 Welcome everybody back to Segal Talks here at the Monteney Segal Theater Center, the Graduate Center CUNY in New York City. Spring is arriving and but somehow it looks like the gods are lost in the dark forests and caves and streets and of Manhattan. It's still a very, very grim outlook. The numbers of people infected seem to be growing every day. The unknown numbers, things are still closed, theaters, bars, restaurants, the number of people who we lost, the lives are staggering. It's the epicenter on planet Earth right now in New York City and other towns have sports as their center. Others also have the car manufacturing or other things, but New York City is a town of theater and culture and so it has been hit extremely hard. We have five, six million people taking the subway every day. 300,000 people coming out of only one train station, the Penn station and going back in the evening, so everything that makes New York great that we talk and party and care about our communities is now has turned against us and we have to see how to deal with it. The world has come to a full stop, the break has been hit and a car that was in full motion, perhaps overdrive with overheated wheels for a long time and feeling is there that things haven't been so good before but now they're in a terrible shape but it's a moment where we should think and reflect and also listen and listening to artists is a significant thing to do over centuries. One wishes people in power would have listened to the voices of artists. They are on the right side of justice, on the right side of social progress most of the time, almost always. Especially if you could all the voices together and again we are in a time right now of crisis. It's a tragedy, it's tragic times as Milo Rao said here in the right sense in which sheknaue added it's also farcical because we have leaders that are farce what they put out and suggest we don't have the good kings or the bad kings we have heard voices really really from around the world from Tunisia from Egypt, South Korea, Taiwan Germany, Italy, so many many places India, Pakistan and it's going to go on with talks this week from Romania and India again and today we have two representatives from Hungary Hungary is a significant and important country in the center of Europe in Europe it has a great history of artists who have contributed to world art and culture but also it's a country that has brought out engineers and ideas it's quite remarkable for a very small place how much influence came out there but the news as in Poland we hear the political news or having people scratching their heads we are devastated to hear of our colleagues, our artistic colleagues their situation, the great help Hungary also got after joining the European Union seemed not to have had the effect everybody wishes that it's an open society that embraces change, that it's valuing free speech, independent justices and the system that makes it open society great which is called democracy where everybody participates and so we have now two workers of the Hungarian theater here with us Anna Lengel and Andrea Tompa, two people who really have deep, deep roots in Hungarian theater who have worked with the most significant artists and they're themselves as significant artists, dramaturgs and part of the intelligentsia there are people who have made Hungarian theater a clicker to our theater and so so much so many others who we know have made a great contribution so now they are in their homes and maybe we start with Anna, Anna how are you, where are you and what time is it in Budapest or Pest or Buda Hi there, so I'm fine I'm doing really well, I'm sitting in my home in my study and it's 5 past 6pm here oh 5-6pm, yeah that's correct, sorry anyway and so yeah, so I live close to an island actually Margaret Island under Danube which makes it possible for me to walk around the island every day so that's and the weather is just gorgeous so that's one of the best things about all this so you're not in Budapest the town? I am in Budapest, I am on the Pest side yeah the Margaret Island is the biggest island in Budapest it's in the Danube between Budapest and Pest and I'm on the Pest side so it's one of the most popular green spots anyway of the few in this metropolis and now they are closing it down on weekends to avoid huge crowds like on the west village pier yesterday which was really scary all these photos were packed with people anyway so but you can still but not until 9am so you can still walk around or jog around, it's such a beautiful town, I've been there many times such a significant history also of theater not only starting from Ferenc Molnar and everybody but so what's going on how is your personal situation, how are you doing as Anna? well there are three things maybe that I would like to mention in this conversation today I'm an independent theater maker so I lead the only documentary theater I mean there are several documentary shows but I believe we are the only ones who devote our whole work to documentary work called we are called panodrama and that's an independent theater and the independent theater is in a very tight spot to begin with and now with the coronavirus situation it's gotten worse so that's one of the issues I would like to touch upon then maybe myself or Andrea will see talk about this empowerment law which where by the state or rather the government is allowed to pass laws without parliament which is now the case in many countries what's unique about Hungary is that there is no time limit set to this so in every country they said well for the next 30 days or 60 or whatever and here there is no time limit on this whole thing and they are abusing their power as we all suspect suspected they would so that's another issue I think we should talk about and my personal situation is such that I have metastatic cancer I've had cancer for over three years now and therefore and I'm now at the moment not getting my chemotherapy by the way that's my choice I could get it if I wanted to but of course you have to somehow consider what's a bigger threat going to hospital every three weeks and in this case actually checking into the hospital for three days for continuous chemo infusion and exposing yourself to that threat or maybe saying okay let's wait for another and risk that the cancer is spreading more aggressively so you know there is no good solution in this but with regards I'm doing really really really well subjectively