 Hello, everyone. I'm Joshua William-Gelbin. Welcome to Theater and Quarantine. It's Monday, November 16th, and it's nine o'clock here in New York City. It's been a little over eight months since I converted the closet in my East Village apartment, measuring four feet wide by eight feet tall and only two feet deep into a white box digital performance laboratory that we here call the Theater and Quarantine. With creative director, Katie Rose McLaughlin, we've been expanding our roster of incredible collaborators and working with some amazing institutional supporters, LaMama, Culture Hub, Theater Me Too, and the Invisible Dog Arts Center. Tonight, we are so pleased to be performing Mute Swan, written by Madeleine George and presented by LaMama and Culture Hub as part of experiments in digital storytelling. Mute Swan is created by myself, Katie Rose McLaughlin, Culture Hub, Raja Feather Kelly, Chris Bell, Gavin Price, and staged managed by Ada Jean. I'm still here in the East Village, but tonight's performance is mostly coming to you from a replica closet that we built at Culture Hub Studio, just a little further west of me on Great Jones Street. There you'll get to meet tonight's performer, Chris Bell. The performance runs about 20 minutes, and afterwards, I'll be hanging around with my fellow collaborators to discuss the process of making this show, including all of the technologies we used. And we'd love to answer any questions you might have, so make sure to drop them in the chat. Below in the description, you'll find a link to our Fractured Atlas page where you can make a donation. That is, if you haven't already given one RSVP, in which case, thank you. Now, all of your donations go directly to tonight's collaborators, so please consider helping support this work and all the artists who make this work possible. In fact, if you really wanna make a contribution to theater and quarantine, the most impactful thing you can do right now is subscribe to our YouTube channel so we can reach our 1000 subscriber goal by the end of the year. Now, one last reminder. What you're about to see isn't Zoom theater. It isn't a prerecorded film. This is a live performance coming to you from two remote closets in downtown Manhattan. So let's get started. I'm going to take a brief one-minute break so Chris can get into places. Thank you again and enjoy Mute Swan. Boyfriend's dad was a god. I never knew anyone that connected all my life. I'd struggled to rise. And there he was, risen. I let him slump it with me, my words. To be clear, he worshiped me. He couldn't get enough of my earthiness. I fed him frozen chicken nuggets right out of the bag. I mean, I showed him who with commercials. He was like in exchange for these little normal seas. He told me stories about the dawn of creation, about how hard his dad worked every day to light the world, how underappreciated the powerful are given the amount of shit that they have to eat. And I was like, you know what? Shut up and kiss me. Oh, he was gorgeous beyond words when he wasn't bitching about his glass for my birthday. And that was nothing to my boyfriend, Poof and he conjured it. It's like a figurines. Don't breathe on it. Don't drop on it. It might expire. I hadn't asked for a baby bird, but I guess I didn't have to specify. You know, I like a project more than a result. My hatchling was tiny and covered in downlike fur. I held the bird against my chest and it's like a moth. I held it against my ear and it's hard word like a moth. 300 beats a minute. It's hard to compete. My boyfriend and I built a tiny world to raise him and a perfect simulation of the wild. So we'd acclimate him because the plan was to one day set him free. My boyfriend was super delighted with my delight and that's the kind of feedback that gets you hooked. I could have thought his hostile takeover, but it felt so good. Plus, the love factor at the apex of my sternum was a door. When he opened it, I felt myself turn inside out. Gold rushed into me and my tiny self dissolved. It's a cliche to say there's some truth to all cliches. But what can I say? And I say. I took my boyfriend to a meeting. Finally, because he asked me, begged me really to come along. He must have brought it up 20,000 times. It felt dangerous bringing him there. And thrilling, kind of like I was sneaking contraband to a jail. In reality, it was more like sticking a bomb into a church. But certainly how the others in the group would have seen it. Either way, I was tingling all over when I let him up to the door and down the dim steps and all the way inside, my heart throbbed in my throat. The fluorescence buzzed above my head. I addressed my boyfriend up like a real man of the people, workers at Puffy Best, whatever. And I say to him, look, keep your mouth shut. My friends are your origins from a mile away. If you even utter a single syllable, it's hard enough making you look like you go to CUNY back. Keep your gap shut. It's your only chance to pass. I set this item, a normal scent of his silence. There was the usual cheerful chit chat, six sempergeronists, et cetera. And Merrill called us to order and Jordan rose to give the first report. His working group was doing housing and they had some non-development to report. Next, if shared the health committee's latest numbers, still no major outbreaks inside the network since last year. Keith got up and wondered through a rambling proposal about rewilding a couple of abandoned Dwayne Reads. Modest applause. Then, Olivia had an update from the subcommittee to dismantle cause and effect. I could feel my boyfriend stiffen as she pitched the latest initiative. Unmovemented a couple of the false logic by which day follows night. Or does