 Segal Theatre Center in New York in Midtown Manhattan. It's a beautiful day actually. It's cold, but the sun is shining and the sky is blue. And I think the reason is because we are getting together today on this, as we say, planetary event to celebrate and to hear from the Segal Center award winners of the civic engagement in the arts. Anything we have learned in the last year is that we have to listen better, that we have to forge connections and we have to leave traces. We have to go beyond what we have done before and we have to reinvent what we do. And with us we have great theatre artists, great artists, great human beings also who have made a contribution that we think is extraordinary. Like everyone, we did over 200 talks with 300 artists and everybody, one of them could be with us, but we thought these projects speak for many, many others. And it's a great, great, great honor for us to have these shining, brilliant people with us today. But what we really want to know is what they were thinking when they created the project, what impact did it have on their work and what are they working on now? The Segal Awards had been established to really support New York artists or people who support the arts and who think beyond their very own small black box theatre. But we thought in this time of Corona and in this global planetary crisis which we are in and we have to work beyond our borders and learn and listen and these people found something and I think we should listen to it. So with us is Tanvi Shah from India. There is Pamela Villoresi from Palermo in Italy. Hope Iseda from Rwanda. And Katanio here from New York City. Milo Rao from, it's in Ghend, but from Switzerland. Gris Myers here in New York City. Thomas Oberhander in Berlin. Eileen Banken and Kasia Wojcik. If I say that right, in Ghend also Belgium. Abhishek Majumdar in India. Leslie Upo from Hungary. And we are connecting to two more, Kiril Serebrenikov, the great Russian director will join us. And also Emmanuel de Massimoitin from the Teatre de la Ville. So welcome everybody. It's a great day for us for the Segal Center. We're very proud. It's maybe the biggest event of the year for us and still at the very, very beginning. So I would like to start maybe with Hope. Where are you? What time is it? And tell us a little bit about your project. What has it changed? What has it changed in your work? And what are you working on now? Okay, so I'm seated right here in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. And it's 7 p.m., three minutes past 7 p.m. And yeah, the project for me, it was a great challenge because for me it was just listening and following the inner child within and just throwing a stone in the sea and then it had ripple effects. So I had no idea that it was going to build a very wide community globally. So for me that was one really big impact it had. Our community became bigger and it has now really, it is helping us, you know, move on to the next phase of after corona because if you had paused for two years and then you wake up to start to be really hard. So for me, the project is like a bridge from before corona, before COVID-19 to post COVID-19, otherwise it means if posing for two years would have really been very, very hard. So for me the impact right now that I feel like is we have to embrace the hybrid format because we cannot abandon our online audience. So we have the physical audience and then we have an online audience. Every event you are going to be doing has to embrace both audiences because we love them both. So we need to like start catering for both and focusing on these two different communities. So which when you imagine them becomes one global beautiful community. Yeah, it's a great work. It was the Ubumuntu Arts Festival, also daily programming over months, reaching out to hundreds of artists. It is just, I think it was extraordinary. Hope if it's okay. We're going to go to our next speaker. So maybe Laszlo, tell us a little bit about the students and faculty of the free SCFE Society in Budapest. Thank you very much. And strangely enough, we are in Ruranda time. So it's 7 pm in Hungary, although we are very, very far away. The University of Tiller and Film was attacked by the government forced transformation and the faculty and the students put up a fight. Eventually the faculty members resigned and occupied the buildings of the University and kept it under the locate. And they created wonderful, wonderful events. And it's become, it had become a huge movement followed by a lot of Hungarian civilians, etc, etc. Eventually, about half of the faculty and the students left the institution and reformed free society. And with the help of European universities, now we created this program, we call emergency access. So the old teachers could go on teaching the old students and the students will get their diplomas in European cities, at European universities. And I think this really is a unique kind of example of collaboration between several countries and several institutions. I'm very, very grateful we got so far, although I hate the original events, but I'm very proud of the outcome of this whole thing. Yeah. And as a reminder, they did the occupation in the time of the second wave, there was no vaccination. They put their life on yeah. And it was the biggest civil rights movement against Orban and his regime in Hungary. And it started at a university. So I think that is truly extraordinary. So let's move to India. Abhishek and Tanvi, tell us a little bit about your project. What impact did it have? And where are you now? Maybe Abhishek, we start with you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Frank. I'm actually right now, not in India. Right now I'm in Abu Dhabi in the UAE as I teach here at the New York University. And we start classes day after. So right now, what's really on my mind is how to get started again online, since we had moved offline last week, last semester. So there's, I think as an as a teacher, there's always this crisis of, you know, by the time you figure out online, you go back offline. And by the time you figure that out, you're online. As far as the project is concerned that you're referring to, well, I suppose our project, my project in Bangalore and Thandiz in Bombay was really about survival. It was about how will people eat? How will they have oxygen? It was that kind of very fundamental stuff, but very important at that stage. I think it has moved in many ways by now, because we don't have that immediate crisis. But the crisis itself has opened up to, you know, the enormous inequalities that exist around us and for us to recognize that these inequalities can surface in our society at any point of time. Like it's this, it's way for thin, the layer that is guarding us. And I suppose that's what, you know, the role of our artists as well. It is to keep prodding that false security of a society. And just to let people know, Abhishek and his team for months stayed up night after night, after a day's work, called people in rural villages who had no internet, who had no access. They bought old oxygen machines, repaired them, put them together, secured. I remember one evening, he said, I have to bring out some food. I have 2,000 people on my list. I