 It's academic and it's theater and it's the place where they both meet. You have to be audience and participant for each other. It's an actual practice. It's historical practice. It's cultural practice. Everyone? Everybody, please. Examples of women sharing what it is that you do, sharing how you do that. There's no way you can ignore Latinos anymore. Welcome all around the world. You can come and see and talk about it. What time is it now in Kenya? It started out about different people and about different things. A whole sea of Palama. Theater for everybody. Yes, everybody. That's just what's really done. That's a good, completely open. And indeed, my understanding of life relationships has already changed. Martin E. Siegel's Theater Center here at the Graduate Center CUNY. My name is Frank Henschkon. I'm the Executive Director and Director of Programs here at the Siegel Center together with Antje Ögersoll. Thank you for coming out on a Monday evening on a beautiful day. We're so much as going on, especially tomorrow, but we see a big connection between the both days. And so thank you really for coming. Tonight we do celebrate the legacy of Judas Molina and Julian Bach with the Living Theater. And Judas Molina was a very good friend of the Siegel Center. We are honored to say very often, actually, she came out from Engelwood to join our evenings, Monday evenings like this, and she made a talk and said it was her home in a way in New York. She says, the only place I still go because it was complicated and often bread and others. Broder he drove her back was a big effort, but we could not think of a higher compliment than this. The... I'm just calling my mother-in-law. I don't know what... I didn't know how this happened. So... I think the Living Theater in Judas really, really is. Occupy a very special place in New York's theater history, American's theater history, but also world's theater history. It does not always happen. It's very, very rare. It's like a great writer, a great novelist, a great musician, great theater people, and what they did changed theater. The way we look at theater, the way we understand theater, we teach theater, do theater, and everything changed with them. And we really wanted to do a tribute to her and celebrate her life and work together with Julian, but we wanted also to look a bit in the future. It's not really in that sense of a memorial or celebration. We often, you know, then we would have asked many, many people also from over the decades who collaborated with Speak Buddies to see what's happening now, where is it going to. So we showed all-day films. We started at 10 o'clock from the very early, the connection, the break, just to the road trip, the guys just did in October. So, and just to celebrate that moment, and I think she might have been here with us if we had done a political theater evening around the election, which we were thinking about doing it, but we thought, why don't we celebrate the legacy of the Living Theater, which is Sola, close connected to what political theater is, might be, should have been, or can be again. We will find out, like Greek theater always, in the beginning was a context, was giving, discussing things that was happening in the city, social issues were kind of worked out through theater, and I think this is something the Living Theater kept on that thousand-year-old tradition, and we are very honored to have them all here, and especially the company as of now. I would like to ask you to turn off your cell phone. If you can, I'll do the same. Make sure there is one on. The evening should not be longer than 90 minutes, and we will hear a piece that was written by Philip, who's a member of the company, where he collaged some material as an assemblage with it, and we would like to ask you all to then join us in a discussion, after a short panel discussion with some of the artists present. Again, thank you, Brett, also, as you might know, works with us here at the Segal Center that we are honored to have here, and over now in Cindy, again, for coming back, and you were just with us last week, and everybody here in the audience, Marvin Carlson, who we flagged, and Sophie Proust from France, Joe Metello, so many people, and many others, Sean Lewis, so thank you all for coming and for being here, and to really think again and celebrate the life and work of that extraordinary company and that extraordinary woman. Thank you. Who will remember my grandmother's grave? Somewhere in Staten Island rests the remains of a Polish Jewess who settled in Kiel, in the north of Germany, too far from her native cracker. Her daughter married a rabbinical student who went to America to found his congregation. When she was old, and her husband Solomon rested in peace, she traveled to New York to live for a while with her daughter Roselle and Rabbi Molina and Judith Lyon. She died still writing poems in the home of the Daughters of Israel, where we visited her weekly in her final years. And now, as I, near 50, should I no longer consider the annual planting save up for perpetual care? Jody. Malin, yes. Julian. Pleasure. Go-go says you're the most marvelous man I'll ever meet. Well. And all it cost me was a plate of spaghetti. He asked me for some of my chocolate. I bought him dinner. And in return. I see what I'm worth. What are you? Am I? The most amazing man I'll ever meet. Well, I don't know about that, but I'm certainly worth a plate of spaghetti. I should hope so. What do you do, Julian? I'm a painter. And I write poetry, mainly. I write, too. Poetry? Poet, or are you someone who writes poetry? Well, I don't know if I'm anything at all yet. But I'm gonna be an actress. Why an actress? Why anything. My mother always wanted to be an actress. That's part of it. You're lucky my father wants me to be an automobile technician. It's not ignoble to work with your hands. My father, Rabbi Max, helped Jews to escape Germany. So I know how bad it was. Early on it was all we talked about. 1938. Hitler is going through Europe, taking small nations one by one. Thinking about it. Suddenly I'm overcome by claustrophobic horror. The very walls seem nearer and menacing. Burning near stifles me and I say aloud. But that moment was the war for me. People in little kitchens trying to turn around. Go away, you are Jew. Maria Rosa turned around in her kitchen 150,000 times a turbine fueling the family till it became a jewel of the empire. Buried in the Italian mud, the mind filled with heavy wind. Sulfurous fumes filled with particle of rubber breathable but invisible. The debris of 100 million autos speeding on the highways. There's no cure for those particles when they get in the air. Got no rubber magnets said Bookchin. Murray. The waiter looks at me. My tears fall in the soup. Says Judith when I look at him. And know that I can't tell him what means the great multi-hued revolution when he and I will be equally privileged. Not like same size stones. But not he as ripped porter nor I as nipped woman. Do you need anything? The waiter asks. Salt