 One, we are live. Welcome everybody back here on Segal Talk. It's a Friday noon in New York City in Midtown, Manhattan. Slightly cooler day after the tropical heats we had in the last days. And we are back on Segal Talks with voices from around the world, on theater, on performance and artists who try to create meaning and get meaning from working in this field we are all in and that we like. So I welcome all our listeners also and thank Hal-Round for hosting us. We just had yesterday a wonderful panel on puppetry, global puppetry, but also an American puppetry on the shifting field that we all live in. And so I thought it was quite a beautiful reminder of how big this field really is. And Wednesday we heard from Bangkok, from Thailand, Bipam, an organization of 10, 11 countries of Southeast Asia and how they are dealing with the time of change, the time of the corona and what's happening now and what will be coming up. And now we come to another country, slightly more well-known perhaps, France. And we had many French artists with us and we're so thrilled to have with us today Marine Bachelot Niguain and Pender Dio. Thank you both for being with us. We have a great, great relation here in New York also with the French Cultural Services, Nicole and Laurent, fantastic colleagues and have been supportive of our talks and as have been so many others like Emmanuel de Montgazan, people who we locked so closely with. They are both based normally in Lille. This is a town if I'm right, about an hour, an hour and a half south of Paris, just became soccer champion in front of Paris Saint-Germain, a very big deal unexpected and they're also famous for La Piscine, a famous museum where it used to be a swimming pool, a public pool, if I understand right. And now it has a fantastic galleries where you see the contours of the sculptures reflecting in the water. So, bonjour, where are you both, Pender? Where are you? Are you in Paris and Lille? Bonjour, Frank, hi. I am now in Tunis for residency. I'm hosted by the French Institute in Tunis for months. Oh, fantastic. So, you are not in Europe at the moment, you just got there? I will be returning to France at the beginning of July. So, you must be in quarantine still? Yeah, yeah, I still have four days until I go outside, yeah. Amazing, so in Tunis and Marine, where are you? I am in Can, Normandy in Comédie de Can, the theater. And I will have much time in Normandy in this period because I applied for the direction of a theater in Rouen. And I have a lot of real meetings to do and see people and see shows. So, that's very nice. Wow, that's, it's a very significant theater, right? It's one of the state theaters. Yes, it's a Sainte-Dramatique Nationaline in Rouen. So, yes, we are many artists to apply and we have to make this concourse. So, how does it feel as a young female artistic director, artist? I think we just lost Marine, at least on my screen. Panda, maybe we go to you right away. I might read a little bit for our audience, you know, about you and your work. Panda is an author, playwright and prep artist. And she's based in Lille, as we said, and together with Anthony Thibault, she co-founded a label, Jeune Texte en Liberté. So, a label not for music, but for books, plays, is that right? For theater, yeah. For theater, yeah. And she's an associate artistic at the Sainte-Dramatique Nationaline de Balance, and which is led by Mark Lane. And frequently, she gives also writing workshops and shares her experience. And her play, La Grande Ours, The Big Bear, is that right? Eschi Bear, Eschi Bear, is published by Quartet Editions while her play, Piste, was published in 2001 in France, but also in Germany. It has been translated and staged by Aristide Tananda, who's a good friend of us, who was at the Siegel Center for Penworld Voices, our literary festival. It's a fantastic worker and also created that important festival. And it was shown, your work at the Festival in Auton, and my, our good friend, Antje Uebel, also said, you know, it's time for you to speak to Panda and you invited Marine to come and with us. So Panda, tell us a little bit, how was last year, were you in Lille in the time of Corona? I was not far from Lille because I was on a writing residency in the north of France, I think 30 kilometers from Lille. And when the quarantine started, I left the residency to return home in Obervilliers. Obervilliers is in the suburb of Paris. And this period was very hard, but I think everybody shares the same feeling about it. And it was very difficult for many things. The first one maybe as a playwright, we don't have a lot of help from the state. So I think I had six months without any payment last year. So for this thing, it was a little bit difficult. And maybe there was a lot of, I don't know how to say, but maybe there was a lot of police violence during the first lockdown. As I told you, I used to live in Obervilliers and it's a very walking class area in France. And I heard a lot of police sirens. And when we had to go outside, we had a permit and there was a lot of abuse during that period. I remember a black mother, she was living in Obervilliers too, and she was Taze with a tazer. Yeah, because Taze, thank you, because she was getting food for a child. Another example, a young teenager, I know his name is Amin, he is mentally handicapped and he was beaten by the police. So for all these things, it was very hard in addition to the shock of the