't really know how to interact very well without faces it's hard to read eyes and people are covered up some of them like you know probably saw the other day like people wearing two or three layers of masks you know I guess I miss I just realized that like so much of the expression that people have is below their below their nose and I miss that I miss being able to see people smile or to know how they're how they're taking whatever I'm saying or I really I like I've become much more aware of the animal life and things like that we have some beautiful bird song I've never heard before and I really enjoy people use their dogs as an excuse to get out outside and I've been taking my way to get through all of this really has been to take really long walks through the city so I I walk sometimes three four hours at a stretch just to get out and we also installed a we had a walking treadmill that we bought a while ago to walk and right at the same time and that has come in real handy too on days when you just can't get out I just miss being able to move so when do you walk and what do you think about when you're working for me it's just like I I miss like the information so I you know it's been nice to like see the the leaves coming out and the flowers right now is tulip season so there's all this color all of a sudden also to notice I mean I started walking really like around March 13th and it at first people were much closer together and now sometimes I walk and I barely see anyone and there's no cars so it's just gotten much more stark and I walk from Queens usually over the Pulaski Bridge into Brooklyn over the Williamsburg Bridge through Manhattan and back over the Queensborough Bridge is one of my favorites it's just a nice loop and it takes you through the three boroughs yeah and it thinks you notice and the city things that are different yeah the sirens I noticed I saw a lot of fire fire trucks and things like that and then I read that it was because people were people who had never cooked before are cooking and there's a lot of house fires I guess are up too because we're not very good cooks in New York yeah yeah and I've noticed that you know when I do have to get out I have a motorcycle and so you know sometimes I get on the road to you know go get groceries or toilet paper or something and I notice that people are much much more free and easy about the at least the traffic laws like I saw you know one guy pulled up next to me stopped at the stop light and then just blew blew through you know it's just I think there's a little bit of as we get into more and more weeks of this of like what the hell kind of attitude and a friend of mine and who lives in in midtown said that there's like a lot of drag racing and stuff late at night so I'm interested in the you know like what's the progression of lawlessness because as much as you know any be so that people aren't really following the protocol and I have a little trouble with it too I mean I know it's good and we've got to follow the rules and stuff but like everything in my artwork is kind of about like figuring out what the rules are and breaking them so I chafed a little bit at all of the rules and it's interesting to see how people respond to like such a more a hardcore structure for social experience and I don't think it's good that people are blowing through the the red lights and stuff but it is interesting to see the choices that people make and at what point their risk versus reward kind of trips over and they start start being more reckless. So Pavel what do you do and especially when Kelly is off with your motorcycle or something what how how how is it in being confined you are also a group that you know you work so much in Europe one of the few also New York groups that does too and has such a global reach in a way how does it feel to be in the apartment? It feels the same as it always does because when we are in New York generally I stay inside the apartment constantly the food is delivered and I never leave sometimes for weeks at a time so it's it's exactly the same but I was in Europe during the outbreak and I was in Slovakia and the border was closed in Slovakia and I had a flight out of Vienna and so I was able to I would be able to leave Slovakia but not come back but then the next day Austrians closed the border so I couldn't leave Slovakia and go into Austria so my sister and brother dropped me off at a field on the border and I walked across the field 10 kilometers with my suitcases to the nearest town so it just felt just felt like Cold War when people were immigrating from Eastern Europe so I was able to see also the differences between between how former communist countries deal with the virus and here you know I think every I read somewhere that the Eastern Europe European countries have been able to contain the pandemic a little bit better than the Western countries because I think the people are used to obeying so ever and also also telling on each other so when when somebody is disobeying the rules either they report them or everybody just is used to receiving orders from from the government and just doing what what they're told and so maybe that's that's one advantage of living in a totalitarian regime is that you learn how to obey but like Kelly said it's it's I love wearing the mask because we found these masks in Asia one time years ago let's say okay on it so it's a it's a great swag but it's hard to breathe but I'm with nothing has really changed for me other than just the awareness of of or just the knowing what's going on in the world and and how and we're working on a new project that's somewhat related or just thinking how to how to you know what how how do we get how do we get back together especially now just worrying about not worrying about it existentially that oh shit we won't be able to make our stupid little show but just are we ever going to be able to get back together and be in close proximity with other human beings which is which is really what the work is about you know it's not about making little TV shows for the internet you know that's that that is not what we that is not what we do what we do is really