perhaps? The tears fall into the soup. No, it is already salty. Going out on stage is always difficult. I used to think it was because there was terror of forgetting lines or stumbling, humiliation, too simple an explanation. And I used to think that the terror the performer feels before going on stage was because the audience sitting in the dark was something fearsome. The anonymous brute. The king who sends letters to cachet to those who displease them. The madman who slays without reason that throws rotten eggs and tomatoes. The firing squad. The black row of demand who sits in judgment on diets between brass, eagle and flag. The shadow. Then I knew that the audience was a lover whom I feared to disappoint. Then the audience became the people I'm sure to whom the performers return from outer space. And could they tell them that there is nothing there or that they didn't get there or that no one can? Then the hypothesis began to be tested. I began to act in things in which there were no lines to memorize. The lights went up in the house and we met and talked with the audiences. The audiences became people and the officials. And we had dialogue with them. Then they came to throw eggs and tomatoes. In France in the spring of 69 when writers gave us unlit finales of performances to express their disapproval of what we were doing in St. And militant minded leftists bombarded the stage with tomatoes and firecrackers to express their rage and disappointment with the fact that we who bore the imprint of radical thought who carried the black flag of anarchy should carry the flag onto the stage of a bourgeois bastion. We who were saved to society discard the structure metamorphose leave the cocoon pull yourself out of it we were there still inside the theaters the students the students who were assaulting us with truth we had to get out hard to do but not so hard that it cannot be done and what has to be done is hard and I want to make it harder and harder and the harder it is the easier it is it has to do with the releasing of energy. But in 1982 better, progress poems of a wandering Jewess there is time because we are mortal there is death there is love because we are crazy and want to be happy forever I remember when you wrote that and after after you passed long after you passed we did a show Korok the Old Testament the story of Korok some say that Korok and his tribe were the first ever anarchists and we did Korok in our own space another living theater our own space in New York I remember him he was a wonderful man after I passed did he we took care of each other and we took care of the theater he wrote a great number of great plays and he remembered all of your recipes my recipes towards the end when things were bad after the diagnosis stomach cancer yes I always had a feeling if it wasn't the colitis it was going to be something of the stomach I was always thinking about the stomach about feeding the people I ate an entire handkerchief bit by bit at the age of six at the metropolitan opera performance of Hansel and Red Wolf my father thought I was eating because I was nervous which was true but I was also eating along with Hansel to identify with him the tasteless awful handkerchief and then I didn't have to eat it anymore all the children were free out of the oven uneaten alive and still to grow up I have ever done in the theater has been attempt to free the yearning for freedom from the witches prison cage which the Hansel and Red Wolf experience gave me feed all the people as important as stop all the killing always the stomach yes and after you were diagnosed cancer of the stomach at the full moon in June 1984 Julian was in the medical arts hospital gravely ill where Alan Ginsberg visits him and takes pictures while Hannan calls everywhere to find hopeful therapy you taught him all my favorite recipes so that he would be able to make them for you yes I never really learn to cook right it was a form of protest marriage the institution that is married is this my home is the child that I am expecting a real living person to be by these strange cool people now related this my life that I am living is it for this that I prayed and hoped through all my childhood for this emptiness woman that I was to be enough of these Hans it's morning and I should try to use the day you were my soulmate from the moment you die and why have anything other than a revolutionary marriage why have anything that is not revolutionary vast plans small works when do we get to the real work the work of the revolution which I write with a capital R because until it happens there is no other I talk to everyone and ask what they think can be done and everyone comes up against the same wall and draws a blank a useful plan to which people can turn with hope which will bring energy I am convinced that that is the only valid work if you're going to have a revolutionary cup of coffee participation in our marriage was a revolutionary experiment dominated by the presence of the penis I'm always thinking about some penis I imagine how it appears I imagine a slow motion film of its expansion I imagine them in many shapes with all meticulously realistic with errant flabs and protrusions I watch the bulges wherever I go consider the relationship between form and content I become myself by doing this when I avert my eyes caught at this practice by my sensorious captain I lose presence and pulse all signs of life pale into the horizon but when I give over I become the hunger for entity the repeal of identity the yes and no substance of freedom this is the nature of my sexual magnitude love in slave, prometheus bound philocracy I am dominated by the penis more than by the sky less than by hunger 16 years old homosexual intercourse with masochistic fantasy I recognize sex outside of the limits prescribed by society especially with boys and men as revolutionary the artist as one who experiments with his own life trying to extend the limits of behavior the turn towards ecstasy as a form of depolarization for the discourage you either consciously elect to be an element in the struggle or you are manipulated by it and subjected to its vicissitudes its victories and defeats slime on the floor wreckage our own life our living theater as one long 70 year experiment did we get closer to the beautiful non-violent anarchist revolution did we get closer to the revolution there were moments when I felt like we would then we have work we must continue to do yes even the ruling classes are beginning to realize that contemporary society is not a solid crystal but an organism capable of changing and continually undergoing change time is not brutal how beautiful we all is and how beautiful we all are and terrible and beautiful film of becoming how the experience of beauty validates pain compensation masochism on this planet so many errors bound in the prisons of our societies and our ways a man has to vote his way out no one tells you how you have to learn we can make excuses for history or say things have changed but we can't dismiss all