 Welcome everybody back here at Siegel Talks at the Martin E. Siegel Theater Center, the Graduate Center CUNY at the City University of New York in Manhattan in New York City that has been hit so very, very hard. It is the epicenter of the corona crisis and corona. At the moment that we thought would perhaps a bit relax at the moment there are signs that it is not going well that today the New York City marathon has been canceled for the fall. Yesterday on Tuesday we had 35,000 infections in the US it is the second highest or third highest number in the entire month. In the entire time of corona since April we haven't had such numbers over 2 million people are infected over 100,000 many many more died some people we don't even know that they have it so this is a time of complication Amnesty International is reporting from 12 European countries. Violence against minorities against Roma in Romania and harassment in Paris and some neighborhoods, immigrant neighborhoods fines are three times as much when you don't wear a mask and in a push and mostly white neighborhood is the shocking to know Sweden apologized it has 62,000 infections and over 5-6,000 people that compared to Denmark which we will hear a bit later. Belgium is opening theaters the pubs are opening and restaurants and Britain they pretend it's all back going back to business but numbers are not favorable. Switzerland had 1,374 dead people in one day. It's the highest ever recorded and over 1 million infections so it is it is a shocking numbers globally 475,000 people are dead 9.2 million are infected and people don't seem to take care of it. The Putin had a military parade without mask and the EU is officially considering when it opens its borders on July 1 that no American can come to the European Union, because they feel America is not able to contain the virus and America would be in the same boat with Russia or Brazil is a nation that is no longer able to control it. It's shocking our president doesn't wear masks. He sells people they should inject themselves with a disinfectant. There is no bunker where he has police clearing peaceful protests and holds up a Bible in front of the church is shocking it's wrong and we are very worried about a summer perhaps of violence. People have no trust in government no trust in their workplace they are confined at homes, temperatures are rising, and we all hope that what needs to change will change. We as theater people on the side of life on the side of protest but also to look at it and to look at it as and using art and changing ourselves and then to change the world. In Saudi Arabia today said instead of 2.5 million people they only will have 1000 visitors coming for the haji the great visit and the car and since the time over 1000 years. Moshe's are closed so it is a time of incredible upheaval in the world we are a car that came to full stop we are flipping in the air we don't know where we land on wheels or not on the side is that the total crash it's indicated. So in this times we need to hear voices of artists. Next to the economists and barologists and PR managers and politicians. Artists have been on the right side of justice. Artists have been on the right side, the complex struggle for freedom and liberties. The world would listen to them the world would be a much better place to look at any history. They always were what ultimately in the social justice and the progress of social justice they were on the right side. In the world we have many artists and the significant artists, but they also always artists who are masters of that field they transcend even their own role in some people say we have to Western masters left in when masters of theaters where the masters of theaters the profession has changed maybe doesn't exist anymore like the master critic the master. But they are to left in the West it's Peter Brooke. And it's the great Virginia Barbara. We had Segal talk to have Virginia with us as a big, big day is a significant also in the compare to what we just heard about the complications we are living in we are all in the same boat. And it's a fantastic to have him with us and I wanted to say just a little few things and about him and his life he grew up in Italy he lost his father early in World War two he didn't come back. And then thought about becoming a sailor way a welder he wanted to perhaps go to the military Academy rejected it, and then somehow ended up as an immigrant in the way, learning studying theater in Poland and then working as an immigrant of theater in just a little bit in Norway his company the Odin Theater is for people who know theater history know about theater is one of the great, almost biblical stories the great epic stories of theater they did 79 productions in 56 years. And some of them took two years to prepare he went to a small space created an ensemble he created a work for people they could stay together he talks about the work he learned from Kotowski was the body was the work poor theater theater in small spaces theater that is also geared towards justice it was a political mission he created what he called also the center for theater anthropology and and he is teaching the anthropology is this science. When human and humanity is combined the history of the people of the earth so he connects his work to that and he has been quoted and Bogart who was on this on our program said she quoted barbara is the main force when she said about stats how to prepare for things at that moment before the action takes place. Since she, of course has influenced so many others just to give you a little idea so his is that the International School of theater anthropology is open you can go to the website you can learn about what they learn. And I normally don't talk so much it's because perhaps I'm a little bit nervous about all of it, but Virginia really. Coming on. How are you. Where are you what time is it. Thank you very much for inviting me Frank. Living in a small town in Denmark for the last 50 years and the tribal clock in the evening when the shop close all the center of the town. Looks like an empty landscape your man landscape. So when the coronavirus. Obligate all of us to remain at home. It was not very difficult for us living in a small province and not going outside after five or so people just go. To go to some concerts when the concert theater, what is theater, it is a very peaceful provincial town with a lot of associations with people gather is one of the characteristic of. The democratic spirit of Scandinavia, lots of graceful associations, people gathering sport Esperanto languages. The race not that but association with people meet and create a sort of tissue social tissue, which is independent by the mainstream and the manipulation of the press. So the quarantine for me was work as usual. I went to the theater that I made some of my actors. We were rehearsing what's changed drastically for me was that I was not traveling anymore. Half of the year, I'm on the road on tour with my actors or alone with some of my actors. So for five months since 30 years. Here in Ulster group. And this has been a, the main, the main change in my life. This has been a situation of work concentration and maybe a room, which was more calm, which gave me possibility of reading and seeing many other things, mostly reading, because this is what I enjoy. And then Mark locked down early and what is happening. Do you wear a mask for how many weeks or months? Strangely, nobody uses mask here in Denmark, because the medical authorities meant it was not used. I think one of the few countries where we still can see people smiling friend of mine was telling me in Germany was a German center stage designer. It was very strange to go to a new theater. You speak and you know if people are smiling to you or are very serious. They use masks here in Denmark. It was sort of a shock for all, for most people I would say, what