 Welcome everybody back to Segal Talks here at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center, the Graduate Center CUNY, the City University of New York in Manhattan and where we are still experiencing lockdown, the shutdown of life, the numbers that we are reading are not encouraging over 100,000 people in the U.S. have died. The next country is 36,000. Britain actually also is very high, but it's still why is that the U.S. why so much in New York and New York say what's going wrong? And something seems to be not working that the structures of society, the fabric of it has been exposed, what's working, what's not working. And we are experiencing it really with our bodies in our daily lives that have been so disturbed by that COVID-19 crisis. We have talks all around the world globally from Egypt, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Hungary, Poland, everywhere to listen in, of course also New York and American artists we had just in Bogart with that yesterday who shared with us her experience of this unusual time, the time where the world hit a break and we are all of a sudden stopping in the middle of the tracks and we have to really rethink what we are doing, we experience and we also have the time, but it is existential for many, many, many places in the world, some are better off, some not. It seems to be strongly connected to leadership, political leadership and that government often does a good job. We hear from artists who are very grateful of our participation in democracy and it works and in other places it's not working. So we have to find ways that it's best organized for societies and in those countries where things are working out, theater and the arts also seem to have an important place, a significant place, they are part of solutions and now we are turning to a place that we should pay more attention to anyway, it's not so much on the news for COVID and it's the great country and content of Australia and we have with us Patricia Cornelio, she's a legend in her time in Australia, a great, great worker warrior and fighter in the theater, a playwright, whose work always has focused on class and social structures and also focused on the experience of minorities in your country, which of course has a very special history. She came to our Penwell Voices Festival also and now we have her with us. So Patricia, thank you for sharing and I always say that where are you and what time is it? Hi Frank, it's very lovely to be speaking with you though, it is 2am in Melbourne in Australia and it's just actually quite late for me and 2am in the middle of the night, that's incredible, in the middle of the night and it's freezing and so it's all right, I've got a heater, it's okay, I'm managing that. It's winter, it's winter in Australia? Yeah, yeah well just about and just everybody has to forgive me if I should sort of doze off but I probably won't, I'll be all right. Yeah, yeah, I hope not and if so you can all blame that on me. So listen, you are in Melbourne, right? So what's going on in Melbourne? We've been, the country is very divided by states and certain states in the country have really escaped COVID really fairly miraculously and have had such low numbers or no none and but in Victoria and New South Wales there have been quite a number of people with COVID and there's still some sense of being very anxious about distancing and isolation and just really, it's sort of difficult to talk to you in New York and in America when we're so aware here of how it's hit America and New York in particular and that we've heard that news and in a sense we feel like we're sitting pretty comfortably and there's been very good results in very few deaths and very few numbers. So what are the numbers more or less? What are the numbers? Just over 100 people. Is that really true? 100 but that's as much as in one building, one old HOM in New York or New Jersey. Yeah. Really, you have 100 cases in Australia? Yeah, just over there I think. Yeah, so partly we've come later and I don't know about that but partly we there's a sort of sense that there's more to come and the second or the third wave is talked about but mostly people are feeling like it's all over I think and but the impact of the last few months especially on the arts has been devastating but not just the arts. The impact on working class people is just enormous and the loss of jobs is just devastating but I suppose the worst thing about for the arts is that we haven't really been considered in the package there has been relief packages and quite good ones offered to people who have lost employment but of course our artists don't get the criteria and so we fall through the cracks and I think it's going to have a huge impact on for years and years because there will be so many younger artists who who will not manage this time and perhaps seek to do our other things and more than likely will just seek to do other things so yet again you know it's that funny thing isn't it you know you you have this remarkable and peculiar time but actually all it does is reveal where it's been flawed so terribly and the arts here has been neglected for a really long time and no investment in it and no support of it and and so and other areas like the arts that have also been poorly looked after they just fall apart under these really exceptional circumstances so did you had a lockdown then what were you confined or could you go so tell us a little bit when did it start how long was it um in March that we were well it's funny this um these cards behind me or is it because I was involved in I brought shit a play that I wrote to Pen and and that play um has had a huge life and gone all over the place and that's just been made into a film and we were making a film on the on the smell of an oily rag as they've not been properly funded we just went for it but we went for it and the day after we were we we finished shooting was the call for um isolation so we got a shot um and all the footage is there for us to be working the editor is working on it now and we the writer and me and the directors have been working on zoom with her so um there there's just um that was a wonderful experience for us we're just wonderful a kind of luck really but so the the um it's since the early march that we've been locked down and and now things are just being loosened up and kids are going in this state kids are going back to school this week and um or sorry early next week and so uh things are just