don't even know where to go. And I said, when I hang up with you, I have over 100 people, our team, we'll have to call a team, actually, theater people, but also others. But he was a key organizer. So this is a sensation next to his great work. Tanvi, tell us a little bit about the HowlRound and what, if it had an impact and if there were results coming out of that. Thank you, Frank. So the HowlRound for India was a 24-hour Long Theater marathon. A lot of people on this call were part of that, were speakers in it. There were 105 speakers from 31 countries who engaged in a 24-hour constant conversation to speak about their personal and political experiences of the pandemic. And I was roped into this project by Abhishek as a sort of extension of our relief work and to recognize the work that theater makers had put in as caregivers, as fundraisers, as campaigners, as relief workers, as dissenters, and of course as artists through the pandemic. It was arousing 24 hours. We were surrounded by anthropologists and folk artists and scholars and people's poets who were speaking truth to power and politicizing the pandemic. And the idea behind this 24-hour conversation and the magnitude of it was to pay tribute to the relief workers and the healthcare workers who were staying up nights and days and looking for the community. It was amazing. Yeah, it was a great event and I was lucky to be part of it. Let's move on to Chris. We have Chris Myers here. He's actually from New York City and Chris, our representatives here from the U.S. when everybody couldn't go out work and rehearse and act. Chris Meyer was a very successful great actor here in New York City, OB Award winner for Brandon Jacob Jencox's play, Up to Room, which we actually held the very first reading once at our Segal Center. He did something unusual. He created an online class about anti-capitalism for artists and developed a five week schedule and ran that. So he thought we have to read, study, and prepare. Chris, what impact did it have? Yeah, I mean the impacts are still being rendered visible. I think everything started because I think artists, especially in the beginning of the pandemic, were called to conversations around the importance of feminism and anti-racism, environmental justice, etc. But I found that a class analysis was missing and I think that without a class analysis, we can't achieve any kind of true sustaining equitability with all these issues. And so I kind of, it honestly started with just putting an Instagram post out and saying, hey, does anybody want to study? And about 40 people took me up on it. And it was actually an eight week course at the time that I've since done five times over, personally taught maybe 150 people. But the real joy has been kind of people graduating almost from that curriculum and deciding to facilitate themselves. So now there's a facilitator core of four of us. Other people have added additional offerings. We have one coming up exploring the intersection of capitalism and mental health. We've got one on kind of creating what's called the solidarity economy and arts. And it just continues to grow. I think the most magnificent thing is seeing people take this knowledge and go on and get more embedded in their unions because although it is a political education course, it really is, I stress from the beginning, it's the point of this is to do something, you know, it's a difference between having a politics and doing something about it. So to watch artists go and they go into their unions or they go and kind of rejuvenate their art, Claudia Jones said, a people's art is the genesis of their freedom. And so I think people take this and I'm not prescriptive. I don't tell people what to make or what to write, but they learn this lens by which they can then be in the world differently and create art differently. And people continue to message me saying things have have this course has changed their life, but really, they've changed my life because this whole program is community led. People basically say this is what I want. Or, you know, I give a feedback form at the end of the curriculum. And sometimes stuff that, you know, I have to examine in detail. So it's all also to mention, yeah, this was free donation based was a grassroots movement. He created, you know, a new school and, you know, of learning. And it is an extraordinary idea and a little bit also of Brecht's idea of a theater without an audience layer sticker, you know, to and you came together and you learn something. So this is just fantastic. Now with us today, we have Milo Rao, Eileen Duncan and Kasia Wojcik from the great school of resistance in Belgium and again, their work is also very brilliant Milo. Maybe tell us a little bit and enter to us your collaborators. Yeah, hi. So it's so wonderful to be here and to listen to all of you. So I'm the founder of this school of resistance, which started as an online debate format, by the way, together with HowlRound. So we are very much linked to this. And with me are the curators of the school, Eileen and Kasia. And I think it's the best when you explain a bit what we did and where we land next. Okay. Hi, I'm Kasia calling from Berlin and my colleague, Eileen in Belgium again. And I think I will start Eileen and then as we work the last two years, connect and speak and see where this goes. So the school of resistance started in the wake of at the beginning of the Corona pandemic, where there was a feeling of, we need to do something. This is the world is in crisis and we need to gather knowledge. To gather knowledge on resistant practices of activists, academics, philosophers, but also engaged citizens. And we created, we were very thoroughly for over a year online episodes on different topics, ranging. And I really liked what you said also Chris, all the topics that we started. So feminism, environmental justice. But yeah, we, I think Eileen, we tried to gather all the knowledge that is possible in this world and what was created afterwards where the pandemic changed, we try to embed more hybrid dimensions into it. So I will maybe speak about the weekend we created in Cologne and the political impact I think it had. And then Eileen, maybe you want to tell us what's, what, what are the plans and in Cologne, we created a manifesto gathering different NGOs and initiatives to say that what is happening on the European borders, people dying, horrible human rights abuses that this is not, this can't go on. This has to end. And this is complete injustice. And we want to go on working with this idea that we are all global citizens and we all have human rights. And maybe Eileen, yeah, please. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think what, I mean, I can only agree with what Kasia said. And I also liked what you said, Frank, in the beginning, like, I think the project also started from this desire that we had, or this importance to also teach ourselves in listening, rather than only talking. And so I think that was also like one of the main starting points why we thought, okay, let's really set up a discourse where people can also, yeah, can share their ideas, but can also really listen to all the knowledge that is already there. As Kasia said, we are indeed now evolving into a more hybrid format, because of course we also felt we, after organizing over 20 online debates, I think you also felt the urge to also do beyond something beyond that, and to go beyond the discourse. So that's also, for instance, why we are organizing in March, a big school of resistance in the city of Ghent, because I'm now calling from Ghent. It will be together with a couple of NGO organizations and Ghent initiatives, and it will be focused on the regularization crisis and issue, because I mean, as it is the case in Europe in general, but in Belgium we have a very big, or a very urgent case with the Somme Papier, the undocumented refugees that are now living in Belgium. They have been striking for over a couple of months, but there is basically or very rarely, or yeah, basically no real life from politics. And Aline, everybody can join, right? People, once it's announced, you can power out, I guess howl around, you know, we also, we connect, we connected each other, so people can come join, look up. I also would like to point out the great project the New Gospel Meelo did, the film, which also we showed his great achievement, a film school for Moussoul, that they really did a project, a classical play, a Greek play, and they said, it's not enough to come and go, let's leave something, let's help something, they've created a film school, which is, you know, now slowly growing, it is sensational, as is the project to sell tomatoes by the immigrants, by the people who were harassed, by the locals to say, let's create a cooperative, people together, let's own what we do, find new ways of distribution. And I think it is sensational. Amelo, maybe a sentence to that, why do you think that is so important? Why don't you just do a play, even however great it is? Isn't that already a great achievement? Yeah, I mean, we mentioned the word or the name Brecht, and I think Brecht was the guy who said, okay, you don't have to describe the enterprise from the outside, you have to enter the enterprise, you have to own the enterprise, and you have to change the way how artworks are produced and distributed. And I wanted to make work and the School of Resistance is an example, of course, the new gospel is another one of the films called in Mosfalt that we created together with the UNESCO, the cultural branch of the United Nations, that you give the means of productions into the hands of the people that produce the project with you. And that's how an art project can become a starting point, or even an alibi, to give these means to somebody else, and then continuous makes different films, but owns the ways of distributions. So that's what I understand of sustainable work, that you, it doesn't end with a premiere, we are not interested in premieres, we want that there is an ongoing new institution that liberates the people that was part of the project. Yeah, I do think this is quite a radical project, and as was the project in Berlin, we have Thomas Oberender with us down to earth. It was, as they called it, an unplugged exhibition daily programming, with also as Milo often said agents of change, they said experts of change. It was done with artists, philosophers, activists, and without electricity, without flights, the idea was to do something new and to try out maybe what we all are asking for. Thomas, tell us a little bit about the project and also what impact did it have? Thank you, Frank. I'm not sure about the impact. I think the impact is that we started to see our own institution with different eyes, made encounters inside of our institution we didn't have before. Yes, we explored infrastructures who are hidden usually, and now suddenly we met our colleagues who are experts for that. And so it's in a way a project of democratization of an institution. It means that everybody is important and all the technicians, all the people, usually you don't see in their work time are very important. And this is a huge impact from inside, from outside. The idea of the project was don't make another exposition about sustainability and climate change. Do everything in your institutional work to change the situation that we can control. And this is how we exhibit, how we work with the audience, with the artists, with the experts. Change that, change the operating system of the institution itself. So this could be the beginning and then we can go and invite people who are more experienced in this field than we are. So every exhibition or every performance means you create a public sphere. And what we did is we invited various kinds of communities to come together. Usually they don't meet and they don't come together in institutions like a museum. But what we did is we opened up the museum as a place for various communities. And we did it as a team. So it was from the beginning on very much the work of a group of people. Tino Segal was very important for that. But also Julia Strauss and Anja Predyk and Stephanie Rosenthal, who runs as an artistic director in the museum. So it was from the beginning a project of inclusion. So this was very important. Important. And also to remind the idea, I think if I remember right on your work with Bruno Latour and Friderick Aytui, you said, how can you show an exhibition on climate change, but you have air conditioning running and all the machines and saying, if you don't change as an institution or you don't even try to try out, how can you ask anybody else? And they really did that. And I think very successful. It's a great inspiration. Maybe we will think to do something here. I just saw that Emmanuel de Marcimotta joined us from Paris from the great Théâtre de la Ville. It's one of the great, if not least leading public theater in France, certainly also in Paris. And Emmanuel created a project, the Consultations Poetica over the phone. Actors were paid, luckily, but they couldn't work. And instead of closing things down like many, many big US institutions did, they said, why don't we come up with an idea? And one of the ideas was, you could call an actor, an actor would call you back, talk about your life, if I understand right. And they would prescribe a poem for you, read it for you on the second column and also send it to you. Emmanuel, tell us a little bit about the project and what impact did it have? It's so unique, 25,000 people, I think, as individuals participated. Tell us a little bit about the project and what it stands for in your theater. Okay. Hello, Frank. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here today. I'm in Paris with the team of Théâtre de la Ville. For myself, this project has allowed me to move from an idea of solidarity and commitment of the theater to an action shared by a greater number today. This project brings together more than 200 people in France and in several countries now of the world. And the number continues to increase. And it's very strong for me and for the people who are working with this project, because this project goes beyond my own commitment and my personal project. It meets the commitment of other people and other structures. I don't build it only with a team of my own, a new way perhaps of doing for us today, a more inclusive method. And for the institution in France, in Europe, this project has made it possible to develop a capacity to work in a new network, a network that is built day by day with this idea of the relation of solidarity between us, which requires adapting our practice and working with flexibility, a new flexibility for us, not to reproduce what we already know, how to do acquire a capacity for immediate innovation based on a principle of humanity. This project therefore makes it possible to humanize our relation with the institution, with the Théâtre de la Ville and others, big institutions in France, in Europe, and in other countries. I also understand you have a strong African collaboration, Asian collaboration or it was not just a French project. Tell us also a little bit about your arts and science. I found that also extraordinary what you are interested in and what you promote. Yes, this moment of the pandemic, it's perhaps a way and I don't know if we can say an opportunity for us and the science and with the hospitals and with a lot of people who are working in the hospitals to try to transform and renew itself. And we work with more than 20 hospitals in this moment with more than 30 actors yesterday who are working in different hospitals to try to create a new relation between the science and the arts, try to create a new dialogue and not the project for the culture, the culture only with the people, but how we can think for this new century, the relation between the science and the new minds try to advance and the new imaginations in the science, not only the image in the art, but on the science too. And this new relation is very strong. We are working this moment for with the actors and not only the actors with the doctors, neuroscientists and a lot of different hospitals to try to work a new play and to work together about how we can build a new culture of the medicine and not only to change and we need to change our culture of medicine for us because we discover something very strong and not only in France and when you say, Frank, we are working with the African continent, we worked now with seven, no, 11 countries, different countries, 11 countries and this start just one year ago and we are building something very strong for them and we are not thinking how we can help, not only that, we need to think how we can learn something new and to learn something new, we need a new relation and to take time with the other. Yeah, I think that what I also found very impressive that you said it's an open theater, people can connect, people can come to you, participate. So I think all models we heard now, I think are really something different, something new that is emerging. It's a continuation of a tradition, but in a way it is redefined, it's a contemporary interpretation of that great, great form of theater. I always remember a colleague of mine talked about geomorphosis and he said once a crystal was pressed through the forces of the earth and inside a mountain, but over a million years later the crystal disappeared and another fluid came in and then another one. So forms are there but they are filled with new creative ideas. Everybody is with us, Kirol Serebranikov has some problems connecting in from Russia. Ria from the great Paper Moon theater company cannot join us. He gave birth yesterday, Paper Moon did a fantastic project. They would for a very little fee get commissioned by friends of healthcare workers or family members. They create something for that person so they would create a puppet theater, puppet object, piece online and send it to the person as a gift for no money. They got some funders who helped them but very very little. They would send creative little boxes to people to create puppets, how to create little stories and so they also talked to hundreds of puppet artists. They had an online series like the Segal Talk and they also continued their work. So I thought it was extraordinary the beauty of their work. The commitment also is very very little funding and there's no real cultural center to support. So thank you, thank you all. It's a big honor to be with us. We also have with us Ed Katania who we gave a lifetime award. She created something that was called the Lincoln Center Director's Lab. America is often looked at as a big island and it is an island. It's big but it is an island often narrow with the tunnel vision. Toni Kushner said it's the melting pot that never melted and one of the very very few initiatives that really was global planetary and her work and retired from Lincoln Center this month. She's just packing these days her bags and books and it was an extraordinary work and did your work have an impact on Lincoln Center on the city, on the world what happened? Well thank you for having me be part of this conversation. I mean it's absolutely amazing to hear what everybody's doing and there's absolutely no question that it's I think world changing. I mean listening to the people you've gathered Frank and you just have your nose to the ground you know who's doing what. I just I wanted to say really that I'm in New York City. It's been bad everywhere but it was really bad here. I've been in this apartment for almost two years. 33,000 people died within 50 blocks of my apartment when the when the when the infection started. So it's just been a kind of purgation in some regards. The theater is destroyed. It's tried to come back. It's isn't coming back right now. It will of course. The theater always comes back but at the moment we're still locked down and most of the performances people are trying but most of the performances are canceled. But I have come to actually agree with what Emmanuel said which is horrible as this time has been in every way. Not just of course COVID but it's you know politics and the environment and it's been such a time of change. It's sort of like the plague you know changing the world back in in the 15th century that that in a way I think what you all here today are doing is an example of the kind of thing that would never have happened had we not gone through this absolutely terrible time and and what that means is not only are you I'll talk about this in a sec because it's just given me these ideas listening to you. You know essentially great theater artists you know how to how to work in the theater in very different ways but also it's expanded your reach into the internet into new forms of of online communication which is something we didn't do. We didn't know about five years ago even or ten years and we knew about it but we didn't use it. But I feel that the power of what we have is in real time, is in the presence, is with people together and and when I look at what you all have done and you know we can start with hope. It's extraordinary. A family of people just to tell everybody Ann is also the premier dramaturg one could say of America that's what she's known for over 1500 directors young emerging directors from over 50 countries came to her directors lab in 25 years she built a network that go around so it is you know an extraordinary achievement and I think her work also stands for everything I'm sorry I would like to ask a big question. So when I met Hope I mean without even breaking a sweat she tells me she's working with 3,000 people I mean it's absolutely unbelievable but I just want to end by saying