its lessons we need a new form there are better people than me to find it but they are not doing the job and it must be done and if not I who and if not now when and if I am not for myself who shall be for me I follow anyone who makes the destination clear but if no one does it I will ask them to listen to me and I will make it clear or else I will dispose the weakness of every ideology now going will destroy the illusions and leave only what is real human meaningful practical and beautiful and to those who say it can't be done I'll say bullshit and prove otherwise what side are you on the side of those who believe you when you say one stop all the killing two feed all the people one plus two or two plus one the Maoists have the second part right but are very fucked up in part one the pacifists are right on the first part but don't know how to distinguish either part effectively if if you switch clauses or the order of the clauses as you want to my dear Carl you don't really solve you put off and maybe that's the best you think you can do but I'm on the side that can do better let's find a way to make it work really embrace and sisterly love all power to the people to arm is to harm there are stronger forces then guns to make a new world find them love the forsythia is brilliant yellow behind the house a sherry red tree blossoms across the road but brexit we live in an age when to speak of trees is almost a crime love do you think we'll ever get there I have to believe we will then we will in paradise now have we not brought the audience to the doors of the theater and said and surpassed the privileged position occupied by art and not want the streets to be free it was there at the doors of the theater that we knew the street was the place we had to go the street I thought as the brighter life of freedom flooded my eyes is the place that surrounds the prison the people walking in the street lost the enchantment that they had when seen from behind the mesh screens and grading of the women's house of detention because while from inside they seemed to be free as soon as I stepped out they were as I was and I was not ever again to be free while prisons exist and I am not free now I am not free I am in the streets that surrounds and encircles the prison the street that squeezes its misery into the prisons as if to rid itself of pain by compressing it into its innards in the street on a farm or at sea or on the road or in the metropolis in the street is on that narrow strip around the walls enclose the secret sins of the world and the elemental human our untamed part instead of letting our minds know how our hearts are feeling this people if we could really feel the pain would be so great that we would stop all the suffering we would feel that one person every six seconds dies of starvation and this is happening someone is dying from starvation we would stop it if we could really feel it in the bowels the groan the throat in the breast we would go to the streets and stop the war stop must continue putting on place I knew this was the way routed for despair but you had heard an ancient seagull cry and drop its wedded wings and swerve and die you taught me how to listen to the clamor of superstition he monarchs could never be withstood if I could comprehend the substance that is fire and fathom all the mystic dreams of priests and monks then your objective speech coming unuttered might find my mind this way is obviously routed to despair life is not simple but we must not let the complexity tremble that might someday shatter and fade away a delicate sphere within which I move so pleasurably sustained family community work theater enough to eat the privilege of traveling from country to country as we play our plays I ride in a VW bus and sometimes a hair out of the mane of the horse of temporal fame brushes a cheek outside the moving window and inside the moving brain it's like too much good fortune and all the time that we ride around in these buses all these years I live in dread that it might one day my grandfather was cutting bread we shall not meet again he said I thought why does he cut the bread that way laying it on a board as if it were a fish mama and oma when they cut the bread hold it against their breasts they cut firmly it frightens me when the knife moves towards their bodies opa is sensible to lay it on a board and saw at it like that I said what do you mean we shall not meet again I shall come back I thought on the ship I shall walk through the dancers careful not to brush against the gowns because that's the rule of my game and besides the dancers get angry he said even if you come back I won't be here he looked at me darkly he wagged his beard he covered the slice of bread with a layer of chicken fat I decided to take the risk I said where will you be he sighed and and ended the conversation Judith the night we met genius incorporated go go gave you my number and I said my name was Jody Mallon what happened after that I knew then and there that you were my soulmate and then after we left genius incorporated we went and bought grapes and we we fed them to each other and we rode the bus all night and when the night was over we began our work the work we're still doing today and it must be time for us to buy our grapes and begin recording it that's why we're taking them sometimes what it's going to say people don't project how they used to do for years ago and so sometimes it is first of all thank you so much and I think this is Philip the first time this was read out there was a collage put together for this evening an experiment tell us a little bit an idea for the play yeah I've been reading John Tytel's book about the living theater which is called the living theater and when I first bought it Tom Walker said to me oh that's a great book but it's very gossipy which is very true and a lot of fun I've read at this point I think most of what the living has read or written and so now reading work about not most of what they've read most of what the living has written and so now what has been said about them is sort of an interesting experiment and he talks about the way they met and just the circumstances of Judith lying and saying her name was Jodi Malin because Judith Malina was a very ethnic name and the getting the grapes and the taking the bus and I just think it's a kind of beautiful story for something that no one would have known would become what it did and so that was my entry point thank you so Philip is a drama toji student right at Columbia University and a member for many years how many years? Cindy how does that feel for you to listen to the play and to connect the history I'm very moved by what just happened in this space just to give a little backstory Philip was my student one of my greatest students ever but he's very young I'm a professor of drama at Hofstra University and Philip was an honor student there and created as part of his final thesis this extraordinary play that was based on diaries and documents of Judith's and Julien's called the life