starting to um yeah happen slowly but there's still theaters are closed um transported there is not a number of you know a certain number of people allowed on them um and but for a lot for a good month people were keeping away from each other in the street and they're really distancing but i've noticed that that's really becoming i think it feels too unreal for us has an hit in the way that has hit your country and others and um and so you get this sense of it's not not not kind of real all sorts of bullshit conspiracy theories about it as if it's not real so um even so you only had a hundred confirmed infection cases the country went for three months hundred deaths what there's there's a lot more people with coronavirus yeah a hundred deaths yeah a hundred okay i misunderstood yeah a hundred people died which is extremely low of course um but um so but still the country went for three months in the lockdown where people had to stay at home and you could just go to a supermarket and um you know you could you could there were sort of special times for the elderly and disabled and then um but you were only meant to go for you for um vital things not not for shopping all the other shops were closed but anything essential um you could keep buying and how was the mode of the australians in that lockdown how did they take away as far as we think you know perhaps uh uh a wrong way of looking at that kind of as a country that we don't love the outdoors sports being on the move enjoying um um the landscape uh and the distance is a video well how did australia take this uh i i think it i think most australians were very compliant i mean we we see the um footage of demonstrations in america where people are in a fury about not being able to go to work on um and the whole distancing stuff and we we didn't have we had very little um resistance to we were quite compliant in in keeping distance i think it frightened us and um and people especially uh the aboriginal community indigenous community in australia were very very wary of how this would devastate communities and very mindful and most of australians were quite mindful of that so all travel in interstate stopped and i think they've only just opened up certain parts and certain borders are still closed the queensland borders close to new south wales for example and um to alice uh you to um northern territory and the northern territory is very wise to just keep their borders closed people out travel and tourism out until this is way over because of the vulnerability of indigenous communities there um but generally we have been really compliant really um sort of towing the line in terms of um our um uh the leader of our state uh andrew's has been very very stringent with us in particular this state and kept things closed and kept distancing um much longer than other states and people have actually liked him for it they feel like he's looking after us before this very um remarkable now push to get get back the economy the economy over um helps that that debate that's happening all over the world and where you um are not willing to look after people in the way that you were when when it was um in the early days i think it's stinging a bit in terms of the economy now well that is interesting to hear italy also you know as far as we know very much italyans listen to it in france people were very hard they did not listen to the government or had a free independent spirit they actually had to print out forms and carry it with you show to the belief people who are on bikes were fine two three hundred dollars euros in america of course it's schizophrenic our president says to people to inject disinfectant um he pushes to open churches even so we have the highest numbers here of uh infection death cases of taking into account the people might die even in religious services uh in taxes the store owners hired um militia people with semi-automatic guns here and then made up army closers to uh fight the state who forced them supposedly to close things meanwhile in south africa they said we close all our liquor stores because we don't want domestic violence to go up in south africa they even closed tobacco stores with the problems of a black market and and now um now maybe half yeah i think almost one out of four end workers in america filed for unemployment their studies that you know once unemployment was more than 15 16 17 percent it's dangerous moments for um for societies and um and so we are in a very unstable moment we don't even perhaps see it then compared to an australian situation it is a stunning really stunning stunning the difference it's of course an island a big island there are many reasons you don't have five million people in one city using the same subway um but still there are structures that are um out there forms um that are not not working do you feel australia as often uh it's kind of the world passes by what happens in the world they said you're in feeling of of a remoteness from uh what's happening on the globe or i'll say i feel um i i think that you we used to we talk about a really a thing that's been all my all my life is the cultural cringe and that there's a kind of embarrassment about being australian that the australia is a backwater the australia is not part of the the real uh and vibrant world and um it it's especially in uh in relationship to the arts like you we import so much and we we think everybody else's work work is so much better and uh as much as i think it's incredibly important to see other other works and to be involved in that dialogue uh to not look after your own stories and to be able to tell the truth about your own country is uh is is shocking um but but and i think that lots of people kind of have made sort of jokes about australian and about yobos and um you that were a bit backward but most backward and we are we're kind of a backwater in terms of uh we still have manis island and an aru where we have uh people migrating here and they came here by boats and they've been there for years and years and we've imprisoned them and there's nothing else to say about that except they've been imprisoned and it's absolutely miserable so we and then we've got a history with our indigenous people that is so shameful and and we don't recognize um really basic things that we're treating and um and compensation and even just recently are a huge and important um part of the land in western australia Rio Tinto is just your um dynamite addition because of their their industry