it have to be that way? Just because it's always been? Why shouldn't we have, so to say, and how the world gets lit? The subcommittee was seeking a graphic designer to help with the broadsheet to help spread awareness. Beside me, I could feel my boyfriend's curt sigh. Then it was Raven's turn. And Raven worked on the read, just reading well. And it turned out Raven's team had taken kind of a big leap forward ambition-wise. They were proposing a pretty daring action that would quite literally raid the coffers of the powerful and hand out the cash in the street to the desperate. Not knowing who was there in the room with him, Ray laid out kind of a lot of specifics about his plan. Targets, tactics, even which door they plan to use, code names, contingency plans, weapons, et cetera. Some concern was raised by the pacifism committee about the amount of bloodshed, but Ray was ready for this. Wasn't this cash soaked in up blood already? Hadn't we shed enough of ours so that they could hoard it? Whose blood are we worried about here? Anyway, my boyfriend's head turned slightly. Just a degree, he was looking at me with the thinnest crescent moon of his gaze, but I didn't turn back. I made like I didn't notice. After a couple more reports and a book recommendation and a sign up for a potluck at Jovon's, we adjourned. We didn't even make it out of the alley before my boyfriend had any up against the wall and it was 40 days and 40 nights of fucking. So they processed the events of the evening because they never went to another meeting. After that, I never knew how far Ray's group had gotten with their actions. If it did go down, I didn't hear about it in the press above or below. If they arrested them, they never purple off them in front of the cameras to make an example of them. Maybe Ray called it before they started at too risky, not worth it. Or maybe they were martyred mid-flight. So had something to take care of out of state. I was like, go, totally do what you need to do. Only when you get there, and I kissed him goodbye. I had a sense it had something to do with his father. You know, testing out his capacity for a scent or something. But we worked out 20,000 different ingenious ways of not speaking about the unspeakable. So he didn't tell me where he was going. And I didn't ask. He didn't have cell service wherever it was that he went. So I threw myself into work. My job, I was developing a system to tracking the books that came in and out of the special categories. It was dull, stirring at a blanket, keep myself calm. But the back of my mind, I was wild with alarm. The thing about the sons of God is that they have so much to fucking prove. The rest of us are just trying to get through the day, but these guys have to demonstrate their worth to some kind of sky tribunal. And they have to do it by destroying a show of strength, a show of force. And it's not just worth a fucking eye roll. It's fucking dangerous to others. One light flex from one of these assholes and a mind collapses, a glacier melts. I don't have to go on. You know the kind of catastrophes I mean. We all know what a life is worth. Why don't they? Why don't they know what a life is worth? Why don't they know? Why don't they know? In private, no one knows where. My boyfriend had a clear, cool soul. I drank from it. So I know firsthand. I believe that he cherished me. He knew that I was alive. This patrimony was in him like a latent disease, like an unexpressed gene that mutated and started to divide. This is just a long way of saying that my boyfriend was one of the passengers on the Lear jet that crashed on the way to the summit. The other titans on the plane were, I don't have to tell you. You know who they are. This I read about in the paper. Same time you did. The door at my sternum swung wild on its hinges mechanically. I put my phone down and walked over to the cage to the simulation we had made of the world. I brought it over to the window, opened one into the other, a flash of gray wing and our pet escaped. Among the physical realities we must contend with is love. It's not just hunger, exhaustion. The fact of being worked to death to serve the sun. Those might seem more real, but they're not. They can't survive without the bodies and souls of others. So now the masses will dance on his grave. Love, what is it good for? Absolutely knocked through about 40 days before I felt it overtake me. Grief bent my neck and stride into straws. My face hardened. The blood thinned and warmed in my veins. Membranes stretched between my toes and all across my skin. Every inch of my body, 25,000 stings. The quills of tiny pinions piercing through. I always have to unmute. Song Min, I did it again. He's not in the room. He's in another room. Hi. Thank you all again for tuning in tonight. I'm Joshua William Geld. This is Theater in Quarantine. And yes, we did indeed forget to put the link to our Fractured Atlas page in the description. So I just put it here for you, which is not clickable, but it is nonetheless available for you to look at. It is fundraising.fracturedatlas.org. Someone turned on YouTube. Turned their mic on. Fracturedatlas.org. That slash JV dash squad. It seems like it doesn't make any sense, but it does in some sort of concept of time. So that is, again, fundraising.fracturedatlas.org. Backslash JV dash squad. Thank you. We are thrilled to have you all tonight. And we have got all of the collaborators from this project here tonight and ready to talk to you and answer any questions you might want to put in the comments section, which I'm going to keep tabs on. So again, here is everyone else. So I'll allow us to introduce ourselves. Hi, everybody. Welcome back. Hello, Chris. You did