 Welcome, everybody, back here to the Martinie Seagal Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY in Midtown Manhattan. It's a beautiful day, actually, a summer day, kind of a freakishly warm day, close to 30 degrees Celsius here in New York City, and we talk about climate and the Earth and the planet we all share and what's happening. I think it is a very good day for that, actually. And with that, actually, we are also close to Earth Day on the 20th and the Seagal Center for a long time now has seriously engaged with the questions, how can and how should and how must theater performance react to be, to raise the awareness of this global crisis, but also to be part of the solution and find the answers and also represent on that highly symbolical space on this theater. And meaningful contributions that contribute towards an understanding, but also help us to take actions to be part of the change we want to see. And with us today, we have one of the great workers in contemporary theater, I think, who is a combining a work of theater, but also theater at the university as a historian and science literature, and politics and I eat to eat to a T and she is based in Paris but right now she is touring with a work that is very close to what we are talking about. And we are slightly late because there was a problem with the connection but now we have the direct with us Hello, how are you. Hello. Hello, I'm so glad to see you. Thanks again for the invitation to this opportunity to continue our conversation that we started a few years ago. Where are you and what time is it. Well, it's 620pm. I'm in the whole entrance of a fascinating theater in the middle of Normandy near the coast. It's not a rainy day, but I am in this stunning theater which has been made by the British architect on to Todd, and it's actually an Elizabethan theater, made a few years ago from the original globe theater model but also inspired by contemporary design and also by Japanese wood and bamboo making so it's a stunning place and if you want I will enter. Yeah, so I mean the real in a few moments to show you we are still rehearsing because we perform in less than two hours tonight at eight. So we are going to perform moving earth, which is part of the terrestrial trilogy, which I guess we will discuss today together. Yeah, it's inspired by the work of the late Bruno Latour, you were a collaborator with him you influenced him very strongly you, you, he influenced your work. Tell us a little bit what what is that project about where you say this is worth the time of my life my research and everything I'm working on. This terrestrial trilogy is a very important work for me and I guess for Bruno as well. We started it together in 2016 with very simple idea that I suggested to Bruno, we had been doing some plays already for some years. And at some point I told him look when I think it's time for you to go on stage, and to actually perform your ideas, not as fixed finished ideas but as hypothesis as a way to actually try on stage, the most difficult concept of our time. So our idea was that theater was very well equipped to tell us something about our changing world. So it's not only about you know what is the link between theater and ecology. It's actually the idea that theater is one of the places where we can actually try to understand collectively what Bruno called a change of cosmology. But in a way it's much deeper than the question of how to adapt to climate change as artists it's also how to feel and how to understand the the big change that we are experiencing. So the very first idea of inside which is the first of the three plays was that we have actually a rather poor vision of the earth, we consider the earth as a globe on which we live as human beings. And the first, I would say thought experiment that we made in inside was to consider that. Okay, let's get rid of the globe, what happens if we get rid of the globe, where do we stand, what is this kind of strange space that we are in. And we really believe that theater was one of the interesting way to test that question of space because of course theater is also a question a problem of set design of how do you inhabit a space. So that's the very first conference that we made together called inside. If we're not on a globe, where are we. And the second that we made together a few years after is called moving us that's the one we will perform actually in a few hours and moving us really tells the story of the invention of the Gaia hypothesis. This moving us project is based on a thought experiment. The experiment is to put in parallel, the big Galilean revolution and our cosmological revolution of today. So Bruno again on stage was performing this this thought experiment and I'm calling that a thought experiment rather than a text or whatever because Bruno was improvising in front of the audience. And he was improvising and testing his hypothesis. What we did during the pandemic, a third one called viral and viral again is a way to say okay, what is the consistency of this new space we are in, if we're not in the globe, if we are in the critical zone. If we are part of Gaia. What does that mean really what is the principle of this Gaia in which we live. And we used in a very provocative gesture, I think from Bruno we use the idea of virality virus as a as an interesting metaphor to, to understand what is the specificity of inhabiting the earth, which means that we are not on any planetary system we're not on any planet we're not, we are in a very specific one which is characterized by the fact that everything