because of the mining and uh the total disregard of the importance of that place to the indigenous people yet again it's not nothing new to it so uh yeah i think sometimes we are this backwater and or we often are that at the same time you are being to america and york and i've been to london and the kind of notion that artistically for for me that there's the mecca is elsewhere is kind of nonsense you know yeah you have to as an artist deal with who you are and what country you've gotten um it's not better over there it's not more sophisticated over there necessarily and um the whole world is suffering from a kind of um a cultural sameness that is quite disturbing and um and ridiculous so yeah i don't know whether that answered your question or or no no yeah yeah yeah but in a way that australia might be lucky that you know it is not that was the implication that perhaps you know this hasn't come might never come but it also as you said might be coming in waves where do the arts fit in what is your place how do you feel your place is in in melbourne in the community how does it well you know i i'm sitting so pretty because of america because i was a recipient to a really huge prize last year from america which is the windham cambell prize and um which sort of gave me more money than i've ever earned in my whole life ever and um and so you there there's been great disappointments so there immediately i had a play cancelled from a company in melbourne and um and that with no commitment for it to be rescheduled and that's happened to a lot of our playwrights and um it's devastating so there because there are other companies i don't know what's happening in new york but or elsewhere but you know the the commitment to as soon as the as um theaters are back on that that program will be rescheduled and um that that is not happening in many theaters here i think the trouble with the independent sector is so vibrant and so important in this country that we have a very few theater major major theaters and the independent sector has been under attack for so long now and um the the small range the small and medium range theaters are basically disappeared and or are unfunded and um a struggle so they they i think many of them will go under and um not make it with this because they already were under duress so um the the lack of opportunities for younger playwrights in particular and actors um it will be hard on us and there's just not the same care about um the arts in australia and it is a kind of obsession with sport and just uh um you know that whatever theater is bought in big commercial numbers here is what what most people would see and um and where did your your work fit in you got that big award and congratulation again and we hope you know that for also having you in new york for our festival help to to to get you out there why did you get the award what did they say why is your work wasn't awarded um i can't i can't quite like they actually wrote something but i can't quite remember the wording of it but it's sort of um an award for it for a body your body of work but um but sort of i think it's sort of important that they that they give it to people who are still working rather than a kind of retrospective of your congratulations you've done good and probably won't do anything more from now say um yeah i mean it's such a surprise it comes to you out of the blue i had no idea i had i didn't i even thought it was a scam when they rang me i thought oh what is this and um uh so it's yeah a couple do you know them the windom and campbell they were yeah yeah yeah and i i hadn't sorry i didn't know who they were but they yeah so they left enough money for this legacy to be for eight different artists um to be writers of different in genres to be awarded each year um and yeah somebody nominated me in in your work um uh what why do you do theater and what do you see it does in australia what is what place do you occupy in that landscape uh i think i've always i've always i have always been interested in class and i there's an incredible denial here of class and um it's just you know ridiculous lie and also you know the the representation of class mostly from britain has often been quite sentimentalized and or and uh you know not not charm well it still gets quite sentimentalized so i sort of feel like that there's a kind of reason to be really pissed off with the world when you're um uh in a position in as a working class person and especially as a in the underclass and whether you're totally disenfranchised that you the pretense that this is an equal and fair society is is must be maddening and is maddening and i kind of feel i quite like my place to be maddening on that level i quite like to be uh find a way to talk uh about uh those sort of injustices without the either the either sentimentality which just kills in the art form or without it being didactic which also kills um art form so to find a vibrancy in voice i'm mostly interested in the language of how people speak and i i i just want to be able to bother as much as possible and bother the conceptions and perceptions that people have see there's plenty to be bothered about here plenty we're plenty to be bothered about in the world generally i don't think the coronavirus is sort of incredibly bothersome they kind of went up first struck i thought how the fuck am i gonna write ever again how how can i walk what can you you do with this it felt um so distracting and so overwhelming to be able to kind of uh capture uh anything like this it seems so surreal and unreal um and i thought the the good thing was is that playwrights could only go for the jugular now well how how can you write daffy silly kind of your relationship plays or or or sweet nothing plays and i've got no tolerance for them i i know people enjoy them i it's fine to enjoy them but they're just a kind of waste of time and um and it doesn't mean i don't use humor and i don't use any kind of tenderness i do but as a technique to be able to a techniques to be able to say something a bit more gritty and more interesting but you're and i thought this is what will happen that art form will get tougher but now i know that actually that that's not going to happen that there's already talk of kind of things people wanting to laugh and people wanting needing a softer approach needing to hear stories that are heartwarming needing to hear crap and i never believed that in all my life as a playwright i've never believed it for a minute