of the theater mostly based on Julien's text by that same name so just to not talk forever about Philip's process which he could do I just want to say that he's been working with this material and on a very high level since he was a very very young person but it's kind of amazing to see how he's continuing to work and in this context it's just a I think it's just a beautiful piece of poetry which you created that's also extraordinarily performative and was beautifully embodied and voiced by these two people here so one of the things I wanted to say is that it's moving it's inspiring and of course as some of the words that you used there's hope and there's tremendous energy in this piece that speaks to a very I think bright and exciting future a living future God willing for the living and I'm you know so that is one of the things I just wanted to put out there right away but one thing I wanted to hear I told Brad this earlier I really am interested in hearing both from Brad and Monica about well they just took on they embodied and voiced these extraordinary leaders visionaries of perhaps a slightly other time but now we're in this time this is a very challenging time as we all know and I'm this is a big question but I'm wondering if you can think about or just try and articulate and you too Philip what will be and you too Lois what will be the work of the living going forward where these inspirational really brilliant figures what they did is what they did but where we're going I'd love to hear any way in which you can speak to that you don't want to say anything about Julian embodying no you go first well I try honestly I tried not to think about it so much leading up to today I mean Judith was my best pal in my 20s so to be playing my best friend after she's dead is a sort of surreal moment and I think in the way Monica and I were talking about it too and playing them is it wasn't so much like playing them it was just reading their words as us and just remembering them every once in a while just remembering like Judith okay and not doing my Judith impression which my friends and family have heard me do many times I just want to say something based on something that Dennis said to me a couple of minutes ago you actually did a kind of an Anna Devere Smith work where you just let the words become you you didn't take on Judith but you let her work through you very beautifully and you too with Julian and that was kind of cool you know this gender fabulous swap thing which then went to a Brechtian place and I don't know what else so anyway I'm sorry I have to interrupt for a moment Cindy and Brad and Monica and Phillip and Frank by way of saying that's who Judith was the comment that you made that we read her words and we in a way become her certainly her spirit was reflected in I didn't know Julian Beck but I will say Judith was present certainly in your play in your comments in your performance and in you too Monica in your response to Judith just you know hi Judith we're all here I think to talk to the future for a moment I think the work of the company has always been the same I think the name is a mission statement and it's to respond to life to people that are living in the company and whatever is important to us that's really what we do and I don't think there's any reason for that to change in watching the films all day it's real it's a labor to listen to these two people for hours and hours and but I think that's the point I think that's really the point in the play that Phil had and actually Monica and Equiano came up with a song while we were on tour for if we could feel the pain then the pain would be so great that we would end it and that's the real that's the point of the whole thing is that if we could feel like that's why they don't stop and that's why we don't stop you have to we must feel this we have to feel it or else we're not going to end it and that's our work I think our work ending that the pain for the living Speaking of political theater also in the days where we are in and having watched so much of political theater also on the screens but where is the work of the living going I think Richard Schackner often or sometimes said the living has this great vision which is so almost impossible to meet on stage how can you and even if you do it once in a while how will you really be able to really have the same force as these inspirational visionary ideas so what are your plans what are your projects you have in front of you all of you as a company as in there others you would say what do you think could the future look like and what are you looking up to what inspirations are you taking in Well I think we're we're very privileged in that we're standing on Judith and Julian's shoulders already so we have 70 years of work behind us which is an advantage that they didn't have and I think that's incredibly important to right now we're able to do a lot that they were not able to do at our ages where they had to create avant-garde theater and create the alternative theater movement we no longer have to do that that's been done and I think that is an advantage to us what we're about to do now Monica can maybe speak a little bit to this but we're about to go on a winter tour to western Europe to work with theater communities and refugee communities that's what's up next for us you did a tour in the summer maybe tell a little bit to the audience what you did, what happened where you went well we drove to California and back and it was nuts it was nuts actually we have a couple of videos queued up if we want to see a couple of the 2-minute street actions that happened tell a little bit about the stations I don't recall it you had 5, 6, 8 some stops, you started in New York it was 20 20 cities maybe even a little bit more it was 3 weeks long we spent 2 days in Chicago and 2 days in San Francisco but otherwise it was like get up in the morning early 5-10 hour drive maybe some street theater at Boeing headquarters and then arrive at a venue warm up, perform go to bed, wake up, repeat all the way across from Chicago, Detroit Salt Lake City, Boulder, San Fran down back through the south in Nevada we went to El Paso and did an action at a border patrol station we went to an experimental village in Arizona went to New Orleans, performed a street piece that 2 company members created called Black Body Radiation in Jackson Square in New Orleans Birmingham, Alabama Washington DC we primarily used wow this is on really strongly so weird I don't know if some of you were here just before this there was a screening of on political sadomasochism and so we used that as a form and structure to we were performing that in different places and then we were also using those meditations and if I'd rather have Philip explain it because he does it so well but we used those 7 meditations to do street performances as well not just street performances actual interventions, actual direct action and so really half of our time was either in the street and engaging with people we also did workshops