coronavirus. And I think we have been a lot infantilized, a lot by the government. And the distance between the police and the population is increasing. So for these things, it was difficult. And maybe the theaters were closed and there were a lot of proposition on Zoom. But maybe too much. And I led widening workshops on Zoom. At the beginning, I didn't feel like it because I wanted to share this thing with people, but we couldn't. So at the end, people were very happy because maybe it was a space for them to escape during this difficult period. And we were very alone. So maybe they needed it. So I continued, I pursued. And of course, even if it was great, during this time, this specific time, I prefer to do things and share, of course, with other people. Oh, yeah, it was very... Quite a complicated time. Yeah, we experienced also very strongly that moment of Black Lives Matter, what already has been there, has over centuries, but all of a sudden corona crystallized everything. It was visible under a microscope or as Richard Schachner said, like a nuclear reactor is melting, but the roof is open and you look inside in real time. So that must have been a tough experience for you going back in your... This is the town you grew up, right? Oh, I grew up in Dijon. Oh, in Dijon? I used to live in Oberwillier during 13 years. 13 years. And I left the first... My first decision after the quarantine was to move. To move and to live. I moved to... We also heard from Romania and other places where people said that people who don't, whatever, are part of minorities. They either looked at the ones who carry the virus, almost like a mid-evil thinking of some people who don't look like us, or like the majority of the ones who brought that in. So completely wrong. It's racist and it's just... But also a reality. Did the Black Lives Matter movement, did that somehow helped that discussion? Do you feel that had an influence for you and for your work and in that Oberwillier in the town? I think the sad murder of George Floyd had a big influence, but all over the world, because there were big demonstrations to fight racism and say that Black Lives Matter. And in France, Adama Trauré died in the same condition as George Floyd five years ago. And his sister, Asa Trauré, has been demanding justice even since and she's still being harassed by the police and of course by the state. So it was a real wake-up for all of us because it doesn't only happen in the United States but also in France. And during the demonstrations, there were a lot of people and young people and that gave me hope for the future. Yeah. France in a way, such a great country also has a great history of theater yet is also struggling with its past and with global problems of climate change, of racism, of hate against women and I could say these are global issues. Do you feel for you in this time, did something change that you probably said you couldn't work, you were not paid, experienced over the year, very closely something that if you would have been in Paris with your friends, they would not have been experienced maybe as immediately. Do you feel this changed your work, changed you in your thinking? I don't know because I think we are still in this crisis. So it's difficult to have enough distance to speak really about it but I can say maybe that I didn't discover because I knew it already but now it's relevant for me that we have to pay more attention to our environment to this particular place of people in the world in relation with animals, with plants, with the trees and maybe the fiction will be inspired and maybe mine too by all these theories by about a change of paradigms and we have to pay more attention to our environment there is a lot of talk in France about the basket fiction and about that fiction as a, about the things that fiction has privileged the hunter, the battle against, with weapons against mammoth, but as neglected maybe the basket which is a very useful, not weapon, but thing to feed people and to bring food home. Basket you mean to collect into like a little basket where instead of hunting and killing, you know the agriculture and the ideas of, yeah. So maybe our way to white will be impacted by all these theories and all the thinking about the other crisis and the environment. Marie-Marie-Marie, welcome back and we will come back to you in a second. Panda, one more question, tell us a little bit, what is your work all about? Why do you work with Aristide, you know, and that was a French director, which one would think, you know, so what do you do? Hmm, I think I like to write theater because we, it's a way to speak to people all over the world. And I think art is the best way to join us, like dancing or painting or music. And it was important for me to work with people from the African continent and with Aristide Darnagda to show that stereotypes about Africa are always the same, poverty, misery, illness, and things like that. And I wanted to show that we could do, tell our stories. And with Pist, with Aristide, I'm speaking about, I'm telling about the genocide in Namibia during the German colonization and there's not so much people who know this story. So I wanted to put some light about this fact, this terrible fact that the first concentration camps were in Africa and a lot of people died in very awful ways and nobody knows about it and nobody speak about it. So it was important for me to write it and to work