that you you can't put that on because it's too hard hitting you can't do that it's too uh sad you can't because actually i think people have an amazing appetite for going deep for hearing in in the flesh which is what theater is the best at or the most um you're powerfully and they there's such an appetite for it and um it's the other is a lie yeah this is uh this is all very true and your play also a shit what you showed in new york in all those young girls where you didn't know what really happened to them and i think you went on trams or through through the parts of melbourne where you picked these things up and there was was the truthful and serious but also playful but felt you you mirrored something and touched and on something that resonated what stories do you think we need to hear what if you say in this corona time or after what do you feel is of is of what theater should be all about i think i've noticed that there are a lot of plays and in the making or or being developed about climate change and those things and i think that once once she once she's sort of as much as that is in totally important and huge i see and you're talking about race or even class when you're talking those big uh with the big concepts or big ideas is to be able to find the right kind of story and the the right characters that are that bring bring it into manageable bits you can't to be able to tackle uh stuffed into greater chunk um it kind of defeats it but i i think i think that capitalism yet still is the most wretched wretched um system and uh and we people get tired or get kind of really like oh is that old fashioned patricia or you know that you can't talk that kind of talk um when actually it's in our face and the corona virus is a you we have not got the health system that kind of looks after people um that that we that we do not have we have a the lack of investment in science that that they're that we're behind the eight ball with with stuff like this there that there are there are not um already kind of mechanisms in place you that you where really what's capitalism it's a kind of making money at the expense of so many people it's very simple but i kind of feel like i think that there should be on the absolutely raging and on the attack i feel like it's this has made us go um come on let's let's not let's not get seduced by warm and fuzzy let's not get seduced by simple um caught up in um the the politics of of self to the point where um we we kind of lose the main thrust of who's attacking us and who's hurting us truthfully how yeah i can't uh each person you apply you have to kind of just find the the vivacity in work and that that that's the biggest trick i reckon is like to kind of have either either the vivacity or vehemence you know so there's nothing more startling when you go into a uh see a play that has a life force and you think there are so many works that just don't they are dead in the water and they you sit there politely and or you snooze or you kind of never talk about it for a moment after you leave that theater and it's just a waste when there's such vehement uh concerns to be addressed and do it it's just so i found a little bit um lecturing not at all no i think this is a very serious and important uh to hear and i think the rage and i think and bogart yesterday also talked to how angry she was when starting out as a theater in a way also you're saying this is good you know it gives me something um there's an older story of uh i think it was um a gutter who german great writer wanted to visit chiller's working room and he was never allowed to get in one day chiller was not home and gutter lied to his wife and said no no no he told me i could come in and he went to his desk his standing desk at that time they would dictate to their writers all they would stand up they wouldn't sit down and it was a smell he couldn't uh he couldn't bear and gutter left the room almost throwing up and then his well said this is terrible what's in there and his wife said oh he didn't tell you no because nobody was allowed to go in and he said no and he had rotten apples in uh in his renting writing desk and so he thought about is that that somehow you know whether we fight communism we fight near little capitalism we fight religious intolerance you know there it is something right great fight against you know the rs totalion theater something to rage us it makes us working but it also has to be something real in that sense and i think um there is so much to be really upset about because it would work better if the forms we find to do with our right and the forms don't work we have to find new ways of dealing with the world we all live in and i think theater in a way that's always also looking for forms has some answers you know it has some uh some some things that can offer in uh in the sense of the mindset of community and uh for the individual so if you that rage what you have or that that uh seeing realities and not you know getting the sugar candies plays and that are not good for our health you know but so how would you see reality how it is how do you put it into work what what are your what have you found that works and your writing in your thinking and for theater how do you translate it into your work i i i think most most of the time i'm trying to uh be uh to use as much trickery as i can without it without it being fussy or busy or or or a you or a roots i'm not kind of trying to trick somebody in that way where you sometimes go oh you know you get a kind of twist in the story that you weren't expecting but it doesn't delight you it you feel a bit cheated that some elements have been left out but more that it has to be an act of seduction theater that people have have to uh as instead of the warm and fuzzy and telling inane stories it still has to delight and i suppose more and more i'm interested in how language can delight and i i like the vernacular i i feel that street talk is so gorgeous and and also quite you know i poeticize it if you like a bit because it also can be so dreadful so so shocking and so banal in the opposite way but so but there's something in the humor of it and the power of it where um so now more and more language is the thing that the of evasiousness in in in how people are talking all right it's interesting now isn't that because that you people are doing all sorts of things to rediscover how we can get to work again when we can't have people and people might be afraid to go to the theater for a