or then, you know, taking that more into the cave of the subconscious and into the theater too but I prefer being on the street more and I think what's really powerful especially about going and doing this tort so raw, I mean everyone's so heartbroken right now and what Brad was saying about that, if we could feel I think I think I see a lot of political theater that tries to be over above things or be very clever about things and that's wonderful and great and has a place for it as we need to be able to go and to intellectualize and think about where our place is in the world but we also need to just break out of how we've been socialized and how obedient we are in this country and we need to, you know, disrupt a little bit more and change things and so I think that's what the living really does is it demands you to feel it demands your heart to be out on this lab and that's what this tour was like and it also was a play from the living theater from the 70's in Brazil, you kind of like a DJ as you kind of make a remix or an appropriation or a hybrid version of it maybe we could see a little bit, is that the clips we have? The clips we have are of the street performances. Yeah maybe we look at, we can look at them. I think one of them you could do like, I think the one in Mormon Temple Square is pretty awesome. Mormon Temple Square? Yeah, it's Salt Lake City we can tell the little backstory behind that too. Well should we say it first or after? Well, so the Mormon church has this park which was it was a public park before it's right there at their center but then they privatized it somehow and they own it and they can enforce their own laws there and some of those laws are for instance couples of the same sex cannot be affectionate, cannot show affection within that park and they have actually forcibly removed people for doing that and just recently they had a new rule come out in their book of rules of that children of same sex couples can't join the church until they're 18 and then if they do choose to join they have to denounce their parents and so there was a mass exodus of people from the church at that point. This was just a couple months ago I think. I mean at the time when we did this it was just a few months before this and so we wanted to provide some solidarity and we met with some people there who were ex-mormons who had left the church and they joined us in this and we decided to show what love can be outside of the bounds outside of these face that constrict what love can be between people so that's what it was. And this was guerrilla performance you just went there and oh yeah. Yes this was illegal actually yeah and you don't see but over on the side here there's security guards yelling at us. Brad was being our liaison at the time so he was dealing with that running interference everybody was telling us to get out there were children going by like what's that daddy said like oh I don't know what it is but it certainly isn't for Jesus and different things like that. But also didn't one dad have a good conversation? Well yeah it wasn't that the dad had a good conversation exactly but he said it's about LGBT and the kid said what's that and that's all I heard of the conversation but I think that even that moment alone is has the potential to be a radical moment because if that's not in that kid's vocabulary. If he hasn't heard LGBT before which he very well may not have it gives him a thing to google it gives him something to go home and look up which I think is largely about what this was and a lot of what we were doing was going out and saying you need to be empowered to learn more we're not here to tell you things it is the sense of we're here to help you feel. And you didn't see the moment before Phillips partner in this John who was a Mormon before he was so terrified we had a long talk with him afterwards he was terrified to do this kind of thing and because he soon is the security and the people came in from the church he felt he said that tone that patriarchy coming in he said he immediately froze and he's like oh just just kick us out I don't want to have to do it I don't want to do it but with Phillips help he did it and then he felt changed by it and that was one of them we did many things like that it all sorts of do another yeah machines and you want to see black body radiation from Washington D.C. created by two company members that we are a mosaic area and you want to say anything we'll just watch it this is in Washington D.C. this was created on the road to we did this while we were in the van this is somehow when I did perhaps look almost like performance art intervention in public spaces or redoing what Brecht once also told to his actors you know go to the street and pretend you have a fight someone got shot and see how you react how the people react his famous idea that you know a street scene you just retell what happens and you put it into a mix so this is an idea to to create new theater in a legacy that you have with your company so maybe we open it up to comments or questions that we have you here with us so if you are a member of the living theater you want to make a comment or you have a question or an observation that is now again we thought it would be a right thing to have you guys here the day before the election you know I wonder what Judas Molina would have done what she would have thought up to do and and where we are and where this particular theater which is now a great American tradition in a way where it will be going it's really a classic question about theater as I was listening to you all and very moved by your play and I was in the living theater decades ago in Europe I was thinking about we are in an age of endless mediation and way back in the 60's and 70's when I was active in theater there was this super charged feeling about theater as a place of change and the physical presence the immediacy of another person now we see atrocities on our televisions phones, video youtube, facebook, wherever we are endlessly confronted by the pain and endlessly numbing ourselves so I'm just sort of throwing out a comment or question about is there something about the physical presence of the human being that goes beyond the mediation that can be part of theater and change and revolution and all that good stuff this is something I think about a lot I was talking to a friend about this yesterday and I was saying heart surgeons don't walk around going oh but does heart surgery really save lives they just know they do but theater I think we're constantly asking is there a real reason that we're doing this one thing that we talked about on tour and that we talk about a lot is you can go through your day and never make eye contact with someone or physical contact or real contact and that's part of what theater is that's part of why doing it in the street I think is so radical and maybe even radical in a new way in that I mean and I do this too when I'm in line I'm on my phone and so you don't engage I think almost at all unless you actively