it again. Yeah. Wonderful. I assume everyone else will be bouncing in. In the meantime, let's say hello and introduce ourselves. I am Joshua William Gelb. I am the founder of Theater in Quarantine and the video designer of this piece tonight. Katie Rose, take it away. I'm Katie Rose McLaughlin. I'm the director and choreographer of this piece. Chris, do you want to introduce yourself? Hey, what's up? I am Chris Bell, and I am the performer in this piece. Madeline. Hi, I'm Madeline George. I contributed text to the piece. Yay, Gavin. Hey, I'm Gavin. I did the sound design and some composition. Hey. Hi. I think we have other friends that are joining us. I can hear them on the Zoom. Hi. Hey, don't worry. Your misintroduction. In fact, it's your turn. Oh, hey, I'm Maddie. I'm at Culture Hub. My name is not Sungmin's iPad, but we're using Sungmin's iPad. And yet I'm here with Sungmin, who's a creative technologist and other folks on the Culture Hub team here, are Billy Clark, who's the Artistic Director and D'Andrea Anthony, who in this show did the lighting design and is our lead technician. Well, thank you all for joining tonight. And being with us, Chris, amazing job. How do you feel? This is such a journey that we go through both the text and in the direction that has informed the performance. So I feel appropriate. Wonderful. Yes. That's so lovely. Well, so of course we did this already earlier and I didn't warn our Zoom panelists. I was thinking about that, just as we were about to start, I was like, oh shoot. Yeah, we didn't warn you, but it's 9 p.m. or it's the 9 p.m. show, so that's fine. So of course there'll be a little bit of repeating yourself. That'll happen, but I also wanna hear more about birds, Madeline. So we are gonna get there. So first off, Madeline and Kitty Rose, tell us a little bit about where this came from and yeah, how this came to be. Also that makes me remember the question that we got during the break. Go ahead. Oh, great, great, great. So this piece, basically, Josh and I were sort of setting the theater and quarantine schedule and Josh is also directing it show at NYU right now. So we knew, and that show opens in like three days, four days and we knew that Josh was gonna be incredibly busy and in tech so that his involvement wasn't gonna get to be as much as it usually is and then we had brought Rajah and Feather Kelly in to do a piece with us for Closetworks this summer and so I was like, hey Rajah, you wanna make a piece with me? And we were just sort of dreaming and scheming and then talking about maybe what we wanted to do and then it became very clear that we wanted to have a writer write something for us and so I reached out to Madeleine who said yes and this was also like, Madeleine and I were talking and I was like, I don't sort of really have any ideas but just like recognizing the fact that it is really close to the election and that we would basically have to start planning the piece and like getting the design team all together and thinking about performers, all of that stuff that would all have to be in place before November 3rd but that also the piece was gonna be performed afterwards and so I was like, Madeleine, the piece has to be like really political and she was like, or it has to be about nature which was just like so brilliant and I was like, oh yeah, yeah, no, nature makes more sense. Madeleine, will you talk a little bit about it too? Yeah, not that nature's not political, of course, I mean, of course. No. Yeah, I mean, for me, this is like such a fun and thrilling experiment. I mean, I was saying before that I really don't, I'm not so techy in terms of my playwriting usually, like I'm pretty analog but not only, I mean, theater and quarantine, it feels like it combines like the best of high theatricality like in the sense that the box is such a perfect distillation of what a theater can be and then also the best of technology, like the way that sort of liveness and also like super liveness are incorporated into the entire experience of it. Anyway, all this stuff is like way above my pay grade but I felt like this was such a thrilling chance to get to work not only in that way but also with dance theater collaborators who like, I think a lot of playwrights, they're a little bit control freaks, you know what I mean? They wanna give line readings, they wanna hold the whole thing, they feel like they have it all in their head and this is a chance to really like offer something that becomes a fertile ground, I think, for all of y'all brilliant artists to make a thing that's much, much more than anything I could have dreamed of. Certainly, while I was just randomly staring into the trees looking at birds for many quarantined months. And we will get back to birds. I do wanna say again to our audience out there, if you have any questions about the process, about the technology, about anything, please feel free to put it in the chat. I am monitoring the YouTube chat. Katie Rose, I believe you are monitoring other chat. It's all the same, I found out it's all the same. We learned, we learned it's all the same. We learned things every day. So we're all monitoring the same chat. We're all monitoring the same chat, but Billy, you should introduce yourself. Oh, Billy, hi. Oh, hey, I'm Billy. I'm the Artistic Director at Culture Hub and happy to join you from a new location if you were watching the prior show. Did you make it home? I did. Oh, good for you. It's so nice. This is the first time I'm seeing Billy's face. I just wanna say this is like a phenomenon of Zoom like and masked rehearsal. I feel like I'm meeting a person for the first time. It's exciting. Yes, I've lost my black mask and black void behind