no pain or nothing like that objectively it's less great but anyway but with regards to that I would really love to talk about the healthcare issues there are some really really serious ones which I would just I will talk about this later but the summary of this is that in an effort to have low numbers for coronavirus related deaths the government had some measures taken which however would result in many more deaths in other with other ailments so if you have cancer if you have a heart disease if you have a very high blood pressure or just got your leg amputated or whatever and they are actually throwing out patients on the street under the you know under this effort to to have many many free beds in hospitals so I will talk about this more because the whole idea of living and dying as a you know indignity that is something that escapes them entirely and that they truly don't give a damn about so I would really like to touch upon that well Anna thank you for letting us know and I'm terribly sorry to hear about this I was not aware of this I think last time we saw each other in Robert Wilson's Water Mill Center or in Budapest when I came to the CTI meeting so these are terrible choices you have to make between getting an infection when you are in a risk group because of low immunity and the chemo it sounds like war time it sounds like a time that is asking us really to make choices and think deeply about everything our bodies our minds our friends family and life and Andrea how was the mood how was the situation among theater artists in Hungary I think it's I think it's very people feel very unsafe now for many reasons of course for personal reasons but what is going on in Hungary since let's say 2010 since we had the first government and it's a continuous threat of the whole theater culture and the whole culture in general because I'm a writer first of all and a theater critic so I have both perspectives of the artist and of the critic and I also see how large this landscape of I wouldn't call it censorship but it's a control over cultural landscape from the side of the government and I think that the big threat now is that this situation of the coronavirus might be very useful for the government to impose even more control even more control over leadership budgets institutional functioning and all areas of the culture and and all the fields and institution might be even more politicized in the way that the actual political leadership will want to interfere even more with the cultural sphere this interference has been already very very high and sometimes very radical and of course we can talk about what happened in Hungary in the past 10 or even 30 years but the current situation it can be used as a tool for reinforce this kind of political control over everything so this is one thing and also always every such a crisis critical situation for many artists is in a way let's say useful to understand more about the world more about personal issues more about what human being is and to have an even deeper understanding of our current lives and I think there is not very much innovation in the responses upon coronavirus from the side of the performing arts field but there is a lot of thinking going on so there is not we cannot really talk about important results or outputs yet of course we are in the process and we don't know where this process goes but there is a lot of thinking about what is really theater and how will theater change due to this current very tragic situation as you mentioned in your introduction and I really agree with the words of Milo Rao that we really can rediscover tragedy and the tragic right now because we experience it we often get here in New York news from the great Philip Arnault who did rank alarm bells about the situation of theater artists in Hungary directors being removed from important theaters festivals not censored but just completely the funding taken away people who are not from the artistic field put in charge of you know cultural institutions but they are a member of the party in corona times has there been additional measures being taken that they would have even had a hard time to justify during the normal regimes days where they already more or less do what they want they have such a high numbers by voters but as you say now with the empowerment law has there something changed additionally on top of what we know I only know about and maybe Anna will add more details to it or other ideas but I only know about one big project of the government one big idea is not to give people money but to give them work and they open try to open up a fund for getting work for artists and people around theater performing arts but this is very much in the hand of the government and will be a kind of a grant or a big project where and not independent board members will decide upon who should get what as a support so everything is given by the government is problematic because you don't really have a independent decision making process you don't have transparency you don't really have a democratic competition situations you can rely upon so no matter the government opens what that is very always very very biased and since there was recently I think in the second half of the last year created a huge representative board of the so-called national institutions but these national institutions are led by the so-called loyal people and I think here I should mention that what really our government expects people leading institutions and organizations is to be loyal to them to the government to the urban regime and once you are loyal you can get support you can get the support of the government or of the different funds so this question of loyalty I think it's very important on the artistic field of course things became very complicated since last fall we had local elections in Hungary and in very many cities also in Budapest the opposition won so there is a new struggle on the whole it's a new battlefield basically between the local government led by opposition leaders and the urban regime and this is very tricky now in the whole corona situation yeah so well yes I mean it's a complex story I don't know how much the viewers are aware of this major protest that happened back in December yeah which was unprecedented which had been unprecedented for many years now so in fact the government tried to sneak in law tried to really pass the law what they usually do is they they have a bill