was happening because our imagination had never been able to imagine something like this. So, it was interesting to see how the Danish population responded to the sort of civic responsibility toward the medical and the Prime Minister was asking us. So there was a huge, huge civic discipline, which was very admirable, I would say. Yeah, very low cases of virus, very few dead people in Denmark compared to Sweden. Everybody was surprised because everybody was expecting much more cases of illness and but the virus was contained and we can say that the lockdown function. Yeah, it is quite incredible. You also use masks in theater but nobody wears masks but otherwise people do wear masks, you know, that whole idea of the face. When we see in television, it is very, very strange to see that everybody is masked. Although by law in many countries it's predicted to wear masks in the States. Yeah, it's true. In the United States for a time after some, I think after the civic unrest, it's a Coty Park and New York City and Occupation Occupy that nobody is allowed to wear a mask. Now everybody has to wear a mask. It is, it is strange. There's a question, you know, you know, I think you have, I counted it, 16 or 17 honorary doctorates from around the world for your work and one you got in 2019 from the Pilipines University in Greece. You wondered what will happen when this island of freedom, this theater world we live in, and there are no subsidies anymore when we are in a different, in a different place. What do you think about theater now? What is happening to theater? Throughout the whole history of our profession, theater people was dependent from financial resources given by sponsors or church or public authorities. From the very beginning, it started in Athens. It was the town who was giving a lot of money and invented this strange expression called theater in order to glorify the town's political system, which was unique at the time, democracy. To the point that the attendance authorities were paying the citizens to go to theater because they were losing their working name. So from the very beginning, there was a body who was paying for people to go to theater. In Europe, it was in the middle age, the church who was providing funds for the religious mysteries. You had a lot of spectacular manifestations, but those were so-called charlatans, etc. who were then selling something afterwards. They were using theater or theatrical manifestations, music, stills or this, attract people and sell something. But the great moment of freedom for us theater people was when the first professional companies were created. Because in the 1550s are the first contracts. When the first companies arrived from a professional theater, they liberated themselves from the church, from the aristocracy, and they invented a territory of freedom where the spectators are paying very little and therefore they can begin the game to do what they want, the theater people. Then with the time, once again, the spectators wanted to have certain things and therefore the actors became a game. Prisoners of the market. Then there was another attempt to liberate oneself. Because all the time there was this sort of complementarity in our profession. On one side, we need resources, economic resources to do theater. On the other side, we want to be independent from the power, giving the money, and in a way condition our way of doing theater. And the attempt to get a new freedom, whether the end of the 19th century, when something called art theater arose. This small theater were no longer interested in complying with the taste of the spectators. And it is the first time that the world of art is connected to our profession. Our profession has always been and still is a commercial enterprise. It is an enterprise where you join in order to entertain spectators. Then you can give an aim, a sort of metaphysical value to what you're doing. And this is what happened through the art theater, when in the 20th century theater was entertaining, but at the same time could become a tool of ethical education, of political awareness, therapeutic, artistic, aesthetic experiments. So all the names which really shaped our horizon, our way of thinking in good theater. I was speaking from Stanislaski, the first one, his art theater. He writes a biography, My Life in Art. He says, you didn't see my life in theater. And we were connected with a sort of particular location of our profession and not just only entertainment. Which is fundamental because without entertainment, you're both spectators. And entertainment is the zero degree. It's the fundament. It is so important as, I would say, bread in a Mediterranean diet, but bread is not only enough. So you hear these artists who begin to give to theater a sort of extra value. And then I can mention, they are Mayerkov, Gordon Craig. If you think of the thousands of theater, theater daytime was the only entertainment. And then comes film. And film is our epoch performance. And in a way it is taking away the importance of our profession. Live performance is reduced and is still reduced for, yeah, the number of spectators are reduced. So what can we do with this profession? Which strangely enough is not disappearing in spite of all the technology. Each generation, new generation, young people come to theater. And here comes the question, why do people choose to do theater? Why don't they choose a profession which is useless, meaningful, noble? Why don't they become doctors, anthropologists, pedagogies, pedagogues? So the question is not if theater is necessary or is important. The question is, what is theater for me who have chosen this profession? The society doesn't need theater, I think. The problem is these days, they have opened everything, banks, schools, even universities, and they are like, theater is still closed, nobody is protesting. And they can continue to keep it closed for one or two years, nobody will protest. But theater is necessary for me who is doing it. Therefore I went to theater. Nobody sent me a telegram or a letter or any invitation, Mr. Barba, please all come and do theater because we want you to do it. It was my necessity. And this is what I think. There will always be on this planet, people with a wound, who's longing for something, want to escape, and therefore they will join theater. So I'm very optimistic. Despite the numbers show that statistically we are the theaterist dimension, there will always be a circle and class, small and class, with people who will try to build their own island of freedom. There will be, I hope, the huge body of theater, which is entertainment, which is the big industry, because this gives to us a reflection of the importance of our profession. In the present, it gives good arguments, economical arguments for tourism, but it gives also for the theater culture I belong to. This is the culture of theater group, of this very strange particular wave of joining together, which happened after the 68th in the 70s. I began before because of age, so when I began, I was in 64, so I began according to what I knew from theater history. I was not accepted in professional theater. All right, I could begin as an amateur. And I began as an amateur, and then slowly I managed. Yes, I say, I managed to set up or to invent a new production system, which was not only dependent on performances. Building theater in 65 begins what are today a huge market of workshops of alternative pedagogy in the 64th where only theater schools. But no one was giving workshops. So when we start doing this, it was very difficult for traditional actors. We are all traditional actors at the time. This huge, rich polyphony of a tactical manifestation of expression as today, it was very building this building, they were performing text. And in those days, the firmament was given by others by people like Beckett, Yonisco, the angry young man in England, where the