me, so. At the earlier pop back, Billy and Maddie were masked throughout. So it was a little mysterious. Boy, tell us a little bit about experiments and digital storytelling and what Culture Hub has been up to in the past couple of months and years, frankly. Sure, I'll try to be brief. Experiments and digital storytelling, which is what this piece was in the context of Culture Hub is a collaboration between Lamama and Culture Hub that started about four or five years ago, actually, in its beginnings as a desire to look back at the early experimental work of Lamama and to kind of regain that as someone I came into Lamama in the 90s, obviously there was 30 years of history before that. So there were all these names that I'd heard, but I'd never really read their work. And so we really wanted to go back and sort of dig into the archives and think about pulling stuff out and kind of restaging it and putting it into these new contexts. And that's really where this idea for experiments and digital storytelling came about, which really then became about a need that we saw, which was that so often in the performing arts, the technology is layered on at the very last moments of the work. And so it has to be very safe. It can't take as many risks and also isn't as true of a collaborator. You have to kind of guess what the technology can do and then you implement it in those two or three days of tech. And so experiments and digital storytelling was a hope to kind of bring writers, creative technologists and performing artists together in one space and give them a little bit more access to allowing the technology to be present through the full developmental process of work. We say a lot here that our process is entirely tech. And in some ways it kind of has to be because everything is so mediated, there's no other way to function, right? That being said, we've got a question that is to Madeleine but I have a feeling will be for everyone, which is from Mary, how much of what we just saw was written into your script and how much was devised with the other collaborators? Oh, that's so interesting. I mean, I think every word of this in exactly the order that it was put down by me is in this piece. And it's the, well, let me say that and then let me hand it over to Katie Rose because it's so much more than just what's on the page. Yeah, yeah, so like Madeleine said, every piece of the text is in there. And then we just sort of expanded upon it based off of some of the conversations that we were having based off of a lot of play and experimentation in the room with the other collaborators and sort of all of the different points of view that were being brought in. But I feel like Madeleine just created, like she said, like fertile ground for us to like grow this piece. And it was exciting for each of us to be able to bring in our different points of entry to create this thing. I also appreciate that Madeleine wrote this piece sort of, you know, not trying to predict what would happen in the digital space at all, which just opened up a lot of room for play and imagination with what could be possible. Cause when you think about writing for a digital format, it's like, okay, then I have to know every little thing that happens. And it's like, no, you just have to know how to explode potentially everything that happens. If possible. Oh yeah, that's such a good point. Well, Maddie, first, will you very quickly introduce, wait, did you already introduce yourself? You didn't. I think I did, and then I left and came back. Okay, you were on Songman's, I got, I remember. Okay, great, great, great. Yeah, yeah, that's such a, that's such an interesting, that's such an interesting point. It's because the text was such a very specific story, but also was just so open that it allowed us to like really sort of throw a lot of tech at it and then like throw a lot of tech out as we sort of discovered the path of this piece and like what seemed to be most true to it. There was a real distilling process to this piece. Sorry, Billy. There was a what? A real distilling process, ultimately. We spent like the first couple of days really throwing everything we had at it and ultimately realizing that there was a much more essentialized story to be had. Billy, you were about to say something, right? That was exactly what I was gonna say, Josh, was that there is so much and so many different ideas, never went to have these ideas and not all the ideas made it specifically into what just happened. However, I think this is quoting paraphrasing, a conversation that other people were having, but like the ghosts, the remnants of a lot of those ideas are still in the space. And that's like a secret that I can have behind my eyes. That's a lot of what you saw today was crafted off of this kind of like skeleton that you can't see that we produced during this time, every day being in tech and all this exploration. I feel like I would like to think that my technical naivete is like a plus in this situation. And also, it's not an accident that I went to Ovid or went to Myth for this, that's what Myths are good at. They leave gap intentionally, you know what I mean? And in the imagery and in the storytelling, that's what makes them generative and persistent through time, is that you can always be re-entering them in their weird elliptical space and reinvigorating them for whatever moment you're in. Well, speaking to Ovid, we have a question from Dr. Catherine. I thought you were gonna be like from Ovid. From Ovid. Ovid in the sky. Love bird imagery, but would like to know more about the swan concept where you're working with the non-human animal politics and any of the Donna Haraway work on trans species care and