choose to and to have someone who's really a stranger come up and just make five seconds of eye contact with you that alone I think is revolutionary right now and then to go from that into this idea of what do we do with our feelings how do we activate them again I think that's step one then we can figure out how to change the world but first we have to actually know that we need to and by know that we need to really I mean feel that we need to and I think that that's why theater and I think especially that's why street theater and yeah I wanted to say as a baby boomer growing up in the 70s I was particularly moved by this piece that you created that you all created I didn't go on the tour I for me I think it's one of the best pieces of the living theater I've seen and I truly mean that the thing that really affected me in watching it just now was the apathy of the people watching I was waiting and waiting and physically myself wanting to jump on that screen so I think that's you know as Brad points out nothing much has changed that's our job as actors but it's the audience's job hopefully with our inspiration to become a part of that I also thought it was really poignant I have to say the baby wailing so everything old is new again and that sounds perhaps pessimistic but I mean it in a very optimistic way because we're intergenerational the company and we teach each other and you know the living theater lives on I know that didn't quite answer your question but I wanted to share my feelings reflected on inspiring part of the answer to your question is really simple if art wasn't necessary and culture wasn't necessary then based on the science and the math that we have we'd be converting to solar energy power right now without hesitation so there is a massive amount of cognitive dissonance in the population where we have clear information about all kinds of things all kinds honestly I mean all of the street actions we did we did like 12 different street actions we went into a bank to talk about eviction protocols we were at Mormon Temple Square to talk about same sex interracial religious issues black body suffering we talked about Monsanto there's a class song where we did in solidarity with prison complex with the prison strike that's going on we participated in the no DAPL protest in San Francisco all the way out there and we've been performing in banks here if math and science were enough we would know in 1851 the United States government signed a treaty with the standing rock zoo Indians and the case closed and they don't want the pipeline built so if facts were enough we wouldn't need art so it's quite clear that we do need something that shakes up our soul and allows us to make progress and for me that's theater and performance because of what Phil said because of my experiences with everybody in the company that's what for me that's what has turned me on to these things and I'll add too that we get a great feedback towards us from it as well which I remember when we did No Place to Hide at the Clemente de Sotovales and then after we started doing this in the parks and I remember afterwards this man came up to a friend and I who were in the show and he said I hate everything that you just said and I want to tell you why and I think that that is part of what revolution starts as or even Leigh and I were at the RNC in Cleveland and it was my first time meeting an honest to God loud out spoken Trump supporter which did I change their mind probably not they certainly didn't change mine but now I don't picture that person as a demon I know that that's a real person and that affects my politics and I think that the feedback for us as well is equally radical and exciting I think the devil's advocate Judith would say the devil has enough advocates you could play an angel advocate I love living theater I actually I published an essay about the Brig in a book of mine I adored living theater but when I hear you talk about feeling the pain and that will get us somewhere as a reader of Dostoevsky and Freud I wonder doesn't we have to deal with there's a dimension a significant dimension of our human nature that likes the pain and likes and likes to feel the pain and likes to administer the pain and worse and just feeling the pain isn't isn't the magic it can't be the magic in itself no of course there needs to be hope too you have to be enlivened you have to be activated by it it's not just feeling the pain it's feeling all the fields it's everything it's waking up it's waking up to your own responsibility as a human being to every other human being that we are responsible for on this planet it's that and so hopefully we begin to touch upon that in some small way everyone is feeling pain we could be so saturated and burnt out on it it's not just that it's all complicated it's so complicated but still one could argue that the living theater does say after a time in Brecht's play where you looked at a mother's courage and she didn't learn anything but you learned something and your mind changed that companies like the living theater said no actually there's also not enough actually you have to do something you have to take action that a socially engaged art socially engaged theater right now and do something it's actually you who has to do something and that's how I also see your work of course you use emotion and pain which perhaps Brecht would have not agreed on but I think this idea of a call to action that actually it is up to someone that will learn something and do something is something that I think your work and many other companies who the political theater at the moment do think this is of significance and a pretty based socially engaged art that really ask the participants to change their own lives and to intervene yeah I think that's the the artodian balance to the Brechtian intellectualism the idea of saying reducing it to if you can feel the pain that stands a chance at being the arrow that pierces somebody in the audience's armor maybe that's the thought that gets them to pay attention to the rest of it but of course it's a whole it's a whole gamut and I think we try also sometimes maybe not enough to have joy in our work the word beautiful is in our beautiful nonviolent anarchist revolution so I think we try for that too well that interesting I asked Zizek why was film and theater more interesting before the wall fell down and we're on the cusp of an election I wonder what your theater is going to look like if Trump gets in it'll be illegal yeah I don't know that yeah I don't know that people have that level of clarity about that fact a lot of people that people love will be their lives will be in serious jeopardy if you were to become elected and a lot of people's lives will continue to be in jeopardy if he is not elected well we're going to help refugees in Europe next and the way I feel about what we're doing right now with our work is instead of rushing to make a play we're listening to the world we have this extreme luxury and privilege of this legacy and it