 It's just another reason why I'm here right now, simply because of the sake of the fact that he had that effect on people. And I'm fighting, I am truly fighting to not cry, but it's just an amazing feeling to have known this particular man who was just so many things, and yet he embodied, I just love him, I love him. There was a point when Reza passed away, a number of us had gotten together and we tried to carry on and continue to make theater together. And that shit was messed up in the best way, in the best way, but it was not the same. I can definitely say that. I was just, you were just making me think about it, James. But they were great memories. Yes, oh, great and bleak, yes. Oh, I was just gonna say something quickly just to like throw in something quick and fun. They were very, very dangerous shows, as is stated. I was almost electrocuted in Hamburg one night on stage because it was 102 degrees and I had an electrical prop that had a light on it that wasn't working and was watering and I kept getting shocked like this. But you just kept going, you didn't stop. You just had no thought, oh, I might die on stage today. But that was part of the thrill anyway. I just wanted to state that. Do you all have questions for us to open it up? Yeah. It was a soul exchange, giving his soul and for the audience to perceive his soul. And in that is what we all do in our own ways. And that his fearlessness came about and his intelligence and his always seems to be always challenging himself and the audience without having a script on him. That's my... Yeah, absolutely. I wish, I mean, if there's one thing that I could add to the film is the experience of being sharing, being in a state of togetherness with Reza. His ability to be present with you, you know, was just mind blowing. I mean, it's just seductive and everything you want it to be. In any context, sitting around the kitchen or driving to the hardware store to get something, just every moment was intense. In fact, I remember when we were about to form, when we were in the preliminary stages of forming our company, which is called Darlu's, we were doing these meetings for a while. Do you guys remember those meetings? Yeah, I need to make that amazing mushroom tea. But, you know, and Reza was in Los Angeles while we were all meeting in New York and discussing things that we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. But we just, you know, we were trying to start visualizing what was going to happen. And then we would have these conference calls at the end of these meetings with Reza. And his voice would be coming out of one of those old office phones because it was, you know, pre-internet and stuff. And I remember one really intense kind of transmission he was making this kind of sermon-like transmission telling us about the altered state, the altered state he was encouraging in us, you know, that this meeting that we were in right now together in that room, you know, that we could bring a sense of, you know, the level of focus, the potential of focus that we could have in this very moment with, you know, in that room right now. That could be a piece. And when he would use the word peace, I mean we all knew what he meant by that word because we'd all, some of us had been in the work, some of us had seen the work, but he just had that hunger for that energy every moment possible. And every moment, anywhere, the fancy theaters, the alleyways, he wanted that. He had that kind of desire. And that meant an exchange, a very, that meant you had to have an intimate exchange. That's so true that my relationship, our relationship was one that happened on the stage in the theater in the rehearsal and also on the streets and having some robotic food or in a phone conversation when, I mean it's interesting, Peter, but what you're saying is during that time I was actually in Houston, my father had just died and I was having phone conversations with Reza while this was happening and that's when he invited me. He said, I want you to be a part of this. I know you're in Texas. The thing is that his curiosity and his will desire to have that, a kind of communion was so deep that for me, I never felt outside of the work. I never felt out, even though there was conflict, there would be arguments, there would be pain and accidents, but it was all part of my own need to express these things. And it was always my dream, really. I mean, to find Reza and to find these amazing people had been something that I had wanted to not have a divide between performance and life outside of it, that it was all part of it. So for me, working with Reza, I mean, it was what was happening for me all the time and it was very intimate. The thing, and I said something in the film a little bit about this, but the extraordinary thing about Reza, I mean there's so many extraordinary things, isn't his recognition of the light, of the spark of an ember in people. I mean, I look at these amazing people on the stage and think of all the ones that couldn't be here, including Adam Satch, who was in So Key with the video work and I think did this amazing film, but Reza just could see, could recognize it immediately. And I tell a little story, I remember when Juliana was, she had a small role in Father was a peculiar man. And I remember