with someone from the continent. So like Honduras is about Namibia and... Pist is about Namibia and about my childhood as a black woman in France. And La Grandeur is more about, it's a fiction, but it can be very real because it's about a woman. She has a paper, candy, candy, candy, candy paper. And it put it down on the floor, it put down on the floor and she has to go to the police station, she stays there a very long time and it's very awful and stressful. So to get more energy and to find herself, she began transformation and she... She transformed. Transformed with a morphine. Thank you, in a she-bear. Incredible, incredible, incredible idea and I think it's from someone we should really see here and hopefully it will make its way to the US. Marine, tell us, we talked just with Pender also that this is a time of awakening, a time of change. You are highly respected as a director, also a playwright and you are applying as a young woman also for a position right now in France. How is this moment? What are your ideas? What do you want to do different? What is your vision? Yes, I'm sorry for the short, for the electric cat. It happens in theater. Yes, I heard Pender and I agree with her we have to change our way of doing and it's quite difficult because now in France from a few weeks theater are reopened, people can come and there is some kind of frenzy and we enter in this new frenzy that is similar to the one before the lockdown even worse and it's too slow down is something difficult to do because there is also a very big concurrence between artists, many young and emergent artists, women artists, black, Asian and Arabic artists are structurally discriminated by this system and the capitalist system from after the crisis would be very, very tough and hard. So I think there is something to balance and to be very attentive and to all the phenomenon that affects society and the heart, how our background and we are also in all this. I think my, I was hearing Pender and I was listening to her and I am now trying to write about the period of the lockdown, the violence of the police in the lockdown, the change of paradigm that affected us. It's really hard to write about this period and well, what changed? For example, my next project because it's a strategy also to get out from this crisis I want to work on a woman, a Vietnamese woman who lives now in France she is more than 80 years old and she went through the Vietnam war she received the orange from her body and she lost her first child in the jungle in the Vietnam war and she is now making a trial a process against Monsanto, the chemicals and other petrochimie agro-industrial societies, American societies and well, I want to focus on her, write something on her because she is at the intersection of anti-imperialist ecological feminist fights and I want to carry a story in school rooms, in classrooms, in theatres I think we realize with this crisis that it was important to make theatre also outside of the theatres we need to have theatre outside at the open hair in classrooms, in libraries in bibliotheques and so on I think we need to be very adaptive to this new context to meet new publics, new people and to be very careful with this adaptability, agility not to answer to the capitalist system because we have to adapt but not at all crisis I could say that and with theatre writing plays and shows that reflect the reality try to think about it but also open spaces for imagination, dreams, political utopies and so on I would say that we do read a lot in the news about that complex relationship of the French police now to its own citizens also that there was an attempt by the government any video, any photo would be forbidden you couldn't publish it, it has been taken back where were you during the lockdown and did you see were you an eyewitness of people your family, your friends were they affected by that or you saw the demonstrations you were part of them Well, during the lockdown I was already in Lille and I had the chance to have trees and birds I didn't have a garden but I couldn't see the nature and well, when it was in May or June yes, I returned and I came back in the street in demonstrations against this police violence so it was very important to see all these people in the street despite the straight of the virus and we were in the street to demonstrate well, to demonstrate against the police the police is always very very present to repress but from many, many years it's just like that in my hometown it was a real laboratory for the government to repress the demonstrations so we had yes, we are used to this police violence and well, as for me hajjan people hajjan young boys are I think less targeted by the police if I think to black and Arabic people which are really the targets the discretion and invisibility of hajjan people is also something I work on and write on but I would say of course I am concerned and I had to in last November I was about to create a new play which is called which talks a lot about the friends of today about terrorism and police violence because it's a story of Akila and she is a young girl from high school and after a terrorist attempt in France there is a minute of silence in a high school and during this silence minute she puts a white hijab on her head and then she defies the law of the high school and of the republic and we and then we discover that she is the sister of a terrorist one of the