opens doors for us in many different places and we get to work with many different generations of people everywhere we go and I think we we will learn what to do from the world when we go out into it depending on whatever happens and I think part of what the tour did for us has helped us solidify this network that we know exists and that we now have met and our friends with radicals across the country who hold similar beliefs to ours that are sympathetic to the cause and people who I think in moments of extreme tension will be people who we can look to and converse with on what action is appropriate sorry is someone playing a baseball game or something are you just here recording with oh yeah I do hear recordings sorry never mind so I was struck watching the two instances of the street theater and I was very glad to see that they're clearly organized as artistic interventions you might say so it's not just about anger or pain or making a statement but about constructing something that has flow and shape and so forth could you say something about the aesthetic do you think that you're developing or are you sort of putting out a consistent aesthetic or do you have that to the forefront of your mind as you're shaping the intervention and the public appearance I also want to there's other company members here too so I want to make sure if any of you want to say something too people aren't shy I don't think I trust them I trust them I trust them too I'm much more interested in cultural movements than I am in artistic aesthetics at this point I think that aesthetics are still very important and the means of the message are also part of the message but I I only very recently I was actually speaking with Professor Erika Fischer-Leicht and she sort of made me feel less combative about aesthetics I think that a lot of people get lost in aesthetics and there's a lot of intellectual discourse on aesthetics and it's really to me it's like get some words and some movement go to somewhere where something needs to change and fucking do something to be quite honest you know like I think there's so much over intellectualization in the theater and performance community that people actually theorize their way out of the fact that theater can be a means of social change when for ever and ever before now that's what it was it was adjut prop there were hundreds of theaters and maybe even thousands in Russia little local community theaters that did nothing but communicate from local people to other local people with like sort of like shoddy performers and not real experts and that was the means of communicating about the real issues of life and now people are so lost in breaking through you know Shekner has said recently that there are there is a lot of avant-garde work that is very good there's a lot of people that know how to do it very well there's a lot of people that have mastered the aesthetic and like are carving their own fine details into the etchings of the aesthetic but there's very little new anything there's very little groups pushing the boundaries of anything and that's what for me when I don't know what the aesthetic is that can do that I just know that we have words and we have bodies and we have to do something with them and I'm hoping that the world will show us what the aesthetic is that we need whether it involves technology or not to break through to some kind of new level because it's quite clear that where we're at now is just collapsing all around us so aesthetics I mean they're important but for me it's more about cultural movements I just want to jump off that question before I studied hi Brad before I studied I didn't distinguish the word aesthetics from forms and so still I interpret that question as where do you draw your forms from for example because I've seen a lot of no I haven't seen a lot of living work but I know that one of the distinct forms that I work with is ritual circles and sound baths so I guess I would add to that question by asking because you are a new wave of the living not just because you're young where do you draw your forms from who do you reference in your work consciously or not and you may resent that question as well but I know that aesthetics I know now that aesthetics carries a lot of weight academically and it makes me furious in the same way so my as a second part to that question what are your forms where do you draw them from how do you think your forms are useful something that Judith says in the same letter that Lois read at a different part is that I follow anyone who makes the destination clear but if no one does then I will or I will and this is now I'm going to start to paraphrase but essentially I will get rid of everything that I know doesn't make the destination clear I think that part of what we're doing is as Brad is saying listening for what it turns out is the way which I think is what the living has always done what's in our vocabulary right now includes biomechanics includes a lot of what Joe Chakin came up with who was a company member and then went on to found the open includes Ganawa Chance a lot of ritual work yes and we still pull from that huge catalogue and this is part of our luck as a company and our incredible joy is that there are books that we can go to and say oh in 1970 they would have done this and in 1980 they would have done this and there are company members who are there for that and it's this amazing thing and so I think that we still use this beautiful extended catalogue of movement and of sound and of technique and style and a lot of what we do was developed by the living theater and now has gone on to become a thing for other people which is really wonderful and so I think we pull from that and at the same time we also pull from who the members are now and what they are training is and where they come from and then also look outwards towards what's happening and what we can use. Let's take the mic, sorry. I think something that's always been really fascinating about ritual or practice is that within ritual practice the most important thing is repetition and within repetition you just naturally get a breaking out of form which creates an organic aesthetic whether you want it to or not and so I think there were two questions that I'm trying to mold into one but with what we're going to do now after tomorrow and where we're trying to go with the living theater what I found working with these guys is that I came into something that had already like a motion that had already been set and what I tried to do was jump on this board and like steady myself and figure out where are these guys going with this I was really just going off of blind faith and then after sleeping on floors and drinking gas station coffee and starting off not enjoying it to starting very happy that we got to get just the cheapest coffee that was available I found that we just let go of a lot of pretense and we got to pop out of our bubble and we got to actually get to know each other and we got to learn from each other and we got to