long time but oh god i i feel so mournful at the idea of how you know hear lots of things online and people are doing all sorts of experiments where actually there's no kind of real audience anymore and your theater in particular is a the vibration that you get just when you're watching your own work and you can learn on that opening night or a preview you can learn from everybody in that theater so minutely but so clearly what what it sounds like or how how it's working and there's a kind of that vibration from just the personal experience of sitting there let alone they're just you what you're watching and and seeing in the flesh and how that how that um affects you and and moves you differently from film from screen and um i i just i yeah just to be able to get people back into the theaters and um and be be unafraid it's going to it's going to take something some time i think and that would damage us even more but to go back to the kind of the techniques of i think there's just a lot of seduction either of the other use um use any technique you can in how how you get to have characters even speak sometimes i think oh this is just so hard well how do they start opening their mouths in a this weird artificial world we create with lights and session all sorts of effects how how do you break through so that you the artifice doesn't kind of kill you and um or just offend you um so some somehow i think you have to find the the the story and the characters to tell that story that are really have something great to say and there there's lots to say there's lots to say there's a lot of a lot of the arts not interested in in what they have to say that's the hard part you want to write tough and powerful theater you are not necessarily going to be open you're accepted with open arms not at all not at all it's surprising how frightened it can make a lot of theater companies feel rather than delighted or excited that they'd think you just they're they're nervous about who they offend especially uh you know if you have a subscription audience and there are people that you keep um you faithful to so that you start to presume that they want only a certain type of theater and that's always been yeah in this time now um um what you have to say do you feel something is changing inside you is that you're observing something so let's just say i'm gonna something is switching how i will write and how i uh will will construct my plays is it having an effect on you or is it reinforcing what you feel i knew that and now i'm focusing on that in a different way is that is there is a moment of a change for you i'll say initially i did feel a kind of i just felt distracted from being able to concentrate on it so the the what what was happening outside and in the world just seemed overwhelming and so i felt daunted by it so i thought but actually now i'm kind of we we we writers are used to self-isolation we kind of you know it's it's not it's not kind of that painful or early so now i feel i can my concentration is back and um and and i can find my way through this stuff without a charm daunting me any longer but i definitely think it has to i you have to consider um the kind of the form that that it might take but i don't i'm not sure about that frank i feel like of all you always you always have to kind of find the right form for a particular story but the distraction is less now for me and i feel can i can work i'm not really again so for two or three months you couldn't really write and now you are starting you are sitting down and work yeah yeah i know well even more is so i i'm the kind of um most undisciplined i i i have a garden which is sort of thank god because you you kind of um i i write a i write a really good little bit of text and i go out into the garden celebrate for half an hour because i i feel like oh i've done it i've got something and um but and even though that seems frivolous lots of ways it's like walking or it's you know sometimes ideas have an you an uh an accidental kind or they need an accidental kind of um diversion where you where you become clearer about something so i am don't always just do most not all my work is done at the desk is what i'm saying so how do your corona days how did they look like when did you get up and when did you write and do you read and listen or music or watch films what did you do how does your day so they organized at my days um i've actually i've got my son who's um sort of probably he might think he's stuck with me so he's been away and he's come back to australia and um he was what he was living with me or staying with me and then the coronavirus uh came in and um so he's sort of was a bit stuck with me and which was actually fine good good stuck but maybe not so good stuck for him but um so i i'm not not i'm not in total isolation um but i uh so i share my house with him but uh i i um i just i get up and i would just now i've just been sort of pushing for a kind of weird trying to get a scene a day down because i've got to play with it so i just aim for a scene a day and and i don't always achieve that but i um i've got i've got bits of scenes if you know what i mean it's the seeding and um then yeah yeah i don't know and then i was also working on this film the ship film um got two things going at once and the play did you started writing in that time now you already had the idea before um yeah it's material that belongs to um i've written a novel that that uh it it's about as well and um but and it's also it's a commission that i've had for a long time that i haven't acted on so i had no excuse whatsoever because of coronavirus but um get it together but it's uh to look at i was brought up by a um pow father who was uh a pow in on the changy railway and um and i was wanted to look at the legacy of his um experience on the fact on his family um and it's not it's a personal war yeah yeah and not not so much as a kind of autobiographical thing but there there are autobiographical bits to it because they're very convenient and most vibrant and and because i can use them to to embellish and or to say something about war and about um that that kind of legacy from the end of the second war war leading up to vietnam and that's because this partly because it's a commission for melbourne theater company melbourne theater company has traditionally a quite an aging um subscription base and a lot of people who are probably my age or older who know of that period and have a kind of uh interest in it and their