 everybody, back here to the Seagull Theatre Center. We are still thrilled to see live audiences. I know the world has moved on and it's an old hat, but we only opened basically in June. The Graduate Center was closed and we had to rebuild. So it's a great pleasure every evening for us to have with us a live audience, especially if it's about an artist. And that's a great one, as we are celebrating today. Coltés, Bernamarie Coltés, a fantastic European playwright, a French playwright. Many say the most significant one towards the end of the 20th century in France and that does say a lot. So we are honored to present some of his work. We actually published a book, The Seven Plays in New American Translation, not British, but American translations. And Amin Afani, our great colleague, he also at the Graduate Center and in the CUNY System at Lehman College spearheaded it. We collaborated it and so we are the publisher and we also think about maybe there's a way to do these plays which we feel are so significant and actually grew. There's some work of artists that grows like Simone, Nina Simone's work, you know, people say. Although something gets bigger, it gets more important and nobody knows why. And he had Sola's music, you know, he said listen to it even a bit more, even so he was known. But right now we also feel he had something to say, had a very strong connection to New York City. We will learn about it more. So welcome everybody for taking time. We also welcome our viewers on HowlRound. The evening is live streamed on HowlRound TV, a national non-profit theater platform that has supported us for a very long time and we are thrilled. So this also has a slightly larger audience than he in the room. And actually through this it's also a global audience. We have great people here, the French Cultural Services, Diane, Louise, Nicole, we have Marion Chevar, Jonah Boca, Dan Rothenberg, so and many other colleagues, Thomas and Claudia and Christina. So many here. So really thank you for coming and celebrating this work for us. Now we're going to start. So if you have a cell phone you also take it out and make sure it is. I'll do the same. It never really rings at the Segal Center at any event. So it's really true. So this will be good. If it continues, the structure of the evening will be, we will see two short excerpts but also not too short of two plays. I mean we'll tell a little bit more about them and then we will sit together and talk with the translator, the artist and whoever them want to join in. Why should we listen to Coltas? Why is he important? And perhaps also hear your reaction towards. So now I would like introduce a great colleague of mine, great professor of theater. I mean come over here. I can give you my phone. And he worked many, many years to put this together. I think Marion also translated one of the plays in the collection. He translated this really big significant ones, the ones we also want to hear tonight. And he put the anthology together. So we worked on it for some while. So it's a great evening. We did a small presentation of it in Corona time also as the French cultural services. It was our first event after two years. I thought it was a beautiful one. But we are now happy to do the book celebration, our center. So Amin. So the first play, welcome everybody. The first play is a seminal monologue that Coltas wrote in 1977. It's a one sentence 60 page monologue. Yes, that's what it is. It's about a man that we see often, especially in New York City. It's a very New York play as is the second one. It's about a man who comes in the street and accosts you and asks you for money, for a cigarette, for a light, for a room for the night, for a beer, and ultimately for love. And it's a very powerful monologue. It changed quite, it changed theater, honestly. And people after this text wrote differently, tried to match that text. And we are very honored to have Ismael Conner, who is a master of Coltas, and who is going to give us the night just before the forest. Ismael? All the way to the hotel room, like my regular room where I lived, was all my little habits, which became a mirror in Coltas, but not in Coltas. And if all of a sudden, Coltas was someone who was in the inside of his house, it means he was there. Or in an apartment, just set up the way they liked it, like those with families inside of him. When I walked in there, I turned it into a hotel room just by living there. Me, because of all the habits. He's a huge, recent kind of product, like those in Coltas. He's an important person to me. A big fire place. A big furniture like he's never seen before. 100,000 years of old age. When I get in there, me, with nothing whatsoever, and in no time, I make you a room that looks like those in a hotel, where I live at home. I can disappear. I change the taste of everything. I did all those objects, no one ever notices, anywhere, just in Coltas. That special smell, it makes you feel like a foreigner. They never really think that they're really at home. I've ditched them all in old age with them. I'm like this. I don't like things that remind me that you're a foreigner, but still, I am really a bit of a foreigner. Many people think they're all crystal French. Can't even imagine, because they've never seen anybody watch a singling. Stuff for us, it's old habits. Fathers all need that. We're on from, we do this all the time. In me, I do it all the time after taking a piss. And when I was watching it a minute ago, like I always do, but I think downstairs, feeling all those fricks packed behind my back, I acted like I didn't understand. Like a complete foreigner. You can understand nothing, those fricks said in French, and I can hear them while I watch myself. How do you do that? Make your dean a living dream? Like I can understand nothing they said in me. I keep doing it, cool and all. Making these drinks for those French fricks to keep wondering packed behind my back in front of the scene. How do you make your zingling drink? Anyway, how can your zingling keep thermos? This is easy for me. I'm not completely from here. I'm sure you've noticed this. Those French fricks with your imagination got it right. And despite all this, I ran after you the moment I saw you from the street corner. Despite all the fricks left in the street and the cafe and the basins of the cafe here, everywhere. Despite the rain and the wet cold, I ran, not only for the room, not only for the part of the night that I need a room, but I ran, ran, ran. So that this time, running to the corner. Don't call me that. Am I scared yourself? Scared to grab you by the arm and run. My dear approaching brother, do nothing, brother. Nasty rain. Just nasty wind. It's fucking intersection. Something good is walking around here to life for you or for me, but I don't have any cigarettes. It wasn't even a completely forced smoke that I did. This is my unlike, brother. It's not smoke that's particularly expensive. Disease. Can I ask you for a cigarette, brother? I don't need a smoke. It will cost you nothing. You have to stop. No lights. No cigarettes. Brother, no money. Then you walk away. 20 bucks don't make a difference. Not tonight. That's enough to buy us here and coffee. Nothing to treat, brother. Instead of walking around in a strange light, it will cost you nothing that I've approached you. Maybe I have my way of approaching you, but in the end, it costs you nothing. I'm not talking about a room, brother. A room that's been the night, but it's in the night. You guys have their mouth shut. You walk away. Let's not talk about a room being, brother, but I have an idea to tell you. This doesn't make things easy. I'm not really looking for one. It's not really that, that. I just idea first. I must tell you, and me walking around in these strange things is no money. You know, I'm not taking that back. Not now. It's just a conversion session. It's not the money. It's not you or me that keeps us nailed to the ground. So me, I've got this idea, brother. It's for those like you that you need. No job. And I'm not really looking for one anymore. This is that telling a job of people like us who are outdoors with empty pockets. We don't carry a lot of weight. The slightest