is entangled the living forms are constantly interacting and that we are very deeply intertwined as the virus showed us in a very terrible way, but it could also be understood in a positive way, this kind of lockdown, we are locked down in a critical zone and what does that mean for us. So you see three thought experiments. And at the end of the day we thought okay, this is a trilogy actually this is a terrestrial trilogy it's a trilogy about what does that mean to be on earth. And to all our viewers, why this work is so important and so significant and something we all should think about is that to to to record what's really said, we are in a revolution on this planet Earth, compared to the time in a way of Galileo who came up and said, the earth actually moves around this on a complete change of a worldview of a paradigm. And right now, and we had that talk with Thomas Obama and I was whom you also collaborated so beautifully on the great down to earth project for the Berlin fast dealer. And now we are moving in this time of the Anthropocene in the in a time on our planet where what mankind has done created influence has changed the planet irreversibly. It is the first time, perhaps in 100 to 200,000 years, you know, of the existence of mankind where now we are experiencing catastrophes, modern tragedies and the way we're going to have that talk with Avra next next Mondays or what does it mean to be tragedy but it is in many parts of the world they want to happen is a tragedy, and the work of Bruno Latour and Frederick is really discussing this how, how do we understand that the world has radically changed. And it doesn't really care if we notice it every, you know, attention, but theater has to be part of it. In this trilogy which you did now for 10 years how long are you involved with it. No I mean the first part of the trilogy is from 2016. It's from 2019 and the third but it's 2021. So it's quite recent actually quite relaxed seven, seven, eight years plus the preparation for what, what did you learn from it what are the big lessons what did you learn. That's an interesting question. First of all, I should say that Bruno said very often that the trilogy helped him to make his concepts more accurate, more specific. So, we learned a lot from doing in a way we learned by by making the trilogy. And then we said that the trilogy is in no way an adaptation of Bruno's text or ideas. It was before the text. We created those performances plays. I don't know how to call them conference performances we created them while Bruno was writing and working. It's really like a laboratory for us. So we developed in a way, this idea that theater can be a very powerful laboratory where you can test and try different ideas. I would say that's the first thing we learned we learned that yes, theater is not a place only for sharing ideas or showing off, but it's also a place of making making concept making ideas. The second thing we learned, I think, is very much linked to the place I am in today. Our main hypothesis was that we need a new theater of the globe, a new globe theater. We need to reconnect to somehow the time of Shakespeare. Not because we have to go back, of course, but because we need to, in a way, to close down the modernist period, you know, it was one of Bruno's great and provocative thesis that something was starting beginning during the 17th century, which is the big modern ideal, and that nowadays this ideal is crumbling in front of our eyes. So the question is, really, how do we understand this new new world, what do we do with it. We draw it, shape it, understand it, and what are the tools so that we can actually understand this world. And there is something very important in the trilogy, which is the idea that we actually don't know the world. We enter, we don't know it very well, we don't have the right metrics, we don't know how to measure it, we don't really understand it. And in a way, this is what was happening at the time of Shakespeare. So we were discussing a lot this idea of what is the new globe theater, and where do we stand in it. And of course this new globe theater is full of, sorry, there's a bit of theatrical movement around me. So this new globe theater is made of new actors. That's one of the things we learned new actors. Bruno was talking about agent. He was talking a lot about the question of agency. And of course theater is a good place to test agency. It's a good place to invite new actors on stage. And again, this was an intuition, first of all, the intuition that the, the Teatro Mundi, the world stage is not only made by humans, but what was interesting is that this intuition little by little was met by all the all the readings, all the books, all the discussions we were doing at that time with Anna Tsing, with Dona Haraway, with Isabelle Stengers. And for me it was very moving to see to what extent theater reading, writing, thinking collectively was going on together. Let me think what did we learn as well. I think we learned a lot from the audience reaction. We learned a lot from the way in which people were telling us that they were moved deeply moved by the radicality of Bruno's hypothesis. For instance, the people were very interested by one of the idea of moving us, which is that the cosmological order and social political order move together. That's one of the things that we decided to develop in moving us. The idea is that when you move the way you see the earth, the cosmos, then everything moves and of course this is something that Bertrand Brescht had already said in the life of Galileo. And