and then they appear with the bill like at you know 8pm and then they pass the law at midnight that's their methodology so that and there is absolutely no discussion with the stakeholders there is no only their friends so we don't know about these laws as well either in the arts field or in you know teaching or public education or you can name any number of fields they never discuss it with the stakeholders but this bill that they were proposing was actually so outrageous that even some of their friends who were aware of it they leaked it to the press so very early December in the first days of December we became aware of this bill that they wanted to make into law what did the bill say exactly three major points with regards to theaters first that the funding the annual funding of the independent performing arts field would be seized all together now of course we must emphasize that we are still in a much better situation than the standard performing arts artists in the US because we know of course that the US budget there is only two cents out of your paycheck which go towards the arts and it's being attacked by Republicans as a rule so the NEA is always the first target among the first targets of Republican talk or Tea Party talk definitely but we have this European tradition whereby taxpayers monies which by the way are never called that they are always called the money of the state money which of course the state doesn't have money so that's another element which is totally twisted anyway so traditionally artists do get funds from the state performing arts the law the first performing arts law which was passed in 2008 after more than two year discussion with the stakeholders it was a very thorough discussion and the law wasn't perfect of course but it was the first one of its kind and it guaranteed that at least 10% of all municipal funding goes to the independent scene which is a very important thing in Hungary so 8-9 out of 10 international invitations to major festivals go to the independent scene rather than state or city theaters so this was a guarantee that would have established would have made it possible for the independent scene to have a more stable funding and a more stable future but as soon as the urban government had the power in 2010 and especially Arti Lavinjalski now director of the National Theater who decides about life and death in the theater field they discontinued they changed this law so there are no guarantees anymore and in this past December they were proposing that actually the structural funding the annual structural funding for the independent performing arts scene which is little still very important would be discontinued all together that they would discontinued the national cultural fund which is the most important project that the project that you can apply there for project monies so not for the whole annual whatever subsistence money but for individual projects and which has a budget of 9 billion foreigns which if I am not terribly mistaken is around like 270 million US dollars and they wanted to discontinue that and replace it with this what Andrea already mentioned this body of the national institution heads who are all Fidesz loyal or government loyal people most of them puppets and not individual artists or thinkers and then the third one was which you Frank mentioned at the beginning sorry that they said that any city theater who gets any funding from the state or from the ministry there the minister would have a veto or would have an influence over who becomes the director the artistic director or the managing director of that particular theater and we don't have a ministry of culture anymore since the Fidesz government so actually the minister is called the minister for human resources he is an oncologist and he is an idiot as an oncologist too but he says for instance that 80% of fatal illnesses could be avoided if we kept the 10 commandments that's what he says as a professor of oncology that's just one of his favorite before this minister of culture we had a priest Lutheran priest again not minister of culture but minister for human resources so we only have a state secretary of culture but it's the minister who would have the right to veto so it's actually he doesn't know he has no clue the oncologist so very clearly he'll do what he's told and they say whoever gives the money decides is there is what they say and of course they don't realize that the money is given by the taxpayers so their logic is we are giving you the money so we'll say who is director and what programming you do so the city where as Andrea said the opposition won and we have finally a young very active mayor the first time ever the first ever who rides a bike to work and stuff like that he made a deal with the government whereby he protects five city theaters and he overtakes five no it's Katana Radnoti Örken Trafo and this festival out of 12 but the problem is that I don't think this this does protect these theaters which they have labeled for a long time as leftist theaters and now thanks to a me too kind of scandal they are also dubbing them the abusive theaters which is particularly one as well as the academy of theater and film and it's a scandal that only touched upon one person who was right away let go so I mean everything was done the way it was supposed to do it was supposed to be done or nearly and the director any mistakes he made he admitted to and he said he was sorry about some delay that happened earlier but no one there is absolutely no sign of these houses being abusive on a regular level and of course they don't talk about the other scandals in the theaters that they prefer there are all excuses to interfere with the programming and interfere with the funding but even though these theaters are now protected in a way I think it's an incredibly dangerous precedent because basically now you have they are trying to it's very similar in fact to the US society, Hungarian society is very similar in the respect that it's incredibly polarized, it's become so polarized that it splits up families and it's hugely problematic so the situation I'm sorry I'm explaining it in such a complicated way but what happened was this was leaked and we managed to whip up an amazing protest so we had a petition within three days signed by 50,000 people and it was a very it wasn't even a petition it was just on a petition site it was very straightforward and very toughly formulated and we