playwrights were giving a short of disturbance in the criteria and the norms of theater life. But when all the theater, and then you have the showman in the United States, you hear La Mama opens, but it's very interesting when La Mama opens the space of freedom in Europe. It is enough to help playwrights. And only in the 70s begins this really different way of considering theater as a sort of physical, spiritual experience. There, of course, are total texts which were published in the early 60s, Kratoski, and then many, many others have been contributing to this deep, deep change, which has not affected very much the what you can call the main body of theater. But where in Latin America, for instance, where these huge industry, theatrical industry doesn't exist, all the firmament, the richness, the rage, the wrath, the lust to fight, I'm still existing as an individual. He just came in Kratoski. And therefore, I'm optimistic that we'll always be in a generation, someone who wants to fight, because a deep wound will make them join together with others. Do you think, oh, let's go to the, how are you, what are you thinking about at the moment when you have the time, perhaps a bit more, you say you're still rehearsing, but is this time of corona changing your view of the world? Are you seeing things different? No, no, no. I think that the human being is an animal that is not generous by itself, that he can accept what is different in small doses when there are bigger doses, he becomes racist. I don't think that even if technology is being used much more in this period, he has to say yes, technology is also being used to make children. You can make children in the laboratory now, but most of the people who want to make children will go to the archaic technology or making love. And the same will be in the future with theater. People will go, if they want to see theater, they will go and see human beings in front of them. It's not changed. I think that at once, at once we will be over this. People will forget because this is the great, the great. I don't know if it's a good consolation. This memory does not persecute us with memories of horror. People can forget and then go on and get involved, committed or indifferent to what's happening in the present. In 1999, you wrote a book that came up with Black Mountain Press. It's called, If I Have the Title Right, Theater, Solitude, Craft, Revolt. Is this a moment of solitude that will help to shape craft and become a revolt, a revolution or something that turns? Do you think? It will do. There is a bad solitude and a good solitude. Solitude is when it is positive on you and not lonely because you are excluded. Then you will feel solitude. But solitude means that you yourself choose a moment of retiring from the social links, connections you give to be together with yourself. When we speak about theater, we speak of two very, very different things. We are speaking now about theater. And this is something big, general, as it was only one dimension back then. But there is another way of knowing what theater is. And it's the daily struggle that each theater person has every day to get up, to take the streetcar, to bus, to go to a venue. And for some people, the venue is a huge theater, clean, where somebody has been clean, et cetera. Or this is maybe a cellar or a garage or a storehouse or something. And then you have to find the, or you have to face the hundreds of decisions, how to find the money, how to do these. So theater is this sort of personal struggle with a lot of decisions where you're alone. You're not alone, especially if you are a director, and you have the responsibility for other people because you are alone. You can't go and have a sort of consolation from your actors. You have to give energy to your actors. So I think it's sort of the fundamental part of our profession. This I know because when I run in certain small places and I go and visit or because I've been invited by a theater group, I see what it means for them to have the visit of a foreigner or a person because you are isolated. But this is what I also experienced when I was in Poland, in a communist country in the early 60s, how the country was closed. They were not foreigners. And as a foreigner, I was enjoying a status of first, a kind of security, the scholarship and also psychological, intellectual security, because at the passport, I could leave this country in a moment while Poles and as old communist countries, inhabitants, had no possibilities of being in this sense of solitude, of being isolated, endeavor, it was so important, the exchange. So solitude, I think, is a part of this. Of course, I know that it exists a culture today where being together is very important, where to mobilize or to engage these people. I see if people is forgotten that exists two types of energy, the fact that you are looking at me and don't do nothing, just look at me. Does it mean that you are passive or that you are inside you using it? Another type of energy, the mind which is in this very moment active type of shape, words and find the right sentence in this language which is no mind. But you are taken, you are dreamed by a receptive energy. And this is the other. This is the moment where an receptive energy meets an active energy. And the actors know this very well. They can feel this sort of vibration, quality of silence that these potatoes can create. There are applause, certain applause which are sort of, and there are other applause which almost are like tears or like crying. So, yes, I think solitude is the destiny of an actor, the moment you start an improvisation, the moment you are facing the task, nobody can help you, the director can take you until a certain door, certain limit, a certain, and then the actor goes alone there. The director remains, the actor sails away. The very man on the harbour sees him really facing all the dangers of superficiality or of selfishness or of losing, losing. This is the feeling, the trail which makes you come back to what is the professional awareness or if you want the professional superego, which means you are doing all this for somebody else. And this is the spectacle. Because theatre is the spectacle. We can do all the exercises we want, we can do all. If you don't think that this is something which I am giving, offering to a person which I call spectator. And this spectator is a person who is offering me one hour, two hours, three hours of his life. Wintertime, snow, cold, and then they go out of the warmth of the house and take a bus and travel half an hour, maybe one hour to go to theatre. It's good if it's a big theatre, if it's a small theatre, it's not very comfortable. And they come. And you must give to this person who is offering three hours of his life the best. So this is the aspects of solitude which you face in the preparation for this meeting, for the performance. Yes, but remember always, solitude is so good and there is a bad solitude. A bad solitude in not having chosen it. When I started in 1964, all my friends and everybody thought that I was mentally disturbed because they couldn't understand that I would do theatre without having a venue. The time it was impossible to do a theatre without a venue. Or amateur theatre had a small venue with a stage and a place for audience. And the fact that I was working in a classroom, in a school, and then started going to the gym, they couldn't understand it was something totally wrong. Yes, both these affected very, I felt solitude, although it was not solitude, it was not recognized. But I had this T4 for young people who were following me. And this gave a huge, huge feeling of power, of being not alone. And this is very important, I would say, in group theatre where people gather and establish emotional ties to not happen in a professional theatre. I mean, when we speak of theatre, we speak also of two very different work organizations. We