terrorists that committed the last attempt and this is a rewriting of the miss of Antigone she will be the only one from her family to go to the funeral of her brother and she will keep this hijab on her head in her high school which is really forbidden by the French law and so many things will happen in her high school so that's a way for me to use a miss to understand the issues of the French republic one of her older brother he died a few years ago in a police crime he was killed by the police so this young girl carries the story of her brother to understand what happened to her brother so this show would be showed to the real public in next October but we had the chance to finish the real source and to play it twice in a high school with pupils in the theatre in the high school the environment of the play seems to be like an emergency solution is closer to the spirit of the play the setting might be more thought-provoked do you think for your generation is this imprint of this year something you will carry through life is that strong or do you think it was an interruption and we will go on back to where we were and keep on fighting it was already there before I think this crisis was like a mirror and everything that happens now is the same years ago but we didn't pay attention on it but now it's funny because during the first quarantine we had a lot of meetings about the word after corona what we are going to do in theatre is to think for the place to think about the environment about the scenography of the place and about the relationship between big structures, big theatres and small companies and as Marine said everything went very quickly after the quarantine and we didn't get the time to do everything and I think the thing we need now is time time to think about what happened to us what trauma happened for us because it was like a trauma for everybody and to really try to find another way to live because we are going very fast in this capitalism and this capitalism is very cruel and I think people who were a little bit in difficulties now are surviving and I am speaking about artists but a lot of other people in France who are not aware of surviving and I don't know I hope we will it's like a lesson and I hope we will listen to it it is to as far as I know France had the hardest lockdowns all European countries perhaps until the end of last year but you continue to have a lockdown until 6 o'clock and it is surprising that on one hand it was so rigid and then all of a sudden it opens up and the idea is let's pretend nothing happened, we should go on in that way you both talked about the police violence actually also which surfaced in Britain also this murder of a woman now it became clear actually a policeman was for killer and a demonstration during the time of Corona they were dissolved with extreme violence the idea of theater and the idea of art the idea of beauty of course is to find solutions they are not violent they are actually the opposite in a way to the ideas of police or military or weapons as you said the hunter does it work what do you believe in what works what's your experience is that perhaps the play in the high school is that working better than bringing the high school kid to the theater Panda what are the new strategies are the new ideas you guys are exploring in face of what we say you know these capitalism that is cruel and what we have seen is also not fully working especially also here in the US so what are strategies are you finding new ideas new solutions we would help us to share and would be good for us to know with my with the label we do with with a director it's been I think it's been going on for seven years now and from the beginning we have been thinking to get out of the theaters to meet people those who are not used to it who are not at ease to enter in a theater so we have been organizing readings for seven years in different places outside of theaters it can be in parks in libraries in bookshops in women's associations last year we had an appointment to do it in a hairdress salon because we stay there for a very long time so it was the perfect place it's for me the perfect place to listen to stories and to read the author afterwards so yeah we thought about it for a long time but we are happy that now we want to do this and want to develop it but I think it's not enough we have to work on our representation to think about who is telling stories who has the money to tell stories who is on stage and for which war if it's a stereotype or not if you always take a black woman to do a prostitute on stage or the wife of a migrant we don't want that anymore so I think we have a lot of different ways to work on it to have a better not a more inclusive theater and more space for people particularly people we don't hear about to express themselves and to listen to their stories and to welcome people important I really agree with Panda we have to change our ways to do but as well as Panda in my theater company we always did some shows in theaters on the stage but also theater landscape theater also things in libraries, parks classrooms and so on because contemporary writing speak about contemporary words need to meet the people everywhere and so I think we need to invent circulations between theaters stages and the outside and also to invent moments of conviviality for example I remember that one of my best souvenirs was a karaoke that was proposed by a theater