had a huge demonstration with at least 13,000 people and all kinds of the most well known actors all put up videos on Facebook protesting this and so therefore they got frightened so this is also this makes me optimistic in the way that there is a way they are cowards so there is a way to protest against them and I always say that we should do that so they withdrew some of the bill but they kept this thing about the city theaters which I just explained with the mayor but they still so the annual funding for the independent scene is still there and the national cultural fund funding is still there but it's important to know that as opposed to almost all countries and we heard how Thomas Ostarmayer said that theater people had to fulfill a form or fill in a form on a Saturday and on the Wednesday they had to check for 5,000 euros in their mailboxes and here there is absolutely nothing so any kind of help you get and this is news from yesterday in fact is one billion Hungarian that's 30 million US dollars going to all of the art fields the whole art field but it's not decided upon by a neutral set of curators or commission or whatever where you could apply and where it could be transparent and objective and there is no description on how the decision is going to be made but the decision has been allocated to the national theater director to the director of the literary museum and all of that all these government loyal people and they also left out many professions so for instance no playwrights no translators no dramaturgs none of the technical crew and men almost none of the administrative crew and it's only there on subject matters mostly I mean you can apply with individual poems poetry that you will do some poetry lectures or something like this and it's not you have to promise that you will make a show and the money you get is now for that show so actually it's not any kind of actual social systematic social help but they always say that you shouldn't be given money if you don't work so what this boils down to is that they basically don't understand the role of the state they don't understand that the reason we pay taxes is among other things that when there is an emergency situation then those monies or some of that money must come back to us and they must not expect anything in return because it will help us to survive and it's a social kind of benefit and it's not money for work so it's a disastrous situation that already was disastrous along party lines I think the government is using the situation to starve the theaters to already closed down half of the Hungarian theaters the Budapest theaters the city's theaters I'm glad to hear that the great Joseph Katana is still somehow alive and kicking but it's a declaration of war from the government it is clear theater artists have always been on the side in a joyful way of participation in the source of life and it has been the role of theater throughout thousands of years to point out what's wrong what could be done better we can work through family problems or through questions that are about politics and power and what justice mean and what law means like Antigone who says I'm going to bury my brother even the laws against it there's a higher law and art is close to that so I think it's a terrible sign for society any society where theater and the arts is blooming is a great society it's alive and if not they are big problems and they manifest themselves so fast of course in theater as Abhishek Mumba from India said you know people watch films and they could be critical people don't care but I do a show I get censored by the government so theater of course somehow speaks to us in a different way it tells the truth that is uncomfortable as a model on stage that seems to be real and it could be like this and also in life and that is stunning the power of that but question to both of you how is the mood on the street and Budapest do people wear masks for how long have you been confined can everybody go out is anything open what is closed how how is the situation in Budapest well I live in a family so I have a kid and my kid haven't been to the school in the past two months so schools were closed almost two months now Hungary closed down quite early which is well I consider it quite early basically on the 12th or 13th of March and it was very funny to hear on a Friday morning on a briefing our prime minister saying we were not closed because the schools and on that very Friday evening he announced that schools will be closed so it's not very much of thinking and planning of course so I live on the outskirts of Budapest on the north also by the Danube and this is very quiet here we live in a house with a garden and that's very privileged and now it's really a blessing my son was mentioning that we shall visit the center because we haven't been to the city and we were planning a tour in the city to see how how is the center people here wear masks but it's very very quiet theaters are also closed that's everything else and it's a little bit of punishment upon Budapest right now since some new directions given by the prime ministers how the city how the country should operate and in the provinces the laws the regulations are lighter and in Budapest they are kept tougher and you can interpret also that is a punishment upon Budapest the liberal bad Budapest so I also have an understanding of this kind of punishment because I was reading that people in living in Budapest stay much more at home and don't move very much around while people in the provinces this is of course based on the cell phones data so it's being really tricky most of the shops are closed for instance no bookstores are open and me being a writer and looking at what is going on in the literary life this is this will have a very big impact not only on the publishing houses but also on bookstores and on further lives of the writers too and it's very tricky really to remind us all the time in this wonderful spring that we live in an era where this kind of tragic is not visible with our eyes in the real life so we have to read the news to have an understanding about what is going on so I think what is also very tricky and I wanted to add something to the health care system about which Anna has a much deeper understanding my husband works for care home for the old and he has never been tested and he is very angry he is not testing very much and it's very much criticized because I'm not testing