have a mechanically, I say, aggregated experts which are chosen because they have to achieve a certain standard in a product. Actors are chosen according to this, the director is chosen in the stage designer. So all they are aggregated in order to shape a result which must have a certain quality. But in group theatre it's very different. People gather, first of all, because of certain needs, personal interests, so often, ideology. But also because they create sort of microsoft social, small social, I would say culture. And they build their own rules. First of all, most of those groups are autodidact, which means they all have gone on the same process from sort of ignorance and insecurity for something which gives them a feeling of work, of professional identity. And this is shared, this is shared. So when I started, we were speaking about bed-solid, it was the fact that people were not considering what I was doing healthy. I would say simply healthy. It didn't disturb me so much because on one side I had these young people following me. And then of course it's left that one person believes in you, like my wife. My wife, she was working and gaining the money so that I could completely dedicate myself to this insane passion. But you see when I say insane passion, not because I want to do theatre, but because I didn't want to give up. I didn't want the society or other people to decide on me. It was a sort of infantile reaction, maybe. But also because for me theatre wasn't necessary because it was a refuge. I didn't want to escape the discrimination I've been living as a warp legal. Also it's called the legal among Scandinavian workers or especially when I was a sailor. And I was a sailor, it was a really unpleasant experience for us Italians, Spaniards. So you were really discriminated by your fellow sailors on the ships. But this is the reason why I do theatre. Tell us a bit, what made you what happened and what was the moment? In the workshop I was working as a sailor in a workshop because I was very accepted. Never I felt this sort but I was different. But this happened when I became a sailor. And then they shaped it, not only they insult you verbally, but the violence is also fissure. The sense that if you are queuing up to get your food, the Scandinavian concert told you away because as Blonde Albino is the right to come for me. So all this was a spontaneous struggle and fight. And then when I went back to Oslo, I continued to work in this workshop. But then I was also studying at the university, I was almost finishing the university in the evening. And then I was asking, I'm going to be a teacher, but then this experience of how to hide my ethnic background. Because when people saw me, this was in the 50s in Norway when there were not many foreigners. They, as I told you before, when there is a small doses, it is a curiosity. And a lot of people treated me kindly, openly. But once I felt that this was sort of discrimination, they were not treating me like a normal person. So this, of course, I enjoyed very much when they treated me well. In the opposite case, then it was possible to find the solution to this problem. And then the solution I found was that I could become an artist. And then I found that I cannot write, I cannot paint, I cannot. So I found that there is an artist who sits on the chair and says, do this, do this, this is the director. And that's why I decided to go to theater. But I have to confess, theater in itself, the performance, very few performances interest me. Otherwise, what I like is to work and give something which everybody thinks it's impossible to create. Far away, everybody says, no, you can't do anything in a small provincial town with the North theater traditions, etc. And I enjoyed going there. And we had no performance in the daytime of the theater. Still today, the theater is designed or is defined by the, by the identity of producing performances. We can, from months and months, sometimes even for one or two years don't produce performances, but we have many other activities. And this is what is fascinating, how our profession, which consists in establishing relationships, establish a relationship with the text, the past, yourself, of course, as an actor, the director, in order to transform all these in live movements, intonation, silence, relationship to the spectator, to the space, to the death. So how can I, how could I use this knowledge, this know-how in other situations which were not only making performances. And this is what our group of actors, which is characterized by a personal obsession, not to lose them from the way, from the very beginning. I want them to remember me because they had been my teachers. And I, I've learned what I know. Thanks to these youngsters who left Norway, the country, the language, the family, the friends, and followed me to this small village down in Belmont, built this new way of life, it's in the old way, old way, but it's possible way of using what people consider theater. Yeah, they stayed, was it? Yes, they stayed, very often. Yeah, but they didn't stay long because they loved me, of course they love also me, but because as a director, my first duty, I felt, was to give them a salary every month. So I managed to secure a basis, an economical basis, not very much, but they could live with it. In economy, in a personal economy, it's not how much you earn, but how much you spend. So if you live in a small town, you spend much less than in a bigger town. And this was one of the reasons why I accepted, I want to leave a big town and go to a smaller town, but also because I'm very political minded. I knew that in order to conquer the capital, you have to go to the provinces and then slowly encircle, encircle the bigger towns. So the gist was the reasons, economical reasons, and then of course, a period of training in the sense of preparation, which was very, very hard, so that a lot of people went away. And those who remained, remained because they found a meaning in this sort of work, where I could dictate hard, working discipline, but I never dictated ideas, they could think what they wanted. There is no middle, there is no philosophy, I am no one who says fear should be like this, what I want, each of them could become as free as I felt, and then they become, and they have started to hear personal projects. So today when you come and you see the 12 actors, all the interactive, they are sometimes directors, they have their own groups, they organize their own festivals, it is a short one, like I feel like King Arthur with the Knights, and they are doing a lot of very, very different initiatives, which are even far from my interest, but this is very important, because they made them grow, and at the same time, there is this sort of extroverted aspect, but there was the introverted, and we gathered together, and then we prepared a new production for several months, and we can invent the project, we work together, we can try to conquer a town, or do something in our own town, host group. So these are the reasons why people remain with me, because they also found the possibility of developing their own personal interests, without coming into a conflict with me or with the interest of the company, the group. No, it is absolutely remarkable. If I understood right, you know, you were also rejected from art school in Norway, you found actors, all of them who were off by the institutions that, you know, you're not an artist, you will never be an artist. You said, yes, we can. It is not, it is a necessity, and you created something out of that, and you said, I'm going to go to a small space, and a small place, and then conquer. So there is something in there, and it obviously worked, you know, for all artists who are listening also. I think Eugenio found next to his artistic work, also an organizational work, an economic model. He found something that helped to create great