let go of a lot of hang ups that we had and from all of that I believe the aesthetic and the wanting to just burst through and just do something started to synthesize and I think the more we continue to do there's no way that we're going to have the answer by Wednesday or even after we're done with the European trip but the more that we continue to come together knowing knowing a goal or some place that we're trying to reach we're probably never going to reach it but we will definitely make headway and the next time you see stuff that we've done in the street or performances that we've created it will be a lot sharper, it will be a lot more powerful and it will be a lot and the ensemble will be just dynamic and I think that's what the Living Theater was about and I think that's why it's been going for 70 years because not a lot of them are still doing this but we're still doing this and it's just continuing to keep the ball in the air and just continuing I would say the Living Theater in 1947 when it was co-founded by Julian and Judith looked backwards inspired by what wasn't happening and what was happening as well and found a way to take words and make sense out of them and found a new way to use the body and I think from my perspective having been in the company for some time now there's evolution going on and I think things are changing and that's very very important for things to change so to answer your question instead of standing one way we stand another and in standing that other way, I'm being a little poetic here, not quite literal, we discover something new and that's very exciting and it gives birth to 5 or 10 or 1000 other forms and ways to be Hi, I would also like to address upon the aesthetics and the form part of what was talking about before was actually communication cultural movement and I remember the time when I rehearsed with Judith and I read the books about how Living Theater was rehearsing a lot of things actually coming out from how do we communicate with the audience is there other ways that we can engage with the audience members from that point we developed different aesthetics to engage the audience one of the shows that we did here we are we actually invite the audience members to create something sandals actually throughout the entire play and then wear them and then wear them back home on the street that's the way that we engage and we also demonstrate how the society could have been done better and that's part of the form that we are still developing that we are still experimenting the ways in which we can engage with the audience and I think that's the aesthetics of the Living Theater I would like to find out more about your work with refugees that you are planning and how you go about it are you going with a plan are you going to develop your strategies on the go how did you choose the place where you go so I would just like to get a little bit of a picture of that excuse me so we have a plan and you are all coming with us so we are working with some community groups out there there is a few organizations that have centers that do free programming cultural programming with refugees and with migrant communities in London Berlin Athens in Oslo and I spent a few months ago I was working with refugees creating theater pieces in Vienna in Austria and Kirchdorf in small town and also working in Athens and we are not going to necessarily be working with people that are just swam across the water and are in that state of emergency but preferably more people that have been settled for a little bit or are in a place where they are able to process a little bit more and be able to reflect on their journey and what has happened to them and to create we are doing workshops we are doing theater workshops that is an old tradition of a living theater workshop called the day in the life of the city and so we will use that as a form to work with locals to work together teach each other, share stories together and then create small scenes from that together and so it's about the issues and the things that concern them in this moment right now and they get to talk about it and it's not so much that we are going to go and save them and that we are going to help them it's more that we are helping to facilitate conversations to happen creation to happen and so this is just going to be a small tiny little pack through the darkness to bring some light to that I think we are we are we are we are we are we are we are we are we are we are we are close to our time I will have a little reception here in the room so I hope you will stay and comment and say what we what was right or wrong and what was missing last final question living theater never had a space owned by the living theater I know it was good you couldn't really own something not true that's good, that's what I heard and this was one of the reasons but will there be, are you looking for a space outside, will it be on the streets or are you actually looking for a center for a home or a building I think that right now we are very content to be itinerant and it allows us to go places and to learn from other people like Monica said we are not trying to go save the world I think we are actually trying to go learn what goes on and without rent and without big overhead expenses we were able to do that we received a grant, we decided to do this with the grant whereas before the black hole of real estate would have immediately taken almost all of that money immediate without hesitation so in the future perhaps as we build towards it or if it becomes a necessity or if opportunity strikes but I think right now we are very content to find a home without and also within the people right now our home is the company itself it's wherever we are together that to me is the home of the living theater it's sort of where it's always been whether it's 3rd street or 14th street or 100th street or Clinton street Julian says at the end of Paradise Now did not we take the audience to the doors of the theater and say the theater is in the streets it was then that we knew the streets were where we had to go I think that was true then and continues to be true for us now well thank you so much for sharing your legacy and also a year and a half after Judith's passing and I know this is a big moment also in the company history but I think we all are very thrilled to see that you are listening, you are going out and you are finding reinterpreting and there will be a long life hopefully the next 70 or 200 years there will be many many more living theaters incarnations and there's Mothagram one said it's a great Mothagram sometimes I don't look for movements movement come to me and I think you are listening and something will also come to you thank you all for coming and I hope you will have some questions for them here and you will save it for the reception so thank you again and thanks to the Living Theater and really congratulations to the company that's not easy to work through these moments of change but it's also an opportunity thank you