communication. Haraway, I'm a huge Donna Haraway fan. Anyone else in the Zoom, a Haraway fan? Anyone else like a little Donna Haraway? I feel like this is really like speaking to Ovid more than it is to any theoretical texts, but I'm persistently interested in what are the troubles that we have with non or more than human animals and what they can show us and the kinds of communication that we're missing with them. And that recurs in my work. So yeah, I think Ovid was probably interested in that too even though he didn't have the benefit of the Haraway. Probably not, but only probably. Well, actually it's funny coming, come to think of our original very early conversation about three weeks ago. It was like yesterday. Yeah, we talked a lot about swans and the fact that swans have such a strangely rich history in movement and it was almost a surprise. I think to all of us realizing that, although Kitty Rose, I'm sure, go ahead. Well, no, I actually felt quite dumb in that meeting when Madeline was like, oh, of course, swans are like this trope that keeps being used over and over again. I was like, oh yeah, yeah. And then I was like, of course, of course. Like I know so much about all the valleys with all the birds and all the fairies and all of those creatures. But it was actually so thrilling to sort of dive into that sort of, not even moving the vocabulary, but like a movement history that I sort of have in my body and have like embodied through the ages as you do when you're like doing choreography that's been passed down since like the 1800s. So that was really interesting to bring that sort of history embodied history into this piece. And I'm sure, Chris, you share some of that as well. Oh, I mean, I swear, at least for my part, Chris, like the moment where we get the true bird's eye view, bird's eye view of you standing up, there's something so quintessentially dying swan about it. Oh yeah, and when he's like doing this with his arms and he's got this like gorgeous apama. It's just a little quote. It's a little like ballet Easter egg. Well, it's amazing though, because it's a ballet Easter egg from a position that's impossible on a ballet stage, for the most part, let's assume, right? Well, we have other questions from Bridget. How does it feel to, how does it feel, Chris, to perform these days? Great. Great. During these brave new world that we're in, live performance has not been happening in theaters. And so having this opportunity to work in a real theater and to work on new material with several collaborators, I'm sorry, it has been an amazing experience. And there's something beautiful to performers about expressing yourself through performance. And there's something very humbling about performance in general, but specifically with this experience, you know that you're just the conduit through which this experience is seen, but what's happening behind the scenes is just this impressive electronic ballet that is just so humbling. And I'm so grateful to be a part of this team. And I'm so grateful to have an opportunity to perform live nowadays. And so the short answer is great. Yes. Hello, Bridget. I missed you and love you. Hello, Bridget. Well, and this goes back to the question about process. Were there any tech performance elements that were communicated to Madeline to craft the techs? Or were there certain tech elements that you knew you were going to incorporate? Oh, interesting. That's such a good question. Madeline, actually, why don't you go first and then Josh and I will hop in? Oh, I was gonna say no. There were no specific tech elements. I mean, there's a closet, you know, it's like a box. That was the tech that, I mean, I don't think that that was just me falling down on the job, right? Like I was like, I thought there may be other components and this is, I needn't anticipate them in order to bring them out of that. Yeah, I think we knew, actually there's a lot, we didn't know going into it, you know? We knew I wasn't gonna be as involved, but I think for a while we thought this closet was gonna be more involved. And until we had built this relationship with Culture Hub through their Downtown Variety Series and kind of becoming residents at LaMahama and Culture, that we realized that we could take advantage of your space, and I say your to you down there as if spatial relation. Yeah, that's where he is. Well, great. Take advantage of your space to use the closet in a way that we truly have never been able to do so. And it's not to say we planned that. I think that came out of a meeting we were all having. But nonetheless, it's what excites me so much about this project is that we were able to take the exact same square footage and totally upend it. And really I wanna say thank you for that. So, K.R. Yeah, and yeah, and like huge, huge thank you to the entire Culture Hub team, especially Billy who just was able to use some of those carpentry skills to put it together. Cause it would not, this is obviously quite physical in this space. We realized, I think maybe we realized before yesterday but it was yesterday that I realized that he moved so much that he actually keeps moving the closet off of its spikes. And so this afternoon we had to drill it, we Billy drilled it into the floor so it wouldn't move. So the camera would, so it would be like square in the camera. But going back to a little bit more of that question that I would say Josh, like sometimes when we're making a piece, you're like, ooh, I've got this cool new trick that I can do. Let's play with that and let's see what this little piece of technology can do. And we just like play with things, especially a lot of our closet works pieces. And definitely the piece that