sitting at the table and she was there and her head was shaved and she had a spoon and it was like a silver fish or some bug running around. And she started chasing the bug with her spoon. And I just got riveted watching this and I thought, oh my God, this young woman has something. And I looked up and Reza was standing there and he had his eye watching on her too. And it was like, we looked at each other, we went, yeah, and then it was, he recognized it. And I think it was the same with everybody, that sort of recognition in you. And then the demand that that ember just spark into the biggest fire it possibly could. And that's what I also really missed the work on the stage and all that, but the work with the people that he collected who were just remarkable. One of the things that came forward in interviewing everybody, and I wasn't able to be at every interview, there was a lot of them, but was that Reza did have an individual relationship with everybody. And that it was rarer, rarer that he would direct the group. And it was much less rare that he would go into the process, into a rehearsal, for example, and address the individual. So he was constantly reaching in and pulling out. And that's something that just sort of emerged. And I don't know if that really comes through in the documentary, but it really came through in the interview process. And yeah, he just had this really unbelievable knack of connecting both in and then, of course, taking that and exploding it outward. He required us to give everything we had. He would say, go collect the garbage, bring it into the space, go burn the garbage, bring it back, meet me at six o'clock on the Great Lawn in Central Park and pick up all the garbage and then do yoga. And he'd say, take these chairs and move them over there, now move them back, now bring them over there. So he demanded from us to completely trust in him and to give everything we had at all times. I would be the one rehearsal, I think it was, I think it was hip hop when he just literally in the room yelled at everybody, do you wanna be mediocre? It was like, yeah, no. Well, and then, of course, the legendary that if he would drop a line, he would cut it. And then he did, if anything, there was probably one particular instance that I could recall, and as a matter of fact, I think that was probably one of the sound bites that Adam had actually placed in the documentary where I had made the face where Res wanted me to be naked and I was like, are you serious? Are you kidding me? And even for him, at that time it was a stretch because it was definitely something that was not anywhere within my comfort zone, especially as far as coming into being a part of the theater. And like I said, the instant I heard him say that it was like complete culture shock to me because I was like, wait a minute, you can never get me on naked on stage. But in hindsight of it all now, I'm like, okay, thanks to Reza, I'll get on the stage and be as buff naked as I possibly can. If it conveys a message or it sends a message that needs to be seen or needs to be heard or needs to be addressed, that was one of the greatest things that I could take away from knowing Reza is that you have to go into it being fearless. You can't just take a pause and say, oh, well wait, maybe I can, maybe I can't. No, just do it because you never know what's gonna be on the other side as far as being able to reconcile within yourself. Because I mean, there's still a lot of things that I have to reconcile within myself, but that was one particular thing that I just could not wrap my head around. And it came so naturally for these guys and I'm like, wow. I wish I could be like them. But that was the thing that was great about that, great about the company, great about Reza. Well, if he knew you could do something and eventually ended up in the show. And I had been warned about this, but I like to brag at the time about having been a ballet dancer on point and learning as a young man, what little did I know what trouble this would cause. So after I moved from assistant stage managing to performing or accommodation of both, Reza discovered this and decided to add a ballet sequence into quotations from a ruined city. So poor Ken Rowe tonight were forced to teach the entire cast to do shanae turns across the stage. Remember that you were also angry? And I didn't realize that I would end up doing the entire show in point shoes of which I was in charge of 200 props. So I should never have said anything about the point shoes. Speaking of Ken Rowe, I remember in Minamata that beautiful sequence where he's playing this young girl who's suffering deeply from mercury poisoning. And he's naked and he's all twisted up and he's kind of babbling. And then he goes, can I only stop? And he says, I don't know, can anybody understand this? I feel like nobody understands this. And Reza went, I love that, keep it in. So over the night in the show, right in the middle, do you remember this? Like Ken would like turn to the audience and walk up and say, do you understand this? Can you know what's going on with me? And it's like an amazing moment. And also in Minamata Reza decided that, I mean, it stands in the film and Minamata was a really long and really, really hard show for the performers. It's over two