really a lot and my husband lives and we all live in this very careful mood because he is working in this house with 90 old elderly people with very mild symptoms he could not be tested he should go to be tested on private on his own costs because the government would not provide you with a test because you have mild symptoms or you have a job which is putting you in this difficult situation I don't think and of course as with all the news coming from the government and this whole situation is being controlled completely by the government it's very difficult to trust all these news and you see all the time that at these briefings the opposition media media's questions are not being answered these briefings that the official communication of the government is very much often based on propaganda and not on making the population to understand what is going on and what are the real data and what you should be careful about so trust is something I really lack in this situation so I'm sure that this approach to a virus doesn't work to punish Budapest but leave it open in the provinces not taking care of institutions like old age homes which have the highest infection rates and in New Jersey this will be shown that this isn't incompetence and that there's something that is really not helping the people of the government's big idea of course is that as you say prepare for these things so that the people of the government can get to the society can thrive it's disconcerting and makes me so sad to hear that from a country I've been very often I love Hungary I love the Hungarian theater the famous film maker said even if you're a Hungarian writer you still need to write a good third act and so much that to hear that a country that was under Nazi and Stalinistic oppression that finally got out after the Berlin Wall opened is now experiencing such a dark moment where the arts especially are which is so important in society what role does theater play in a normal life in Budapest and what do you think will happen when it's over will there be a change so how significant is theater performing arts for the people in Budapest let me first answer this I think theater is a very popular form of art in Hungary it's still very popular Hungary is a country of almost 10 million people and the ticket sales is almost 8 million tickets per year which would not mean 8 million people because me growing like a hundred times to theater in a year I'm there with the number of 100 but it's a very very popular form of art and it was increasing very much in the past few years due to probably the fact that the prices of the tickets are kept low because we live in a culture very highly subsidized by the government and of course a very big part of this theater culture is a culture of entertainment it's not like a very deep very serious often not very critical kind of art form but there is still a major part of the theater which is very valuable so on one hand we are talking about a very popular form of art and a very important form of gathering we have big theater houses in Budapest and around the provinces and to practice theater going it's very important still today from the school from the early years of kids so we have this rich culture on one hand and on the other hand this kind of political culture which would want to influence this theater scene politically very much and to put it under control maybe Anna should add something and then we go back to the question about the future I wanted to maybe add to the previous question about the healthcare system a little bit the Orban government is very similar to the US administration in as much as it's not experts who announce the findings or the new laws or whatever whereas Trump does it on his Twitter feed and on his personal Facebook page and well he won't say we should drink Clorox I think that's even Orban wouldn't say that so that's a keeper but it's not experts who are offering their views and in fact hospitals are banned from answering questions of journalists so you can't really have as Andrea said we don't have the facts they are bragging every day that they have now I think I forget the number but maybe one million or two million tests but they have only done like 80,000 or something like this so we don't know we can follow that all of which in the beginning there were very few of and even now there are not nearly enough they send a lot of that to Hungarian minorities around Hungary to Transylvania and Romania but also to Moldova and I don't even understand because there is a very high sentimental value of helping minority Hungarians that's a key element in their rhetoric which would be fine of course or is fine but I mean as long as we don't have nearly enough tests and protective gear that's a problem but anyway the numbers in Hungary maybe your viewers don't know that either are pretty good as far as you know deaths go and I don't remember but I think we are between two and three thousand now for ten million that's not so bad at all and I agree with Andrea that the schools and the theatres were closed down on time I agree that was a good decision but we don't know how many sick people there are because there are hardly any tests and over Easter this is what happened what I said would mention over the Easter long weekend hospitals were ordered to free up 60% of all hospital beds 36,000 hospital beds for potential coronavirus patients and anyone with the facts any hospital management and other experts they said there is no scenario according to which this high number of beds would ever be needed for corona patients so this is probably something that they wanted to do anyway and now with their full power with no control from parliament they ordered this excuse of coronavirus they did something that they wanted to do anyway so they sent a lot of patients home and there is this private nurse who offered her services pro bono and she reported about the ten patients that she was taking care of for sure they were terminal patients but within a week nine of the ten were dead so we are talking about freshly amputated legs we are talking about terminal ill cancer patients we are talking about people who sat on a psychiatry bed for 20 years and their families can't do anything about them or people being sent home to partners who are 80 years old they can't feed themselves and can clearly not feed them and not give them infusions and none of these deaths will figure in any of the statistics of