a social experience so all of this is really endangering our reason for for making any kind of work it's not just what's what's on the screen or what's on stage but we really care about what's actually happening in the audience our theater is going to be rearranged in the way that that that people are seated is there going to have to be every you know two-thirds of all the seats in the theaters will they have to be removed so that there's enough distance between everyone is everyone before they can enter a theater going to have to show the proof that they don't have any disease that that can infect everybody else in the theater is is there going to have to be some kind of a plexiglass barrier in front of the stage separating the audience exactly that's what I thought Richard could do shows right now and it's all it would be all great and and just but then thinking also is is do we what kind of if if the giant theaters can never reopen which is fine I never really unless I went to see Balanchine with Annie B I never really got to be here as I just go with any B are we going to start having kind of secret dissident performances in our in our apartments are in the basements is the is the experimental or avant-garde work going to really take on much more much bigger importance than it has had in the set in the last years do we stage things in people's apartments you know which is which to me is an exciting prospect because I do feel that unless unless we are able to get people into the same space that the work that we do is is meaningless to at least to as least to me you know I'd rather just than write novels because it I'm not really interested in creating content for the internet or or making television shows Paul but what comes to your mind what comes to my mind yeah when you hear your all your yeah of course your partner but also your friends and being in New York City being your apartment yeah but what is on your mind yeah the rhythm of this conversation is is kind of cool the way that because of the constraint of the technology we're talking way differently than we would if the five of us were hanging out we do that New York thing of kind of blabbing on top of each other so I'm digging I'm digging the this the formality of this conversation that you know formality imposed by a by this authentic constraint of the technology will flip I'll get all fucked up if we talk at once makes us each hold forth in this separate way and I'm hearing aspects of everybody that I probably would not be that aware of if I if we didn't say okay now it's your turn to say your thoughts you know yeah beautiful and you're at the end of that yeah yeah right so I got as each person talk and they were all so cool and smart I got more and more nervous with each take off our shirts that's kind of standard but it could be lucrative how is it for you as a creative mind you know as thinker are you a thinker of theaters everybody here you know and what does it do to you well it was I kind of looked out in that any and I my company has been around about 26 huge amount of time and so as a great desire was gradually accumulating in me to be by myself and so starting a few years back I started to make this solo called cage shuffle where I put all these John Cage one-minute stories on on my as a playlist on my iPod and I speak them as I hear them and I do a dance at the same time and the gauge stories are come in random order so how they match up with the dance is different with every performance and it required to do that it's a bit of a pat your stomach and rub your head type thing to the max so to create this piece I had to spend a lot of time alone in my house and so I was already in the mode of working by myself for a couple of years having made cage shuffle and I just agreed to do the cage shuffle marathon where I'm going to do 90 of these one-minute cage stories which requires 90 minutes of dance so I have more than enough to do by myself in a room so on that level it's it's sort of like Pablo was saying is what else is new you know I mean it's some business as usual in that sense but the difference is well you can't dance by yourself alone in a room without killing your hip my left hip that is for more than a couple hours max so the rest of the time mom Annie and I were making masks we had a sewing machine but it broke so now we're down to sewing by hand so we're moving backwards to the you know medieval technologies and reading way more I had this funny this funny marriage of two things that seem disparate and then end up being so in concert with one another what I mean is and this is gonna serious sound very highfalutin but I happen to be reading Anthony and Cleopatra and I never knew Cleopatra is such a fucking kid she's outrageous I mean I think that one of these wonderful drag queens like Taylor Mack could be in habit Cleopatra she is just out of control she well Harold Bloom says exuberant narcissism which is I think so beautiful anyway I'm reading that and I'm watching this documentary about our reading four nests and this thing of exuberant narcissism is just very prevalent in my mind and how do how thrilling that is when it's when the exuberant narcissism is manifest in somebody like Irene four nests or you know certain artists can or politicians or personalities can exhibit exuberant narcissism in a rather thrilling way one question if I may ask you both are also couples creative couples you know like Judas Molina or Julian Beck or Mario Martinelli who we had to your own Miss Armana Montenari from Italy and how does it how is it to you already work together but now you are confined you can go out it doesn't have an effect on your life or is it a time you say this is something we normally don't have how is that working for you all nobody's answer I think Annie can connect can field that one well Paul mentioned that he you asked Paul mentioned that he's working on dances for his piece and the first iteration of the piece I had choreographed the first 30 minutes of the dance it's his piece but he asked me for choreography so I would just give him these one-minute segments of and I know Paul was a choreographer too so I'm curious