hours long without an admission. People would leave, you know, with a lot of them sometimes. So Reza had designated two actors, Tony Bette-Marco and Ken Rowe, to when people started leaving, grab a mic and come to the edge of the stage and announce their departure. And it was so gratifying because instead of just people leaving, it was, it got, you know, there it was. It's like, well, they hate it, they're leaving. Two audience defecting, house left. It was amazing. And we used to sit in the back of the theater on each side of the doorway and like hold open the doors. And we'd wait like, we'd wait like 10 minutes, you know, before the first wave of people to go, oh my God, we can't take this. And then Reza, we let the doors closed and he go, now we can begin. You read it aloud. Got a question? Right, because like of the nature of a documentary film, it's sort of like set up in a such a way where it narrates one's life and obviously being HIV positive and living through this like crazy time in the 80s and 90s is, I can't even imagine, right? But something that always struck me about his work was that it's like, I mean, act up was happening at the same time and there was like in crazy, like really like direct political action, but this was like theater, this was art. And I wonder to what extent like, I mean, I guess, because for me, when I first saw this work and it was when I was younger and I didn't really know as much about the early AIDS crisis, that wasn't necessarily what came through to me. So it was interesting to hear people put that sort of onto the work in a very specific way. And I wonder if that like was like, I know obviously like stuff with like Reagan is like a major intentionality, right? Of like directly commenting on the political climate of what was going on, but I just like really intrigued by how the work wasn't necessarily so direct. And I wonder if it was about, I mean, obviously it was about other things, but I don't know if this is a question, but I'm just putting it out there. Yeah, I'm not sure if I understand the exact question. I can say that I can say that I happened to be going to a lot of act up meetings and while we were making this work. And I was a moderate activist and wasn't specifically said to me once, I just do my work, he was, if that answers anything for you, he was really, I wouldn't say, I'm not qualified to say really what his deep opinion about politics was, but I clearly would end it up in the work in a very powerful way. But I think it was a very holistic, holistic amalgamation, I think he viewed politics as a strain of the body, like poetry, like, you know, so. Yeah, it wasn't about the polemics as much as the deeper causes, that if a society was sick, you could talk about it on the surface in political terms, but what was really sick was the psychic sickness underneath. And he had political things like, I remember I think it was in Minamata, there was like a George Bush mask on one of the naked actors, I forget who, and that because quite a little stir because at the time some supporters of LATC were coming or supporters of Bush, it was a big fight on whether that mask would remain on, which it did. I think that's such a fascinating observation and for me to reflect on that, I felt that the work was so political, but very holistic, very much about this sickness and violence and I mean, I know when I first met Reza, which was following Krovar, Angard Arts production, which many of us were in, and then my very first time I met him for a father was a peculiar man. He was so interested in the work that I had been doing and was doing with wow as a lesbian, feminist, activist, who also was going to act up meetings and knew so many people engaged with that, so it's fascinating for me to think about it in that context because in conversations that I had with him, he and I did speak about the political landscape and what that was doing and the violence and the deaths that that was causing, but very much globally, I would say, so I mean, that's just my... Martin just talked about the George Bush mask in Minamata, but really an extraordinary thing that just popped up in my mind was this proposition in California when we were doing Boogeyman, Pete Wilson. It must have been like an AIDS quarantine, like an HIV quarantine or something crazy like that. I don't know, but he added that scene up yours, wasn't that your line? Up yours, Pete Wilson, we're here to stay? Or something like that for the last few weeks of the show, and it was just so, it was just so organic, the way that kind of stuff would just enter into the work, it wouldn't become like a stand, it would just become another part of the very, like we keep saying holistic kind of environment. Well, I almost think that that's why, I was actually in Simone Boca Negra, and I think I'm the only one here who was, and that was the first time that I worked with Reza, and as David Schweitzer says in the film, Reza was very unhappy during that period. He didn't really seem motivated to be doing this opera, and I wonder if it's because he didn't have the ability because of the guideline, the structure of the opera house to infuse this more organic process in the rehearsals for creation of this opera, and the only way that he could do it was through, he specifically