that's the reason why Bruno was so happy to work with theater, because this great intuition, which is in Brescht, that when you move the when you make the Galilean revolution, of course everything moves. It was created, for instance, the carnival inference in 1632 where everything seemed to be changed or the traditional hierarchy social order was deeply moved. This intuition, if we try to apply it today, then it's very stunning that, at least to me, after doing the trilogy, when I consider what happens in terms of the gender revolution, the change of understanding of what is the couple, family, love, the society, everything is moving at the same time. So what we consider as a purely scientific problem or economic problem, which is the climate change, should be actually widened up in a way, should be understood as a much broader cosmological revolution that really influences all the aspects of our life. Yeah. Yeah. And it is such a big question. I agree with a Boulou Latourism, such a famous of course French philosopher, and also you and with your something very big has moved and has changed. Whether we acknowledge it or not or whether we just go on and watch Broadway shows or engage and work like yours. What really happened. And the big question is like also what Brecht felt he was facing is how do we represent and that new world are we how are we part of that world, no longer just representing it by changing it but now also to really ask our participants to become active in it and what I find so fascinating about very often we are based at the university people say universities are dead nothing comes out of it it's the last place where innovation comes from the actually 1015 years late someone writes a book until it's gets printed and gets a professorship that time is over. Actually, you are a historian 17th century early modernist, and one of the two significant voicing contemporary philosophy continental philosophy. And he was interested if I understood right in theater. And also as a model as an idea that he said they are actors, the viruses, the plans, the animals, the humans, we have to understand, we are part of a much larger system that idea of the guy I was where everything is connected. And in theater, not only can help us to understand that complex universe on our planet which we live in, but also it put potentially help us to find a ways to have a meaningful life to contribute to an adaptation of that what's coming and the great artist anticipate the future that's what once you say this traditional forms like a globe theater, but you know with new technologies that come in. And was for that to end for you. Was theater interesting as theater theater or was it because Freud often got attacked for good reasons it was only interested in the myth but he wouldn't go to a theater play would never say, let me stage my ideas. What was significant was the engagement with theater for developing his ideas or was he just demonstrating so was it influencing. I would say, I would try to answer you in two different ways. First of all, I think it's important to understand why Bruno that who actually went on stage. It's important to it's important to understand that his own conception of science is very theatrical in a, in a good way. He, he, when he analyzed pastor in one of his first very important books. The pastor war and Louis Pasteur the great neurologist. It's, it's a book from 84 that we know wrote when he was only 37. And he explained in that book that the way in which pastor made him believed when he understood the importance of microbes and viruses was by doing what he called a theater of science. So the, the theatrical metaphor was already present in Bruno's work. Well, before I met him, but it was a metaphor. He was using theater as a way to describe the working of science, the working of demonstration, the working of experiment. There is a long historiographic tradition of analyzing experiments as a kind of theater of proof. And here, I think of my master in Cambridge University Simon Schaffer, of course, who studied this idea of public experiment. Now there is a very strong and I would say historical link between theater and science. And this was I think the first reason why Bruno really took theater seriously, not only as a way to share ideas, but also as a way, as I was saying earlier to share great ideas and to, to test them in the strong meaning of test. We would say in French. So, yes, that that's that's one aspect. And then there is this idea that other sorry I lost I lost your, your question I had a second thing maybe if you rephrase your question I will find my second point. Second point of it, yes, how in perhaps an opposition to a fraud, you know who use theatrical metaphors the Oedipus complex or whatever but not really a deep interest actually in theater as an art form or in the way theater artists work, you know that they agree on an opening night and then they have a certain time there and then they do agreements and do a research, actually a scientific also research in a way as we as bright side of the, the children of the scientific age, where his plays and now as we say, we have the children of the digital age. What did we create work for, and did, did the theater, the process of making art, which is the radically different from a five year business proposal from you know, said was a bit we know what the unexpected happened or where there are you knew things unexpected things happen a space is given for it and it shows on the in the final result did this work influence his philosophical writing and his ideas