the thing that we hear together sitting and looking at all your faces know we know how to do is to collaborate and we know how to collaborate in a respectful artistic and adventurous way and that is not a thing that most people in the world know how to do they don't know how to do that in politics they don't know how to do that in business we know how to do that that's how we approach the world and that is what our gift is and that's the reason that all the projects that you've been describing has worked I don't think they knew how to do that in universities as well so it's sort of like that horrendous horrendous saying that Apple had when they started you know move fast and break things you know move fast and break things but retaining the spirit I mean it's like in the spirit it's how we grew up we were apprentices in theater we know how to work with people just like Shakespeare did or just yeah so this is the question is um um and thank you if we say we know how to do it but to get back also on Milo's book project he uh collected voices from over 100 theater makers around the world and thinkers philosophers and the idea was why theater you know the famous Lenin quote what to do that's too you know but why theater and I would like to ask everybody as an open discussion you know we don't want to have this go on for too long but but but still to open discussion um our theta talk was about this why you know Bryce said we need new theater for new times we live in what what do we need now what are you thinking about what are your plans for the future what do you think is of real importance and I'll just um open it up and um and just speak whenever you can but I hope everybody will say something so um to everybody also listening and then now we have listeners from many countries young artists also established artists you say you know what is of importance now what is of significance what can we learn from from you as Emmanuel um said whoever uh wants to wants to start Chris maybe I'll ask you uh sure I think um I'm really fascinated by people who are experimenting with new models of producing theater of creating theater I mean I think right now for instance the theater industry is debilitated but I think the theater is clearly alive right and I think a lot of that connotation of industry is I think because of how embedded capital is with theater makings I don't I can't speak to all the countries on this call but in America you know we have our nonprofit structure which is super problematic and we have the commercial model which is of course very problematic and it's hard to make um theater that speaks to people or experiments with new not just content but new forms and so I'm really interested in a lot of what I do try to encourage with the people who take the course is to think of what it would look like to make theater that is truly in community with or rather in conversation with communities instead of like boards and like people who are seeking profit what would it look like and I think it's a completely different way of making theater because we kind of assume that we do a play that matters and then we just put the advertisements out and it kind of they come you know there's whole scores of people who never make it into the theater with that model and we're not accountable to them and they're the people I think that if we want to make progressive art really matter so I think experimenting with new models of production and embedding art into communities is huge but we have to listen and also that's another thing I'm learning a lot on this call is it's it's shifting away from speaking at people to listening to people and having an actual dialogue that's something I've been doing this professionally for 12 years I mean I really don't think that most of the work I've done has been coming from a place of listening it's just coming from a place of talking at people I would like to say that we need for I need we need to use the creative power of theater and being in the International Institute of Political Murder for the last five years I learned that theater is the tool the utopian tool but it's like a really like it's a tool where we can shape the world with it's like we can take theater and say this is real and it becomes real and this is just the fun of it and I think political movements need that or progressive political movements because we also see theatricality being torn or taken by alt-right or fascist movements but I'm saying I think we have a lot to offer to political progressive movements because we have so much fun creating things and it's yeah we can just create situations it's awesome yeah so for me I think I'm just up to need what I've learned is that really the idea of collaboration makes us stronger we learn more in a very short time by just doing like the Chinese proverb but I think we need to pick up on that how do we collaborate we don't have to travel anymore to collaborate and when people just work together just you know a random artist with another artist from Syria and they're just tapping on one theme it ends up affecting us all as humans and a fun that really we are together we are we are human together and through being humans we create art and art is about life and for me I think we can build our communities and give our communities hope by just you know creating a conversation through creating art together so I think for me the worry of I have to travel to China I have to travel to wherever to create with somebody is that is out because for me I think what I really focused on last year was how do we as artists work together and most and in our online festival it was more about collaborations than you know because that's that's what I was missing can we meet again but if we can meet online and create work when we meet physically we still have a conversation to work on yeah so working together collaborations for me is my take I think collaboration and creation you just said the keywords referring to to our example in Hungary loads of institutions loads of parts of the society have been attacked by the government and destroyed by the government but no resistance like ours touched so many people because the students as I said and of course with the faculty we created so many spectacular events all through Budapest and around the country so with the tools of theaters we kind of woke up people all around and if it wasn't for this attack if it wasn't for the movement we have we could have never experienced the the collaboration with those international institutions and that was also via theater so I firmly believe in in the power of this kind of artistic collaboration that touches the the hearts of so many people and watching you all around the world and on my screen what I experienced is there are you know several endless ways of this kind of creation and collaboration I think one of the aspects of our power is that there's no one way there are several ways millions of ways this is giving me an idea someone should write something about how the arts and politics can inter it can work together to to increase their effect to good effect I know some of you know about this and some of you may not but when we were doing Seraphina and we had a lot of contact with South Africa's