theaters, great theater. Yeah, so your method of production in a way, creating also the aesthetic outcome? I think that what was a very stimulating aspect of the audience, it was not only to see a group of actors well prepared and making performances, which touched those who saw them, but also that we were organized and we were earning our money not only to performances, but also pedagogy, I mean all the workshops, starts with all the stuff, and the fact of the venue where, which is not with the stage and the separation, it's a black room, it starts here, publishing, very important, many different groups, especially not in America, starts following, so we publish also. And then with alliances, always say, because this is the characteristic of our profession, we are not able to collaborate with others, because we are different. And my attitude has always been because of my immigrants experience, because we are different, but we have to find the point of context. And therefore I've been collaborating with many, many theater groups, completely with projects, although we have different aesthetic and even ideological vision of the world and of the profession. So all these is being, the fact that they could come to us, that we have a sort of, I would say hospitality. I always as an immigrant, also as a wanderer, I've been traveling in the 50s, always was oppressed by, yes, by the generosity of people when I was knocking at the door in the night, and asking for sleeping in the garage or in the barn, if I was in the country, and they always opened the door. And then I said, this is theater, something like Stanislavski wishes that should be the theater houses where actors could travel and then go and visit and live in these theater houses, which were the theaters. So all these are the only targets from the very beginning. Any theater group can come and perform and then we will give them the money they receive from the box office and then sleeping and one minute. So this is, because I feel very, very much connected to these, the people of the group theater, because they are in a way refugees just like me. And I think we all tend to forget how hard life was also for Italians. There were lynchings in America also of Italians just for being Italian, there were discrimination in neighborhoods were beaten up by Irish gangs and others because they saw there's the one under them. I think a city university till today, Italians are kind of have minority status and have some protection. So it's incredible, especially Italians coming more from the south of Italy, the insults, so that experience you transform that in something you said also that somehow you are political, but with other means. Tell me, but you also mentioned that before you say I'm very political. Tell me about tell us about this. When you experience abuse and overpower on the ground person, because you start trying to find out who is responsible for this, not only the person who's doing this. And in the 50s, during the time of the Cold War, it was very evident that it existed a capitalist system. And it was a communist society and a vision of the how a society could be when the human being was not exploited. So of course, I was on the side of this vision. And this was the reason why I went to Poland, because it was a communist country and the time also came out. For example, South Journal, the town of modern, modern times, an issue about Polish theater literature, graphics, film. It was in the early end of the 50s when just a few names probably will be known. People like Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munch, Kibadevowicz, the young Polanski were in the film and they were unbelievable. The quality, the excellence of Polish theater, I mean, I can mention Kantor, I mean, China, the young Yugoslavia. So therefore I went there, because it was the ambulance that the system functioned like when I arrived there. Then I discovered censorship, I discovered sacred police, I discovered corruption, I discovered deep injustice. The deepest injustice was that the citizens were all prisoners of the state and they could not travel abroad. They had no possibility of having a passport. This was the greatest injustice. For me, it would have been an emigrant and the one being visited in the other countries. So I was killed by my political ideas or vision that injustice continued to exist in the world. So how to fight? And then I thought that theater can be a sort of politics where you have not to use political arguments, you have to use other arguments or other means or other tools. And what are these tools? The tools of beauty. And therefore I say theater is politics by other means. Is this true? I can only speak on the basis of my experience. After 53 years, I know that I have changed quite a lot in the small town I've been working in. In the beginning when the mayor, I'm not knowing anything about theater and was interested in having a theater company from Norway abroad that really didn't speak the language of the place. But they thought it was fantastic because we accepted to be there because they didn't want a building, a theater building. They had not a theater building. They said, any venue. They had an old farm outside the town. Fantastic. So we just couldn't talk on this farm. Therefore, it cost not very much to them. And they couldn't understand what sort of theater we're doing because we're not doing performances. We started this seminar, this workshop, publishing, making a sociological enquire about the habits of people or reactions of people who have never been to theater, those who have been to theater many times, etc. So all this surprised. But what these politicians did, which is unique, was when we made our first performance and they saw a program on television. They were very proud. For the first time the town was coming on national television, but they were showing our training and they saw people rolling on the floor screaming. So they had invited a small group of madmen and they reacted. All of these people were full of letters of citizens furious with their politicians. They are really stupid. They have been cheated by them. And these continued for many, many years. I'm not an expert in theater, but those who are experts in theater say that these young people have something. So let's wait a few years and see what they're going to do. This is the reason why I even meant possible, because this mayor made possible to us to find our wings. They are in a very strange place. They are like all the surfers, we are surfers, we have wings. And with the years we have been conquering, literally conquering, but seducing and making one citizen after the other on the other side. The result was that when about 10 years ago I made public the decision that we of the audience have taken the decision that when we die as people, individuals, no audience must continue, must disappear the name because the people are there. Not the building which keeps. But there was a huge reaction in the population, but we need audience that you must find out a solution so that something like you can continue. This is, of course, influenced the last 10 years of our work, my work, and those of my color actors. So politics, politics without ever speaking. We went to South America, participated in a lot of situations where really we're arrested. We were saying, well, naive Scandinavians, we have been sent by old Queen in order to show the folklore of our country. And this changes with the cultural expressions of your country. Never speak about social changes or revolution. I admire very much the new theater, who was very open in this. The Living City. The Living City, yeah, Judas Molina. I love them, they were two so beautiful people. We invited them in 75. They've been with us for about a couple of weeks. Chalking also. I had in the beginning a contact with the American group theater. Remember, the element visited