that became so significant and important. Yes, absolutely so yeah the second thing I wanted to say is beyond the fact that theater was already a metaphor, you're absolutely right in saying that the making of art was absolutely key in Bruno's philosophical of, I would say, because he considered like, like a few philosophers that art as a, art was a specific, I would say veracity veracity I don't know if it exists in, in, in English but let's say that art was a specific mode of existence. So this is deeply linked to Bruno Latour's great book, an inquiry into modes of existence. What this really fundamental book says, amongst lots of things is that there is a special world of art and fiction, which really has its own way of acting in our world. And Bruno was really interested in the, in, in the specific way in which art was creating our world. And before we, we met, he was, he was not doing theater but he was already doing some kind of art, because he was very interested in the format of the art exhibition. And he was doing what he called Godenka exhibition, the, the, the, these expositions de pensée thought exhibition, which was, as you see, another way to, to, to try his ideas, but not only in, I would say in, in a he didn't only want to use artists and art. He wanted to collaborate with them because he believed that one of the great questions today is a question of form is a question of how do we shape the world. And, and I think that's one of the points on which we were completely connected and on which we completely agreed is that you can't really face Gaia, if you don't think in terms of aesthetics, and also in terms of politics of course philosophy and sociology. But if you, if you put aside aesthetics, then you, you lose an immense part of the question. And I think it is this faith, so to speak, in art that made Bruno's thought so powerful. As I said earlier, he was taking theater seriously, and he was taking art and artists seriously as specific kinds of thinkers of makers. But if you think of it, it's very interesting, because the Gaia hypothesis says that what is around us has been made, completely made by organisms, you know, that's why he was so interested in Lin Margulis for instance we were reading together during the last years of Bruno's life a lot. And really, even more than love luck in a way Lin Margulis explains to what extent everything around us comes from organisms, and it's not by chance that this world is adapted to life. It's just because life made this world. So this kind of reversal, deep reversal of point of view. When I think of it with you today. Then if we take that idea seriously, then you can understand why art is so important because it's part of our human way to make the world. Really, I mean everything around us. And one of the things we, I mean, I am really interested in and I think Bruno would have said the same, is the way in which there is a strong link between our way of thinking and way of doing. How do you go from a concept to a form? How do you go from an idea to a building, an architecture? How do you go from an intuition to a form of art? How do we, how do you go from an hypothesis to a play? And this relationship between thinking and doing, in a way, one could say that Bruno spent his life doing things. He was thinking by doing things. He created a new kind of school. He, he was working with architects, engineers, web designers. He was fascinated by designers, design, design, because design is really this making through thinking and thinking through making. You can see why theater was so enjoyable for him as a way to explore this fascinating passage, I would say in French, this fascinating movement from what you have in your mind and what you create as a human. So deeply he was believing that art was something that could change the world, I think. And that's the second thing I wanted to say. Now, I remember one of the reasons why I think this trilogy was important for us and maybe for other people is that it's not a way to face catastrophe which makes you despair. And that's something I want, I would like to say today in memory of Bruno is that working with him was just everyday joy. And that's something so important. We were working on terrible topics. We are facing a terrible situation. And I think one of the immense strength of his thought was that it was never about despair. It's, it was an active thought. Again, this idea of agency is everywhere in his thinking. Everything is agent, everybody can be an agent. It's all about making, again, new forms, new books, new, new works. And that's something which is so terribly moving to think that in the last four years Bruno knew that he was ill. He was ill. We all knew he was ill from 2019. And I remember very well that every month he would tell me, look, what are we doing next? Yeah, no, he really, for all the listeners, you know, I wish I would know much more about his work, but he thought about this idea of a critical zone of what's above 10, 20 meters, the earth and below 10, 20 meters, that it is actually life. That gives life the plans like what is alive now has been for millions of years the precondition but also is now nothing has changed in that. And the question is how do we live with it and we understand that we are part of it. And I'm missing this idea what he said he was interested in design like a tool also a tool in a way is representation of a thought of a theory put into practice it's useful. And it is at the time it was manufactured the highest, hopefully the best way to do something to achieve something in theater in that