before Mandela was released from Robin Island there were a lot of theater people who were involved in his release and his assumption of power and how that was done from stage designers I know who created his inaugural stage to the great and this is someone Frank you should definitely have on your some podcast the great Peter Dirk Ace who is a big powerful rugby player like Guy who dresses as a woman named Evita Bazoutenhoit and she came on to the stage with Nelson Mandela and let's just say this is like a guy's society and said oh I am so in love with with DeClerc he's so sexy you know and he diffused things through laughter using a great theater artist you know you have to remember also in a bad sense that that a lot of the conflict in the Balkans started at a theater conference where you know like the Berlin a festival where major productions from theaters are invited to perform there's there was a similar festival and each entry was a kind of nationalistic presentation from a writer and that caused the beginnings of a lot of you know the wars so there's a power there it would be interesting to to to to write about examples of of where that happened I mean you can make a case that Artaud you know writing at the same time is brecht you know in the totally opposite direction that the that the end result of a great Artaud vision which he was never able to realize would be the Nuremberg rallies you know a spectacle non-verbal I mean it's very interesting I mean of course he would never have wanted anyway but but it's it's a very interesting somebody needs to say this somebody needs to write yeah I think this is the importance we have to write things also down theater people have to write also engage I think this is something we in America often are a little bit too cautious but who else has Pamela I think that the pandemic was really an occasion to ask to ourselves what is our duty what the theater can do for the society like in the ancient period of Grecia you need theater to to have interesting questions to have some answers for the life so during the lockdown especially where we are we are closed so what is our duty what because the people the society needs us and so we started okay we were the first in Italy to start to to act live our performances and to go online but it's not only that we wanted to collect the voices the thoughts of all the persons they were closed in the house in the prison of the house where the word were closed in the house and so through the professors and the schools we received a hundred and hundred pages of the written by the students of all the area of Sicily and with all this material we let out the professor drama professors and drama pupils of our theater school to work over this material and then when the lockdown was finished the first we in summer we produced three shows about all this material inspired from this material was one was dedicated to the second generation especially in Palermo we have a big Indian group in Indian community I mean Indian especially from Bangladesh and so we did the show the called the Bengala Palermo and then two other shows via crudex and one with Irina Brooke that started to work with other our pupils actors from London and she started to work with them then she came and in September we did a show in a very beautiful yeah so if you say right what to reach out the work school actually often comes up you reach out to schools you listen to voices and you you you put it together and from what was around you and listen I think Thomas had his his hand up thank you yes just one idea about future of theater personally I'm very interested to become become more and more interested in positions beyond the human position because we understand the the drama the rather strategy with Gaia and our whole biosphere of the planet earth is because we humans think we are in the center of everything and one of the models to teach us that we are the center of the world is the theater every conflict on earth that is on stage is a conflict between humans and so I think we can also use the theater to go one step beyond and have different companions different perspectives that are not only human perspective so if we can manage to bring back the the ghosts the animals the things the objects in a different way we did have that before the modern time before renaissance and I think we have to go back and learn from the archaic epoch how we can more be sustainable not only in the way how we make theater how we look on earth on the planet that's important and we can use theater also for this this would be my wish and that's what I'm working about abhishek what do you think I think you know I think before the pandemic I used to think often that when I would travel around the world that we were all becoming court poets like we would all sort of get something and we were there was a model how you become successful in the theater is by becoming a court poet or something you you sit in a king's courtyard and you speak a certain language and then you become an important person and that was the kind of model I felt and I think it is shifted drastically into a lot of people recognizing that we have to be bank robbers and not court poets you wear a mask you go in you have very limited time you steal from the rich and you run and you scramble and give it to everybody who's around to me the most important thing that I learned in the pandemic is to not be a court poet but be a bank robber amazing thank you thank you Emmanuel yes I very important points I think for me and for us it's how to change something with not with the others but with with us with me how we can how I can change and what I can change in me because the point it's what the theater can do to decide the society but we can think on the same time what the society can do to the theater because I think it's the same points theater theater is society and society is theater and it's not a separation and perhaps if we think more how the relation with politics and arts can work together perhaps it's the same point it's the question now to how to build a new for me a new alliance between the medicine with the doctors with the artists with the education on the society theater can do nothing alone now the point this new alliance after this pandemic of artists doctors scientists not only change our production mods in the theater but we must connect with the frontliners such as doctors medical staff researchers we must find a new amazing nation that connects them and it's not only us and the artist and the culture it's it's more global and now it's a new link for the 20 now 21 century with the new generation and it's how we can stop this separation between science art education no all could be connected now this is the point for me wow that's quite something the school of resistance what you have done an extensive research and it's an ongoing project what have you learned and what what do you think what do we need to do maybe I can briefly add to that also to get back to this idea of white theater I think for me is one of the main reasons is this idea of inclusion or importance of inclusion and representation and I think that was something that we very strongly had as our ambitions as a school of resistance and