course so the rhetoric will be that we manage to get out of coronavirus at least the first wave with only so many deaths and no one will be able to get out of the hospital completely haphazard and unprofessionally organized very sudden emptying of these hospital beds led to so that's really important to know as far as the street there is a huge debate about everything almost and I spoke out pretty loudly mostly on facebook but still for going out because I think both for your physiological and your psychological health I think it's key that you go out into the sunshine that you move, that you walk around and the rules thankfully allowed for that unlike in Spain or Italy so at least they follow Germany in that respect that there was a separate line where we said it's okay to go out to do sports and to walk around as long as you only walk with the people living in the same household so in that also even the Hungarian government I think was doing well and so there is a lot of debate but I think those people who go out and make sure that they move around no matter what age or what condition according to their conditions I think they are in a much better mental place because I think there is very little talk at least in Hungary for now and I haven't read a whole lot some but not nearly enough about the psychological factors of being locked up for months at a time so even in Spain where we know the virus hit hardest in Europe they for instance children were not allowed to step out the door for I believe six or seven weeks I don't think that's right I think that's very dangerous small children and you know school aged children so I think in that we have to be you know really a differentiated thinking and there should be a social discussion about that as far as the role of theater just very briefly I all of what Andrea said is of course very right I think that regardless of the government over each and all of this I think Hungarian theater is in a crisis artistically the independent theater is and theater we are not we have lost our compass in a way there are some outstanding shows and some very exciting projects but not nearly as many as say 20 years ago or 15 years ago so that's another thing but I think the most important issue if I have to pick one issue in Hungary I think it's education so if I had a choice to take back one thing from this government it would be public education because what they are doing to the future generations that's the scariest part of all because now we have but a small portion of university students many I mean much fewer universities applications than say five years ago and this is what Orban wants he doesn't want smart educated people around him he doesn't want informed consent from people he wants people to be uneducated uninformed so that he can tell them and they believe him and no one will contradict him so I think the biggest danger and I think theater can play a key part in this with the theater in education projects and even proper theater shows I think the public in a way that's at the same time not didactic I think that's one of our most important tasks these days these are all shocking statements so you know the disregard for life and the dignity of a human of an elderly person that clear out 60% of beds to pretend you have empty beds for something one didn't even know supposedly they are very little kids it doesn't make any sense it sounds more closer to a North Korea than it sounds to a member of the European Union it's absolutely shocking and I really respect both of you for trying to make something work in order to find a way as an artist to survive and to make a contribution do you think there will be new forms of theater coming out what are Hungarian artists doing at the moment are they at home doing their stuff online are they right in place or do you think it's a pause button we will go back to already the crisis that was in theater or do you think this will be a different definitely a game changer I don't think it would be really a game changer because probably the big institutions would only want to continue as it was and they want back their public or as many people in the room as possible I think one of the big issues will be that the audience will not really have the confidence in theater in going back to the dark room and sitting together like many hundreds of people and it will take a long time until all this big mass I was talking about earlier will go back lots of people I'm hearing that they are rehearsing on Skype and online and doing research and probably for a small amount of independent artists this period and the experience of this online world and this lockdown and this new tragic experience will will open probably a new understanding of what is the role of theater and why making theater why should one make theater probably I don't think it will have in a short term such an impact on literature because literature is very different it reacts more later and it's on a long run probably but theater can react more quickly I think now the question is how the fall will reopen and if the laws will allow theaters to open and in what way maybe there is I just called one of the theaters to have a concrete understanding of their thoughts I called the artistic director and she said they are talking about putting 50 or 100 people into the big hall and how they can seek to be taken people wearing masks and can you really manage that or how can you function under such conditions or one of the big questions will be after this long lockdown that all artists are very willing immediately to work and how can you really organize a new life of artists working together and creating shows there were postponed many shows were postponed so I don't think we don't live, I agree with Anna that we live in a period of crisis Hungarian theater is clearly in crisis everywhere so in this situation will not be a really changer of the understanding of the role of theater so as she said we lost the compass the role of the theater is not very clear except for the role of entertaining and that's not what we or me would like to see this is stunning you barely can even talk about the overwhelming problems you are having here you communicated to us in that short time how does one even think about making art I guess also for you guys it's a time of rethinking of an inner immigration and protest are European theater colleagues are they supporting Hungarian theater are they writing how is