way is connected to it. What about guy I think for you of course it's on everyday word you use I don't think it's so much in the minds here in the US or in the in the Americas, we might do actually a conference in next spring about guy on the idea of a guy theater you said to face. Gaya, Bruno said you have to be prepared you have to know what you're doing you did the Gaia global circus. So you faced it so tell us a little bit about this idea of that word, what comes from what why is it important why is it significant for someone who a student was listening for the first time. What, what is it about. Well, the first time I heard about Gaia is when we were writing Bruno and me a little article which is online I think you can find it which, which is an article from 2009. So it's a long time ago. And I remember, we were looking for an ending. The article was about theater and science and why already why theater is such an interesting laboratory. And the very last line I remember very well Bruno said, Oh, I know what is the last line. It's, and now Gaia enters. And I thought, what is that Gaia. And why does she appear right now at the end of this article. And it was the moment when Bruno, I think, had read through Isabelle Stengers, this fascinating idea that the earth has created its own condition of habitability that the earth has and not only the earth but the living organisms in the in the earth have made life possible that life has created its own environment. So this is the idea of Gaia. It's not and Bruno said it many times, it's not the idea that the earth is an organism. It's not a holistic idea. It's not this kind of, you know, new age conception of the earth, and Bruno spent many, many years trying to say what Gaia is not, because of course, it's a, it's a mythological figure. So it's very easy to, to frame it into something a bit, you know, yes, like, like allegory. And it's, it's complicated. That's something we discuss a lot in moving earth in this second performance, we say, okay, Gaia makes the whole idea so complicated, but it also says it all. It's also very telling. Why is it such an interesting name. It's a name because, in a way, it's also a theatrical figure, of course, it's a way to dramatize what's going on. So again, Bruno was very mixed about it. Sorry, I'm just trying. I'm just trying to say that yeah Gaia is is is an interesting mythical figure. It makes the whole discussion a bit complicated because it doesn't sound scientific, but at the same time, it's a very interesting character to stage. So in Gaia Global Circus that you, you are mentioning, it was our very first collective attempt to do something with this character, which was just appearing in, in a variety of philosophical texts. And what is very interesting for me is to see to what extent some concepts were moving from biology, physics, chemistry, the realm of science to the realm of philosophy through Isabelle Stengers and Bruno. And then we were trying to do something with it on stage. And that happened again with the concept of the critical zone, which is the same kind of idea but a bit more, let's say, a bit more acceptable for scientific colleagues. But Bruno until the end of his life was ticking to this concept of Gaia, because he liked, I think, the mythical aspect of it. He liked the fact that Gaia is not a nice character, that there is something dangerous about her. That there is something frightening about her. And of course that gave the title of his last book, not his last book of his, is one of his important books about ecology called Facing Gaia. And in the title Facing Gaia, you can see that it's a question of action. It's a question of positioning yourself. Where do you put yourself in relation to this threat? No, I think it is quite stunning that to perform what you've learned, to perform knowledge, to investigate knowledge by doing and do something, what you think about. The big question if we move our arm, did we think it first? Or did the arm move? And very simple, choreography, ultimately what we show on a stage. So let's say you have this world of ideas which are so very, very significant and I encourage everybody to only engage with the work of Latour, James Lovelock and everybody, Friedrich mentioned Friedrich's work. Because I think it is what we need to be thinking about and finding ways to come to an understanding and meaning of our life. How do we inhabit the place now? And how should we inhabit it best at this changing paradigm? And things have already changed. Whether we talk about it today or not of politicians at whatever parties accept it or not, it has happened. It is there. It's a fact. And the question is if we really think about representing the world, it is as the Mirror Theatre has to act and also think about what is urgent, what is important in that Breitschen sense of that we all have to roll to play. Additionally, because the space of theatre is so symbolic and so fought over, who gets to show what? What's the best? What's important? It is important what we look at and it's important what is being presented. So for all the presenters, it is something to think about as well as for everybody who creates art. It has to be a part of our work and as Thomas Oberänder also reminded us at the time of just human interactions, personal conflicts, father, son, families or civilisations. Perhaps it is not the most significant, but now we do have to find a way to include animals or plants or the thinking about it in a different way as a thought exhibition. It's a beautiful work, maybe also for a theatre. It is a thought