because one of my last shows is about Vietnamese, Russian French family memories in one moment of the show we do a karaoke we are in a karaoke in Vietnam the world is entering the big story is entering this karaoke and the theater in Paris they propose to do karaoke and many people came for this evening of karaoke because they wanted to sing there was a group of migrant people there were very nice moments with drinks with singing with singing in every language not so much English but French Farsi Arabic and Creole and so many Portuguese so many Brazilian, so many languages and just with songs that carried nostalgia and from the native country and I think we have to invent with our shows other things, have a drink make a concert, share a meal where everybody can bring something and we have to reinvent ways of sharing you know the art background are quite yes, on themselves so we have to reopen things and to go in schools where there are whole people that have a lot of memories of the world different stories and when I work as well in a hospital or in prison where there are retired people I can listen and hear a lot of stories that are really rich to feed my work my working work my writing work really a call to reinvent and to start new as a question perhaps as an honest answer you were with Ariste at the Avignon Festival doesn't get much better you were in the hair salon where you did the reading but how did you feel in these moments when your work was done after Avignon? no, how do you compare both experiences like in the big stage of a festival on world class tell us about the experience of it what felt closer to your work or was it very different it's different because when you were alone and it's a monologue so I was alone on stage and the real soul it was easy for me because only Ariste and his assistant were there so it was not so much people I was not so impressed but for the premiere I think there were 250 people and it was full and I'm not an actress it was my first time I went on stage to defend and to say my text it was a very different feeling at the same time I was really eaten by the fear and in the other way I was supported by the crowd and everybody was very careful to listen to the words and with a lot of respect they listened to the story about the genocide and I felt very touched about how people were touched by the story even if they are very far from the story even if they are not black I was very happy about that because it worked for me it spoke for me about universalism because in France this universalism is ethnical because it's white at 90-95% and it's important to show that universalism is not about the colour of the skin but if the story is rich the characters are complex and you can talk to everybody and everybody can identify and people in the when I did it on the stage I think they identified and it was a great it was like a small victory for me so it was really different because I didn't expect so much energy but I was surprised because I was in the theater and the understanding was the same in the hair salon was that the same understanding? sometimes I was surprised because people loved at the moment I didn't expect I couldn't expect that so I wanted to find new subtleties new senses that you didn't imagine when you wrote it it was very interesting you both represent in a way a new generation of theater makers how was your journey when did you discover that theater was meaningful and how was your journey Marine, we start with you my journey towards theater well I think I always wanted to write and I wanted to write novels when I was little and then I discovered that literature was sometimes cut from the society and I discovered the political theater and I wrote a kind of memory about Dario Fu and Frank Arame theater which in the 70s they engage themselves to make theater out of the theater out of the institution in factories, in streets and well I think I studied at the University political theater I was very struck by Rwanda 1984 which was a very long show about the genocide in Rwanda and well I think I realized that I wanted to write a political theater I wanted to experiment and at that time in the 90s mid 90s beginning of yes political theater had a bad reputation it was considered low artistic at all and I wanted to prove that we can invent aesthetics be creative with political ideas so I think I decided to do this kind of mission and yes that was evident for me that my writing to touch people theater was the ideal art of that books are great but I think actresses can move people with the words that I wrote it was a collective art because we can invent this utopia of collective and you got into a theater that was like a competition how did it start well in high school I was making theater atelier and I was on stage I realized that I was better at writing and when I was at the university I made a workshop with Roland Fichet and it helped me a lot to assume that I wanted to write and this Roland Fichet was also a director of a company that created a group of young writers so he invited me and we were in this group of young writers and we had the chance to be able to read and to criticize our text and to be in kind of laboratory that helped us to assume ourselves as writers also with first command and first text to a stage and then when we were with five other writers, young writers we created a theater company in red which is called Lumière d'Auth, Light