the situation one of the problems that many have addressed before is that the European Union has failed in the face of the coronavirus in the sense that everyone is thinking of closing down borders between countries saving their own country it's a very little effort compared to all those individual national efforts to changing or helping the EU as such so the European Union failed this test in a big way at the same time there will be a charity event in a few days maybe on the 7th I'm not entirely sure and they are trying to raise 7 billion euros it will be an online auction event or not auction but charity kind of event your viewers must understand that individual charity and all kinds of that kind of the thought of if I'm doing well if I'm making a lot of money if I'm lucky and I'm making a lot of money also because I'm good then I need to give back this thought is not nearly as rooted in Europe as in the US philanthropy in the size of George Soros and of course many others is not as well known so I think we need to I'm afraid Andrea might be right but I really applaud anyone for instance the director of who gave an interview and he said he must rethink the whole coming season the whole programming because what he was programming before isn't valid anymore because now he needs to have shows with as many of the actors from the permanent company we have a repertoire system with permanent companies obviously and not an on-suite system like the US or most English speaking countries so that it's key that he gives all of them work in almost all of the productions and this is not only so that they can make money but also so that they can have the feeling that they are doing their job and what's in most cases more than a job a true calling of sorts what is needed now what would you both say this would help Hungarian in theatre the Siegel Center once tried to make a little contribution in the new theatre the new skin house I think leadership was forced to exchange we did a book and they talked about they didn't want to have riffraff plays from New York anymore they published a book of New York plays in Hungarian translation we called the riffraff plays from New York but obviously it didn't help to have an impact what needs to be done what do you feel it would revive the scene with or without or with the new mayor what would be needed to think this would be a new start this could be something it's very difficult to say there was a few weeks ago there was the fundraising situation of the independent performing arts organization trying to help the independent artists of course funding is always very important and independent grants are very important probably also international corporations but all these international corporations will have a very different future from now on with much less exchange physical exchange probably I think visibility is very helpful for all those artists who feel somehow not only lockdown but also they don't their voices cannot be heard they are like very important artists and artistic directors from Hungary who could be introduced to the kind of international scene so these are my thoughts for your questions actually that kind of funding we are still trying to raise money the independent performing arts association for the independent artists who are almost or rather I'm sorry to be exact not the artists because most of the other funding only thinks of the actors and none of the other participants of the theater work like creative people or technical or administrative people so I can send you the link where we are trying to raise more money and if you can put it on your website that would be great that institutional funding there is no institutional funding so that means that any kind of very very limited sources are only available to individuals so as an independent performing as an independent theater sorry that was me turned off as an independent theater I cannot apply for extra funding so if you think you can hook me up with someone who would help with that and possibly there would be Americans who would like to help us with that that would be also great but since you mentioned the publication I think a similar effort might be helpful maybe not necessarily plays that too but perhaps this time around it could be writing on about theater but not only because for some reason which I failed to understand there is very little theater publication on theater or plays or whatever in Hungary so we are one of the very few countries in Europe for sure where not a single book on Robert Wilson has been published ever or our same you know like our own director makers Thomas Osset and I could go on and on most of them no one has ever written a book about so if you think that the Siegel center might be interested in putting together a book about Hungarian theater or maybe independent theater but maybe not only whatever we can talk about this and if you had the funding for that there would be a lot of people who could write really good articles and essays for that there are a lot of people who can do that in English in fact so let's talk about this if you think this is helpful this is a way to do we had your colleagues from Taiwan which is an exceptional successful like South Korea in fighting the crisis next to additional funding they gave 140, 160 million US dollars right away in the first weeks for artists and they are collaborating and looking for models of collaboration and their mission also is to find new ways of theater so maybe there is a way to connect with them and combine Hungarian artists with them but I think also Europe has to step up European idea which is founded on the idea of enlightenment which is founded the great story of Troy which we all share and our gods of theater and the history and I think Hungary has to be reminded that this really is part of the history and I think it's an important moment also next to paying attention to what happens with the coronavirus but also what happens to our colleagues and friends in Hungary so thank you really for sharing I'm sorry that these news are so gloomy as the famous Billie Holiday song of the gloomy Sunday you know the Hungarian suicide songs you know the mood doesn't seem to be good and I hope that this beautiful city the little Paris at least will come back on its feet maybe it's time to connect to the young mayor in Budapest they make sure that existing theaters the ones who maybe didn't get that they connect with free companies