we made for Downtown Variety was just like trying this one little thing and just sort of exploring it. But with this piece in particular, the, I think the only thing that I knew about it is that I like wanted new texts. Like I wanted something that was like written now. And because I think that it's interesting to explore these times and to just acknowledge where we all are at as humans. And so we really allowed the, like once we got some texts from Madeline and started having conversations about it to like let that dictate the technologies that we were using. And to Chris's point, as he said before, we like tried a million things. We had this great day of rehearsal where like everyone in the cultural team was like running around like Billy had a fan. And then he like, he came over and he's like, do we have feathers? And I was like, no, we don't have feathers. And he was like, and then I turned around and he had like this bowl. He produced a bowl and it was full of pieces, like tiny pieces of paper that were like the shape of feathers. And then he just like ran over and was like sprinkling them. Like everyone was just like trying out a million different ideas. And then we were able to like go and look at that and be like, what was successful? What worked? What didn't? What is a super cool piece of technology that we use but actually doesn't feel truthful in this piece? And also like what, and so we distilled it like everyone's been saying down to like some like, I don't wanna say like three or four but some like very specific pieces of technology and like sort of ways of like technological storytelling that we then implemented throughout the entirety of the piece. There's some basic questions here. First off, Madeline, is the text available online? No, it's available on my hard drive. I mean, like I could send it to somebody if they wanted it. Happy to share it. Happy to share it. We try to answer all the questions. Yeah. The show will exist online as well. So in that sense, it will. Yeah, thank you. Here we go. And another question is how do we get the floating illusion? We give away the answers here. We're not magicians. We do this. So the closet's on the screen. Yes, Maddie's doing it right now. Yeah, there it is. So the closet's on the floor, the camera. So here's the closet on the ground. So that's how Chris was constantly floating because he had no weight on his feet. And then the camera is above us in the grid. And that's where the, I stood up on a couple steps over here and just dropped feathers onto Chris. And then while we're here doing a tiny tour, I'll also just show our sort of tech setup, which, and there's some, and yeah. So here's all this sort of magic where we have audio, live streaming Q-Lab and Isadora and BDMX and LiveLab and Sangmin Che who operates it all. Yes. This is actually a perfect segue to this question. Oh, sorry, KR, go ahead. Oh, no. Yeah, I was going to do the same thing you were going to do. I wanted Manny to show that big screen real quick because Josh is going to talk about it. This one? Yeah. It's a perfect segue, a question for the creative technologists. And also I assume for everyone. Oh, that's a big picture of me. Big Josh. What was it like? Were you present? How did you communicate during this process and how did we get all of the pieces to come together? I mean, I can jump in there a little bit just to say that I think one of the things that was pretty magical about this experience was the way in which the technicians were working collaboratively, remotely and that there was actually an entirely different rehearsal system that had to be built. And I think both you guys in theater and quarantine and also what we've been doing with the downtown variety shows that we also started back in March as everything closed down. We kind of created these workarounds but this was I think a step forward. I mean, we had Deandra actually triggering lights from home which I didn't really know was that super feasible and actually building lighting cues from home. Similarly, Gavin was over there and Sangmin had created a little patch so Gavin could control the certain elements of the Q-Lab triggering basically for the rehearsal process and then they would collaborate and a lot of sending patches back and forth and using Zoom and LiveLab and interconnecting all of these different remote systems to make it all kind of happen. And I feel like it's important to say that it's not like that was the magical solve for everything but it's just like a new tool in the tool belt and it's not the replacement of any other tool but there's always a world, can you guys still hear me? There's always a world where people cannot travel or potentially leave their homes for all sorts of different reasons and I just, yeah, I feel like it's important to have these tools and really figure out how they can be truly useful and include more people. Totally and to that point, I feel like choreographing over Zoom has been such a crazy, crazy experience when Josh and I obviously started working together. I mean, actually the first time I saw Josh was like a couple of weeks ago and we've been making pieces every two weeks since March and so it's forced me who works, is a primarily, I work in a visual medium and it's much easier for me to use my body than it is for me to use my words to describe something but I've had to just become, I've had to develop a new language. We have a whole language about how we rehearse in the box and we've numbered the walls and things like that but also in this process in particular because there were so many more people involved we had to ask one another to do things like repeat ourselves like more than once in a way that's