children uh and um others kind of the ricochet it might ricochet from but you know i'm not sure that that's a valid reason but it's sort of interest me still so yeah i'm writing about a part a post war about your confinement also in a different context yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean you also worked for the melbourne workers theater which if i understand right from the tradition also really worked with workers people from the city um what can we learn from australia it is such a vibrant country sydney and melbourne they're fantastic cities you know and of course that's the obsession with sport but also there's movie theater that comes out the circus uh tradition that has been also reinvented by uh by um circus arts circus arts yes and the festivals the literary festivals the uh the theater festivals so um what can we learn you know from australia were perhaps you know that you said we are a bit perhaps also on our own we have our own stories you know and that kind of uh uh engagement with life and and your stories what did you learn what do you think what feels that works in australian um um arts or theater that could for everybody we are all looking now what is really working what could be but what what what do you detect what do you think could be of use for us for all of us from from about australian yeah what do you found out in the engagement but you know we you're with the arts i think i mean i think it's more broader than just australian there's a bit like questions of class obviously and race but at the same time we don't tell those stories here and with those stories uh when i worked with melbourne workers theater there was great successes with plays with that company and um and a great vibrancy in the community with those plays but at the same time there there was a kind of they become um quite isolated too from the rest of the arts community who do not accept that as real theater you know the community based theater there's an incredible snobbery about it what what what real what really is art or what a high art is see i i think there's just a way of breaking through someone said oh that that journey for me i mean when i worked with melbourne workers theater it was like a an apprenticeship that was offered that is not offered anymore by any companies because these companies don't exist anymore they've been defunded and that that apprenticeship was offered to a probably i could name at least five playwrights that came out of that company and who are still working and they're still writing vibrantly and um uh he he just uh are on the floor with a with a whole lot of actors in workplaces where the if you if you if you're not hitting the right note or if you're if you're full of bullshit you will be called and um it is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time and um and you have to you learn all sorts of kind of techniques on the floor we're in interviewing workers in finding out what what their stories are um you you're kind of introduced to ways of of coming at work that you'd not you wouldn't be if you just in isolation and so it's that kind of collaboration that is missing now for most playwrights that kind of um engagement with others who are like-minded and your peers in a in a real community trying to tell stories and in a form or um the particular stories that are going to really really work beautifully sing um and have what what your and you talked about and oh that's you know have a certain rage in them maybe and or vehemence at least um but that that that experience is sort of sadly missing for for most now okay we meet young playwrights and their their greatest hope is that maybe the mainstream theatre will pick up one of their works and um and you kind of see them getting sort of almost treading water stuck in this with this sort of sense that that's the mecca that that mainstream company is the mecca they're the important um voices cultural voices that representing this country most of the time not doing Australian stories most of the time um doing Australian stories that don't talk about Australia really and I see Eric you you gotta think actually it's not the trajectory that you that will feed you not the trajectory that will kind of feed the work that you're creating that will um develop you um it's nonsense and as much as it's lucrative if you get to you know a play on you can be a lucrative in terms of a royalty and fair enough that's great it it's sort of um there is no kind of joy in the making of work that that the experience with a company like no one would consider where each play is considered and learned you already know what the next play is because of the research that you've done for the last play you've been fed so many ideas and so and you can you pick up on what's what's um vital for a whole community of people um all those things are kind of uh so important and um but we've lost them and this is with the coronavirus going to lose more the few that we've got left because it's just not sustainable and they're not getting any um income whatsoever or income assistance whatsoever yeah so it will be quite a devastating effect you predict for bostonian theater or you know where you say that isn't looking for truth and uh and also wants to delight and um enchant but um but people may you say might not want to see it or opportunities to be trained to connect to them i'm missing do you feel australia have found a way to connect to the indigenous uh a culture in a better way i mean in america is also i think it's a disastrous way and i think um spider women's theater a great theater company in new york they said we would love to have our own theater we can't even get nobody we don't even have your own theaters nowhere in the us all right you know we can tell our stories you know so much has been taken from us how come we don't even have a little tiny adc theater no one supports us how can that be in the richest country of the world also it's stunning as how little it's represented in museums very very few museums have collections significant direction often they are were done beyond the outside how is it in australia and uh did you find ways to include to to collaborate to include and yeah there's also there's really there are um each state or most states have an indigenous theater and um melbourne melbourne's indigenous theater is obituary theater and i don't know they they're not uh they struggle to keep funding but they are funded and um and vibrant they i think