how he feels about this but now I literally can't even touch it like I don't want to make dance right now I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to think about like that whole enterprise and I think it's a little bit because of what Pavel saying of just like I need to be in a room I need to like really you know I need the whole thing I really I need my dancers in the room I need you know to know how long I have I need to prepare I need to you know and right now it's just everything feels very liminal and floaty and I am working on on some projects on my own but they're not choreography but these would be the couple thing I think we're working separately pretty much when you say we read a play together yesterday but mostly we're working separately yeah strangely enough how about you guys we're writing the news new new text for the new show and Kelly writes something gives it to me alright I go over it give it back to her and we just pass it back and forth and we read and we you know it is it is what we do it for 90% of the year is solitary work anyway you know it's not so it's it's it's just the it's just the payoff that is being threatened everything else really is is how we how we work and yeah and we're always we're always in the same for the most part apartment and you know we don't really it's not a it's not a change other than the content what were you saying Kelly oh just like I think I think anybody that works together as a couple making theater you know it's like sometimes you're on top of each other in a hotel room or like in a plane like it you spend a lot of intense time together like this and so in that way it's really like if you if you manage it's because you have some strategies for getting through this kind of intensely four hour walks yeah yeah yeah I mean sometimes it's great to get out and give each other a little space if you can I guess from having made so much work together these two couples that is maybe we're more prepared for this collective quarantine then yeah and people that don't work together yeah yeah I really do think so and it's one of the sad things in the corona time that we all do think all people go back to their families and their partners and they stay at home but a lot of people do not have partners or families are not married and they often they can't see each other they don't get in France or Italy they cannot visit each other because they're not formally married or maybe people have multiple partners and so it's a it's a very very complicated time for many many people next to others how is it for you work wise as your have your commissions been stable there's one thing I wanted to mention yeah it's related but not exactly which is that I think that out of a legitimate fear which is like as Pavel said the commissions are they the thing that's being threatened is the having a future having you know gigs and having a being in the game when all when all this passes still being having a platform I guess is the word and out of that desperation or anxiety about that I think people are making work just to get their face keep their face out there and I relate deeply to that anxiety but I do despair a bit about the amount of quickly thrown together online crap yeah I mean our work takes time but yeah there are no shortcuts and there's a lot of stuff being thrown up as well as these these videos of pieces with like that were really just documents of the work with like two cameras shit far away that people are supposed to watch in replacement of being in the room with the piece you know that beautiful triangle of the piece and the audience and the artist and that interaction I think that's I don't need to speak for you Pavel but what you were afraid of losing you know yeah thanks okay um I totally agree and I guess I initiated this little beat but at the same time there's a few incredible opportunities viewing wise I experienced so I have to mention that as well which is that for example Mabu Mines because of you know a lot of people are posting things from their archives and Mabu Mines posted an incredibly compromised of course because the technology but from 1975 a performance by David Warlow directed by Lee Brewer of the Becket prose piece The Lost Ones and for all for as compromised as it is David Warlow is no longer alive you know there's so much it's a piece that I saw live at the public theater in 76 it was life-changing for me so I don't know when I watch it I see that the video is barely even viewable but and maybe it's only if you've seen it live but the fact that there's an opportunity to see that piece I can't recommend it enough and the things that the Worcester group is posting so this thing of bringing things out of the archive given that it's you know it's it's it is video but it's also a bit of an opportunity to look back at these archival things that are kind of amazing to the extent that you can kind of can imagine what it maybe was live yeah and I think whatever you were saying Paul about like people trying to keep their kind of face out there to keep some kind of like keep the keep the the idea of the virtual store still being open right I think maybe in in New York and stuff that that panic is even heightened also by the fact that you know everybody's backup job or the thing that I used to say is like you know if I stop being able to make a buck with theater I can still I can still like wait tables and now of course that's also gone and so the level the level of panic here in New York I think is especially a really good point because of that but you know in a weird flip side of that is like now that everybody's day job is gone I really like the fact that you know you kind of have this resurgence of boredom because there's only so much like social media crap that you can do in a day and so people are reading books or like you know there's a friend of mine that you know was working at a coffee coffee place like you know 40 hours plus a week and now all of a sudden he's drawing all of these amazing things and I see his drawings again and people are like doing stuff like sculpture and you know they're they're finding ways to be creative again