usually quite annoying but Maddie and I were talking about this yesterday that there also was something about making sure that you really understood what someone was saying before you then moved on to the next task. So that's something that I'm actually really excited to bring forward. I feel like we and theater are constantly moving like so fast and like we have three weeks to put the show on its feet and then it's in previews and like no time, no time and then we're not really listening to each other and the thing that has come out of this process in particular but just in working in this medium in general is that like we are being forced to communicate better and also to listen to each other better. Speaking of listening. Got one. Yes. You can talk in and out. I was very grateful to have this incredible technology set up during this process because well, because of quarantine. I mean, I was in, I had that a crazy existential moment where I was working remotely and then for the first time during quarantine I met somebody in person that I had met in 2D. Like I met all the culture hub people rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing and then we had to do a couple like I had to go to the studio to tweak something. And so speaking to the power of culture hubs creative technology, I was in the studio for two hours during this whole process. And so that was amazing to have that experience of like first of all, only being in the studio for an extremely limited amount of time and being able to do everything else remotely. And then also like meeting Maddie and Billy and Chris and song men and being like, oh my God, you're not zeros and ones. That was the first time that happened to me. So that was a complete mind fuck, excuse me. It's all right, YouTube will allow it. Just make sure that music isn't copyrighted. Another question here, maybe this will be our last. Some of the imagery has for the lack of a better word post-production elements, how did those come about? Discussed, created and fused with the live performance. And that's actually one of the things that culture hub has been working on obviously that we at theater and quarantine have been working on is how do we create and how do we tell stories that don't just live in a digital space but actually necessitate digital storytelling and engage with that. So yeah, we use in this production, we're using Isadora and also VMX, is that correct? VDMX, yes. I only did the Isadora part. And QLab of course. So that's how we're doing all of the video processing which allows us a tremendous amount of flexibility. We are able to do an absurd amount of what you'd call post-production work live, not in camera but in computer. And that's been one of the most exciting parts ever since the very beginning of theater and quarantine when Katie Rose and I realized if I put a chair on the wall and Katie Rose flipped her computer on its side we could start emulating a sort of gravity-less space. And that's been sort of the very beginnings of this entire project. So since then the goal of course has been how can we, because a lot of theater and quarantine pieces at the very beginning were done in post, but since then we've tried to move forward and say, well, how can we do it live? How can we create these cinematic experiences that feel essentially theatrical and embrace liveness? And that's of course been the goal as we move forward. I also... Go ahead, Nanny. Well, some of, at least one effect in the show tonight was movement reactive. So there were like a couple of sort of glitch out moments at the beginning that, so it wasn't a glitch but we call them that for ourselves. But when Chris would move, these sort of colors would come in and those reacted to his movement. So as much as like the word post comes from sort of a film world, but these are live production effects that are coming, I mean, with a creative technologist and that's like a real collaboration that is happening live that doesn't, I mean, it does still happen in a regular theater but there's a lot to be explored. I like that it happens in a regular theater because to me, we're still just taking the tools. I mean, ultimately like Q-Lab, Isadora, these were tools created for live performance and we're adapting them to turn them into production studios, which is just a pivot. Well, since it's after 10 and since it's the Lake Show, I'm going to ask everyone to come up with a final thought. Oh, no. No, it's not the last time. Now, a final thought can be anything. A final thought can be promotional. A final thought can just be a word of wisdom. A final thought can just be you staring at the camera. At the camera, but we do like to do this. So please, Gavin, I'm going to do this. I have a final question. Oh, now I don't know. Can I ask a final question? I was just going to ask you, Josh, like how is it going to feel like are you, one day it might be that we no longer have to perform in closets, like how will you feel out in the blasted wasteland of like workshop or something? Oh, you're breaking my heart, Madeline. So cozy. I hope you, I hope you're okay. He is so cozy there. I mean, I don't know. I think what's been most remarkable about the closet and Chris, I'm sure you've felt this even just playing in it for the past two weeks is that there's sort of an infinite amount of storytelling possibilities, particularly when merged with the digital functionality that, you know, this two by four by eight space allows for, has the potential to just keep going. So maybe we'll leave the closet, maybe we'll just keep building more closets. I mean. That looks worldwide. Yeah, maybe we'll just tour around with the closet, but it's entirely possible. And I think