went after some super numeraries from Cal Oates and how I got involved with him. So he would push us to just terrorize the chorus, he hated the chorus, and so the chorus was terrified that we were inserted as these super numeraries, and we were told to not even look at the chorus, but just to move from stage left to right with our spears and not look out for the chorus. So the chorus was terrified of him, and that was the only fun that he was having in Simone Boca Negra was with our posing room. I'm sorry, John, but I loved the story you told me a long, long time ago about having the chorus on stage and saying, okay, on that note, everybody put your arms up, and he got like half of them to do it, and then said, okay, we're gonna do it again, and he goes, okay, and then note came and then maybe a quarter of them put their arms up on the second time, and the third time, maybe you were the only one who put your arm up, and all he just was, fuck this. He told the chorus to fuck off, he said, I'll make this quick, but he got so mad at the chorus, he said, what kind of a fucking chorus are you? You can't even move, you fucking suck. That's a fact. Well channeled. But just as a question, if he would work today, what kind of theater would he do? Do you think he would have been continued, or what would come to your mind, or how he would react to the world we are now? I don't know, I feel like he, I kind of feel like he's done it for us. Like, I don't know. I mean the thing is he was so in front of his antennas were out, so so much of the kind of subject matter that's in front of us now was so much a part of the work already. I mean, and it's, and I'm on, you know, to the extent that so much of what Reza feared politically has come to manifest in our culture, I'm actually scared to answer your question honestly, because I think he would have, he would have, it's almost like, I mean, it's deeply sad, but it's all, I feel like we've been dehumanized to such an extent that I almost don't know how Reza could exist in this world that we are facing right now. I actually have a different feeling about that, because I think the rage, he was in the front of the rage and the pointing it out, and I actually think that he had a deep capacity for healing and for transcendence, and I actually think that's where he would go oddly enough. It seems strange to say that, you know, because we know him so much with a sort of intensity of rage, but I think he would be out in front of the next step of breaking through about resurrection and about some sort of, because he had a real sense of poetry in him too, and a deep spiritual sense underneath it, and I think he would break through, and I would hope that he would have what Mishkin has, you know, really like a whole compound, like Teatro de Soleil, you know, with his people there, and I mean that would be my hope, whether it would be in this country or not, who knows. I have to, I share that hope with you, Morgan, I think that's very beautiful. Yes. I think we're kind of at time. I wanted to say a couple of things about what we're doing with the film. We have representation now, which is really exciting for us. We're being introduced and hopefully shopped in the European and international markets. That's very recent, so we're really excited about that, and Adam's been working really hard to get the word out. We've submitted the films to, I don't know, 25, 35, 45 domestic festivals, and we're waiting to hear back from a lot of them. So we're hoping that through that process we'll get seen and recognition, maybe distribution. You know, everybody's dream of that path is our dream as well, because we really are passionate. Adam is extremely passionate about sharing Reza's work with the world. And one of the other things that's really exciting is that the abdo estate has just decided to allow the videos of the four performances to be uploaded for streaming, so it's a really exciting time. There'll be, I don't know when they're gonna be up, but knowing Adam and his quickness and his passion and his direct nature, they will be up soon. There will be, for now, accessible from the film's website, RezaAbdo.cufilm.com, I have cards in my pocket, you can come find me after. So the full length productions, the edited video from Minamata to Quotations. Minus Father was a peculiar man. I think I'm not 100% sure about that because I don't know if there's actually, maybe we'll get some of it up there. I don't know, that's a question. So we're really excited that the world will get to sit and stream and in good quality start to take in this work in the arc of each piece and not in these fragments, which though are incredibly beautiful, lack what you get when you can make the whole journey of a piece. So that's all I have to say for now. Thank you so, so, so much. And of course to Adam, who is working tonight, who couldn't get out of his contract. And Brendan, and thank you again for being, for sharing again. Now this is tough, emotionally so deep to see this all together, combined and for us perhaps, because look at it, but for you it's your life and youth and work and. I also want to acknowledge that there are a number of you not up here with us. So, hi, come up and give us a hug or something. All right, thanks everybody. Thanks for coming.