blow of wind would carry us away. No one could force us to stay on the thousands of stuff by tying us to it. A good blast of wind. And when we take off light, meaning without fixing things up, that's my idea. It's like it ain't a religion. It ain't something that you tell the people one way or another. And that's changed nothing. It ain't politics. It's definitely not a part of it. Nothing like that. But like you do. That know it all. That see it all. That let nothing escape them. And then to add my idea to this, there will be no room left. And it has nothing to do with that. No, my idea. It's not that at all. Don't worry, brother. It's for our own good. It's only for our own good. Because that's really what we need to defend ourselves. Right? But then let it still be. Maybe I'm the one who approached you. I'm the one who'd eat a room tonight. No, brother. I didn't say I did. I'm the one who asked what was in your life, but the one who approached us not always to be one. And I saw right away from there that didn't look very strong, walking around all wet, not very tough at all. While me, despite all this, I'm resourceful. And me, I recognize those who aren't very strong with one quick plan because of their gaze. Especially just the way that they walk those tiny steps, nervous, like you, with their backs, nervous, and the way that they move their shoulders, nervous, and something in their gaze that doesn't fool me, but their face, too, made a little line. Time to be the fucking thing for nervous, like you, something on the face that doesn't fool me. Almost nothing. Even when they walk around all swaggering, like pimps do, or pimps made of nerves, little pumps spread out, or who come straight from their mother. And the whole top, like this, all swaggering, like nothing's going on under the rain. But me, I see right away this kind of nervousness. The kind that nobody can hide. Because all that nervousness, it comes from the mother. Straight out. And their mother, those little pumps, they can't hide her away, no matter what they do. Me, instead, I'm like, blood. Hulk made of bones. Muscles. And all that comes from the father. Nerves have never bothered me, because my father is the opposite. He was a tough type. The type that never got his nerves tangled up, because his thinking's too much. Nothing disturbs him. A man made of bones. Muscles. A man of blood. People could have called him a terminator. And me, too, they could call me the terminator. And that really is why politics and the party, and the union that exists today in the top, in the army, which are all political, they're not what I want. All that's way to hang them up because of their head. And with their head, they throw you back to the factory. And me, the factory, nervous. Where is his microphone? Where is his microphone? Forgive me. Thank you. And thank you, Ismael. The second piece, I just wanted to, before I go to the second piece, I wanted to introduce also the stage director, Philippe Boulay, who came straight from Paris. And who knows Coltas? Who knows Coltas from a very long time ago, and his career has been very much defined by Coltas. The second piece with Ismael Eptekander and the legendary Tony Torn, that's indeed, it's called, is honestly, I am not exaggerating at all, is probably the most important play, French play, of the second part of the 20th century. It's called In the Solitude of Cotton Fields. Like the piece you heard before, this one also changed theater. This one guy did it twice. It's about an encounter that is not very dissimilar from the night just before the forest, is a client walking in the street at night and meeting a dealer who stops him in his path. And the dealer tries to peddle, sell something to the clients without ever telling what the product is. And the client who says, hey, I'm not here to buy anything is still very much there to get something. And the genius of this piece really is one of the most poetic pieces written for theater, but the genius of this piece is not just in what it says, but it's really also about what it doesn't say. And that's absence of meaning really kind of makes a very special relationship between these two characters. So if you can please welcome Tony Torn, Ismael, Anki O'Donnell. If you walk outside at this hour, and in this place, it is because you desire something you do not have. And that thing, me, I can provide it to you. And if I have been in this place long before you, and will be here long after you, and even at this hour when savage encounters between man and animals won't drive me away, it is because I have what is necessary to satisfy the desire that passes in front of me. And it is like a burden I must unload on whoever passes in front of me, man or animal. That is why I approach you. Despite the hour when ordinarily men and animals savagely pounce on each other, I approach you with open hands. My palms turn toward you with the humility of someone who offers faces someone who buys with the humility of someone who possesses facing someone who desires. And I see your desire like a light that turns on at the window at the very top of a building in a twilight. I approach you like that twilight approaches the first light, slowly, respectfully, almost affectionately, leaving down in the street the animals and the men who pull on their leashes and savagely show their teeth to one another. Not that I have guessed your desire, nor am I in a hurry to know. Because a customer's desire is the most melancholy thing which you covet like a little secret waiting to be pierced and you take your time to pierce it, like a gift wrapped up who string you take the time to untie. But then ever since I've come to this place all I have desired all the things that all the men and all the animals might desire at this hour of darkness which pulled them out of their homes despite the savage growls of unsatisfied animals and unsatisfied men. That's why I know better than a worried customer who for a time keeps his mystery to himself like a little virgin raised to be all for. That what you will ask for I already have it and that all you have to do without taking offense at the apparent injustice of being the one who asks facing the one who offers. Since there is no real injustice on this earth other than the injustice of the earth itself sterile from the cold or sterile from the heat and rarely fertile from the mild mix of the heat and the cold there is no injustice for someone who walks on the same parcel of the earth in the same cold or in the same mild mix and a man or an animal who can look another man or animal in the eye is his equal because they walk on the same fine line flat from latitude slaves to the same cold and to the same heat rich in the same way and in the same way poor and the only real boundary no matter how blurry is between the customer in the salesman both of whom possess desire and the object of desire empty full at the same time with an injustice smaller still than the injustice of being male or female among men or animals that is why I borrow humility for a time and lend you arrogance so we won't give the same appearance which is ineluctably is the same for you and for me so tell me melancholy virgin at this moment when men and animals quietly growl tell me the thing that you desire and that I can provide you and I'm almost affectionately perhaps with affection and then after feeling devoid and flattening the peaks within us we will walk away one from the other balanced on the thin and flat rope of our latitude satisfied amid men and animals dissatisfied with being man and dissatisfied with being animals but don't ask me to guess your desire in order to satisfy everyone who passes in front of me while I stand here I would need to enumerate everything in my possession and no doubt the time required for this enumeration would dry out my heart and wear thin your hope I don't walk in a certain place at a certain hour I walk period from one point to another for personal business conducted at those points and not along the path between them I don't know any twilight or any form of desire and I want to ignore the accidents on my path I was going from that lit window in my back that back up there to another lit window