Katie Rose and I resigned ourselves to this a couple of months ago that closets are gonna be our life for a little bit at least. So, yeah, back to final thoughts. Yeah. I just wanna say that I'm obsessed with Dr. Catherine Mazer's comment about the Donna Haraway shout out and like non-human animal politics. So I'm gonna be thinking about non-human animal politics probably for the rest of the night. Gavin, send it to someone else. Oh, Gavin, oh geez, Gavin sending to Belly. Well, first off, I wanna thank LaMama just for all of their support and also for helping secure the NEA funding that allowed us to participate in this project. And then so many thoughts rushing through my head, but I guess I'm gonna say I wonder, Madeline, if we've broken you now that you've now become like an insider of all of this creative technology and is it gonna ruin the next two iterations of your bird trilogy? Amazing. I don't have to answer, right? It's just final thoughts. It's true. It's, yeah, I look forward to finding that out over time. Belly, send it to someone else. Oh, right. I will send it to Chris. Sweet. First thing I wanna say is promotional. Please catch another amazing artist, Heather Christian, who I had the great opportunity of working with a couple of years ago, I won't say how many, but she's amazing and I can't wait to see what's going to happen in this space with that beautiful music and her beautiful mind. So please catch that at a future date that someone is going to say. Glad I wanna mess up. December 14th, yeah, December 14th. December 14th. A little bit more. There you go. And also, Raja Pethere Kelly, who is one of the artistic advisors ended costuming on this show, was involved me in this process and I wanna send a thank you out to him as well for introducing me to this wonderful group of people. And what's my final thought? Life keeps moving forward. So why not go along? I'm gonna send it to Maddie. My final thought is a really quick face reveal for Madeline. That's just not many, this is for those who are watching for the late show, you know? And so that was one. Another final thought is this. And there's- Oh, wait, wait, look at Josh's. He got it in honor. So for all of you playing at home, I wanted to bring a treat to the theater on the first day of rehearsal, like the first day we were in the theater. And because it's COVID times, I couldn't get my usual like bar of chocolate and like box of salty snacks, like things that you put your hand in and other people put their hands in. And I was at the store and the only thing they had that was like individually wrapped was this gorgeous box of Ferrero Rocher. And so we've been munching on the moves in. Maddie, any other final thoughts? It's a total privilege to be in this Zoom room and in this real room. And just this room is very interesting to be in when Chris performs, because it feels that the performance and their energy sort of transcends all of us and Songmin and I do our own little choreography throughout the show, which includes a lot of this sort of a thing. And I just think that that's interesting, that the performer takes on a few more performers to get through this digital space and reach the audience. Madeline, do you have a final thought beyond your final question? I guess I just, I'd love to think about that infinity inside of that constrained space, like you were talking about. That's a really potent thing to take forward into any form, I think. Itty Rose. I'm just writing down infinity in a confined space. Hold on. If I don't write it down, it goes out of my brain. Just so grateful to everyone I know. I'm just letting you in on the process. Just so thankful to everyone culture hub in particular for helping us through this process. Every single person here approached this piece, even though most of us didn't even know each other, you all approached this piece with open hearts and open minds and a real spirit of collaboration and an honesty of storytelling. And I recognize that that's, I'm very lucky and that that is very rare. And so I just want to, yeah, thank you all so much. Josh, what are your final thoughts? I would also like to thank you all. I'd like to thank you, Katie Rose, Chris, Gavin, Madeline, Billy, Maddie, Sangmin, Deandra, Raja. Really everyone, it's been such a pleasure and we're so thrilled that you could be part of this piece tonight. I do have to do some shameless promotional work, which is to say that in two weeks, Theater and Quarantine is back with another iteration of Closetworks. Is it volume seven already? Wait, was the last one? Yeah, seven, last one was seven. Sheesh. So we're back with Closetworks in two weeks. So if you want a series, come check it out. And then two weeks after that, we are indeed back with a premiere of a new Heather Christian musical and we're so excited for you to see it. Here's the tiny, the trailer, which is to say it is indeed about Mother Teresa. So that's happening. Again, we totally forgot to put the link in the page. So fundraising.fracturedatlist.org, backslash jv-squad if you want to donate. And again, we beg you to subscribe because we have a sort of off-the-book scheme here at Theater and Quarantine to see if we can actually get monetized by YouTube. And what would happen if theater artists didn't have to write grants for a living? So, subscribe, see, maybe we can get to 1K, maybe we can get beyond that. Thank you all so much for coming. The earlier show, Madeleine had a really wonderful phrase, coined a phrase about theater and quarantine. So I shall leave you with that. It feels real in the box. Next time I say it, it'll be a little less like, slow beat. It feels real in the box. It feels real in the box. Good night.