exhibition where you sit on a chair for an hour or two. And instead of running through a gallery where you look for a couple of seconds as a piece of art and then you march on, you really sit and meditate and open your mind for part of change. But if we come to that now, Frédéric, these are ideas which at the university, let's say we sit in seminars, we often have those and we think about it, then we go home. But you are different, of course, and Bruno, you put it on stage. What solutions did you, how do you do your theatre? You know, Gaia theatre, if I may say so, if it falls under that umbrella. What do you show on stage? How do you work? How do you rehearse it? How do you come to agreements with objects, actors, light, sound, whatever, plants, how do you work? What do you put on? How is your process? Of course, it's interesting to start by trying to make the difference with the academic world where I come from as well, where Bruno comes from. So we are very much, we were very much used to what you were saying, this world of seminars, conferences, articles, books, and this is a very, very important way of doing things. What we were trying to do by going in this kind of amazing places like today was to explore some of the things we were not able to explore in our seminars. We were not able to explore in our books precisely because these are aspects of our world that somehow need some different tools. It's the question of affect feelings, emotions, sensations, but when I say that I feel that it sounds a bit weak because we are academic. Academic people, we deal with rational ideas, don't we? We don't deal with emotions and feelings. However, that's what moves us, and that's what makes the difference. And what I like so much with theatre is that you can really experiment with what Bruno was calling the texture of Gaia. This is something which is very difficult to grasp, but if what the geophysicist and biologist tell us is true, we need to completely reconfigure our ways of feeling, sensing, seeing, understanding. That's why the work of Annette Singh, for instance, the mushroom at the end of the world was so important for us. The way in which she explains, for instance, that narrative can be a kind of method that dancing is the only way to find a mushroom, but maybe also to find an idea. This way of going beyond the kind of epistemic frontiers that our academic world has set is really important for us. So yes, obviously there was this need to explore not only feelings and passions which are very well explored by theatre, but also the need to explore sensitive things. For instance, what you can do on stage is to change scale. You can suddenly try to understand what it means to see the earth from outside and you can suddenly be inside. That's the title of one of the things. What does that mean to be inside? It is a conceptual question, but it is also, I would say, a phenomenological question. It's also a question that you have to experience with your body. So I think the question of the body is a very good reason for me to go on stage. Because it's about where do you sit? Where do you look? How do you look? From where do you look? That's one answer. One answer, I would say, is about landscape. Because one of the things that this Gaia theory changes, of course, is our relationship to nature, to the living things. And as you know, theatre is one of the places where our understanding of nature as a landscape was actually created. It was also created through painting, as we know, through the work of perspective painting, natural painting. There is beautiful work on many beautiful works on that. But if nature is not a landscape anymore, then what is it? And what I find fascinating with theatre is that it participated in a way in this making of the modern understanding of nature. But because it participated in that, it can also be the place in which you test another relationship to nature. So you can actually have the audience on stage, you can change the viewpoint, you can put into question the way in which you look at other living things. So it's an amazingly plastic art, actually. Sorry, I think I lost track again. So you have bodies, you have students or actors, you re-text and then you do a movement, you do body training, or do you design like a Bob Wilson, you do a sketch, how do you work? Well, there is no such thing as a single method that I could just give, because each time we started with a question, a problem in a way. And the problem was first of all, an always intellectual and body problem in a way. For instance, where do we stand or how do we stand on earth, which was this problem of inside? Are we moving on a globe or are we moving in the critical zone? Okay, so it sounds very theoretical, but in fact it's a question of where do you stand? Where do you look the globe from? If you think of the globe as a globe, it means that your gaze is outside. This is the point of view of serious. It means that you are on Mars or on the moon, and then you see the earth as a globe. But if you are not on the moon, and you and me, and very few people are on the moon, then what do you see? Then what is the earth? So you see it's both theoretical and very practical. For me, this is a stage problem, and then it starts to be interesting, because then I start to think, okay, how do I show that? How do I show and how do I share with the audience this change of viewpoint? Then I use very practical things that we love to use in theatre, which are, for instance, I don't know how to say that, a green, this kind of transparent clothes that you can put on