because they've actually been given their time back and we all have this kind of like you have that moment where it's like well I what do I want to do creatively that we haven't because we're all in this kind of treadmill all the time even if you are able to do your art for for for pay you know you still like you end up chasing like the next job instead of maybe what you would most passionately care about so I appreciate that too but there's also a provisional nature to it that you don't have to that there's an excuse it's almost like it's it's a holiday so the excuse is that it doesn't really have to be good as long as it's something it doesn't have to be rigorous I just have to respond somehow just to just to make sure that everybody knows that I'm around and I'm important and I am I have something to say rather than just a time to reflect or just to pull back and and actually let and pay attention and and let let the world feed you know I'm just mainly worried about like once we do start rehearsing or working with people are how does that how is that going to change how is this going to change the dynamic of what can you ask people to do is is close contact with you know it's contact improv even gonna be legal maybe it's for the best if it's yeah no for sure but any kind of you know is is do we have to rehearse with masks our actors even going to be willing to to rehearse are you putting putting actors at risk by making them get close to other people other actors you know do you do you have to ask for written permission for consent we need to consent forms to ask someone to stand next to each other or even like going out into the audience like having actors touch audience members is also going to be I think a big you know the people who can't consent that you're attacked with the yeah the splash zone has to yeah it will be I think there will be a traumatic consequence if I understand why Germany just announced till the summer of next year there will be no big mass spectacles soccer games or others so I guess what will happen to opera houses and theaters that's you know also so many people get together wouldn't be here without this what will it also mean in New York for the commercial theater so much of New York's theater is commercial only to make money is not being supported so of course it's being taken away the idea so will people then stop doing theater and they will the people like you guys who make theater because out of a vision out of a love out of a commitment because you have to you know will will be the ones perhaps doing this theater and the circumstances you only have done it in smaller spaces with small audiences do you feel something is changing in your is it still too early but do you feel in your work in your thinking about work something is is turning or is it more as you always said well it's more or less it feels the same as it was before just it's been answered or do you feel also the engagement now with the world what you hear what you listen to you feel there is a reformatting of the internal hard drive yeah I feel like we were already on the edge of something like this because we had been making like film also live work but like the film in a perverse way like made the desire to make live work even more urgent and then this happened so then live work is not even possible anymore and you know hugging a friend is not even possible anymore so it makes all of that you know it makes you think about well what what is the essential thing about the work that you make and it's time and people in space and all of those things are like gathering people together is never it's like totally impossible so if that's the essential like for me that is the essential part of the live work like if you can't gather people together this disappears so that makes that makes me want to do it more but it also like it cuts it cuts away all of the other aspects like I you know I guess when we were talking when we were talking about the German theater about that's commissioning the next work you know the question was if we can't if we can't manage to raise the money that we need to do this will we do it anyway and it's like as long as we can pay the people we'll just do it in our t-shirts and with no set you know like that's the in essential part that we can cut away so it it makes you it forces you to think about what it what it is that what it is that you do and what do you need to do it I do agree that the subject matter that we're being forced to confront was in the consciousness prior to the pandemic I mean I had this freaky experience which is the biggest gig that that that for me that was cancelled was directing Macbeth and it was going to be in Australia and I was rehearsing it here in New York and we the thing takes place in a basement and the beginning of the piece the person who plays Macbeth enters from the outside world we started working on this few months four or five months ago so we said he should be in a hazmat suit coming in from the outside world because we should presume that the world outside of this basement where this takes place is no longer habitable so now this happens and that production is postponed but I can't do the hazmat suit if it ever happened because now that's what the audience is going to be wearing or so so I started thinking well what would an Elizabethan hazmat suit be so but anyway so I guess that's by way of saying it's um you know this is um this is more the culmination or or a first manifestation perhaps of something that's very in our consciousness I mean I often think all right it's gone through my mind a few times that this interlude is like a kiss on the cheek compared to the way it's gonna manifest when global warming finally finally comes to full fruition it won't be so enjoyably discreet from the bulk of the population it'll be what's happening to the worst of us will be happening to all of us so it's already part of the dark painful maddening cultural conversation yeah so do we always in case it goes on with it or should we then do different different work than we have done before have we been ready for for this kind of situation what we are in or what we