that other one out there in front of me following a very straight line that goes through you because you put yourself there on purpose and yet there is no way for someone who travels from a high point I know to another high point to avoid going down only to have to go back up again with the absurdity of two movements that cancel each other out and at the risk between them of treading on trash rowing out of the windows the higher one lives the healthier the air but the harder the fall and when the elevator leaves you down here it condemns you to walk amidst all the things nobody really wanted up there piles of rotting memories like at the restaurant when the waiter brings you the check and enumerates to your disgusted ears all the meals you started digesting a long time ago you know the darkness should have been thicker still so I wouldn't see your face only then perhaps I would have misunderstood the reason why you're here why you moved off your path to place yourself in mine and why I in turn moved off mine to a comedy yours what darkness could be so thick to make you look less dark than itself there is no moonless night that wouldn't look like noon if you walked into it and that noon makes it clear that it wasn't just the randomness of elevators that brought you down here but an inprescriptible law of gravity that is yours alone that you conspicuously carry on your shoulders like a bag that ties you down to this hour and to this place but you try to assess with a sigh the height of the buildings as to what I desire well if if there was any desire I could remember down here in this darkness of a twilight amidst growls of animals that don't ever show their tails other than the quite certain desire I have to see you rid yourself of humility and not offer me arrogance because if I have a weakness for arrogance I hate humility in myself and in others and this exchange it displeases me what I desire you certainly wouldn't have what I desire if I revealed it to you you would burn your face who would make you scream and pull your hands away and make you run off like a dog that runs so fast you don't even see its tail but no the turmoil of this place and the hour makes me doubt that I ever had any desire to recall no no even any offer to make and you'll have to move away so that I won't have to myself move off my axis cancel yourself because that light up there at the top of the building undisturbed continues to shine despite the approaching darkness it has a hole in the darkness like a lit match burning a hole into a piece of rag that tries to snuff it up you are right to think that I come down from nowhere and have no intention of going up but you would be wrong to believe that I feel any regret I steer clear of elevators like a dog steers clear of water not that their doors refuse to open for me or that I am repulsed by closing myself in them but moving elevators tickle me and make me lose my dignity and if I like to be tickled I like not to be tickled as soon as my dignity demands it there are elevators like some drugs too much of them makes you float never going up never coming down mistaking curves for straight lines freezing the fire at its core that said during the time that I've spent in this place I've learned to recognize those flames far away behind the windows that look like frozen like twilight during winter but if you just approach them gently perhaps affectionately you'll remember that no glimmer forever remains cold and my goal is not to shelter you from the wind and to dry up the humidity of the hour with the warmth of this because say what you will the line you walked in no matter how straight it was became crooked when you saw me I grasped the exact moment when you saw me by the exact moment your path became curved and not curved to get away from me but curved to come closer to me otherwise we would have never met and you would have gotten further away from me because you were walking with the speed of someone who goes from one point to another and I would have never caught up with you because I move only almost immovably with the gate of someone who doesn't go from one point to another but who stays on an invariable spot lying in wait for whomever passes in front of him and slightly alters his path and if I say to you that you made a curve no doubt you will claim that you moved off your path only to avoid me and then I will claim in turn that you moved only to get closer to me and surely it is because you never shifted from your path in the first place and that a line is straight only relative to a plane and that we move on two distinct planes and in the end what matters is the fact that you looked at me and that I caught that look or the other way around and from then no matter how absolute the line on which you moved became relative and complex neither straight nor curved but faithful well in any event I do not have for your pleasure any illicit desire my business I conducted at the accredited hours of daytime an accredited place to business lit by electric light maybe I am a whore if so my brawl is not of this world mine operates under legal light and closes his doors at night stamped by the law and lit by electric light because even sunlight isn't trustworthy and it shows complicity and what do you expect from a man who's every step is accredited and stamped and lawful and flooded with electric light in every corner and if I am here midcourse delayed suspended displaced offside off-life provisional practically absent so to speak not here because do you say of a man traveling across the Atlantic by plane that he's in green land at any given time and is he really or in the tumultuous part of the ocean and if I strayed off my path although the straight line connecting my point of origin to my point of departure had no reason become crooked all of a sudden I did so because you blocked my way while being full of illicit intentions and assumptions about me being full of illicit intentions but know that what I hate most in this world even more than illicit intentions even more than the illicit act itself is the look that someone gives you assuming that you are full of illicit intentions and so used to that not just the look itself so troubling and muddies the torrents of the mountains and you your look rises up the mud at the bottom of a glass of water but the sheer weight of your gaze violates my virginity my innocence turned guilty and the straight line supposed to bring me from one bright point to another bright point got twisted because of you the dark labyrinth and a dark territory where I have lost myself you're trying to slip a thorn underneath the saddle of my horse so he gets angry and loses control but if my horse is nervous and wild at times I hold him by a tight bridle so he doesn't lose control so easily a thorn is no blade and he knows the thickness of his skin if he could stand the itch that said who can really predict the temper of a horse sometimes he can take a needle in his flank sometimes a speck of dust under the harness makes him buck running circles throw his rider off his back no then if I speak to you at this hour in this way gently perhaps still with respect it is not the way you do by necessity your language shows your fear when that short and sharp foolish and flagrant like a child who is scared of a possible beating from his father me my language belongs to those who don't show themselves it's the language of this territory in this lapse of time where men pull on their leashes and pigs bang their heads against the fences me I hold my tongue by the bridle like a stallion so he won't jump on the mare because if I let the bridle go if I slightly distend it the pressure of my fingers in the traction of my arms my horse would throw me off toward the horizon with the violence of an Arab horse who catches the smell of the desert and then nothing can hold him back anymore that is why without knowing you I have treated you correctly from the start from the first step I took toward you a correct step humble and respectful without knowing if anything in you deserves respect without knowing anything about you and if the comparison between our two states allows me to be humble and you arrogant I let you have