because of course theater is society but is it like in its entirety at that I'm wondering I don't know and I think that theater is just a very powerful tool as well to enable certain people to get into the conversation on in the public debate that otherwise are often excluded from this so I think theater in this way because of this forced this this confrontation confrontation this forced physicality enables to get the table bigger to get the conversation more inclusive more surprising even maybe because it also makes it happen that we talk to people we otherwise wouldn't necessarily meet or to hear arguments we otherwise wouldn't necessarily hear that often and I think and of course it's it's it's also a big challenge because we are especially like being a city theater like who who is a city who is a city we are doing it for and are we already reaching enough to the all the citizens in Ghent so it's it's both a strength I feel but also a challenge that we are daily working on yeah yeah thank you Tanvi what what do you think as a young theater artist in India with all the complications a little funding you know what what what do we need to do what inspires you at the end of 2019 I I submitted my master's thesis which was on what is the director doing when they're non-directing what is a director's practice and then four months later the pandemic hit so the past two years really for me have been about nurturing artistic responses within myself outside of the rehearsal room just my inquisitiveness my curiosity and and my dissent and and just a questioning mind and I think conversations like this really reinstate that even when we have not made theater we haven't stopped asking the question that inform our theater and and that's what I'm looking to keep doing until I get back into rehearsal room and until then I'm I'm currently working as dramaturge on a few projects which are preoccupied with the dramaturgy of dissent and the dramaturgy of discomfort and what is that what is that like and I've never I've never thought about discomfort as much as I have these past two years so I think it's really interesting to speak about it theatrically and find those words and also dissent in India doesn't mean critics fighting up about what you write about a show it means go to going to prison you know so Milo yeah yeah I mean what what I can perhaps add to what Elin said and what Kasha said about the school of resistance is that when you open this space that can be invaded by knowledge that was excluded from this space by what became possibly hybrid formats then you see that for example the answer to how can we have a cosmology or a theater where the human is not the center but there are ghosts and things etc you find out these knowledge is there somewhere on this planet and this is for me the main I mean kind of incredible impact of the last two years that I said we were excluding so much I was not meeting so many people and I don't know why so I think that we kind of overcame I mean now I'm going perhaps a bit too far the myths of presence where we were a bit locked into theater and then he said okay I can have a debate with all of you today on Saturday and later on together with my family you know and I had so many inspirations and that's a bit what I I I I found out in the last years yeah yeah I'm kind of a very intimate personal experience on the other hand is a global or planetary one it is it is stunning again from the seagull center we really would like to show all our respect to all of you and the work you have been doing and what you are doing we know how hard it is to be an artist how much it takes and also to sustain it and to keep on working and the project you created really really moved things you are agents of change what you're doing is the most importance we feel we think these are the homeopathic pills in the body you know but have any fact and it represents something it stands for something and you don't just do something you stand up for something and I think that is a big difference and what everybody asked about experiments and new forms you you did it I think this is models to look up to and for everybody listening please this is just to inspire you also to do your own if you're listening this is not just about concredulating so that's why we're going to keep this ceremony short but what can you do what are your connections how many people do you reach out to in your neighborhood how much inclusion is there I have you thinking about new forms in your life and what is the circle of your friends looking like and but also go to the art support the arts and the art is what they are doing is a visible change and if it's real on stage it can also be real in life and I think this is what Abhishek once said in our discussion he said how come that all the tv shows and films in India go on and they can be critical but if I do a little play in a little room where I criticize someone I get censored and it gets forbidden so why do you ask me if it has an effect it does of course so I think this we should not underestimate that and I think what you did great project brilliant project and really all our our admiration it's you picked a little apples from the tree of knowledge icing and you shared it and you're continuing it so for everybody follow the work of all these great theater artists perhaps you also could connect it would of course make us happy and as a closing sentence maybe for everyone we have young young artists emerging artists listening if there's one thing you would say you know in a sentence or two what would you say to the young artists you know like rilkes famous letters to the young poets but of course a little bit shorter what do you say because it could be you listening to this when you were young and started out what what do you say and maybe I just go by by the screen and how it's in front of me thomas oh I would say um trust the belief that data are not our faith yeah tangy what do I say to young people uh last low four actually in the 10th hour of of how around uh uh said that a pandemic is not a private matter and I think that that really stayed with me because what I've gotten from the past few months and years has been this real sense of community and the theater community is extraordinary in in even with these distances and making you feel like you belong so thank you Pamela uh yes I I would like to say that uh to insist to stay in star in the society uh we want to continue to be the the voice of young persons students the new generations the heroes that are combating against the mafia the voices of women of everybody but I'm sure we have a lot of young persons uh directors and drama writers that are giving us very good projects that are inside the society we must continue to be the voice of the society treya I think the theater uh this occasion brings the theater out beyond the building of itself and I think we have to continue this way yeah thank you thank you hope yeah we are coming from a massive disruption and uncertainty of the last few years definitely a changed world awaits us it's full of greats it's full of promises and I think this is the time for us not to pick up seat but to seize every opportunity and to create a future of our making uh because if we wait