us in 66 was unbelievable. She had just come to Denmark with a friend and friends spoke about this small group in this small town. Then she visited us after death. She wanted us to come. So at the end of the theater, this is New York twice in 1983, once and then in 2000. Because she insisted. You must go to New York because only if you go to New York, you will take you seriously. So we did it. So we were taken seriously and therefore we are speaking with you now. No, no, no. That would be the other way around here. That is incredible. I saw you after 50 years, you buried some of your stage props and costumes. You made a ceremony and I guess people came. This was after 50 years, we had so much there and then what are we going to do? We didn't want to become a museum and therefore we left the young, very, very young children from Bali, Kenya, Brazil and Italy. We were doing theater music. We invited them to the celebration and they were coming and they helped us to buy all this and then we planted a seesaw on the place. Yes. You say the legend and so it should be like a cloud. From time to time we, somebody gets some water from the cloud. This was just falling on the head of somebody. They will say they can get some inspiration. That was a very beautiful idea also. I guess the townspeople came and you also, if I saw right, you had a blessing of a horse. What was that in the church of your town? So you have an animal, you feel that this is a missing, is that a missing part or was it? I like to be subversive. What does it mean to be subversive? It is to subvert what is familiar, what is usual and what everybody considers is normality. So how can subvert? How can theater be a sort of interference which creates confusion, mixing up and disorientation, but at the same time makes people smile and be happy and accept this. This is, let's say, the strategy that even your enemies collaborate with you. And the idea was, we saw a remarkable, we knew them from before, but when we saw their performances also. A company, if you have a company, a French in Marseille called The Death of You, Saint-Tor, Saint-Tor. They are so poetic, so beautiful. And then we decided to invite them. And then to place them in the main square where there is the city hall and the main church. And for the first, it is prohibitive in Denmark to have animals in it. So we had to convince the politicians and the staff and we managed. Then we had to solve all the problems of how to see the, to build, to take away all the muck. We had 10 horses there. It was a lot of logistics. At the same time, the people could no longer drive or go by bicycle. And therefore these kids also sort of urban disturbance, but it was unbelievable because at five o'clock in the morning, six o'clock in the morning, people were going to work. They went to the, the horses were there and they were giving cows. And they were thinking, and the young people, they told me some of them, after disco take, they were going to this strange, unbelievable universe of these horses. And they were taking the last day there. And I seen one of the images which most is made me understand how we can change human relationships to theater or sort of technical situation. I saw a two families close to two boxes of horses. One was then the father was lifting his child up to the horse, and then he was kissing the father, the horse, and then making the little child kiss the horse. And that he was an Iraqi, Palestinian, I don't know, one just like me, his wife with cobbled, and the father was lifting up his child and doing the same, kissing the horse and letting his child. And then they saw each other. And then they went. This is for me what theater can do. And then, for me, the greatest pressure was to convince the, the priest, the pastor, to bless his mentor, and he accepted. And then we made a huge ceremony with a concert full of vitality. But with a deep respect for the psychology, the solemn aspect of life, which religion represents certain people. And this blessing was really also something very, very touching. And it was really unbelievable, a whole incredible image. She was a woman on a black horse standing, entering a full church inside, and she would bend backwards, lie on the animal, sit down and the priest would bless the animal and she would ride out of the church. It's an incredible idea of what theater can be. What did you see? A clip, I saw that somewhere, yeah. Yeah, and last time I think horses were where the French army came over to Germany and they would put their horses in the Cologne cathedrals, you know, to show that they didn't believe in God. Napoleon. Yeah, you or that's what he did at San Marco, I think in Venice, but when he ended the idea of the Venice Republic that was independent for so long. But I mean the idea that theater can do that in that space, give a new meaning, but still doing God's work in a way that's connecting us to something bigger and so it was remarkable. I mean, when you say theater, it is politics with other means what is politics, it is the longing for change. This is wish to change something and we have changed mentality. Both sociologists. The mayor of the blue says that audiences is a customer, the inhabitants to diversity to that point that there are no ethnic problems here we have a rather huge minority of Muslims. So, no doubt. And I think it is true. Absolutely. There was a great writer. He also was teaching at our university. He said it's a failure of imagination. The problem of racism. He said it's people who cannot imagine. They might be very happy to have, you know, people from different living next to them instead of just the same, but they cannot imagine it and art can imagine. And if it happens there, it can happen in life and your town represents, I think, very much in your life's incredible lives work. What I'm interested in your idea of barter or exchange, you know, in that time of post Corona, I mean, every New York artists, musicians theater is till the end of the year there is nothing. No, God, no job, no gig restaurants even are closed. They might be open with where they could work and make money. As a kind of an economy did that work for you was this is this also part of is it artistic ideas, your barter, or is it also exchange of an economic sense of work against you know, the barter is a possibility to make different people who never would come together and exchange something which is agreeable for both parts. If I go in a prison, if I find a person working in a prison, who says, yes, let's organize a barter. So I know one of my actors will go and speak to the people there in the prison and say, we want to come and do something for you. But nobody works for free. So you must also pay something, no money, but some of you, what do you know, you can do. So someone like you can make sure sketches, some can sing, some can tell a story. So they start organizing and what happens right about is very important because it begins to create completely different dynamic in the environment where which has to host us. So, even in the prison, they have to change so that they can come together. Sometimes, if there is also a female department, the female can come and join and then be separated. So this is, once again, the purpose of the barter, just like the horses, et cetera, how to be disruptive, how to be subversive, but in a way that doesn't provoke and that even those who are against it, accept it. I mean, the director is satisfied that theater comes, there's not to pay anything, and he can say, oh, yeah, look in my prison, the inmates can do all this. And then we come and so it is not an economical. It is the moment where we didn't make this really nothing to do with me and my actors and the same actors. But nevertheless, it is as a short of clues that the distant people can find something just one hour to exchange something that is unbelievable in a way. And then, of course, each