arrogance because of the hour of twilight when we approached each other because at the twilight hour when you approach to me direction is no longer mandatory and it is therefore necessary at this hour when nothing is mandatory anymore except savage encounters in the darkness and I could have fallen on you like a piece of rag falling on a candle flame I could have grabbed you by surprise by the collar of your shirt and this correction I offered you however both necessary and arbitrary binds you to me if only because I could have stepped on you out of pride like a boot on a dirty paper because I knew seeing our respective size which makes the main difference between us and at this hour in this place only size makes the difference and we both know which one of us is the boot and which the dirty paper if I did so know that I would have desired not to look at you a gaze wanders around sets on random things and believes it is free and neutral territory like a bee in a field of flowers like a cow's muzzle in an enclosed pasture but what can you do with your gaze looking at the sky makes me nostalgic daring at the ground makes me sad missing things and remembering that I don't have them both equally unbearable so I must look straight ahead at my own eye level no matter what ground I walk on at that moment that's why a moment ago when I was walking where I was walking and where I have now come to stop my eyes must have eventually landed on all things lying still or walking at the same level as me yet because of the laws of distance and perspective any man or animal is temporarily and approximately at the same level as me maybe you're right the only difference between us or the only injustice if you prefer is that one is vaguely afraid of a possible beating from the other and the only similarity or only justice if you prefer is the ignorance of the degree of reciprocity of our fear the degree of the future reality of those beatings and the respective degree of their violence as a result all we do is duplicate ordinary encounters between men and animals at all hours and in all places that are illicit and dark and invested by no law or electricity and that's why out of hatred of animals and out of hatred of men I choose the law and the electric light and I am right to think that all natural lights and all non-filtered air and unregulated seasonal temperatures make the world hazardous because there is no peace and no right in the natural elements there is no business in illicit business but only threats and escapes and beatings with nothing to buy and nothing to sell and no accepted currency and no price range only the darkness the darkness of men who approach each other and if you approached me it's because in the end you wanted to strike me and if I asked you why you wanted to strike me you would answer only I know why and it is for a secret reason you keep to yourself and there's certainly no need for me to know so I won't ask you anything do you talk to a tile that's about to fall from a roof and smash your skull it's like a bee landing on the wrong flower the muzzle of a cow about to graze on the other side of an electric fence you keep quiet you run away you regret you wait you do what you can senseless motives illicitness darkness I stepped into the stream of a stable where mysteries flow like animal wastes and those mysteries and this darkness are yours and they dictate the rule that when two men meet one must always choose to be the one who strikes first and without a doubt at this hour and in these places one must approach any man or animal who comes in sight and one must strike first and then say I don't know if it was your intention to strike me for some senseless and mysterious reason with the interior bed you wouldn't even be necessary to share with me but be that as it may I preferred to do it first and my reason however senseless at least is no secret because of my presence and yours and the accidental meeting of our eyes I sensed the floating possibility that you might strike me first and I preferred to be the falling tile rather than the skull the electric fence rather than the cow's muzzle at the very least if it were true that you the salesman own merchandise so mysterious that you refuse to show them to me or let me guess what they are and that I the buyer have a desire so secret that even I am not aware of it and in order for me to see that I have one I would need to I would need to scratch my memory like a memory like a scab and make it bleed if that is true why do you keep your merchandise to yourself now that I have stopped now that I am here now that I am waiting it's like a big sealed bag that you carry over your shoulders like an ungraspable law of gravity that wouldn't exist and could only be by conforming to the shape of a desire like like those doorman at the striptease clubs who catch you by the elbow when you go home at night and whisper into your ear she's here but if you showed them to me if you gave a name to your offer listed or illicit goods but named and therefore submitted to judgment at the very least if you named them for me I would be able to say no and I would stop feeling like a shaken tree rattled to its roots by an unpredictable wind because I know how to say no and I like saying no I am able to blow you away with my nose and make you discover all the ways there are to say no which begin with all the ways they are to say yes like the coquettes you know trying to trying on all the dresses and all the shoes only to buy nothing in the end and the pleasure they find in trying them on only comes from the pleasure they have in refusing them all make up your mind show yourself are you the brute stumping on the pavement or are you a businessman if so why are you merchandise out first and then won't take the time to look them over it is because I want to be a businessman and no brute but a real businessman that I won't tell you what I possess or offer because I cannot suffer a refusal which is the one thing in the world a businessman dreads most since it is a weapon that he himself does not possess so I've never learned to say no no I don't want to learn it but all the kinds of yes I know them yes wait a little wait a lot wait with me and eternity I have it I will have it I had it will have it again I never had it but I will have it for you and if someone comes and says let's imagine I confess to a desire and you have nothing to satisfy it I will say I have what it takes to satisfy it and if someone says still imagine that you don't have it even while imagining it I still have it and if someone says let's agree that in the end my desire is so that you absolutely wouldn't even want to have the slightest idea of what it takes to satisfy it while I wouldn't even want this despite everything I have what it takes still but the more a salesman is decent the more the buyer is deviant all a salesman wants us to satisfy a desire he doesn't already know while the buyer always trades his desire for the primary satisfaction of refusing what is offered to him his unspoken desire is elated by the refusal and he gives up on his desire for the pleasure of humiliating the salesman but I am not the kind of businessman who shows the price tag to satisfy his client's inclination for anger and indignation I am not here to give pleasure instead I am here to fill the void of desire we call and force it to have a name drag it out to open ground and give it shape and weight along with the necessary cruelty involved in giving shape and weight to desire because I see yours like saliva spilling out the corner of your lips before you swallow it back in and I'll wait for it to spill out over your chin or wait for you to spit and only then I will hand you a tissue to wipe yourself clean because if I hand it to you too soon I know you would refuse it for me and that is the sort of refusal I don't care to suffer what every man on every animal dreads at this point when men walk at the same level as animals and when every animal walks at the same level as every man it isn't the suffering itself because suffering can be measured and his ability to inflict suffering can be measured what he fears more than anything it is the strangeness of suffering and