that the question of racism for a writer is so important as a and as a white writer because there's lots of discourse here about who has the right to to to represent characters from they have no that they have no um that are not your from your ethnicity and i mean it's a bit like lion or shriver when she came and and there was that kind of event that in new zealand where that there's a walk out of um women of color who were furious with her because she was basically saying as a writer she has the right to write about any anyone and anywhere and partly us ago that's that's there's the truth in that that you can't if you just keep writing for your white community in a white world then you get a a white theater and how am i going to to am i going to keep doing that unless i take the risk sometimes to to write and and the daring to write for um in an indigenous voice and that that's the risk i i think one has to take and um um and then you are e-cop it e-cop it's you're bad if if um that community is pissed off with what your voice is then e-cop it but otherwise you is stuffed really like you you're stuck but um did you say that you don't just america have a national um uh museum for its indigenous yes i mean this is masonians you know also the one in new york they are museums but still in the major collections or if you've used that numbers also not small art museums you know of course it's a lot of european art and american modern cosmopolitan art you know perhaps and that that's good but the the balance is not right and uh something is is um can i just tell you that we we don't have one are you done no and it's huge contention here why in the hell we wouldn't have one because it would be visited not just by australians but by people from all over the world there's an appetite for it and there's a great interest in it but we don't have one and it's so kind of telling you think my god this country is in such denial of its history and concern for its telling that you don't what you don't invest in something that actually would probably make the money it's it's bizarre it and but it's about not wanting the truth to be told and that's not new to australia but it's definitely big in australia that we do not want certain things talked about and um and that's definitely in terms of our indigenous past yeah and as you point out these harsh harsh policies against refugees the immigrant community what we heard how they were you know refused in and these kind of camps were set up also the complications on gay marriage same sex marriage which you know shouldn't be should not really be so there's as you say there's so much to to fight against to rage about but your prediction is it will not bring australians together to be more aware to think about all communities and to strive for a better form your prediction is that this will be one one more milestone on the way of less caring of less being involved or less attempts to heal the society is that what you say that that is that the fundamentals that your your country we've got such dreadful health care for for generally across the board if you can't afford it yeah if you can afford it well probably it's the best in the world right yeah you can afford it but it's the worst what the coronavirus reveals isn't it that who's going to be the most vulnerable is those without it and who can't afford it and in the and it's the same here like it is sort of if there's no investment it's it's so poor the investment in in the arts that it's already that poor do you know what i mean before so the coronavirus is just exacerbating it it's sort of already there's not there's not a fight for it there's no kind of a general sense that people see it as something that's absolutely essential for their life is in the arts that that is not the feeling here yeah yeah it'll get yeah it is of course the hope that being deprived from it like on being at tomas uber and or talked about it like when you go on a diet at least you think about food you know and that they hope is you know that people will long for this and theater does represent life in this perhaps most most beautiful form at least that's what we think you know of celebrating community ideas the history of freedoms the history of justice that theater has made contributions on that long march through history and and if we don't have it that we even miss it and perhaps fight fight more for it um you already did say you know something about you very important you say be angry be upset that what do we look at this it's not working it's terrible to tell the truth even if it's uncomfortable if it's not in the interest of your career but dude but for coming a bit closer to the end of the talk to the people also who are listening playwrights directors in the u.s but also from other countries um what do you feel is uh the most significant meaning what we should focus on what should we keep in mind in that time of confinement that goes on longer than for you in australia where it opens up um but but what do you think we should take from this what is that we should not forget if it comes out of that corona time and what perhaps will help us to change things it's hard not to harken back to the good old days you're like and so i sort of feel like that then there will there will always be those young people or you know all people who newly find theater and how it can work and how wonderful it can be and they find each other and they find a space and they do all sorts of you know sometimes ludicrous and sometimes extraordinary um workshops together and and um develop works that are um that are highly experimental and sometimes um you totally uh you know obtuse and and difficult to penetrate and and other times that have moments of great elucidation or i think he's like to go back to those grassroots is to kind of find um a reason to do it and to do it all like you're going to be forced to anyway you can't there there won't be the infrastructure for you so you kind of make that that those um uh nests if you like um together and you kind of learn from each other and you have your fight with each other and you you um you you create work that you is maybe naive and young but has a vitality and i think that that people have to sort of come back to that rather than the that that notion of thinking one day um somebody's going to pick me up my work up one day one of those companies is going to you know it's just uh killing and and keeps you um thought of the entire time yeah no this is um