the stage. And then I decided that Bruno should be inside this kind of stage, and as I told you I would work a lot with the question of scale. And then I would use drawings by colleagues, chemists, biophysicists, geophysicists, architects, and I would try to change their drawings into stage images. And that already is another problem. How do you make scientific image into stage design? How do you go from two-dimensional to three-dimensional space so that the audience is actually plunged into something, and not only just watching a drawing. And then there's also the question of the tone, and then it was very interesting for me to direct Bruno so to speak and to tell him, look, what we would like for this conference is not a conference. What we would like, because it's a performance, because we're on stage, we would like you, we would like to be in your mind. We would like to follow your thought. And that was one of the things I discovered with the trilogy is that actually what is theatre? It can be drama, it can be, as you said, father and son arguing on stage, like in Federer by Racine, Tese and Hippolyte, but it could be also the making of a thought. That's amazingly theatrical, and that's what I discovered with Bruno. If you see something thinking, if you see somebody thinking as beautiful as Bruno, then it's a play because it's full of agents, ideas, contradiction. So one of my, one of my line of thought was really how do I touch the theatricality of thought, of somebody thinking. And that was one aspect, but I didn't want this thinking to be like a talk, like a lecture. I didn't want Bruno to lecture the audience, you know. I wanted something which was more like we are following his ideas and we are plunged into the process of thinking. The way I think we managed to do that is by changing a little bit the voice, the voice of the philosopher. It's not exactly when you listen to the recordings you can find on the internet of Bruno performing inside in English or in French actually. He's telling you a story and he's telling you a story about his thinking in a way. He's telling you the story of his research. He's telling, he's sharing with you his questions, his interrogations, his doubts, his puzzles. And it is something I liked because it changed completely the hierarchy, you know, we have this old, that's that's something we shared a lot as well. The idea that we can't, if the, if the world is really changing if we are entering a new cosmos, then the old hierarchy of the philosopher on his chair, talking down to students this is over. And this is something that theater can show very well. And of course, I was using the fact that Bruno was a great respected philosopher who accepted not to be staged as a star philosopher. He was completely lost in the images. His voice was, he was playing himself with his own image. So that's something interesting also for me to, to rethink, not only the, let's say the cosmology, the vision of the earth, but also the hierarchy are even of knowledge. And one of the things Bruno was saying which was so inspiring for us all in the company was that facing Gaia means that we are known that our fellow scientists, colleagues from the earth system science, our friends, philosophers, sociologists, artists, and the people in the audience, we are all at the same stage, we are all puzzled. And that's so powerful for me to rethink this, this hierarchy of knowledge and to take the theater as a place where this collective measurement can be, can be articulated. Yeah, that is true. That's really true and we are in theater we love it but it is something theater can do and I don't know how much a film or TV you know that is now so strongly in the minds of everybody of next generations for whom often theater seems to be passionate of people who didn't make it in television and film they get stuck there or something say no it is something very different and we see as you say I see sinking on a stage you know our brains inside are nothing but a chemical soup. There are no hard drives inside. What we, what we remember is processing actually what we saw before that all fixed images it can be changed actually that's the great hope. And what we see is an extension of the brain your play is your brain is an extension of it. We see you in relation to objects and movements and it's beautiful I also like what you said this paradigm where are we everything is relative actually while we speak about the planet Earth is turning 2000 miles an hour around itself. In 20,000 miles now we race around the sun right now and the entire solar system is, I think was 200,000 miles on the speeding towards the star sign of Leo, as we speak, you know everything is in movement. It's believable. And, and we forget about it and that complex system that gives life and linear who said, you know, have respect from the plant, everything lives through it humans, and we are no longer the central factor that got like presence on earth where you know you said the hierarchies are changing and we have to accept understand and should that animals plans, the viruses you know that we it's, it's a complex system and that life has to be supported a very old indigenous cultures for a long time have known that and we have to rediscover that as you also said on the idea of the globe where the roof was opened where animals were I guess right and next left to it with the bears and dog fights took place outside but there was some kind of a connection to that world but you you promised us to show us a little bit of that theater. You said it's a kind of an architectural