of us is going and remaining in the same in the difficult or in different situations where they live. But for a moment, there was this meeting where everybody was trying to present itself to what it is. It's not art. It's not art. One of my actors was a fairly specialized business in a small village outside holds the group and he has transformed the whole village in a village laboratory where they're about 100 families collaborate. He says, but I take a person and this person is an old woman and this old woman is good to water flowers. And then I make make it a sort of structured performance where she's watering. She does what she knows, and she does well. So this is, in a way, the idea of butter. But first of all, use butter in order to mobilize to create a dynamic in the moment where you arrive. Yeah, I very, very strongly believe that everybody's starting out and people doing art thinking how should theater look like even after or due on after time of Corona really really should study what the solutions you found the ideas. So you lived through action, also through thoughts and as you said also incredibly enough through publishing you very early on the right or you did the catechali research. I know Richard check now when he was in New Orleans and the Tulane drama review whenever TDR was not theater it was Tulane, you know he published your work early on and you know him and, and that you were interested in this idea of a university or what you call it you know that the it's the national school. So it is also about education. So what you do you create a community you teach you learned everything from your guys it's a model I think that that works and that is also showing in itself, you know, as a proof that is something is you said that seems impossible in the timeline that something is is is possible if I may ask that question and might hopefully not sound too simple but you said theater is necessary for me. What you said that theater is necessary for you as an artist that's the reason you do theater, because it's necessary. So why is it necessary. What is theater and why do we do it. The only answer for myself I don't know why other people wants to do theater, I chose theater because I want to find a solution to this problem of ethnic recognition. And when people see me and if I say I'm an Italian what I am an Italian learner or even an Italian teacher, there will be a reaction. If I am an artist, I automatically be interested in a different way. It was my way of thinking that I'm wrong. But, but this was my way, which made me choose theater and then I thought theater. This is not very, very, very, from the very beginning aware of it, and then I slowly, you know, by solving practical problems. It seemed for everybody impossible to solve but I started solving the menu can do theater also far away from big towns. So in a host of road begins, I began to understand that I could be the sort of micro society. I was completely free of all the criteria, the norms. And this is how the audience ethics from here from my colleagues process is a very strict discipline, self-discipline in order to achieve certain results because you don't achieve, you don't achieve. We are the people because we are not big artists. But what seems impossible is only the possible, which takes more time and a lot more personal effort. This is what characterizes us. We are sort of stubborn, a bit infantile people who don't give up. Therefore, here the world isn't necessary for me because premise to keep in my freedom. This type of theater, which is the sort of my personal struggle to be with an environment which has a certain values, which has a certain, which recognizes the pleasure of generosity or hospitality. And with diversity is the normality. I mean, we are 25 people, even here, different colors, different races, different religions, different genders. It's incredible. And in a way, I mean, there's a beautiful poem by Rilke, I always liked and he talks about the son who had to go to the church in the east because his father wouldn't go there and he felt he had to leave behind. He went to Poland, he went to India. Do you feel that we have to pay still attention to a world of mysticism or spirituality or something, but perhaps came to there? Is that something where you feel Western theater should refocus? You're so well known for your work with voice and body, your significant groundbreaking work of training the voice and the body. Do you feel that this is still what companies should be doing or are you looking also at other directions? We have an enemy, which is a routine. We, after a certain moment, we try to find something, you know, this is a necessity, especially when the director and the actors are always the same, we know each other very well. If I go and meet a group of other actors, they are different, so there is a sort of novelty in this relationship. But our relationships are so established after 50 years, 65 years, 40 years, so we know each other very well. What I call the earthquake in the group are very important, otherwise we get extremely bored and if we are bored in an environment, we want to go away. This is the law of life. We human beings are attracted by the way of energy and stimuli. So, for us, the only thing is very, very important to invent situations which disorient and create a sort of an earthquake. And where we have to build again the group dynamic, but using the experience we have, we have to use it in a different way. Already the fact that the whole dynamic of the group is one of introvert, extrovert, where the individualistic tendency are enhanced so that each of them has their own interests that are very different. Part of the year they can involve themselves in these, and then part of the years they can come back and find the security and same time the challenge which we all wish to create in order not to remain prisoner of the team. All this is very present in our culture, in our group culture, each of us thinks all of this, how can I surprise my colleagues, how can they say no, why are you doing this? So, life is movement, life is change, life is energy which all time transforms itself. And if you don't follow this, then you stagnate and people leave you and they have a right, they are right to leave you because you are no longer nourishing them. Yeah, this is an important life, life is movement and it's energy and it has to transform and we are in that big moment of transformation. A spider woman, that Native American women's company we had on Monday, she said perhaps we are in a moment of a new creation myth, something is starting, but we don't know what will happen. Yes, the stories all are a mythical story, if you listen to them, whether it's the Mahabharata or the Tazia, we don't. But now we know because we tell them, but right now we are in the middle and you have found something almost like you ate a little bit from the apple of the tree of knowledge, you stole something from the paradise, and it was Christ which I admire very, very much when he is essay on the marionette theater said maybe theater and he of course talked about poverty is the way to get the back door into paradise in that state of innocence and bless and marveling at the world and searching for truth, and that this is and you did that and I also like what you said I never thought about this arturian idea. I think Joseph Campbell does wrote so much more stories said the history of the East often were gurus you know like perhaps Kotelsky and country where I gurus and yet to follow them you forbid his company members country to see other performances he would they were not even supposed to leave their hotels in New York. And but you said no they're more like the Knights of the tip ground table they go out slay their own dragon has come back but they tell the story. And this is our Western miss at the moment that we are, that we are living and, and that is perhaps