being forced to endure a suffering that is unfamiliar to him and so the distance that will always keep brutes away from the young ladies who populate the world does not come from the respective assessment of their strengths because then the world will simply be divided between brutes and young ladies and every brute would jump on every young lady and the world would be simple but what keeps the brute away from the young lady and will keep him away for eternities is the infinite mystery and the infinite strangeness of the weapons like those little spray bottles that young ladies keep in their purses that project liquid in the eyes of the brutes and make them cry and suddenly brutes are crying in front of young ladies all dignity banished no longer a man or animal turned into nothing only tears of shame shed over a field that's why Brutes and young ladies fear each other and are squarely and equally wary of each other because we only inflict the suffering we can endure ourselves and we only fear suffering that we can't inflict ourselves on others so don't hold back go ahead tell me the object of your fever of your gaze upon me the reason and if it is a matter of not wounding your pride and say it like you would to a tree or in front of a prison wall or in the solitude of a cotton field where you walk naked at night tell it to me without even looking at me because the only real cruelty of this twilight hour where we stand is not that one man wounds the other maims him tortures him severs his limbs and his head or even makes him cry the true and terrible cruelty is the cruelty of a man or animal who makes another man or animal incomplete who interrupts him like an ellipsis in the middle of a sentence who turns away despite setting his eyes on him who turns the animal or the man into an error of his gaze an error of his judgment an error like a letter you started but crumpled into a ball right after writing the date so wow we we do many readings here but i have to say this was a great one another round of applause really wow first of all again thank you for philip flying in from paris he could make it happen uh and combine it for ishmael to fly in from atalanta um thank you for doing this so with the idea that can be done i also want to acknowledge jim fletcher is here in the audience so thank you for coming um and um and uh maybe um let's uh let's sort of maybe we have a few comments from the audience two or three uh who has a reaction i want to say something of course um my name is nicole berman bloom uh i used to work with the uh vila albertine french cultural services so i have seen um the the approach the cultist approach uh year after year with um marion you uh i mean uh and yes i have one question i have many questions uh as usual um um and one is for amin for the first uh for the night the word the word brother is it kamerad it is okay can you speak of the choice of brother versus kamerad absolutely thank you for this question um there are many many challenges to um translating lanoui of course the rhythm the musicality but there is one somewhat classical challenge with the stakes which is the period where it comes from and where i we i translated for which is for american audiences in american language especially it was originally translated in atalanta georgia um for that for a smile um the transition to in kama the value of the word kamerad in lanoui just i want to formulate the night just before the forest is one of bonding it's one of bonding within the context of sandhika unions in the communism period in the there was a very strong communist culture life there and um translating that word as kamerad kamerad here in the 21st century us has a highly different value highly different value the word brother translates uh translates that bonds quite a bit here in the us but it also has a um a very special um meaning in cultists as corpus in itself which is it describes exactly what kamerad does in that text which is a bond between two people but that bond at the same time is a threat of violence and fraternity is a very specific kind of word has a specific meaning in good this that's why i applied it here maybe two one two more two comments or yeah hi there my name is westley uh my question is i'm not sure who this is uh best directed towards but uh the play has a very how to play high literary register uh vary the rhythms the uh repetitions they're all over uh my question is about grounding the work within a reality how do you start to piece that together because it's clear that we're dealing with at the same time real people and also very abstract circumstances so how do you round this dialogue into a uh motivated reality maybe to philip okay i'm going to try to answer but uh my english is not so good but i do my best it's a very good it's a very good and very difficult question for my experience it seems that um maybe we are wrong when we are doing separation between reality and ideas i mean in acting and as well in directing with display writer because each word is a body so it means it's something very concrete and very real in fact even the ideas can be real even when the people the the dealer or the client don't speak they are still real in the listening in the silence you know we used to speak very often about the silence in the checkoff place i never heard anybody speaking about the silence is about coltis never but this is not monologue it's a real and pure dialogue so we have to listen at the people the character who doesn't speak and if we think about that it means ideas and concrete situation what is the situation situation is when you have a conflict if not we don't have any situation and they are all the time in conflict so what does it mean it means that we don't have to think about that we have to believe to trust it what is said and when we read the text it seems very complex but if we don't forget that it's for speaking for the it's like a oral tradition it's like a gospel when you read the gospel it's very poor but when we hear the gospel suddenly it's very powerful it's like a prayer you know so it's i i i try to answer you but i think we don't have to think how we are used to think in acting i want to hear what ishmael says about being grounded because so grounded in this language i think i think i have my i think my mic's still on yeah is it okay i think a part of it is a one large part is that so i i try to strip away any sort of artifice and what i mean by that this isn't two i don't know archetypes this isn't two characters and they're it's like a sitcom turning on law and order and they're like just the facts and it's just it's it's it's really it's what you saw tonight is it's really me and telling me going at one another in the best way we can i just met him recently and so this is our you got to witness our violent reaction our violent interaction with one another in real time he says things and it's it's it's hilarious or he says things that that make me think with even within the the language of the text and so i don't we don't have to we're we're grounded because that's what it is all this thing is about the desire and about the deal and but the deal is whether it's the god or whether it's to the insect it's all we do is a deal we have the deal i have the deal i'm the i'm the dealer to you right now as the clients and i'm trying to get you to tell me what your desire is so i can try to fulfill the desire and so if it's that then you don't have any choice but to be grounded in something because i'm not trying to become someone else and i'm not trying to portray or demonstrate a thing um uh so yeah it's so it's it's always i don't know like real stakes in that way it's something that are where it's given circumstances but the circumstances in that way is is is always real because we're always dealing i guess yeah tony uh to your question um we know you're from your work with rigid form and razor abdu and the great new york theater artist but how did it feel for you how did how did you explain i'm kind of like i'm i'm kind of like the junior member of this group in terms of my relationship with coltas i'm actually the person who enters me with to coltas it's interesting it's dan rutherburg over there we