of August reference to the novel of Faulkner and that was the space where I could assume myself as being a stage director I could try to professionalize myself also in direction Yes, I did things before in university but when we created our own theater company it was here for me to jump into it Jean-Médiane, of course is also a great theater in France and Ranzet who was here and it was this great history project with Patrick Puchin but Penda, how was your journey how did you end up in Avignon how did that happen? I think it took a long time for me I discovered theater very late I think I was more than 20 I worked for 10 years as a librarian I managed four libraries during a long time and I quit two years ago to devote myself more to writing and to my artistic practice and I think when I was a student I was working in a theater at MC Quatreintres in Bourbigny and I'm very happy because they support me a lot now and I began there as a student so I was working only during the evening to welcome people and I discovered it was a nice job because I had the opportunity to see many plays from all over the world and to see them many times if I wanted to so it was very great for that and I discovered I think my first big emotion was La Soryse from Chekhov and it was the director Jean-René Lemoine and all people on stage were black people black actors and it was amazing not only because they were only black but because the way he showed the Soryse was very different from what I was thinking about and I felt very I don't know I think I didn't decide it at this moment but I think it helped me to push the door and to try to write again and again I began to write I was 18 I think and I think I began to write because I'm very sensitive to situations of injustice we spoke a lot about it and it makes me very angry and writing allows me to put this anger at a distance and also as Marine said to share emotions with people I don't know and I think I like to write a lot of things I like to write theaters too because there are two times and I think it corresponds to a part of my personality the first time is a widening time where I'm quite solitary even if I always I'm always not far from people because I want to write with people and about the world so I don't want to be far but I need some space to write that's why I'm here in Tunisia and the second maybe the second time is when you share with a team with an audience what you were widening and it corresponds to a more social aspect of my personality and finally I think theater is alive and every night you have a new performance it's not static like novel I really like novel and I would like to write one day but to see that everything can change every day is a thing I really like because it's a collaborative work well I think that's quite powerful and this is a good motivation I think I like angry voices also music and post-punk music angry songs are touching us take us to that moment when you were 18 what was the first thing you wrote about and why did you write it how did it happen it was a family they are stacked in a room and nobody goes outside of this room except the father and the father takes some I don't know how to say prospectus some publicity material leaflets thank you from outside and the only way for the family to have contact with outside is the little windows they have but the father doesn't want them to see outside what happens so he puts some things on it so they can't see outside and I think I wrote it because I think I was dealing with something very an oppression situation and I wanted to read a fit and I wrote this play about the family but it can be about a society or about its domination and oppression and patriarchy and you were already a librarian at that time you studied I was 18 so I was still a student French was amazing and a question to both of you France is in a way also a superpower of theater like England, Poland, Japan and many in Germany they have this big history of plays there are scenes with Cornet, Molière and everybody and it's a deal with that do you feel this is a time to reinvent the stories new adapt the myth are these plays meaningful to you or do you feel it's a time where something new emerges what is called for is a creation of things that hasn't been there we have to promote contemporary theater and classical from tomorrow well we at school we have to study Molière, Cornet, Racine but as for now they are not so much on the stage I think it's really interesting to go and visit them from time to time because under the comedy there are some tragedies tragic situation problem of social class problem of yes very very cruel mechanics but well my priority as a director is not to work on Molière or Cornet or Racine we can be inspired inspired by their poetry but I think French directors I think they also look on check-off when they need to well I believe in contemporary writing I need to have a dialogue with Eschiel with Sophocle with Shakespeare we need to be a new web not to be cut we have the heritage but we have to invent the classical literature So I would say this. Pende, you as a librarian also talk about is the weight heavy or do you see yourself not really affected by, do you see yourself in a tradition of that writing and how do you look at it? I think it's a very nice heritage and it's good to know, of course, it's good to listen to it and to read it. And it's funny because with Marine, we were in a journey