might be facing I mean I guess we as Paul said about the hazmat suit and in some case in some ways I feel like we've been into a thing I mean I had you know just feedback it just separately had about six months ago ordered a mask from Japan that was flowers to match the dress of the costume because I wanted my dancers to wear matching masks and dresses but I wasn't like thinking oh this is gonna like Corona's coming it's just there's a few you know this has just been in the air so to speak yeah but I mean if we can't gather in a room together to make things and we can't gather in a room to watch things the idea that we're then reduced to computer screens and technology it seems it's I like better Pablo's idea of high of doing illicit theater in somebody's basement and not being you know then then just giving up everything to to the screen screen world because there's so many there's so many people who have already been doing internet art and there's so much better than us we're just abysmal amateurs at it and probably what theater people are putting on the internet is abysmally amateurish you know there's there's there's experts who know how to do it and who have who have put in years since the beginning of just as we have put in years in exploring this art form and should and should continue to really work within the limitations and figure it out you know I what is what is available and then work with that yeah I'm sorry no I just no you're in my dad so you have to I mean you should jump in yeah I don't know if the audience the hell around audience knows that but Pavel is my son it's true and I'm very proud of him most of the time but I do think that as Danny said at the very beginning playing with proximity in live space in you know in in three-dimensional world is a constraint but it isn't a eradication in other words I remember seeing when I was I don't know Pavel's age seeing damn it bread-and-puppet theater in Glover Vermont in this incredible image of these people about a quarter mile away coming very very slowly toward the audience now the audience could have all been standing we were probably standing a little bit closer together but that's an example that it already has happened in theater history of people playing with proximity within the constraints of six foot distance so it's the new constraint it's the form that's the sonnet you know it's the rules of the sonnet you know or whatever you want a thing of form you want to analogize but anyway and I think it's always exciting when there's a constraint so I think it's a possibility there's possibility and promise with saying we've got to stand we got to be outdoors and we got to be more than six feet away that doesn't mean we all just go home and stop making theater live within that piece of cake yeah I mean there's also the famous TV shows six feet under you know which of course refers to the six feet distance you know of the dead towards the surface to be safe and and yeah so how is it for you do you think for next year let's say Britain is will be going on till the end of the year distancing or even to the summer do you have work schedule how is that for you how will you survive are you are there so is there a support system in New York City you feel that is there for you not really in New York I don't think I think I think for us the situation doesn't change that much because we've never really received any support from from the states anyway and the book theater Vienna but yeah a tiny space in New York no one produces you yeah and and we didn't even ask for we're doing a show in in Frankfurt in January 2000 next year and we didn't ask them but they asked they wrote us like how are you guys doing can we send you some money you know which was which was so kind and and unheard of you know people we've never really that somebody that somebody from a theater is really worried about the artists and and understands that pretty much all our work has been cancelled we had some teaching gigs and and and touring and that was cancelled in until the beginning of the year so all your teaching gigs have all been cancelled by universities yeah yeah and so when we we have rehearsals that will be we're supposed to do here in the summer two of the performers are from Europe we have no idea if they'll be able to get here but we are you know we can we can do it with the three people that are in New York and then somehow teach it you know we just we always work with the limitations that's always been our modus operandi and and I'm sure that we will figure it out and the people the theater in in Germany is assuring us that they're doing everything to make to make sure that that this happens it's important to them that that they keep doing what they what they know how to do best and of course we've assured them that we will also do what we know how to do best and that we have always we've worked for 15 years for for no money with so we will continue if the Broadway theater is done open and who cares if the state-supported theaters don't open it it's it's you know we we have done it with nothing because we have to do it this is what we do this is this is who we are none of us have got have gotten into this because it's a lucrative profession or you know it's not a it's a it's a passion and we feel lucky if somebody gives us money but if they don't we're still doing it and we still will continue to do it as much as we grumble about what an awful art form it is it's still something that we do and we'll probably keep doing it until the day we die of corona next year but I just think that somehow right now we're we're holding holding on to life so so rapidly but I wonder if there will come a time when this kind of life will just become unlivable anyway so we'll just all say fuck it let's just start hugging each other and making out on the street and passing the corona to each other and it doesn't matter because the the being locked up inside and being six feet apart from each other just makes no sense and it's just pointless anyway so I just I count on being able to find a small group of actors who are willing to risk their lives and I count on 15 audience members who are