that you find new models of of collaboration coming out of this and use that time I hope you will find a bit of time for yourself and to take care of you to stay safe this is important and not to feel the pressure that you have to do something it was all our artists say you know it's okay not to be productive it's okay to be overwhelmed it's okay not to have the answers but to think and to prepare for when this is over as for many artists at the real fight will start whether it's Hong Kong or Egypt whether it's Tunisia or other countries in Chile we had Guillermo Calderon what was the devastating situation also after the December uprising so it's something that unites us that this virus is perhaps the first thing that really really makes everybody so close yet we are so far away and our world has become so small our apartments but the global world also is so close to us now and we keep on doing our talks here and Lula Arias will be with us from Argentina we will have theater makers from India we will have Stacey Klein from the double-edged theater we will have reports from a circus in New York City and family circus so how is that working out for them we're going to have Mikaela Tragan and her friend she's a Roma actress in Romania we're going to work out everybody experiences this lockdown in a different way and we need to hear that a little bit over time but very fast, is there anything what you would say to a young Hungarian or Eastern European artist students like what do you feel what is of significance what is important to keep in mind I think what you already mentioned that it is fine not to work so much it is fine to reflect more and to be in this situation and not looking at only of what we have lost and maybe how can we how can we repeat the past and we get back what have been before but to try to understand and accept this present situation and to go forward with the experience of this tragic moment which also all the tragedies have its gains to so not only tears but also there is a lot of maybe I would use the word grace in this time because there is a gain of these times too I mean it is again that we are so such an intimate relationship with the people we live together with and lots of other things we did not experience before or not with that intensity and also to put our anger there where the anger should go I mean that sometimes we put the anger not in the right direction to our partners or to I don't know to unknown people at the Facebook but the anger should go there where it has its place so to look at what is going on and to understand that who and who is responsible for lots of bad decisions and lots of bad situations created and the anger should go there so I think that tears are okay and I accept tears and all tragedies will have tears to share to be grateful for some things and to be angry it's fine but to put this anger there where the source is coming from thank you well I can pick up on that because I agree with all that Andrea said obviously but also that in the end we have to realize that the responsibility is ours also at the end of the day because there are no Soviet tanks on the streets there is no foreign army occupying Hungary we voted these guys into power so in the end I think it's important to realize our own responsibilities and it's key that we have to stand up for ourselves and for our rights so the hospital directors who refused to fulfill this very inhumane and very unprofessional murderous measurement of freeing all those beds two hospital directors were fired over this but if all hospital directors had refused to do it then obviously all of them could not have been fired so this is similar situations as we teachers before or theater directors so we need to for young people my most important message would be that at least times I think it's a perfect occasion to realize your own responsibility as well as your own rights to become very much more aware of these and also to build a community and we've been complaining a lot this afternoon but there have been wonderful community efforts that we have seen and that even though we might complain about the situation of the theaters this is nothing compared to what the Roma families in small villages have to live through because of course their kids in this single room five kids they don't have tablets they don't have the internet so their entire education simply stopped on the 11th of March or the 13th of March and we don't know how it will go on or when it will go on so there are always people much more exposed to these situations than we are but it's important to be aware of that and to build these communities to be aware of your own responsibilities and also to finish on an optimistic note even though this healthcare system was on the verge of collapse far before the corona virus crisis hit and I have been in the middle of this healthcare system for three years now over three years and 90% of my experience has been wonderful so there are so many great health workers, doctors, nurses technical crews whatever so within these impossible circumstances there is so much devotion to really doing a great job to helping people saving people and that is something that we must notice I think we despite everything we must see the glasses half full rather than half empty great and we look forward to see what the great workers of the Hungarian theatre will do to help the society get back on its feet to heal the wounds and to hopefully put together what has been together and what needs to be together thank you all and I hope you all will be able to tune in tomorrow for the great lullarias from Argentina and to hear from her what the situation is in Buenos Aires and what she and her colleagues are thinking how they give meaning to the situation we are in and what they have in mind for their own work thank you both Andrea and Anna it's overwhelming to hear all the things you have to deal with so I hope we will come back and thanks to our listeners for taking the time to listen in these tough talks but they are serious and they are honest and I hope you also help you to get through these days so these unprecedented times and when no one really knows what is good and bad, what will happen or will not happen so we are on the same boat and we be but it's important to hear voices like from Anna and Andrea thank you so much and have a great evening bye bye for hosting us again from Emerson College and to the Segal team and all my best