were working on um super training about five years ago which was a piece without text one day just as a change it pays he said why don't you guys read this we've got blew my mind so um it's kind of exciting to uh get another chance to wrestle with material um but it's like yeah it's when you look at the pages you look at the chunks of text and they're incredibly long arias of language and it seems to be a argument of that abstract things but when actually doing it and and working with ishmael and working with the writer and director here of this this version it really boils down to really really simple relationship conflict so it really for me it was it felt very very easy to ground it in um all the stuff you an actor just wants out of a text to be able to activate that conflict so um it's you know and the fascinating thing was what uh philly was talking about was the silences because what i felt that every time even when every time i spoke i was like trying to peacock myself up trying to give myself strength to like rule this encounter but every time i was listening i felt like my character was completely giving himself over to the other and so that push and pull between losing myself and then trying to regain myself when i was back in sort of the driver's seat of having the language was for me just an extremely exciting place to be as an actor so you know it's not just literary thing it's like there are motors within the language that are really really useful for the act can i add just something about the question of nicole because i think it was a very good comment picked a toreador because uh from from for me as a french when i'm coming here in in in u.s the difference between camarade and waters it's like a feedback about something we which is course differently from this side of the the ocean compared to europe and it's about it's difficult to explain but let's say i will try to remember to to resume in europe we have a let's say like something like an impense social and thinking something like this which is very close to their and thinking the and the where shall i'm thinking uh l'impensé racial and we never question that the articulation between these two big topics in history c'est très recent it's very recent and i think here is different so the it's because these the people in america have begun before something that we didn't do in europe that i mean have the space to use the the word water you follow me nicole it's let's let's because we're in new york in the u.s and especially in in the solitude how does race suddenly resonate here among the audience and it's something that suddenly was a little bit new for me now in 2023 which was not when i saw the first the first time was in fact in the 80s patrice shero staging um so what marion did also and another one for women solitude was between two women um so so it's a question for for you all and for amin who translated about race specifically in solitude and also this resonance of the cotton field that there's a big context behind the notion of race in solitude in particular because that's the play that may hold this breakup with shero breakup with shero because at the first two two times that shero stage solitude the dealer was shero was a very famous important european director of in france who was they were he was he basically introduced coltas to the world and and he was very faithful to shero but coltas was very upset when he chose a white person as in himself shero actually was himself playing the the dealer to play the and the reason was that coltas wanted him to be black there's a line that you all heard uh that the client says that if you walk into a night the night would look like like a noon and that's the hence that the client and the dealer is black but shero like jane a shero i'm sorry coltas like jane coltas says that you know all in in the audience whatever the whatever play i write there should always be one black person uh and even if there's no black person they should make a dummy black and put it there because it's addressed to uh to the minorities it's addressed to the minorities to he talks a lot about the blood of the arab people or the black people of france and that's the new blood that makes the new france and it is true that's the third production of shero that made solitude very famous in which he himself played the dealer uh he put the accent on the homo eroticism between the characters and it was it was a beautiful play but it certainly most certainly was not faithful to the at least intention of original intention of coltas the subject kind of veered off but i wanted to say is mal really i loved um i think the topic came up that you had this sort of neutrality in your delivery which i thought was brilliant because the words are so strong and powerful and um you know the way you just you know set the words with your intention to get you know to convince your counterpart and i just thought it was very powerful and a really beautiful choice and i'm not i'm not an actor but i'm you know just out of curiosity when you um read the script do you eventually develop a personality because do you inject your own you know because because we're not neutral right so your your personality does it go into this darkness that you represent or how do you work with it well it is certainly i'm all things at once and what i mean by that is that i there's what is beautiful about me and there is what is ugly about me what is virtuous about me and what is vile and and you know about me i'm all of it at once and i don't it's and i i embrace it in fact uh so that i can i don't know to try to realize who i am as the sort of acne of my of my humanity of my evolution and so it's it's but further more to that point it's like i for me it's like a while i'm wearing this t-shirt of uh of christopher wallis of the notorious bi g uh well i'm at my friend's house uh in brooklyn is brooklyn in the house and so it's it's all i can hear when doing koltes and doing work uh that is that is musical like this all i can hear is that sort of language so when i hear you know you were turning the street corner when i saw you when i hear if you walk outside at this hour and in this place what what i truly hear is uh uh uh uh your talk is senseless actor knee chiropractor for crack jaw yes i've rocked your chatterbox dangerous you're not i guess down twist your body round and round upside down and it's the same thing and so we want to elevate theater like shakespeare and and but koltes in this instance and elevated be like no it's it's uh and we speak about it like this and this is like and it's not that in fact especially koltes is in the gutter like like biggie and so it's it's it's that musicality there's a it's arrows all we did were arrows at one another loads arrow up that's why i love when he's like you know the doc you stir up mud in a bottom of a glass of water and i walk in and i walk in and you make you make darkness look like high noon and i have to stifle laughs because that's fucking funny also and this is another thing about it is this this this notion of uh this is this is this is it's highly comedic and i have to fight the urge to make it up and it's rotten everything is serious and heavy and this is like oh that is funny to say these sorts of things that's that's hilarious you stir mud up at the bottom of a glass of water that is funny so a long way around to answer your your your your forward question but it's yeah it's it's it's that i'm i'm thank you i mean tell us a little bit about koltes and new york how long do we have uh yeah koltes discovered new york when uh he was first traveling to kebek when he was 20 he just spent a few hours transiting and he was just shocked and he says that he didn't have time to discover paris he just went straight to new york and he went to kebek and he he hacked all the way back to new york just to see it again and then he writes in his letters that you know new york is where he belongs and that's the place where he will always come back and the reason is um that's i have so many codes in my head that he describes new york as being the bag a bag where they put everybody who doesn't belong anywhere and uh he himself most certainly didn't belong didn't feel like belonging in france he had a deep hatred really uh for his um country of origin but also town of origin which was uh on the northeast uh mess in loren parts that was in his childhood um the french military bombed arab cafes during the algerian wars he was just discussed that he fled he keeps repeating that new york the uh is very unique in that sense in that sense of diversity but then there's also of course the uh he was in new york at the moment of the gay liberation movement he participated not proactively i must say he didn't proactively participate but he was among the and those people on the peers on the west peers abandoned west peers are very close to tony's house back then um where the gay population thrived really and he thrived in his letters he says uh the peter rabid was was was a gay bar he says i prefer it to my bed i prefer it to my mother's belly um so these the second priest in the solitude of cotton field and west pier um that's my own right here um also also stay uh translated um these are two plays inspired by new york he says that new york is the place for writing theater because of those improbable encounters that we saw in solitude those encounters between people that are incompatible with each other but that improbability incompatibility makes something happen that doesn't happen in the homogeneity for example of friends um he's but then he also says that he doesn't have many good things to say about american theater back then at least that's you know um new york is the place for writing theater but not for playing making theater at least his theater um so yes new york is the place where he feels solitude being in crowds you know jeanet famously said that solitude in prison was the condition for writing for him he says that solitude and kotesa solitude in crowds is the place for me to write yeah yeah yeah um i don't know whoever of you knows robot lines from the ohio theater kotesa i think lived for a while in his apartment so there's a very strong connection at kotesh is a character in one of his plays so there's a very strong connection before we come to some more questions um do those play work let's say tomorrow someone puts them up what do you feel but as an honest is that does it capture something still how old are the plays so uh the night just before the force is 77 and uh solitude is 86 so 40 years plus what do you all think i'm gonna try to be very actual very often i heard people working in theater they say no no it's over in our kotes and if you ask them some question you can see that they didn't read them so it's as usual you know in a way it's for me it's not a surprise but um i work called i made i made the three times in in the solitude two in france one in portugal i made the two times uh the night one the second one with you it's mainly atlanta and mess and the other one in oncara i made black battle with dogs in servador in brazil uh now i'm in new york what i mean is that it's very strange because as usual french people doesn't recognize what's happening in when some somebody has journey it's the same with the kotes it doesn't matter because all the other countries get him and continue to get him you know the the the best ones in france is the they are not recognized very often he takes much more long time and we forget it we we are very the french people are hurrying to forget about those important figures oh well i mean i can't i moves in i can't make a value judger from the outside inside it was one of the most thrilling experiences i've had in a while to do this text with ishmael so like for me yeah sure bring it please i think you know being in new york but we were talking about the fact that at the heart there is a sort of i said well this you know there is a sort of possibility that the unspoken of desire is specifically sexual and i was talking about when i worked with res abdoe an artist who i feel has some sort of energetic relationships with coltas and back when we were working on father was a peculiar man in the meatpacking district in 1990 that's back when these peers were still there they've all the sites of all these cruising areas where coltas was inspired to write this play have all been destroyed but it's you know the history is still there and uh you know uh that wasn't my thinking but it was something that i was aware of and i was aware of the spaces and the fact that these mysterious meetings were happening in there even as a child as a young child playing on the highline as a like 15 year old back when it was just wild space so for me specifically now as a new yorker i feel the um that energy that history of new york being very much part of this play so i'm interested as a new yorker in this play in the context of its uh inspiration from that vanished world that's still very much kind of spiritually there spiritually present yeah because i think in fact so for me a lot of these a lot of coltas is about sensuality which includes sexuality but it but absolutely sensuality and it's about being inside one's body truly inhabiting one's body and a lot of times in uh so as an actor it's like the french actors i come across just as a as a general rule the french actors that i come across is like so they're here and they have a rich concentration on language and it's beautiful but they are absolutely not in their bodies american actors it's not here they're in their bodies but even that is sort of a not really we give a show about being in our bodies and everything's big and we're all over the place and people i think we sort of mistake that sort of thing for like once being grounded and this is come you know taking workshops from marine flaming and haverages destroy me because i'm absolutely not in my body and so it's it's it's coltas addresses all that all this stuff about the sensuality and putting us up the face making us face that notion of of of raw sensuality of of of of what it is to desire uh it's about to say love but if he it's not even about love he says all the time that there is no love there is no love uh but about desire i'm really fascinated about this thing of desire and for for those of us who are like the desires wide open for everyone to see uh like an open book and for those of us who are more reserved and it's like no i don't do those sorts of things or i don't feel those certain things or i don't say that certain thing and it's just like i'm that collision it's like i'm vastly it's like because i'm i'm trying to be i'm not saying i've reached the the the the the acme of it but i'm i'm wide fucking open to do anything of course i am i have to be it's like not as an actor but as a human being otherwise it's just like oh god i'm not in my body i'm not alive in that way and maybe two three more things one two and a third third yeah so i'm sorry no no no it's to be a recording it was just introduce yourself thank you for acknowledging that by the way um and i think you've all touched on how visceral this work is on every plane i was going to share thanks to frank france and the united states preserve their catalog in very different ways but they have the same thing at stake they also fund culture in different ways so what is the role of the translator the director and the players in preserving the work do you um just quickly as as the translator answering your question um i think that's the relationship of the translator with cortis is the same of the that's ismael was describing from the actor to to call this is that i i'm not a translator i translate cortis i don't translate for the sake of it and the reason for that is that i have a i feel because of my background and we were all talking about our childhoods and how coming from very different places we meet at the same place through cortis it's a very intimate relationship um and and the cortis community and i know it's quite well throughout the world is a very tight one because we all see it and we all feel it and it's really the labor of love beyond archive and beyond scholarship although you know the book that we made is supposed to help scholarship is supposed to kind of launch a new movement but that all comes from that's passion really of love um that's really what i wanted to say no i was thinking that um when you came from i i run you were in chung wil chung wil is 35 kilometers from the native city of cortis i was born in mess the native city of cortis and um i decided to do theater because my my mother had a beach of angela davis you know he was a activist to get free angela davis in 68 and i was one year old and what it was her harm so i for me um africa meant a lot and for cortis as well his father was in the army during the colonial war and i think this historical past when you are living in east of france when amin said that the beginning when he introduced the playboy saying that it was a military city when military family were you have to imagine what does it mean for the body and it makes the link with what ismael said um in black battle with dog albury he's looking for the body of her border her border so for all that reasons that we maybe are not all the time conscious of that but it's there is my part it's my history as well for that reason i'm in that team they are points they are real friends i know tony since last week and he's my real friend i know him since 15 years i know he's been since 12 years and we are very linked you know it's a team it's like jazz player translator directing actors yes but doing something like jazz players and how long have you been working with cortis in atlanta uh since 2000 yeah uh with working with uh i was introduced to it by uh prince director at the uh tiazca national botania name is uh artua nazizia and uh that's how i was introduced into colt with uh into cortis's world and then um uh uh in 2006 was doing black battles with dogs at uh festival davignon and that's how i met nicole and just sitting around the table uh said i got this idea i'm going to go up to the paris meet france wall i want to translate just one play i want to do it in the metro station in atlanta and all that stuff went up there uh but before i went up we were having dinner and he calls that i can help you with this thing i just met her that evening yes let's go to the next question sure thank you uh hi uh my name is k i'm a student at the graduate center uh and have enjoyed taking classes with i mean um and i was really thrilled by your remark about uh the sensuality of colt as and i wondered about the connection that that might have in all of your experiences also with the concept we've already touched on of the orality of both the piece and of theater as a necessarily aural it must be heard it's about the pleasure of hearing things in certain ways and so i was wondering on your end as the translator where there's certain killed darlings you had to make in the pleasurable sounds that were in the french were the things that you were especially pleased with in your translation into english for the sound um and for you both getting to you know speak it and and embody it where there are things that were especially moving in the language um for that kind of aesthetic or sensual nature um so thank you for the question nice to meet again um i believe that's uh actors can speak to this as a translator as a writer uh because again colt as himself was a translator and he said that he learned writing through translating and that's why i started translating it really uh you enter the sensuality of the text through the rhythm and the musicality of it and he actually speaks of it but especially when he speaks about translation but also writing itself that there's a there's a very clear difference between you know signification of words and the relationship of words in their musicality and that what he wants and what he looks for is that musicality that really kind of wakes something in the body and uh ismael was you know going the arches and the arrows and that's the rhythm and it's very physical it's very physical and it gives you chill when you watch them do it it gives me chill just by reading it it gives me an enormous physical pleasure just translating this because he translates the sensuality and uh into the rhythm and the musicality of those texts and he has very specific method he has a method for doing this and as long as you actually read him a lot and understand how he works and how he writes uh you understand yeah it makes sense and it's a very signature style it's a very signature style i can talk about this in details which i probably don't think we have the time i don't have the time but uh but i think that yeah the sensuality is absolutely there and comes first in through the rhythm of the musicality anybody wants to or maybe we go to last question before we have a little reception you know so here we go my name is lily and uh my question is um who is um who is the audience for solitude who is this meant for it's a half an hour play so it cannot be like in a commercial theater cannot be on Broadway or Broadway just not long after our excerpt i i see but how long is the play then yeah so our 20 minutes how uh the question is for director you said the you directed it in three countries how many runs each time it was how many performances and was it the sold out house who is going to see this uh who is gonna pay the money and then walk out and then be impressed and keep thinking about the play because to me like the great work of art if i go see a play or an opera i'm going to listen to a symphony and if i cannot fall asleep at night it means it made an effect on me and for this play i think it's so important that acting obviously and was superb acting today but tell me who goes to the though this place i remember it was all the time sold out and i saw the public i i met was french turkish or to geish mozambique or zillion with this play and there were there were quite we moved um i'm used to to work with for public for audience who don't go don't we are not used to go to the theater for example when we did in the solitude i did as well taba taba and taba taba if i made it it was to go outside of the theater in the popular area of the cities in favelas for example in voizel or in saint sardony in the suburbs in in paris a night tree you know that kind of territories and it was the same uh when we did it in kinshasa in kongu the people go get it get it even the people didn't speak quench because i just speak lingala but i got the situation you know so i think we can play courtes everywhere in sure it's different in every country i think we gonna we have to come to an end and you can maybe ask and the party how many and how much the ticket costs um but uh maybe just as the very last what are you guys working on in a very few sentences we start with you um what what what are your pro project at the moment what are you doing yeah yeah personally what are your new work projects okay yes um well i just finished my academic book which is a big relief now i look on okay yes it's on theory and um the theory of theater and i can honestly a psychotic theory and a lot of post very boring boring yes chromatic more more exciting project that i have is with philip he's working on staging one of my plays one of my new plays that is very much very very very much inspired by kothos himself uh kothes taught me so much and that's um i i he just taught me to love writing so that's it uh i'll give you this so i'm at the prayer with festival fall i did work in progress of spider rabbit maga makler text a solar piece that i did with uh my long time collaborator the director den safer we're looking to continue with that and i would like to continue working on this thank you very much i would like to continue to work with this team here in new york in atlanta and in all those countries in america please any projects in europe i'm working on my first uh novel i just finally just got my uh got an agent so i'm working on my first novel it's a coming of age story loosely based on uh on my life but instead of from my perspective from uh all the people involved in my life even peripherally and how they observe me so it's uh so i'm working on that right now amazing and thank you all for coming did you what tony said that that's correct yeah okay so a big applause thank you to everybody and thank you for coming and stay for a little reception thank you thanks to our viewers and howl run and to our all-round vj and emily's thank you