two months ago for a national school of theater. And I was very surprised and very upset because there was a lot of scenes from the students about classical theater and a lot with violence and violence against women. And I had, I was very shocked because I didn't imagine that there was so much violence against women in our theater repertoire, yeah. And I was really shocked about it. But so it's good to know and it's good to have our own way and to get, yeah, to be inspired by this theater but by other things too because I think I'm inspired by the theater but by a lot of other things. Le Comte, poetry, novels, sometimes cinema. And I read a lot of new plays now inspired by Siri. Yeah, TV series. TV series, yeah. So yeah, it's the base is always the same. It's a conflict between people. It's an argue between people. And I think now we can use it and as people from today. Who do you follow? Whose work has influenced you? Like from theater makers, filmmakers or novelists? What in your field of vision, what is of significance? What's important to you guys? Well, it's a difficult question for me. Yes, I told about the Antiques, Greek Antiques are important models for me as the tragedy deals with political issues that go through the city. I think, yes, it's important for me. I like, in theater writers, I like Michel Vinavert was his way of dealing with dialogues with everyday life dialogues which become music and very entrelast. Well, I can quote some plays, but it won't be very significant. I always try to, well, to absorb what I read and I also like a lot to invent languages from documentary pieces. And like this work of things that are not literature to bring them into literature and to theater. Well, I don't have now many ideas that I would let Fenda talk because she has a lot of references and maybe I'll talk later. Yeah. Maybe the first one is you, Marina. You are very inspiring. Really. I'm thinking maybe to the work of a woman like Toni Morrison or Leonora Miano or Marin Diaz because they are writing novels but they are writing theater too. And the narration, the way to enter in their work is narration like novels. So I like it because I think I came to the theater with the same way because I'm not from this environment. I'm not an actress, but I came at the theater with the novels. So maybe this woman, I like Wajjimua Wad too because I think he has a lot of narrations in his play and I really like to read them. And maybe in painting, I discovered last year a painter, his name is Augustin Lossage. And I really like his paintings and he has a funny story because he was a minor. And when he was under the roof, he heard a voice and the voice said to him to buy something to paint. And he began to paint and he became a real famous painter in France. So I really like his life and his paintings too. It's heteroclit. Marine, good. So, and then maybe you know, so I mean, you talk already, but what are your projects? What are you working on or what would you like to do? Both of you, what's coming up in your pipeline of engagements? Yes. Well, in July, I will present Circulation Capital in Avignon, Festival Avignon. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. You know, it's off, but we are very happy to do. And it's very, it's a particular show for me. Hi, I'm on stage with the two actors. And that was, that's a work about, you know, family memories, France, Vietnam, Russia. And it's very personal and collective work. And we tried to, to, sorry, I'm quite tired. No, you both speak so beautifully. No, not at all. Well, we went through our family stories with trying to question them in resonance with the big story and the big ideologies Christianism, colonialism, capitalism and communism. And yes, that's a quite emotional and political show. Very, very, very sensitive, very personal. So we are very happy to, there are a lot of work about languages, about songs inside. So we are very happy to be able to show it. And for my other project, I would say this work is writing about Trantonia, this Vietnamese woman I talked about earlier. And in the next years, I would like to create a show that will be called Both People. And I will collect testimonies from Vietnamese and Canadian communities that arrived in France after, after 75. And yeah, I want to tell about this stories of Asian communities that are quite discreet, discreet or indivisibilized in France and about the emergence of the humanitarian actions in Europe and in France with all the ambiguities of this humanitarian, humanitarianism. Well, that's a project. And I would also like to direct one of PENDA plays in the next years. I don't know which plays, I have an idea, but we are talking about this, too. I would be very happy to, yes, contribute to the circulation of PENDA's writing. Thank you. Thank you very much, Marine. For me, maybe I can speak about a project we have together with Marine because Marine invited me to a collective project with another author, her name is Karima El-Karaz. And Marine asked us to write a text that we read together about our ancestors. And all three of us have a link with colonization, even if we didn't experience it directly. And three of us have a link with the language of origin, too. Sometimes because we speak it and sometimes because we don't speak them at all. I don't speak my origin language. And yeah, it's a nice performance we do. And we will have one, I think, at the beginning of July, before