willing to risk their lives and let's just get in the room and infect each other with energy and electricity and if if some corona slips out out of any one of us into somebody else then we'll just die knowing that it was all worth it and we did it not alone in a room but together with 20 other people inside the during a performance I mean I know it sounds romantic maybe but I don't want to live that I don't want to I guess I don't value life that much to like to prolong it unnecessarily in a prison cell you know it's just about like we're all being confined to a to a to a life sentence inside our own cells sure we have our books and we have our for the most part our our favorite food but you know for for how long do we do we survive in our separate rooms call you um I happen to go to a play the night before everything ended so to speak and it was those Lucas Hanna piece which is called Dana H which is a monologue of Lucas a tape it's an actual it's actually tape recording of Lucas Hanna's mother speaking about the two years that she was kidnapped and it's her it's a tape of her and the great actress D. D. O'Connell is lips lip-syncing Dana H is lip-syncing Lucas's mother anyway that's the form of it and she tells this remarkable story and it's an incredible piece of theater and the last part of it is Lucas's mother voice as I say dubbed by Dee Dee talking about her work as a hospice worker which is something she's done done a lot of her life and done it very well and talking about how she helps people across the border from life beyond to the beyond and her method of doing that she was very good at talking people into letting go and I'm sitting there and it's a brilliant piece of theater to brilliant and Dee Dee's brilliant and Lucas and Hanna I mean it was and this is the subject matter of the last play I ever saw I'm thinking and I thought well that's totally cool I mean that's completely right the subject's right the way it's being performed is right and if this is in fact the last piece of theater I ever see it'll be entirely right or as the gurus say you know everything is perfect and everything's not perfect I mean it's a dystopian you want to go but I guess like the plague ended I mean I think it's gonna end and I think it's gonna end much later than you know I mean I echo a lot of what Pavel's saying about questions about cancellation versus postponement come up in my mind when I hear our gigs being moved and I guess the presenters have a surprising amount of gratitude and respect right now around trying to make everything work and push things ahead but we have no idea how far ahead these things are actually being pushed you know we're only officially canceled our rehearsals and we also have people coming from Europe so there's that X factor but we're only really officially canceled through the end of May when we had our Walker residency canceled but we all know that you know that's there's a lot more cancellations to come and it's just a shit show of rescheduling in the future so I just really hope that I get to make the piece I'm in the middle of making that's my modest hope it's somehow also a feeling especially than I think in New York of kind of an end of time so we spoke yesterday to black past you know the playwrights group and they said Dennis a Ellen's at me and Dennis Allen said my family is making last wills you know so much of us work in the service industry so many friends work you know in there and they all live together work together multi-generations he said this has been going on for hundreds of years we are affected by it and he says yeah we don't have hedge health insurance we don't have the job what do what are we supposed to do and it's it's crucial you know that they think about survival first and it's artodian times in a way what Pavel said you know most like this signaling through the flames and we all have to stay on the right side of madness in this time we do live on we had rst time line from from Bokina Faso said 300 no actually 400,000 people die of malaria each year in Africa they don't even have the money for measles vaccination malaria vaccination they we this is our daily life you know as Paul said this is what the planet is experiencing something is deeply is deeply wrong and we have to all work and say things have to change we have to be a part of the change Ostromai which was interesting also said you know let's not read any meaning into it is chaotic it's it makes no sense it will be over let's prepare for the fight afterwards you know that also that will come for everybody and also the colleagues from Hong Kong who said you know this is over it's not over for us when this is over you know so who have often have basement performances or the Lebanese artist Sahar who said we had we already forced to perform in basements we already can't announce what we are doing it's risky to put people and now they have that on top of it and so it is a it's a hard time to to to think about theater but if you could give some advice I don't know we all don't know what's going on and but still as an artist and people who really have experienced and shared experiences through your work you know your great work which was formally so innovative and broke so many rules and and now you might have to also find new innovations or maybe it has to become more political who knows but what is what would you say to people now who are like you listening perhaps also in their rooms as audience members now but also as young artists or mid-career artists or artists who have also already accomplished a lot what what do what would you say to them to what to do what to think about it's not not be scared um you know I always always if you have to do it or don't do it if you don't have to do it do it if you have to do it if if you're compelled to do it there is nothing that should stop you from not doing it and you know I always find inspiration from the communists from the dissidents that that continue to make work under threat of arrest in you know the communist regime that's why I got into the into making art because I felt like those people survived and they continued to make work in in their