a way to to think about life as perhaps an old Homeric tales with the multiplicity of gods, you have to honor, you don't own a one everything isn't in this way. Yeah. Frank, one of the learning a technique a profession is not just learning and know how you also learn certain values. When you were mentioning that the Knights going each to fight their own dragon has been learned by learning to be an actor. The actor has to do this. As a knight of King Arthur, you have to save women from bed dragons. But this may be the main difference between the groups, and the my theater, which is very efficient I can create performances which can be very interesting. In the theater groups, it exists for emotional vision and justification of the sort of metaphysics of our profession, sometimes not exposed, sometimes very naive, sometimes become rough, if they're logical, blah, blah, blah. But it exists. It's something which nourishes the personal secret wounds of the members of the group. So, it isn't a story. It's very abstract. The women and the men who do it, each of them very vulnerable, and they all of them alive to our profession because they are escaping from something. Yeah, yeah, really, thank you really for becoming closer to the to the end and again also your point and create a micro society a micro organism that works. If theater makes sense because it's a model for something that's why some people hate it and it's banished or Indian colleague. And you know who we interviewed here Abhishek said, you know, movies in India no one cares they can be as good if I do a little play in my company. I get censored, they say no so ask the government, if it's important what I do it is. And, and I think for you to create that model in your life in your work as an artist and also to create the space for everybody to to to perform their lives their lives but also their work is a is fantastic and I think it has many, many answers what we are looking for and our little motto is Brecht's idea and that new times need new forms of theater but sometimes they also, you know, recycle I have to look back with nothing is new under the sun as, as Becket taught us as a last statement. And of course it might sound like a heavy question to you but we do really often ask it at the very end so what do you say to young young artists or people also our listeners who are at home to use the time but how to do art and you would think of young or junior who maybe was still a welder and you've got mistreated and said I'm don't I study but I don't want to I'm going to start my company and you know, will you survive you put your life at risk, your reputation, you know, and what your family thought of you but what in the time of Corona were already in New York is impossible to do theater if you don't have money. And you know that often they say a trust fund and you're not white, and you've not a trust fund baby but it's and for them it's hard enough and I admire them but what what do you say to our what what should we all do now in this moment we live in what art is still what's the meaning what meaning can we create. I can only say that be proud of what you are and conquer your diversity and make it be respected and accepted through your personal way of behaving doing your sacrifices your achievements. Start from tomorrow getting up one hour before then today and don't give up don't give up don't give up seven times on the floor. It's up Sunday, your worst enemy is yourself, because you have a tendency to be satisfied with the first result to accept the norms of the others. And first of all, let small compromise erode your courage and rage, you have to fight because nobody will help you. You have to find the people with whom you have a certain affinity and be able to collaborate. They have to fight like a snake sometimes sometimes you have to fight like a dove. But you have to learn to choose consciously the longest and most difficult path because it's there. The unforeseeable, the surprise, the real enlightenment for yourself and for the other is here to teach yourself to be strong and don't expect help from anybody. This is a very, very significant advice from Virginia was a whole life behind it and a whole experience and most probably not the 10,000 hours 100,000 hours of real work to prove this is most significant. And maybe we also go back and listen to it again me. But this is a significant and an important reminder reminder, what what we should be doing and also what works and that is also what all the stories and mystics told us if you do what you say it will something will good will come out. If your roof is broken that wins in but you see the moon so I hope this time will help us to get closer to work, what you represent and what you already did on your own very difficult circumstances with great great resonance in people and you change people's and the idea what theater all is about so it's been a great privilege for us to, to hear from you and, and I would like to really thank you in the name of the Segal Center the Greater Center CUNY and around and everybody listening for taking your time and speaking, speaking to us I know that's working as you said so much and so hard so but it was really important I felt and, and we had to had to had to have you with us here so to our listeners. Please do think about what he said we need a great theater but as a genius and it's all about the audience actually it's all about you and what you do with it and how it means in your life that infects something in that border. And, and this is what's important the Roland Bard the great critics that you're literature he said yeah okay they write books but what's important how we read it, how what we make out how we compare it a bruised against, you know, Zola and others how what you do about it and I think this is also providing us something to look at to think about a space, but ultimately it's what you do and then what action you take out of it to save your own lives and to make this country better when it looks like in terrible mythical stories where the king is mad and there is a plague in the country and it has someone has to come up to help and own micro society and it's actually you who is listening it's me it's us and Eugene did that so this is incredible significance what you said today and tomorrow we will hear from a New York actor. How he's a director of Paul Price how he's experienced this moment in New York also as a, as a black artist in that time and Friday we have Levi Yatzee who's a Syrian writer, playwright, poet, also director of documentary films and how she's experienced seeing this moment but really thank you a genie again and I hope it was a little bit also of meaning for you and I can only wish it would be as inspiring to everybody as this talk was for me that listening to you thank you again and I hope you will have a good dinner what will your dinner be in Denmark tonight what you're going to have do you know I always eat Italian food like your mother's and you cook it you cook it but my wife do it they are good so I hope you will have a wonderful a wonderful dish tonight again thank you and to all our listeners thank you for taking the time out of your life I know it's much busier these days than we think they are so full of uncertainties and to listen also for a longer time it's a big commitment as Eugene you said you put in audience but it is something that happens in between thanks for howl around for hosting a CIA vj and my seagull team Andy and Sanyang and please all do stay safe and to stay tuned in and I hope we will all see better days nothing lasts forever not the good things but also not the terrible things so we will get over this but we should be prepared as Eugene said the moment before you shoot the arrow is the important one and this is one which we are experiencing so thank you thank you bye bye thank you very much Frank and to you and your collaborators