for the world to make it for us then we lose time but I think this is the time for us to grab this opportunity regardless of the threats the situation has come up with mm-hmm and you're muted uh I'm not to talk too much yeah I just tortured myself for four years and wrote this book and the conclusion that I came to was something that I knew when I started so saved myself a travel there's a great book published by uh edited by Todd London called an ideal theater and he simply reprinted the founding statements of every theater from I don't know as far back as he could go Stanislavski and and Nemerovic Danchenko were in it all the way up to you know the Teatro Camposino I mean Free Southern Theater the group theater everybody's in it federal theater project and they're all the same there are young people who usually spend a night in a bar that's how the Moscow Art Theater was founded they hate the theater that's around them they find a degree of community communality and and they believe in what they want to do they're unknown they have no money the group theater started in the middle of the depression in the United States when they would try and get a nickel together to stay warm in an automatic cup of coffee for four hours and they made a theater together they didn't get permission from a big theater that's not the kind of thing theaters can do it has to be done by people who agree and that is how it's always been it's a really interesting book because you will recognize the success that they all made in some cases very substantial so I would direct everybody to that and say thank you do that Milo sorry I was a bit too concentrated because Anne gave me in the chat beautiful ideas and names so I had just to copy to not lose it when you close the Zoom session thank you Anne so for me what can I say to young young theater makers I think really theater is a magical tool the world has to be changed and use it and the second thing I I learn again and again is that every play is the first one and this bar that Anne is describing I have the impression every week again you sit in this bar and you want to revamp the theater with the people around so it never stops Chris yeah what I would say to young theater artists is actually the same I'd say that all theater artists are all people really when I was a young person I just read I read older people talking to each other and listened to them and I just took what I needed which is I would say study and organize study follow your passion follow your interests unrelentingly don't wait for people to give you permission to learn something I always tell people read above your comprehension level you'll get it later and organize find community find people who now only completely agree with you who will challenge you and make something do something figure it out through an iterative process and just keep going yeah yeah Kasia well I still feel like a young emerging artist but I want to say what I learned in the last five years is persistence persistence and I think this is also really important for our political fight to really stay just stay and do it and be patient that things happen thank you Elina yeah I think it's a bit similar as Kasia I'm not so sure if I feel confident in giving like artistic advice as I'm only creating my own artistic practice at the moment but what I'm reminding myself of often is to to stay with the trouble to be dissident and to to dare to be the killjoy I think that's it Abhishek I think you know I would say to young theater makers that look at Tom and Jerry and see how we see them fighting all the time but that's because none of them have a house and there's a guy who is so big that in the entire series we only see this person's feet we never see their face they're the big person who owns this house but we always see Tom and Jerry and part of the job the theater has is to imagine the face of this thing this person who's actually responsible for this endless fight between Tom and Jerry and to make that face visible I think that's one of the things that I feel the theater is about and worth fighting for yeah last one yes just like Chris I think this is to everyone not not for only young artists even if you're very proud of your creativity you should always remember that there's much more to imagination than your everyday practice or routine you should open yourself up to the responsibility of collaboration the beauty and the responsibility of collaboration thank you thank you Emmanuel you have the final word okay if you came to us that's what happens yeah I try I try perhaps to say just how to try to respond with a new story and but to know the story and to follow young people to have the memory of what you don't know how not only your story but the story of the humanity in you and with the other and to know the story you need to work with you and with the others and try to find a new image imagination and how the theater yes can be out of the buildings on all the space and the new liberty for a new artist and create relations on the world with other language not only your language now to try to understand if you don't understand the language of another people it's not a problem because you can feel something of the other and it's not a problem when you don't understand you can try a new way and how to work with yourself in this new challenge for diversity gender equality for these planets and how is your responsibility tomorrow yeah well these are very very very profound statements so really really thank you I think maybe we're gonna all type them up and send them out and to our list and I really would like to thank you all again for taking the time to come and join us to accept in the award and really again contradulations and what you did is of vital importance that is of great importance and you're all a part of the civilized world and so this is has been a big honor hosting you we didn't want to go over an hour we even thought it would be shorter so we're gonna stop here this could of course go on much much longer and to everybody listening thank you for taking the time also to listen as everybody here said it is important but think about what it does mean for your practice for your life for your work to collaborate to listen to read above what you normally think and and be inspired by that work that is real at what these people that is very real and it is changed this is how change looks like and so thank you for taking the time to listen so many things are out there right now when we started seagull talks not so many conversations were online in March but now there are more so it's really means a lot that you you took the time and we can only hope it was as meaningful for you as a listeners for you to practice in us as it was now for me to listen it's been a big honor to hosting you and please stay connected to everybody here and let us know what you are doing and of course we will be following your work and hopefully find ways to collaborate all together thank you all all the best and wishing you a great weekend and let's all hope we have a safe year and that things are looking up and that we will find ways you know to get out of the buildings and to collaborate to learn and to listen bye bye thank you all bye bye bye bye