apartments and and find ways to make the work necessary and relevant it doesn't mean that every every project now has to be about some kind of science fiction virus or that you know Paul you should definitely not use the hazmat suit because you should use the opposite you should have somebody come in with you know in a bikini thank you yeah yeah and and bring beautiful flowers and and and show how beautiful and perfect the world is outside while in the theater it's it's broken um you know just just uh I think that the the sense even when when world was falling apart for let's say the dissidents in the communist country when people were dying and being sent to the gulag or anything there was also a humor that survived maybe it's gallows humor or black humor or whatever when one calls it that it doesn't disappear so that we don't all of a sudden all all of us have to eliminate any kind of humor from from the work uh because then it then someone may accuse us that we're not taking this seriously you know I think we're all serious artists and we're all take the situation seriously but humor is one of the one of the tools that we have to deal with any kind of tragedy and it's cathartic but it generally makes puts you in danger of being either dismissed or or make people think that you're not taking suffering or pain or tragedy seriously but there have been many great artists in history who have who have used humor as a as a way of dealing with this whether it's Cervantes or Gogol or any yeah any any people any number of people that you know any what do you think I think that um I love that and I think that um if you're if you're a person who I'm just going to say a choreographer but done I mean just on a practical level there's you can still you know play your scales you have to when you're a choreographer you have to make you have to work on on your craft all the time not just when you're in the room with the dancers so you can work on you can work on choreography every single day um you can make material you can your duets and trios and stuff can be with objects or with the space or the floor you can rethink um you can rethink the body in space over and over and over again in an interior way or outside or whatever there's it's not that you get a break you know you don't you still have to work and figure out how to deepen your craft even if you don't get to be in rehearsal so I mean that would be my advice is just to keep at it which is that um if you're asking yourself that question which is a very legitimate question just for the time of the quarantine uh you are in a very lucky position because the stratification of different assignments here in society now are more vivid than it even than they were before so while we're posing this very legitimate question there are people working 12 to 15 to 20 hour shifts trying to keep people alive they're at the max in these hospitals so if you're have the elbow room to even ask to contemplate the question use some of that time to do something on behalf of those forces that are right here in Brooklyn that are that are really stressed to the max which isn't to say you know throw your throw your artistic practice in the garbage and and go buy groceries for seniors and do nothing else you know I don't think it needs to be quite so um dogmatic and in absolute is that but I do think we have it imposed unique amount the thing we have those of us that aren't working at the hospital is a little more time so use some of that extra time to help those people you know whether it's yeah you know getting online and you know you can call you know there's stuff that stuff one can do so to be useful and that's a thought you know yeah thank you paul and uh kelly is coming to the end of the time what we do is useless we don't want to say what we do is useless no no or that that is the last or that that is the last thing that we should be doing or worrying about I don't follow kelly what do you what's your take uh on it with these things you know like I just keep remembering like that back when 9 11 happened paul and I weren't making theater and there was something about that time you know like I lost my job and you're suddenly forced to slow everything down and shift your priorities and shift your thinking and that's when that's when the commitment really came to start making my part and it changed our practice you know so I think you the more that you can think of these inevitable um positions that you're put in are somehow useful and a chance to slow down and dig deep and recommit and redefine what's important about what you do the better the more we can actually take advantage of what we do have what we do have is a lot of time like these beautiful japanese haikus when your roof is broken you can actually see the moon if you do look yeah it might be cold but you do it might be raining on you so I think I wish we could go on and we just scratch the surface of it but over one hour and maybe we check in again with this last longer and can see how we or look like later on a month or two or three later and um yeah and so let's hope you all can join in tomorrow we have Melanie Joseph you know the great founder of the foundry theater um together with Aaron Lensman and um oren squire will talk about their work more Melanie will also talk about her project to finance uh at least to find ways I know by legal gunner putting things together and of course uh um tell her mac and Kristen do the trickle up new york nyc data orc and to find some ways and we also hopefully we'll hear from all of them but it will be great to hear from Melanie who always nobody has also represented a social and political conscious you know of our community and we hear from shahid nadim from pakistan and then also from india from abhishek and uh in the great puppeteer a woman who will join us for the uh for the talk so um please do stay with us stay safe um do stay tuned also for other thank you all for taking your time thank you frank thank you for initiating this I think it's really cool thank you that means a lot to me and what alba you guys say really does really really so thank you and uh and stay safe and you and your love