we go to Avignon. And after that, I have two projects with the Theater Nationale de Strasbourg. And I am very happy to work with them during the summer and in September. And now I'm in Tunisia to write a play. And I have also a reading in Berlin at the Deutsches Theater with Kevin Riedberger, who is an author and a director. And it's a beautiful story because he read my two plays, La Grande Hourse, The Grosse Berinde and The Piste. And he liked them and he had started a text about the presence of soldiers of colonies, of French colonies in the Rhineland between the two world wars. And he offered me to complete the text, to add something, to cross out, sorry, to cross out, if some parts that didn't suit me. And he trusted me and I thought it was a very generous gesture from him. So there is a reading in Berlin. And after that, I have a partnership with MC 83 in Bobigny and the end is this July. Piste is touring in France and in Germany. I do a lot of readings in Germany now. And there's a podcast on France culture about theater and about police violence. And it will be available at the end of June. And I think that's it. And I'm working on an opera in Australia, sorry. Wow, there are a lot of work ahead of you. And I hope, Marie, you will get the job. And after this talk, we fully endorse you and you can say that and quote it as a voice of change, yeah. What did you say? Thank you. No, no, I was remembering that next weekend I'd been Berlin too for a reading of my play, Les Ombres d'Élev, Shadows and Lips. It would be in a queer theater anthology because it's a play I wrote about LGBT movement in Vietnam, contemporary Vietnam. And well, it was translated into German. So yeah, I also been Germany. And thank you very much for this talk. I'm really sorry for the French electric cuts in theaters, it happens. So in your theater, the electricity went out. That's incredible. And yeah, so really that's quite an update from France and to hear from both of you and Panda from you and your work. Incredible story also, working for 10 years in the library, writing early on and now moving to theater. And so it's hopefully one day and soon you will also come here. And I like that symbol, what you said. You were under the earth, under the ground, not on the surface, not on the light. And you hear a voice and the voice tells you to create art and it happens. So it is something important that I think perhaps also in this time of Corona, something to think about for all of us, also for the listeners, write your poem and do your painting and write something down or play and make music. It is our lives that we have. And when we listen to artists, it's ultimately it is really about us and what it means to us in our lives. So thank you all really for being there. We had another week of Segal talks here at the Segal Center. We had talk number 150 this week, which is an incredible milestone. I think we will slowly come to an end with the focus of Corona, but ultimately continuing these conversations, the global conversations. We also think we will get perhaps more involved in the fabric of theater here in New York with work. And the parks, as you both also have said that it was important to hear that it is of importance to be outside and to create a festival which we do not have, nothing compared to Avignon Festival. And who knows what this time will bring to us. Next week we continue. We will have again artists from around the world. We're gonna have Gerald Thomas who's from Brazil, the US, also partly from Germany with some Russian family and then we will have Abhishek Tapar from India who lives in Amsterdam who just gave his presentation the Huerfestspieler in Germany and the great civil camp son and the Seven Daughters of Yves. That's her company. She's a creative director, actor, artist and writer. And we're gonna hear what she's up to. She lives in our upstate New York and creates also great ceremonies which she has done inside a museum. So it's solstices and other things. So we continue to listen to voices that come out of the theater. And really it was very impressive what you both said today. It was very important for us to hear MS messages and we all hope that this time of corner will bring a change in what has become visible and the brutality of police or say what you both are closer to than others to then becomes a bit more on the minds of everybody that this has to change, it needs to change. It cannot stay how it was. And we shall never just seem to go back how it was before it was already not working. So in theater is a place that can highlight that and can help us to imagine a new world as you both do in your work. So thank you all. Thanks for howl around again for hosting us. And of course for you, the listeners for taking time out of your busy lives. So, so much is online all of a sudden and so much good things also. So it means a lot to us that you are staying with us and I hope it's something meaningful also for you in there and for your own life and to make sense out of the time you live in. It helped me to make sense at least in this hour it felt me closer to the world. So thank you again. And I wish I was in Tunis too and could jump in the ocean but quarantine wouldn't let me do it and what we have some oysters in the Normandy but it will happen one day. Thank you so much again, really. Thank you. It's a privilege to have both of you with us. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.