this is important and you make an important contribution to theater and world theater as you know about the raging you sort of like you know you sort of think it's drama that thing where you go to the theater and you go you come out and you go well i'm not sure what dramatically was going on there if anything at all no nothing was it was sort of like it's just you get told something and you watch it and nobody uses their bodies anymore like they'll just talk told and talked and it's all very kind of polite and very um articulate and well or sort of um and not not about anything much and he he sort of it sort of astounds me that that it's drama we're doing we're making drama it's fairly basic that you're looking for where you you you you feel the rub you you feel the discomfort um i love it i got you go to the when the play it you start to make me um feel quite threatened about what i've always believed in and what i felt secure about believing even even if i correct myself by interval you know like i still feel oh my god that is compelling your sucking me into some way of thinking or or absolutely bashing at my set beliefs in a way that is totally just fabulous um we're there's too little of that now too little where we feel um the the vibrations of of of something something else about the world that that we need to change that we that we uh we kind of get a sniff of that's all you can get with you know you're not going to come out going on i'm going to bring about the revolution you're going to come out and go be enthused about something in particular hopefully no this is a this is a this is a good reminder you know of what should be there it is not and we feel the absence of that in the presence and um and uh and we all have to see it stands for much something much larger that it is missing and we have to find ways all of us uh to to create those spaces as audiences as funders as governments they are significant they're vibrant and they reflect and also change because of their very existence and and just observing and seeing how brains work to leave our own VR headsets it's all set as young and Freud would teach us you know we are lost cases we are already incorrectly we cannot escape our own ecosystems but the only way is perhaps in theater that for a short time you see a different reality and it's right on stage it exists there but it's not it's fake it's open and you go back and force in that moment opens something opens a a space for reflection of accepting and and but as you say you know it has to be serious it has to be real it has to be truthful it has to be shocking and Bogart spoke of the terror of watching theater you know when even you don't understand what it's but there's a bigger larger force so really really your work was so beautiful um also what you presented when you came to us and I like the idea of you going through the streets of Melbourne sitting in that tram you talked about and taking notes how people talk how young also younger generations you know where you observe there was actually young useful writing of those girls where you didn't know where they are going what happened to them where were they but you felt a slice of of something real and it still it was imagined but symbolically it was a representing as you said your stories and what your your town your your country so I think it's a lot to be learned from and it is a vibrant it is from our side also country we you know the back to back theater Riccardo Mundo and many many others or what you have there in the festivals but yes there is something is terribly missing in also here in our country and we have to reconnect with it it's of real importance to save us the country our lives and also to make life worth and what it's all about so thank you Patricia this was truly a great to listen to you and hear your thoughts you're also serious and evaluation thank you thanks lovely to talk to you really and how it is at the moment in your country and there's a snapshot from around the world and of course we would speak to someone else it's always a different reality how it's experienced but these are real moments and you are great artists and and we you know and can learn a lot from this but I think your appeal to be be aware of class and race and struggle do not uh uh go over it do not you know make the sugary donut drinks and food you know do something that's serious but also it's good for you and for your for your brain and for your house for audiences and also something that represents um and the world we all live in tomorrow we have a high five rule from Hong Kong um and um all of a sudden there everything turned very serious I think this lockdown slightly is opening first demonstrations are happening but it's a very serious situation right here yeah and so how how does the you know fit in there how do you do that and what is the role there so I can't wait to um to hear from that next week we will hear from France and from Italy here from from New York and other places so um thank you really for staying up at now 3 p.m. past 3 a.m. in the night that is like in your old student days but maybe you are working in the nights and anyways we often are nocturnal creatures but really thank you that was very important to hear from you and uh and I enjoyed your your your listening to you and the idea tell something what's real with fury but also with delight I think you said that you know that has to be something delightful in there somewhere this is an important lesson and I hope you will be back soon and I hope someone will produce your play in New York and in America because it's shameful that we also in a way so provincial so close that you know the we listen to world music but we do not listen here really to world theater and the voices the diverse voices and something is terribly wrong and we have to be part of changing that so thank you again hope you all will listen in tomorrow thanks to howl around bj and sia and treviz and our single team san yang and andy and um thank you for taking the time out of your life to listen to this it's a very important and significant what Patricia told us and um and um it is a remedy to really for a society to be aware of the structures we all live in and to see what's not working and to take it serious and be furious about it and but also find a way of form to tell these stories and to form it so thank you and I hope you will have good dreams and uh and uh and uh good and a good night to you there bye-bye thank you bye-bye