representation manifestation of a new thought out to how to interpret reinterpret the globe theater and maybe we see a bit on your stage if that's possible I would be wonderful what time is your show going on, what time does it start in 45 minutes but the audience will come before. How many people are involved in it, are they animals, plants, people, how many people are technicians. It's one of the it's one of the conference performances that we did with Bruno so it's one actor on one actor, but lots, lots of things going on so I just show you the inside first and then the outside. So that's the inside so it's, it's a beautiful round Elizabethan architecture. The idea of the circle, yes you we need to see the circle, you see. It's all in wood. You have on the screen, the beginning of the show, which is a silent, silent film with Italy 1632 Galileo and on the, on the right side you have the great climate demonstration of the youth. A few years ago, so that's the, the start of the show, and you have Duncan everyone stage will perform everyone in his bro, his Bruno. He's performing Bruno's thinking, yes, yes, and so that's why we can continue to have the trilogy on tour because Duncan was working with Bruno and me for years. And it was completely natural to have him on board when Bruno started to be too weak to perform and I just wanted to show you outside this place which is absolutely stunning. If you can see a little bit of it. Amazing, yeah. So it's a very, very beautiful piece of art and it's like a little globe theater, you know, in the middle, in the middle of the countryside so it's a real, it's very meaningful for us to to perform here today. And it's in the Normandy, what town is it. Yes, it's close to a little castle called Ardolo castle of Ardolo behind me. And it's very near Boulogne sur Mer near the sea. So, yes, it's rather north than Normandy actually it's the north part of France, not very far from Calais and Dover and yeah we are just next to the to this to the ocean actually to the sea. You know, it's a wonderful place to to to give the audience something to to think about. What are your upcoming plans what what are you thinking now, obviously, you know you wouldn't collaborate in a sense of a life sense with Bruno, what are your upcoming plans what's on your mind what are you what are you thinking about. Well, for now I think that I should go and help with the with the show in a few minutes. But in the long term, I have new new plays coming. Actually, I made a new play a few months ago with another philosopher friend called Emanuele Katia. And it's a play about how to inhabit the world. It's called Earthscape. It's a world play world world world play about landscape and soundscape so it's it's about how to inhabit, which is a way to continue the thinking for me. So that that was staged actually two days ago in Paris but we created it in November and we will perform it in various places. The terrestrial trilogy is still on tour, obviously, and then I have a few new projects with other writers and performers, because the, you know, we are just starting, we're just starting to think, and to, to create new new forms, because, yeah, the more, the more I age, the more I think we need new plays and new new forms of art to understand what's going on. Fantastic. You are certainly doing brilliant research, great research, and, and you know, also that idea to combine politics, science, theater, literature, ecology, economy in a new way. It's, it's a stunning and I hope you will be back you will last fall in the here in New York City so really thank you for taking the time I know how hard you work and how much you work so it means a lot to us to have you for this time with us very significant it's very important to have a contribution and work on what you do. And I would like to thank you in the name from everybody watching from the Seattle Center in New York and the American, and also global community that that watches. So my hope to see more of your work soon and to our listeners thank you for taking the time to listen to artists it is significant work, and they find answers I have questions that are so relevant. It's important for your own life your own practices and we should take it very very serious, because they are the ones who live not only in the present but anticipate the future and help to find as ways to deal with it in a meaningful way. So today we have Avra, Siri will pollute with us from Greece. She created a book on that. What is the idea of a tragedy. What is a 21st century tragedy, and how do you represent it on stage in a way also as Frederick is thinking about that tragedy that is happening and at the end of our planet and it's not an academic question it's not a report a question on just an artistic aesthetic problem be facing real consequences in the moment where we are in this urgency to engage with it and to find solutions so we also a question about those treasure how do we represent them in a meaningful way but also in a joyful participation in those sorrows and complications of life so thank you very much. Off to your stage, and so much from for this conversation. It was really important to hear the idea to see a thought on stage developing how beautiful, really is that. And thanks to how around the, and the VJ for help us tell you here at the Segal Center and thanks to really to all of our listeners it's actually just for you to listen to and. And this is our audience so hopefully it will be meaningful and makes a contribution to your own thoughts. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye.