 Welcome everybody back to Seedle Talks here at the Marfney Seedle Theatre Center, the Graduate Center CUNY in Manhattan and Midtown, which looks like a ghost town. Every second store is closed to empty people moving out. You see people putting up wooden barricades in front of the glass or businesses leaving. Quite a dangerous time, a difficult time as we know and America now has over 150,000 confirmed deaths. Most probably it's many, many more, the ones we don't know that they died with the COVID virus. Most probably 40 to 50 million people infected. These are the real numbers as suggested, 10 times, 15 times higher than confirmed infections. Of course, theatre has been impacted terribly, everything is closed, people are out of work. They will be out of work definitely till the end of the year, most probably till next summer. It's a catastrophe for the field for all of us. We have been talking for 18 weeks now to theatre artists from New York, from the US and around the world, from the globe. This will end in four months where we really talk every day with someone. Most probably we're the only institution creating new content every day till this time. Alex Rowe from the Metropolitan Playwrights said today, Frank, it's not true that you're the only one creating original content, which of course is true, but I think we are the one who came out every day with something new. But of course also it's not a production, it was not an artwork in that sense. He's absolutely right about that. But we really got an insight in the mind of theatre artists. And as we always said here, theatre artists are close to the present, to the moment. They anticipate the future. They have been on the right side of social justice, on the complex struggle for freedom and liberties. And now, if not now, whenever would be the voices of the artists of significance and importance. So it's a big deal for us that we were able to do this. We want to thank Hal Rond again for being so generous and supportive. We do not take this for granted. Our statistics, if we can take a short moment to listen to that, we had 90 talks with 143 artists from around the globe, from 42 countries, 143 of them. Most probably 50,000 people listened to the talks. It's a conservative judgment and people are still looking on it. So it's quite remarkable for us what we got into. Perhaps we're not fully aware of it, that we are archiving the future. And also a field, a profession of theatre artists in the time of Corona. And here we go. With us we had truly significant voices, leaders in the field, emerging artists, significant artists, and with us today we have, as a returning guest, the first one actually is Richard Schachner, the great Richard Schachner, whose work in the field of theatre and performance has been so groundbreaking, so influential, so significant as a practitioner, as a director, as a leader, a founder of companies, but especially also as a thinker, as a philosopher of theatre. So Richard, it's a really great, great, great honor that you took time to come back and perhaps also look a little bit at what happened. You were an early guest in these months and to have another look at the theatre. So really thank you for joining us. I normally say what time is it, but my guess is it's the same time as here in New York, but it doesn't look like NYU where you are. No, on Thursday, Carol Martin and I left New York for a month and we're in Hills, New York City, we're in Hillsdale, New York, which is around 120 miles north, slightly east of New York City, in the area near to Massachusetts, the Berkshire's a very, very beautiful area. I mean, actually, I'll go out the window here. You can out the screen door. You can see the mountains and etc. So it's an irony and it really is this irony. There are a couple of things I'd like to discuss with you. I do want to discuss with you your series. But I, yeah, I think Richard wants to discuss with us. But I think now for the moment we have lost him and I'm sure he will be come back. In any minute, it just shows the countryside, maybe it's not as stable in the Internet connections and the cable connections as the city is here. Again, I would like maybe to make a few remarks on on on our series, on our talks, PHA, the Performing Arts magazine decided to publish 30 excerpts of the talks that will be coming out in this fall issue. So perhaps this will be some material for students also to look at. It's quite interesting to see it in print of what happened. Richard, are you back with us? We cannot hear you. And your sound, your sound is still off. And maybe it's just me, Cia, in case you're listening from howl around. Richard, your sound is off. You have to unmute. And I'm going to try to write that on a piece of paper for Richard. And and and well, listen, it's not so easy. You have to unmute. I'm unmuted, but I don't hear you are here. You are we hear you again. Yeah, but you don't see me and I don't see you. We see you. We can see what happened to us. That beautiful place I was was too far from the router. And it disconnected. You say back, Richard, you were saying a sit down. And I will. I'm going to try to see if I can get a picture because I'd like to see. I'd like to see what's happening here howl around. Well, no. Well, anyway, I can't see you. And now you're looking at my kitchen. Yeah. And. I'm going to try to I wish I could see you. I'm going to try to just put a howl around and see if it comes in. And see if we can back. Yeah, there we go. Yes. Here we are. And now he can see us, but we can see Richard, but it will be just just a moment will he come back to us. So again, Ben Gillespie with Bonnie Moranca worked on creating, I think, up to 30 excerpts from the talk up to June. So they are more perhaps to come. And it is quite quite interesting to see then what was spoken in words and in writing and the contributions from the Virginia Barba and. And from Tanya Bruguera from the contributions from all around the world and how seriously theater artists are affected by this, but also how how essential the questions are that have been post to us. And Richard, you can see you. Can you see us? I can see you. I can hear you. Fantastic. Yes. Now this is the kitchen. I'm going to stay here because this is closer to I need to get my notes and closer to. To it. Good, good, good. Well, it's good that the kitchen is close to the patio. And it's closer to the router, and I need to stay close to the router. Yeah. OK, so sorry, everyone, for the interruption. All right. So what I was saying is in looking and thinking about everyone you've had this situation is not an even situation. We know that in the United States, the death of the murder of George Floyd brought to our attention to the attention of non blacks to the attention of whites. What has been there from the beginning of the settlement of this continent that is that all lives are not equal. Some are much less valuable in terms of what happens to them and others. So it's not someone in one of your talks that, well, the virus does not discriminate. That's true. But the dispersal of the virus reflects discrimination. It's like saying floodwaters do not discriminate, but those who have a dam or a wall or do not get flooded and those who do not do get flooded. So this virus in the United States disproportionately affects people of color, especially African Americans who remain even more. What can I say? Discriminated against, fenced in, segregated, then let's say some Asian Americans, some South Asians and so on, it still is a distinct community. And we have not paid reparations for the slavery. Perhaps the only other group. So devastated or so oppressed, although things are changing, we hope, have been Native Americans. Who obviously this is a settler country. So if we go back to say, what are the settler nations of the world? The new world of North, Central and Latin America represent the most recent settler occasion or not most recent, but the most egregious or it's hard to use most terrible situation of a settler nation and settler places. We're not going to change that in reading over what has happened. I saw that there's the the differences between the people who live in the have places, the people who live in the have less places and the people who live in the have not places. So I think one of your contributors from Burkina Faso said, look, you're talking about this virus. We lose more people to measles. We have the Boko Haram. We have a number of problems. This is not this is not our most important problem because we have other plagues and have had other plagues. Someone from India noticed the 600,000 people, workers who were made to leave Delhi because they know they had to shelter in place. They didn't their wages were such that they lasted only a day and they were starting to walk 500 kilometers, a thousand kilometers, 1500 kilometers. And then they had to return a turn around because there was no way for them to get to where they were going. And they were told that they shouldn't be on the road. I don't know what's happened to those people. That was back in April, I think, or maybe May. And we're now in July. I do know that from friends of mine in India, the situation there is grave and perhaps even more underestimated and covered up than in the United States. So what this crisis, one of the things that's exposed, I will talk about the positive, but on the negative side or on the X-ray of social situation side is that the world has not been globalized in any kind of way which suggests inequality. It has been the virus has exposed the inequalities. So even the fact that I'm sitting here today and you're there today, you're in the Segal Center or wherever you are in New York, I'm in upstate New York, we're in fairly good circumstances, represents an enormous privilege. So that you may have a 500 or a thousand or 5,000 or 50,000 people watching this. But there are, of course, six billion people on this planet and enormous numbers of them suffer doubly. They suffer from the pandemic or triply. They suffer from the pandemic. They suffer from the economic and consequences of the pandemic when things shut down. And they suffer from the previous endemic pandemics that continue to plague them in the literal sense of plague them so that this reminds us of how far we have to go. I mean, it doesn't it would, and in a certain sense, depress me, but it doesn't depress me, but it does tell me it does show it is a kind of spotlight on the inequalities we have. So some of us can worry about will people come back to the theater? How much online performance will we be able to do? Can we teach university seminars through Zoom? While other others of us, us being the human species, still wonder, am I going to eat tomorrow? Who is going to die of diarrhea in my family? How can I get out of this hard refugee camp? Which if the virus comes here will take, in fact, 80 percent of the people because there's no no chance to do social distancing. You can tell me social distancing is like telling me drink only clean water when there isn't pure water so that this has really the George Floyd incident, the George Floyd murder was a kind of a cynic. OK, it intensified. It showed what is there to be seen. He's not the first and unhappily nor is he the last black person to be killed by police to be killed by state violence. But we have the instruments now to actually watch this and it and seeing these things repeated is a kind of snuff film pornography, as well as a way of of raising consciousness. In other words, I'm myself so ambivalent. In other words, when that video got played again and again, I literally covered my head. I didn't want to see it again and again. And at the same time, I know that you go on to places in the Internet where such videos are played as entertainment, literally as entertainment, as celebration. And so what our instrument of communication have given us is the ability to see the full range of human behavior and human feelings from the very positive ones that Frank, you represent and that so many of the people who came and spoke on your series represent to actually horrific actions that people celebrate. The, you know, that we learned that genocide is not an infrequent or past event. It continues to happen and it happens, you know, systematically because of the inequities we have. So the question questions are raised. Are we capable of of remedying, of changing, of moving forward? It's not that the human species, that the human race, I hate to use the word race in relationship to our species. But you know what I mean, Matt, human kind is is capable of deeds of angels and deeds of devils. And and we're constantly performing both kinds of deeds so that this period to be makes me aware as I've not been aware you know, for so long, maybe ever of the of the breadth of the human experience and that it is as as damnable as it is a blessed and that we see that occurring. And what will we what will we learn? You know, from from these events when the Holy Grail of the vaccine comes? Where will it go? And what will it mean? So a vaccine comes and I assume that many people in Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, North America. And even there, the question is, will the people in, you know, the wealthier people get this vaccine first, even in these places? Will they go to equally to Turkish workers in Germany and African American ghettos in the United States as they will go to people like me? So. And after the vaccine is available, even now, you know, there is a vaccine for measles and as I said in Burkina Faso, children are still dying of measles and the and the AIDS is still ravaging the parts of of Africa, South Africa, particularly and not necessarily the white remnant in South Africa, but the people of color there. So these things are how do we react to them? And I'm kind of asking you because you sat and listen, you know, it does raise the question of what is the function? What can artists do? We can record these things. We can all right, let me put it in another way. When Euripides wrote Medea, when Shakespeare wrote Lear, were they doing anything that helped the world? Or were they saying this is the way the world is? And for those of you who have the leisure or the privilege or can get into the Globe Theater or sit in Athens or down through time, you can learn about these things and we can kind of have our jaw drop, we be astonished by them. But do they change anything? And, you know, I wish I had an easy answer and say, yes, art matters. And for me, of course, it matters. And for you, it matters. And I think for most of the people watching, it matters greatly. And maybe artists are not there to address these incredibly. Difficult social problems, which we now see much more nakedly than we saw before. And the virus exposed it not only because it exposed everyone's vulnerability, but it also exposed how that vulnerability was met in uneven ways by different societies. So what do you think, Frank? I mean, what do you think about that having listened to this, the role of the art and the and the social structure that this virus has exposed and actually your own theories, which shows us so much good work. Is it simply that we continue to do good work and we we accept the human condition as it is and slowly, slowly ameliorate it if we can, recognizing that perhaps we are not deeply living better than we lived a thousand years ago. Some things are better. Some things are worse. Is that the way it is? Or is there is this story of progress, a true story? Yeah, yeah, it's it's the big question. And listening to all the artists. Many, of course, said art is important to me and that's enough. I mean, you being as someone to paint as that is for someone to be a farmer, to be a father, a mother, to be a lover or to be a writer says that that is we don't care so much. Other people say it's important or not. Abhishek, we will also mention India. He said, well, we do work in small places, but I get censored by the Indian government. They don't care about the TV and they don't care about the movies, but our plays get forbidden. So it must have an effect. It must be important. So maybe we should ask them, you know, so obviously it it it highlights something as you that produces something. But it is it is such a deep question. And as you also said, just yesterday, we had two artists from Lebanon who said for us, it's now about survival, about food. We have electricity for two hours a day. We cannot even get the money out of the banks. The American dollars, they might have the few ones are no longer allowed. And even middle class families will are starving or won't have don't don't have the access to food. It's collapsing. And so how can we even think about art? But they say Dima said, yes, but he do. And we think of strategies. It's who we are. And I think what emerged from the talks and it is deeply moving. It is inspiring. And it's also part of what is real, symbolic and not just imagination, but part of it is that what these artists do is representing the very best of life. If there is a functioning community, a functioning city, a functioning society, theater is functioning. A great city has great theater. It's the reward, great sports. And if it's not, there is no theater. It's forbidden. It doesn't come out. You don't see great theater. So so at least theater in that way is a celebration of life. So many talked about what it is about of getting together. Gertrude Stein said that, you know, half of theater is you call a friend. You make a plan. You have a coffee before you go in. Then you talk about it, what they say. And then you say that it was so lovely to see you and go home. Those they connect. And the other half is what they show. And so I think what it did show is that the deep experience of life, you know, as the Russian clinic now. Thinker will come to me in a second from the 30s. We said, you know, when black is black, a stone is stone. Hey, to say that you experience it. And so the deep experience of life next to inside, you know, our inside. But something that comes from the outer perhaps theater is one of the closest. And that's why we miss it. But I think as Brecht said, first comes the first company to eat. And then comes the morals and the ethics. Yeah, but you know, there is where Brecht is wrong. And this because I've been to places where people will, particularly in relationship to religion, to what they deeply believe, they will make great art in the service of their belief before they will put food in their mouth or despite putting food in their mouth. I've seen it in India again and again. So there's this fabulous music. There are these processions. There's the performances. And these are very, very poor people who dedicate, you know, who make these things. So it's it's the question of when theater, not just theater, but art itself becomes sui generous, becomes art for art's sake, becomes itself that you, you know, what happened in the West with the Renaissance, and then it continued through the Enlightenment. And now, you know, the idea of the art of the theater rather than or art itself, whether it's a stained glass window or a great piece of music or movement or dance or chanting or or or or theater when it was a part and parcel of the belief system, the civic system. So even the great theater of Dionysus that we, you know, take in the West as the origins of our theater, not the origins of all theater for heaven's sake, but the origins of Western theater in Athens in the fifth century B.C. It was a civic celebration. And those who were citizens all attended. Yes, the women did not attend and the slaves did not attend. They, you know, that's the I don't know if we therefore should destroy the statues of Euripides and Sophocles and Escalus and all because they obviously supported a society that sustained slaves and sexism of a profound kind. And we have to ask, having supported such a society, how do you write plays like the art of style or edifice with your costa or Medea or Phaedra, you know, so that the women did not participate at the political level, but obviously emotionally or in terms of the tragic imagination and in terms of agency, who has more agency than Clytemnestra, you know, and how she uses it is the way she uses it, et cetera, et cetera. But the at that at that point and through the again in the European Middle Ages and in many places in the world now, these great arts are functions of deeper systems of social commitment. So this is one of the things I did feel from listening to forum and from getting what I got from the TDR editors, 14 of them responded and it'll be published in early September in in TDR. That there is a renewed sense of theater in particular, but art in general, as part of a social fabric. That social fabric may be familial. That social fabric may be communal. There's, you know, these dances that go viral. And then all of a sudden, you know, the the the rapist in my way, that that video that went is seen by millions began in Buenos Aires, I believe, or in Chile, rather, and then moved all around the world so that this this machine that we're using, this computer that we're using is a way of creating a community. So we we are hungry for and I think we are to some degree returning to that sense of community. So I think of small places in New York. So let's take Dixon Place, for example. It's a small theater. It's down in a basement. It's in the former Lower East Side and still the Lower East Side, but that's been gentrified to some degree at any event. So let's say they can't pay rent and they're out of business. But Dixon Place will not be out of business because they can find another place. And in other words, these smaller places that exist kind of without huge commitments to ornate 19th century proscenium theaters and etc. They will they will find a way to return or to continue partly online. And as people begin to assemble and people will assemble again in in place, what's really threatened at the present moment and it's an interesting threat are the larger establishments. You know, how long will it be before you can put 1200 people to watch a Hamilton and get that budget together? How long will it be before the Metropolitan Opera comes back, etc. So the the smaller places, which are in a certain sense like opportunistic insects that find niches will will they continue and they'll and they will they will come back because they don't need the terrific resources at the larger ones. And they form a different kind of community. When you go to these smaller places, you are seeing people that you see again and again at the same, you know, the Marvin Carlson's of the world who go to everything or a lot of things. So you you form a certain kind of community. That is is hopeful to me that that kind of community will persist and and and even thrive. The question then remains, though, how are we going to address the large structural social changes? And I don't know if it's the job of art to address them, except as Brecht did, except as the Greek tragedians did, except, you know, to call as Chekhov did and Ibsen to call attention to them at the end of death of a salesman. Linda says attention, attention must be given to this man. And it's she's kind of speaking for the playwright for the artist simply to pay attention is an act of of of living of life, an act of potential change, whether we can as a a global group really raise ourselves from poverty, raise ourselves from injustice. I don't know. It may be that the human enterprise is a vast cosmic game of guacamole. You knock down this injustice and that one pops up over there. You knock down and someone pops over there. Maybe that's the way it is. I'm old enough to have that slight taste of despair about it, but maybe there is such a thing as as progress. You know, Steven Pinker would argue that in the better angels of our nature that given statistics, we're living in a peaceful age that a smaller proportion of people are hungry. A smaller proportion of people are dying in wars, etc., etc. The absolute number is greater because the total number is greater, but the proportion is less that indeed in in much of the world's history, most people's lives were nasty, brutish and short. And now at least we have there's some progress in that. I don't know. What do you what do you think? I mean, I'm I'm kind of I kind of begin to know what I think. But what do you think from listening to all of these artists? Do you think that we're moving in a in a healthy direction? Or do you think it just is a kind of a cycle? Well, in a way, I on one level, I would agree. I do think that extreme poverty or extreme hunger, except for sub-Saharan Africa, which probably in this world is no longer as prevalent as it was. There is a better access to education for women, girls going to school. But it's a long, of course, a long process. Numbers of solar energy that is being created now by far, by far, outstrips what even El Gore promised in the late 90s. It's it's incredible in that sense what what has happened. And and we also need to to recognize that that numbers, you know, I am from Germany, a country that is so peaceful and also tries to lecture people on democracy and they're doing a great job. You know, but they cause two world wars with, I don't know, 40, 50 million death and we don't live in that time. I'm the first generation of over 250 years, isn't the war on the ground in Germany, so we like to look at this as progress and we like the idea that Germans now do it real as they did all the other stuff. It's the best visor, the best Weimar Republic. But now they are the best, we are the best democracy. But it is hopeful and there is a line that led to this. And we hope and think that it is part of a good, intelligent design that is what is good prevails ultimately. I think theater artists and I think you are right. Theater artists in a way have to call attention, make visible change. And Bogart said he on the talks quoting physicists, the mere act of observation changes reality, that's what she quoted from nuclear physicists. I think that's part of the indeterminacy principle. That by the way of doing it, people do observe, people do think, people do point out and numbers are larger, I think. I liked what Jaguar Rodriguez said that he said with Anna Akhmatova tried to get to see her son, who was jailed by the Soviets. And she went every day to see him in prison and you had to wait for hours. Someone said to her, in the middle of them, isn't that Akhmatova the poet? And people said, yes. And the woman said to her, will you write a poem about this? If you do, I'll let you in front. And she did. You know, and he said, this is something, this is a function. That's why he does theater. And and so I I do think that the contribution is important. It is significant and. But when we come out of this virus, you think we'll come out and, you know, now there's the movement of Black Lives Matter. There are people in the streets. We in the United States hope that the presidency of Donald Trump will come to an end, though he's now talking about not having an election. Yeah, I mean, but do you think that when this is over, we will go back to business as usual as quickly as we can, or will take the lessons that we've learned and apply them, that there will be, you know, a move towards greater social equity, not only in the United States and in the highly developed world, but collaboration among the nations that we will come to grips with climate change to some degree, you know, to move away from fossil fuels. And all that climate change will bring to us if we don't attend to it urgently. Or do you think once this, you know, is our is our memory such as our are we like in waiting for Godot once, once pots of a lucky leave, they don't know, OK, that's over. What do we do? Nothing, they do not move at the end of that play. You know, Beckett, you know, we can say Brecht is one great teacher. And Beckett is another and Brecht is the great teacher of social amelioration and exactly what you're saying. Look, observe, pay attention. The street scene, see what is happening, etc. And Beckett says, you know, life decays, entropy, it goes down. People have very short memories. Once you do give a little bit of relief, they forget about the pain and particularly the pain of others, you know, who looks at what lucky suffers in waiting for Godot once lucky and pots of have left. So which is it to be? Or are we, as I feel, always in a tension between these two visions, you know, between the tragic comic of Beckett and the political hope of Brecht, you know, which and and we have the followers of both or, you know, between Aristophanes and Euripides, if you will, or, you know, one could get many, many examples. I feel that that we contain it, we contain multitudes, we contain it all. If if if indeed we can end poverty, but to end poverty in the long run, we have to control population, you know, God, I hate to bring these things up, but the world only had two billion people in it 75 years ago. Can you imagine a 75 years ago, it had one third the number of people that it has now? So that's, you know, multitudes. You go, the population grows geometrically and the resources grow arithmetically and so that the question then is, yes, we can end poverty if we can level the number of people. We can't just constantly add add add people and so on. And I do think that art shows us this. And I think that what has happened in this in a certain sense, terrible moment, but also a magic moment is how much people communicate. So you're doing seagull talks a year from now, when you do a second set of seagull talks, when the crisis is gone, where people come back and and and and see what issues remain that we have to address. And if you did a second set of seagull talks in 2021 or 2022, would you have the same amount of listeners or does it always take a crisis? And then when the crisis is over, we kind of say, OK, let's we'll just go back to whatever the new normal is or the old normal. But over the long run, what's happened is a kind of increase in ability to solve problems coupled with emerging new problems. People didn't have to worry a thousand years ago about water pollution. There weren't enough people to worry about water pollution and water pollution just happened to be human shit and some animal shit and so on. Very take of a you could deal with it organically. It wasn't kind of heavy metals. It wasn't the results of industrialization. It wasn't radioactivity. So even as we progress, we produce more yin and yang, the other side of the progress. So that's the that's the thing we have to grapple with that, that the sense of crisis and comradeship that we have now, how can we maintain it and really make for some fundamental changes? Are we capable of that? That's that's what I really would like like to know. I would hope that we are, but the evidence is not. It's not all in yet. We'll see whether there'll be seagull talks two years from now. That will be a big, big indication because what you're doing under this pressure, which is so glorious, many people are doing in their own way, and including the people in the in the streets, including the pressure for reparations for increased education, including the movement against Donald Trump, including the sense that democracy is being threatened not only here, but in Poland, in Hungary. In Germany has a new rising fascist party. You're talking about good things about Germany, but there's a forgotten something for Germany. That party is not as small as it was a few years ago. And throughout Western Europe, there are these anti-democracy. There's an Apple Bounds new book on the Twilight of Democracy. Interesting book. So the question then is, how can we continue this fervor, this goodness, this comradeship, this sharing when we have the vaccine? Yeah. Yeah. These are these are important questions. They are important observations, important concerns. Many, many answers. If I think if theater is of interest, of course, it's because it's a model. For something, what do you see? Yeah, but they're different theaters. Any second model is the model in game. Or is the model? Let me let me what you see on stage for a tiny moment, your own VR set, your head, how you perceive the world, which also is a composition. It's a dream like composition would be perceived of reality. It is perhaps shattered. And this model should reflect the change that is possible, the new ways of producing new forms of theater, like Amida Rao talks about the outside theater, collaborative work, less of hierarchies, sharing ensemble, what you did, ensemble work that goes away from a central figure. So what do you see reflects a new way of representing things? The idea of a remedy protocol or what Carol works about is the idea of the real that people are in the center of it, whatever the quoting quote, the real and the normal people. It's a humongous change from the genius playwright, Arthur Miller, to saying, what are you thinking? I mean, we had Adelheid Rosen from Amsterdam and she goes on her bike with her team, goes to a neighborhood that is complicated, rings doorbells and talks. She would say, we would like to do a play about you in your apartment with seven others, you know, on the same time, people will go around and we would like to learn from you. So that's radically different. But it represents, I think, a different, a different approach. James Simpson, a literary scholar, I think, is Harvard about English literature, who said more than that book, which I like, Permanent Revolution. It takes 150 years for a revolution to take place. If you look back, that even Calvinist revolutions in England, early England, they were purely tannical, they were intolerant. But ultimately, the beginning was the beginning of form of libertarian thinking, and so perhaps also democracy with Hungary and Poland and all that problems, you know, is going through phases. But ultimately, hopefully that revolution will will will happen. And it did. And he said, revolutions happen when actually something has already changed. It is not as much the Black Lives Matter, which, of course, is the presence. Oh, as Ron Sia said on Monday, he said that these people are like artists, people are on the street imagining a new life, a better life, different models of life that that these people, you know, contribute to change, but something has already changed for them to come out. And this is why something will happen in Germany. Numbers of that right wing party actually down. Trust in government compared, of course, in difference to the US, is much, much higher than before. And Jeffrey Sachs, the great economist on Columbia, who says, well, we could feed everybody. Everybody could have a basic income. It would be enough food, maybe not the best, but everybody could be the planet. Can sustain it. It's no, there's no political will of sharing. There's no political idea behind it. And we have to change that thinking that it is for young Germans or young Europeans, instead of buying the big car, they think about having a great bike. They pay three, four, five thousand. But the change, you know, like in Germany, or the Mercedes, it's like the biggest thing in life was to get the car. You could own this machine. That was the vision, the dream. And now people say, no, I want to have a bike. Yeah, so it's a fundamental change that's slowly happening. So I do think why theater is important. And the theater of the middle row of a Jaguar Trigas or the Casting, all of that is they are different models of producing and experience life. And this shows it and we show and we we we reflected with the call to action. That's about the spectator. You are also in the center you're participating. And as we see now, if there are no spectators, it doesn't exist and it perhaps wasn't clear. You know, I agree. And, you know, decades ago, I began to do theater outside of regular theater spaces outside of the procedure and so on. And what you're talking about, about ringing the doorbells, you know, Augusto Boal also did things of this sort with the forum theater and the spec actor and so on and so on. So it's there. The question then is also, however, in socioeconomic terms, will Broadway come back and be what Broadway was or similar to that, will they still have these huge things? Will Hollywood or Bollywood, you know, the and the filmmakers or will Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, you know, there are the we're talking and you're talking and it's great about small players doing great things because we can find we're kind of like the cockroaches of the society. We find a crumb here, a crumb there. We survive, we make our work, we do it, we ring doorbells and so on. At the same time, there are these large structures which are productive and oppressive at the same time, you know, so that at the same time that we're socially learning and socially distancing, perhaps we're doing more shopping on Amazon and not less. So Amazon is kind of like the anti-bike bicycle, right? So what happens to the small store owner who depended on you to do something now that Amazon does like that and without any danger of of the virus getting to you because, you know, it'll get to the messenger who's delivering it, but not to you or when the Schubert theaters come back or when, you know, it may not be Jeffrey Epstein or whatever. You know, the other guy in Hollywood, but it'll be somebody else in Hollywood. So what happens to these larger structures? I think that's one of the crises in American democracy, in other words, what you're saying is true. But also the all right is also highly quote mobilized, literally, you know, there are like 350 million guns in the United States, some enormous number of weapons. And and these groups are also organized. They also use the social media. They they use the same tools that we use and they use them with a large number of people. I mean, yes, Donald Trump may only get 40 percent of the vote, but 40 percent of the of the vote is an enormous number of of of people. So, you know, so the question for me is that this is ongoing tension and ongoing dialectic, and I would like to see some big changes made in the large structures, as well as in the small structures. And and that is very hard to hard to envision, because I don't see the. I don't see the energy that I see the energy there to survive and thrive in so far as we can, I don't the energy to survive and thrive and really overturn the social structures so that we have a new way of a new way of living so that Amazon is truly a public corporation or or whatever it could be so that the Broadway Broadway is is not only has new moments of showing things, but its whole infrastructure has changed that Hollywood, you know, we not only have indie films, but some of the larger film, you know, the things that go to regal cinemas or wherever are also changed. So these are these are questions that I think we need to need to think about and work on. I was thinking one last thing I know I've talked a lot here, but one last thing is that I was thinking about the word revolution. So and and at my age, you think about these things a little bit differently. And I say, do I do I really want an armed revolution? When I was younger, I would say, you know, we revolution is a revolution, you know, the French had it, the Russians had it. You know, they went out and they killed people and they changed the government. The czar is no longer there, although I don't know, Putin seems to want to be kind of czar. But when we use the word revolution, are we really talking about reform? I mean, when when people like you like me, do we really mean reform or do we mean revolution in the Che Guevara Lenin way of revolution, even George Washington? You know, they they took up arms. And I personally no longer feel that taking up arms will lead to anywhere except for a lot of death and the and the reestablishment of an order that will be perhaps different, but in certain oppressive ways the same. Maybe different people will be oppressed. But, you know, if you look at it from another planet, it'll still be one group of humans oppressing other groups of humans. Reform is something else again. I like the idea of new structures and reformations. And what you said about it taking a long time because you talk, you know, I like the idea of the Newtonian revolution or the Einsteinian revolution. You know, these are ways of changing modes of thought. And they over time, they they change the whole way. The world is is is is apprehended and the way the world is made. So those kind of reformations I'm very much in favor for armed revolution. I think is a chimera. It doesn't really get us what we think it will get us. You know, the Russian Revolution did not get the Russian people what they expected. I don't know, Mao's revolution seems to have gotten the Chinese a lot of what they they expected. So there's a case where it seems to work, though, of many of us may not want to live in a shaping China. But of course, the number of people that were lifted from poverty there is an enormous proportion of the of the population, even in my lifetime. When I first went to China in early 1980s, people were living in caves. I saw, you know, the change has been extraordinary at the expense of freedom of expression, at the expense of some I way ways kind of thing, at the expense of what's happening in Hong Kong. But perhaps that's not such a bad trade off for those people. So, you know, it's also tolerance of different systems of governance within within a certain certain range. Maybe democracy is not the mode, popular democracy is not the mode for everyone at every point of social development. I don't know. What do you think? That's a good, good question. You know, the question is democracy for rich countries, you know, who have the means to do it and maybe it takes a takes a while. Many changes started out, as you say, with violence. Some people argue the 68 civil rights movement was successful because of the Black Panthers were organized disciplines and they brought change. But actually the peaceful Mahatma Gandhi, which didn't bring change in India, but it is so that it is the exception of of the rule. I think things, as I said, might have already changed. American movie theater companies are struggling. The theaters are empty. They only make money by selling the drinks. Someone found out there's a net. They hired a Netflix executive and who said, you know what, they have people pay ten dollars a month and let them in for free, but they're going to buy drinks. And that's the only way you're going to make money. And that's what they did with the gold movie pass. And within, I think, a month, ten million people or five million signed up. And but it was nobody sort of so many people would come. But it has changed Warner Brothers and Disney will release films online now because the movie theaters are closed and they have been problematic anyway. You had to get there. You have, you know, well, the people are all Warner Brothers. Will the ownership shift? Will the will the Schubert's, you know, no longer run the Broadway theaters? Yeah, will the structure who owned the change? You know, I mean, if you go now to the Broadway theater neighborhood, you don't see Broadway theaters producing masks, engaging with the neighborhoods, you know, supporting people, having food kitchens. They don't. I think people will remember. And one would also argue that they always have been part of the entertainment that perhaps is closer to the donuts and the, you know, the sugary food. It's not healthy. It's not equal eco food is what we like, naturally, organically produced. It's not good for our bodies and our brains, what they have been putting out, even so a lot of it is fascinating and they provided work and so do for so many people and so many artists. But the question is, will people really miss it? Will people miss the Yankees when they're told the biggest thing in your life is when Yankees win the World Series, they are your family. We all have, they are not, they're not there yet. You know, they are the Broadway theater, everything is, they are not there and they are not supporting it. So I think what we look at is what pranks change, you know, so many people in the talk talked about Joseph Scheikin and the Open Theater, a small company, very few people knew about it. You know, I in German, I didn't really hear about them, you know, but the influence was tremendous, what they did and how they changed minds. And and I think in the bigger picture, these small places are like homeopathic pills that perhaps in the big body have a resonance. We don't know, we will never know. You know, but I think I agree. They do have a resonance, but they are also to some degree kept in their place so that because the very nature of getting larger means you change your structure. I mean, I knew Joe Chakin quite well and the Open Theater and, you know, he left the Living Theater to form the Open Theater to investigate acting. They were a group of them and his sister, Shami Chakin and Jean-Paul Van Italy, the playwright and so on. Now, if they had become like the group theater successful and moved to Broadway and ended like Elia Kazan and, you know, Marlon Brando, you know, and the actor's studio with Leigh Strasburg, they would have become something else again. I mean, Joe wanted, of course, he died young and tragically. I mean, he had a heart condition. He didn't, but I don't think he ever would have wanted to be successful in that other sense. And I think you're quite correct. His influence and his the waves and also the Living Theater, their influence are vast. We see them all over the place. And maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe it should. We should have a class situation in the arts where there are the large structures, you know, that occur and then the smaller things that occur. And then some get absorbed into the larger structures. The visual arts are very interesting that way. You can sit around a long time and then get absorbed. I mean, Vincent Van Gogh was, of course, a tragic outsider figure. And then he's in the Louvre. Andy Warhol was a pop artist and then did the factory. And then he's in the Whitney as the show, you know, because the visual art remains, the theatrical art, performing arts, not film, but the live theater is ephemeral. So you can't save it. You can't you can't say, OK, now Joseph Jakein belongs at Lincoln Center because there isn't any Joseph Jakein. There isn't any open theater. There's some video. Yeah. And we cannot buy your Dionysus in 69, you know, as a collector. Go back, say this is an early work of Shacknor. I'll pay a million and I own it's not possible. That's the fundamental difference, you know. Correct. And and that's a healthy difference. Yeah, but it is a structural difference. So maybe what we're talking about is, you know, Mao once said and he probably regretted it, that a hundred flowers bloom and the French say, Chaconne au sangu, you know, so that those are two kind of classic statements of classic liberalism, in other words, that multiplicity and diversity and difference is is healthy and good. At the same time, we know that when we have a quote, free market, it isn't free for very long and the bigger players get bigger and bigger and bigger. That seems to be part of the human nature. At least enough of us are greedy and skillful that it may not be everybody. It may not be even most people, but that we don't take too many people who are skillful and greedy to accrete wealth and power and then to keep it. And every once in a while, I mean, I think this was the function of the American revolutionaries in the 18th century. They said, you know, you have to break that and and and start again. So that's what I mean by reformation. Maybe you have to break these power structures. We when or when Rockefeller got too big in the end of the 19th century, they had a trust busting. They started to pass laws. You couldn't hold all these things. Now they're trying to say, is Amazon too big? It's an Amazon. After all that, it shouldn't be broken up. Should Facebook be broken up into multiple social media things? I don't I don't have the answer to that. But I do think that that multiplicity is good and too too big is not so good. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is definitely also depending on one thing is not good. What we learn, right? They have to be dependent, small units that that do work. And the question now, the hundred flowers, the argument. The other one is you can cut those flowers, but spring will still come. And the question is, are we in that spring, even if things are cut here and there in Hungary, Poland, Trump, is it still coming? And I would say, yes, I am in that sense hopeful. I think that mankind does remember in a good way. It just might take time talking about the American Revolution, the slavery project also by the New York Times and others. Very clearly also said that the American Revolution, one of the reasons were that the British said we're going to end slavery. And and that there's lots of states, especially the southern or others who are very, very loyal to the British. They said, that's not possible because as I guess Ted Cruz said, this incredible thing, they said, what was the necessary evil? No, Tom Cotton said that we needed slavery as a necessary. It's a shocking racist supremacist statement a week ago or like two days ago. But they said the American Revolution, which always was a transatlantic revolution, was the help from France, you know, only because the French fleet, naval fleet, finally intervened, also helped the Americans to win and they gave large loans. But the idea of that revolution was also a wrong reason, perhaps next to all the good reason. They were also part of it, as you said, the contradictions we all live in. And I mean, the absurd contradiction that Thomas Jefferson can write all men are created equal and hold slaves. I mean, he wasn't an idiot. He must have known what he was writing and saying that he could not live up to his own ideals. Yeah. So and he didn't free them all upon his death. He freed, you know, his life, but he did not free her others. So their contradictions are right there. You know, in almost all of the world's great myths, whether it's the Bible, the Ramayana, you know, these great myths have contradictions at their heart that that people are going in two different directions that they're that they're no one, no one is perfect. You know, as Hamlet said, you know, thinking makes it so. The very fact that we think means that we imagine great things, but we can also imagine and do horrific things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that is so. I think why is theater is significant? And I remember once Basil Jones from the great handspring company talked about it. Well, use of puppets, he said, you know, he did voidsack, you know, and the truth commission. And he said it was hard. By the way, he always would say we use puppets because puppets can say things and don't get so upset, you know. And we do use comedy and those human relationships, even in the times of apartheid and our contribution was significant. It helped to change. People came to see our work and we got away with a lot. And the fact that we could do things was meaningful. But Basil Jones said that you could represent things that were normally not possible. Like the father, son and holy ghost, how do you really do that? That's, you know, paintings try to it doesn't really work. But you have people moving a puppet. The puppet seems alive, but the person is hiding. And you don't for a moment you are irritated as a spectator. What's going on? You know, what's what's real? It's not real. He said for a short moment as Heiner said before, look between looking here and there, what really happens in our brain? When we look from one moment to the other. So he said, but this can fracture that and it is an opening and all of a sudden you listen and you spend some time outside your normal VR system. Our brains are not different than we are machines. That is, you know, I think a minor that the German philosopher who writes about meditation and the ideas of his mistakes to experience real reality or the divine, he says, these four centuries, philosophers and people who have tried to access that and that theater perhaps is a way for that short moment to question what we perceive as reality. As you sit there and Richard Forman once said that, you know, we don't see our heads. You don't see your head. You see your body, but it's your head that processes the world. Yes, we think it's objective, but it's not. What we, yeah. Yeah, I don't see it on Zoom. That's true. That's a big difference. Perhaps that's why we are listening to each other. But he said, you know, so what we see with our head is a VR set. It is creating a reality that is dreamlike. Our neurons we process it and we think this is true. This is not true. And we are not aware this is what young and Freud, what the school told us when people hated when Galileo said the world is actually or the Earth is not the center of the world when Newton said it and Darwin who said we all from the apes. And then young and Freud said we are who's governed by our subconscious. And we are not able to understand that we are not able. But for a short moment, we understand that we processing things and there will be a little bit questioning that for a moment in that way, there is a chance. And it's one of the few, few ways to to understand that perhaps we do process reality different and that the idea is to be aware that we are processing. We will never get out of the Richard hat, the Frank hat or whatever. But we are aware that we are processing and theater teaches you that. And I think this is why it is important now. And what I hear from all these artists who say things are so complicated. Yemo Calderon and Chile is that we were on the streets in December. Police are putting a demonstrator's they shot about 800 students. He said people the eyes out intentionally. And then the same police is now saying, shut down, don't go out. We have to protect you. Or yesterday, you know, millions of people, two million at one time. We're on the street, almost a quarter of the entire population. And then they had to go home. You know, so so to deal with with these things, to live in the contradictions we have, I think, and not to go too fast, answer the trumps of the world. We say it's black or white. It's right or wrong. It's always they are lying. They're lying to us because they do not look like theater. And the same thing from a different way. Michael Frayn, the great playwright said, if you have a great play, everyone is right. That's a great play. You know, right, right. Well, I think you said it very, very, very well. And we live in this immense complexity. And during this this period where we've been forced one way or another, either internally or externally, to isolate ourselves, to communicate in a new or different way, or not really new, but more intensely using these means of communication to be careful and aware when we're out, you know, part of the thing about going out into the streets is you look at people and you say, are they safe for me? Are they not safe for me? You kind of do this kind of dance. It used to be, at least in the New York streets, that you maintain your anonymity. You know, you plowed through, you kind of had a channel. Now you kind of look this way and you look this way. You wonder who you're with, who is next to you. Do I want to be on the same side of the street as that person, as this person? So all of this is a kind of marvelous hypersensitivity and I would love to feel that when the vaccine arrives. And I'm using the word vaccine metaphorically, as well as actually, in other words, when we are no longer threatened by coronavirus or we feel we're no longer threatened, will we be able to maintain the sensitivity to others that we now have? Now that sensitivity involves avoidance. But once you have sensitivity or avoidance, you can also develop sensitivity to contact, right? It's sensitivity. That's the important thing, whether you use it to stay away or to come close. So will we be able to once the metaphorical vaccine, once we're not afraid of that virus, will we now we now look at a stranger and we wonder, is this person safe for me or not? Will we be able afterwards to look at a stranger and say, can I? Why not hug this person? You know, I used to stay away and I would say to hug them. Will we be able to accept that kind of thing? Will we be able to create our community? I agree that the theater, the live theater, I mean, I like the media too. And I like mixed media and the theater and all of that. But what happens in the live theater and especially if you are just out of the seats to some degree? I mean, even in Shakespeare's day, the people in the pit were standing there. There was like a mosh pit. They were not sitting yet and they were outdoors. So they were moving and they were doing so. I would like to see the live performance like performance art be much more interactive. It doesn't have to be fully participatory. It doesn't have to be Dionysus in 69 or then she fell or, you know, the things like that. But but it can get involved and bring people in in in more active ways. And we're doing it virtually. Will we be able to also do it actually? And I would like to hope that we we will be able to do that. Yeah. And we don't know really what the world will be like in a hundred years from now. I mean, I've warned about I mean, a lot of people have warned about climate change and the consequences and so on. But one thing we do know about history is that the projections usually don't happen because of the reason you say we imagine one thing and we begin to make something else come into existence. So I think a hundred years from now, what we thought will happen won't really happen, it won't happen. It won't happen in the same way. And what artists do they they not only can see the future, they can imagine what can be constructed. Then that's what you're saying, too. This light of the imagination, this notion that what what goes on in here and out there are interactive and I create the out here as well as the out here creating the in here and we two together and whoever else is out there watching, hello and participating. We're creating new realities, even as we sit here and talk. Yeah. And I do think where people also agree, everybody more or less said this is a very serious moment. It is puts confronted us with death and it's changed. Everybody says things have already changed and things will be changing. Of course, a lot will be trying to go back, but this cannot taken back. We are animals. Someone said I forgot who was we realize we are an animal. You know, that our skins all of a sudden are like state borders. Or we say we don't want to let people in and our skin all of a sudden is the outside border to the world, something come in. We desperately don't want to have this invisible virus to infiltrate us. And so we forces us to think, who are we? Well, not what are we defined? And let me just just finish. So the idea that comes out of this is this is the first time the West after perhaps World War Two experiences uncertainty. Everybody, as you said, in Pokina Faso, yes, from malaria, 400,000 people die in Africa of malaria. And we know that I can get it and die. I have it actually once a year and just hope it's not the bad one. And that this uncertainty, that understanding that we are animals, that we have bodies, that we are vulnerable, life can end with a bad head handshake, that's what Tyler Max said. You know, he knows people said, my friend, survived AIDS and now died by Corona. You know, so this is unheard of. We did not know that before in this uncertainty. This is something that really, really has changed how we think. And Friederick, who said who works in the Punula tour, who said, you know, this is now clear that they look at the virus and medicine and medical research as theater, too. So this is an actor. The virus is an actor. We are on a big stage. This is the general rehearsal. We cannot screw this up. And but we are no longer at the center. I think they're big. I think that might come out of this. And they hope that this is this critical zone. Ten meters or 30 feet below Earth and 30 feet above what makes life life. We all need a life because plans are alive. We are alive. We keep producing life. He said, this is endangered and we have to understand that we are one part of it. That there are plans who are significant to our lives that community is significant. What happens in China and the fish market affects our life and that we have to collaborate and that we have to find ways to survive. Otherwise, our species, as you said in the beginning, is endangered. And to look at this as a theater and whether it's under the microscope, under the electronic micro or whatever, but to say this is something. And there has been what perhaps literary critics said early on, that the de-centering, you know, the deconstruction that we are no longer as Galileo said, the planet Earth is not the center of the universe. Perhaps this now teaches us we are not at the center. This is also the big lesson. And perhaps theater not helps us to get accustomed with that idea that and that's OK and that it is not a bad thing. We do not be afraid of it and that we have have possibilities. You know, there was the concept for plans in Naples in an opera that, you know, French artists, we spoke to, you know, from from Montana, we said we have animals and plants are part on the stage. Toshiki Okada's work out that represents a new way of thinking. And that's important that we see that. Right. It's a new way, but it's also a very ancient way. You know, I'm thinking of the Ramayana of Valmiki, which was written around two thousand years ago and which Rama, you know, is the incarnation of Vishnu, his allies are monkeys and bears and who obviously speak Hanuman is the best known so that it's kind of a respect for the non-human world and then in the Bible, the flaming bush that Abraham sees in the voice comes from the flame in the bush so that it in a certain sense around the 18th century, 17th century, the industrialization and the idea of mechanization and that the world belonged to humans and that we could take down all the far so we could build machines and, you know, when you see a movie like Prince Long's Metropolis, the imagination, the idea of what the metropolis looks like and our imagination would be a place full of trees now. I mean, we don't want to imagine a metropolis completely devoid of that kind of nature and only is manufactured. So that, you know, I think these are getting back to a kind of balance. I wouldn't say that we're insignificant because we think and Kogito ergo sum is true to some degree, but we are not the be all and end all. I mean, when I get out of New York now, in this place that I am and I look out and I see thousands and thousands of trees, I'm happy for that and want that to continue. And I do think that the theater reminds us of the fact that we are part of the great chain of being. We are not apart from it. We are part of it. And we can manage some of our comrades on that great chain of being to some degree. But we also have to really, really carefully and deeply and lovingly respect that. And so many artists said, well, actually, I do gardening. I have some plans. I'm watching a plant crow. Right, you know, Miguel and Gloria from the Spider Women's Theater, Native American, who said, you know, she said, you know, I get my hands into the dirt. I talk to the trees. It sounds very simple. And, you know, but she said, no, this is of real importance. That's what we should be doing, connect to. And she also said, which I liked, I think it was Miguel, that we are in a creation myth. That's what she said. All the stories we used to hear, which are story, story, but they're all true stories. That's why they are significant. What happens in there can save our lives or just destroy our lives. If you listen to this, there's no we and a new one. There's the Mad King. There's the plague in the country. People have no work. People are starving. People are dying. How do we react? What do we do? What is the right thing to do? What is moral and ethical? I remember you talking about Antigone. When you talked about taught lawyers and theater artists together to say, you know, what's law, the written law, what's human law, what did Antigone do? What is the right thing to do? And she came up with Antigone and Galileo. Those two plays were mentioned quite often, I would say. Did that surprise you? Would that surprise you or? No, it doesn't accept that their stories finally are not happy ones. So I hope that we don't end up in a cave walled up or convicted of heresy. So, so that Raul changed it. He's changed the ending. He said he worked with the indigenous artists. He said they told him that that's not a good idea to. And he said, OK, we'll change it. He was in Brazil when he had to stop it, you know, and. And. Well, go ahead. I'm just saying, I think what you've done is changing the world in some significant way, this this opening of these dialogues. So I do think that at least I know we're getting near the end of time of our time 120 already, but I think that you should do this not for three months a year, but for a month each year, you should you should say that this is the first seagull talk series, because I think what you've done in bringing this wide community of people together and, you know, from. Ron Sierra to the people from Palestine, the Bukina Faso, you know, this very wide group of people is an enormous service to the theater and beyond the theater to the community that generates the theater. So there's human gardening as well as botanical gardening. And we're a great gardener, a great human gardener. Thank you that the seagull center is, you know, a significant farm in the middle, you know, right there in the middle of New York City. So and you're the you're you're the gardener, you're the farmer. So I hope that this is not a crop for one year. But of course, you run the seagull programs. So that has been going on for quite some time. But I mean, the idea of seagull talks should kind of annual or semi-annual event, maybe each time organized around a particular crisis or opportunity, you know, because the virus will pass, we will get the vaccine. But it's not the last thing that we're going to be facing. You know, one on global warming would be very interesting. You know, how how art is going to attend to that. The return of nuclear weapons, you know, that's another very serious thing that's happening that the United States is quote upgrading its nuclear arsenal, which is kind of horrendous to think about upgrading it for what purpose. And that we have been saved these last 60, 70 years from global wars. But we've had many, many, many little wars and we have not had the use of nuclear weapons, hopefully we'll never see them again. But as they proliferate, as different countries feel that they have to exercise their macho-ness, the chances for that happening increase, and that's another thing we have to deal with. So these are intersections between large issues that confront humanity and theater and the arts. And I think you're in an extraordinarily powerful and good position to help us work through it with a community of people, as you have done. Well, thank you. That's a generous and thoughtful. So it's accurate. Thank you. That's a big deal and I take it. And that means really, really, it doesn't mean a lot to me. As you said, we come closer to the end. And I know that you also you prepare for your great TDR magazine. On the scholarly side, also reactions from around the world, from around the globe. So we are, in a way, not the only ones, but perhaps was more the focus on practicing artists, but what do you what it could also be? You know, a Steele Talk series, you know, the voices. This we believe we are the university, we believe in thinking, we believe in theory, we believe in models to whether then they work out or not. But that's what we need. We need those as a significance. But so what what what is the what came out of the contributions? You said 15, 20 people sat down and well, I did. I invited the TDR editors. Yeah, so that the TDR contributing and consortium editors come from various parts of the world. Now of the twenty three or twenty four of them of 14 contributed. So they they range from Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett to Joseph Roche, Carol Martin, many contributed. I mean, I can't sit here and summarize what they said, but they gave examples of performances they gave philosophical takes on what the future is going to hold. Both Tracy Davis, who was a historian and Joe Roche, look back at earlier plagues and Tracy is talking about the first use of masks in China in 1911, where the flu was just beginning and hadn't gotten out in the world yet. And Roche talks about the great plague of London, you know, in the 17th century, which killed one third of the population. And then we have this many examples of the current perform current performances, so on. It's a very interesting tent because what you've done, which is so important, is this conversation. And then you're editing Sarah Lucy and her comrades and you have edited for a perform arts journal, and that's going to be very interesting. What we've done is it exists first as writing and so that they've had a chance to write it. But we both chose to organize it when publishing in the same way in a day way, because the earliest published is the earliest received because what's happening is unfolding, what's happening is happening in time. So in that sense, the coronavirus situation is a theatrical situation. It's a narrow logical situation. It's, you know, it is theater, but it's actually a broader genre. It's the genre of the story being told. And the story has a beginning and a middle and we're moving towards the end. We're not sure what the end is. We pretty well know what the beginning is and we're in still in in the middle. It's also what Victor Turner would call a social drama. In other words, it begins with a breach, which is the escape of this virus, the virus jumping to human beings. And then the crisis when the virus gets out into the world and then redress of action, what we're doing now, which is how does it get dealt with? And then the end of a ternary and social drama is either a reconciliation or a schism. So reconciliation would be what I'm calling the vaccine, some way of resolving it, of moving on. And a schism would be if the virus morphs, the vaccine doesn't work. We have to live with this continuously. It's constantly moving forward, which is horrific to consider as a possibility. I don't think that will happen, but it is happening. I mean, one of the things that I see philosophically with the virus is our belief in progress. In other words, the deep human belief in the scientific progress, there will be a vaccine, the laboratory is working on it, we're testing. There will be, in other words, we we take this as a natural occurrence with a human solution, right? It's not going to run its course. What happened with the 1918 flu is they had no vaccination. It ran its course. And several hundred million people died, a huge proportion of the world's population. And from 1918 to now, that's 102 years, human faith in human knowledge and science has exponentially exploded, in other words, we are terrified by some of our knowledge, namely certain forms of genetic engineering, the possibility of nuclear war, global emissions leading to global warming and all of that. But we also celebrate it. We are confident that the Abbott laboratory or some other laboratory will get something that I'll put in our arms and this virus will go away. You know, not quote herd immunity, which is an interesting term because you read it and it's about animals running together. You listen to it and it's like I hear about this immunity. I can it's heard. I can it's it's it's a kind of urban myth that, you know, we can do it. So all of these things are operating together. And I look at this, you know, for my performance studies point of view, as as not so much theater as a huge performance in other words, theater is part of performance when I think of theater as a very precious particular genre involving actors and perhaps stages and playing roles. But performance is larger. We're playing social roles and and and and we're we're acting. It I agree is to perform acting it out as a human species. And we have great faith. We have great faith. We're like fast. We have great faith that we can find the solution. And hopefully it will have a happier ending than the first part of Faust in the second part. He he does OK, right? OK, and goes around though goes around the world. Yes, I would say I think Faust would be a great. I did once a Faust play, but Faust would be a great story to do in this period because it's a Faustian kind of thing we're involved in at this moment. It seems that's very good. Yeah, and some suggest he actually was model in Alexander von Humboldt, you know, who you know, challenge and the world's idea that it all comes for Athens. He said, Faust means fifth. It matters. It matters, yeah. And that perhaps Faust, too, was the first post-traumatic work before Hans Tieslema, you know, was anywhere in the states that it was a very loose structure, never finished, started working it early on, never finished it. And perhaps because of that and that post-structural way that there is no post-structure, it is closer to really this is that's also it's a good good idea. So maybe you might include it in your in the work you are working on with next to Mary Bloom and Joseph Conrad, there might now might be. But I did a Faust. I did a thing called Faust Gastronome in which Faust was a cook. But the idea of his and the and the Mephistopheles was a woman. So it was like the bargains he made and so on and so forth. Any rate, yes, but Faust is I might include it's a fabulous story. So it is a great story. So Richard, really, thank you. Thank you for for spending time with us and for for for sharing your thoughts. And it's important for listening. Thank you also for asking. And normally, I would say the lineup for next week and we don't have one. So but it is good to think about. And yeah, and so how the question is, how should that go forward? So anyone from the listeners have idea email us, you know, it's easy to find. Also, but that's a good suggestion, perhaps, to over a month and to rethink it and to structure it around themes. Well, we'll have to see it has to be meaningful and also part of a change mail, perhaps, you know, one of the thoughts we have is, you know, to be part of a great theater festival in New York, you know, that we represent all those voices that is outside that also represents these new forms. Perhaps as Morgan Jeunesse said, what Joe Pap would do to go back in the parks, find way to engage that the people should be in the center. Yeah, you should have a festival of multiple kinds of performance. In other words, rather than like under the radar, it's like all in public. But some is in the street, some is in the theater, some is live online, a kind of multiple theater festival, a very good idea. And this might be an idea for a Seedle talk, mind you to talk to a lot of people, say, how would that look like? And Avenue Festival was founded after World War Two. It's a clear reaction. It's a great festival in the world also gives identity to a city and a life. And it's a joyful celebration in the sorrows of life, as Buddhist say. It's a really joyful celebration. People did say that as the last thing I would say is what I forgot. You know, what a lot of artists did mention it is a time for them to connect to the inside, to the inner world. I think it was Krishna Morty who said early on what he was so worried about the computers who came up said, but it's the inside that matters. He said, it's not what comes from the outside. Yes, it's all about what's inside you or young who said the only thing that hasn't already happened, buildings have been already built, plays have been written, music have been done. You just even if you look, it takes a while for the brain to process. But if you dream, it's immediate. No one has seen it and you are the writer, the stage designer, the director. You know, you put it all together, but that's who you are. And this is that people said this was a moment or is a moment to connect to what is significant is the inside and everybody, especially the big corporations, it's not important. You know, the Yankees, the movies, theater, the Broadway plays, that's more important. And it is also the inside. I think perhaps this time is also a contribution to to get closer to that and listen to it and to the ancient wisdom as you as you said from India. So, Richard, really, really thank you. And I hope we continue and it will be an ongoing conversation. Thanks to how around really see for getting up every morning before nine a.m. in Los Angeles, you know, it's an unholy time for everyone who works in theater. And she does for VJ to be so supportive right away of the idea I called him. I think on a Tuesday and then the next week and Monday, the first talk happened and that they were so open to flexible that this is part of our mission. We also need to get out of the kind of American context, you have listened to voices from the world. So it was a big contribution for us and it was a privilege to talk to everybody. So, Richard, again, thank you and thanks to all the people who talked to us, who took their time, put their thoughts in there were some of them were heartbreaking talks, some of them are very inspiring talks. I think, as you said, it reflected actually the world we're in and kaleidoscope, so it was an enormous privilege. So thank you and thank you for our listeners. Yeah, we are a little bit over time, but it's the last one. I hope we will get away from it with it from you. And thank you for listening. It is important to listen as we listen to the artists also for you, the audience, it is about you. Ultimately, what changes will happen will be implemented in your life. What can you learn from artists? Experiences, what they teach us, what they say, and this is of real importance and to take action and also to be someone who creates an authentic change in ourselves in order to to change the world. And if there's anything we learn in this year as we really need change, forms we have, don't work, old forms that might have worked some time ago, but no longer enough energy comes out and as they should and only new forms than who are close to the time we live in will will will create that as they someone said about Woodstock, it was the same concert today wouldn't have that effect. So we have to find what is it that helps us to reinterpret life, to be give us a vision and I think theater can do that. And we are we are we are looking at it and it's an experiment and it's a laboratory and and works like from Richard, who did it as a theater director and as a writer and as an editor and a teacher. This is a shining example of how we we can live our lives. And be part of change. So thank you so much and thanks to everybody. And I hope in whatever way and form we'll see you soon again and or see you soon. And goodbye. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Stay all safe.