 Kirtana and Eric to mute because it does end up creating a lot of white noise and static. Thank you, but definitely we will unmute when we get to the discussion part. So welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for turning up at these strange hours of your bio rhythms. Really appreciate your participating in this experiment which is the first time that in terms of time zones we've connected Australia, India and the United States. I'm the one who's benefited from this exchange. It's a very reasonable one o'clock in the afternoon for me. Thank you all for suffering and putting up with this. It's an experiment, but you are very, very so welcome and it's such a great thing to see you wonderful people here to be with my wonderful guests, Kirtana and Eric. This is session 13 of Unrehearsed Futures season two and our topics of organizing these sessions in season two have been planetarity, possibility and plurality. So we convene once a week on Thursdays to talk about things that we care about in the world of theater practice and pedagogy and performance. And it's a collaboration between drama school Mumbai and Jehan started this in the middle of the pandemic in 2020, we're at the very beginning of the pandemic and then involved me at Embodied Poetics which is my link with Norman Taylor. We are both pedagogic directors of Embodied Poetics and now we're collaborating with the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Our two colleagues, Mginni and Wenya may show up. It is extremely early in the morning for them. But at any rate, I would like to welcome you all and my guests to this discussion of theater and community which we devised together. I think it's, from my point of view, it's relevant because the pandemic I think has really changed what we consider to be community. I myself have experienced a kind of amazing upsurge in community as I'm somebody who has traveled a lot and lived in a lot of different places. And I have found the pandemic with all of its challenges and tragedies to be also a chance to feel my planetarity. This is a phrase by Gayatri Spivak which is a very powerful antidote to globalism. So planetarity is the way in which we find our interconnections and our connections to each other. And I have found that unrehearsed futures has been a really powerful vehicle for that for me. And I'm talking to Kirtana and Eric about how they practice with their communities, with their theater companies and how this might be changing what the pandemic might have done to that and what's basically what's going down. So I'm gonna ask them to introduce themselves. Kirtana is in Bangalore, India, outskirts of, right? And works at a theater, I call it a theater farm but it's really a farm, infinite souls theater or farm. It's a farm, it's a theater farm, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The farm theater, the real theater. Marvelous, marvelous. Can we start? We'll start with you Kirtana and then move to Eric. Kirtana, can you introduce yourself? Your bio is gonna be in the chat. So all of the sort of long introduction but what specifically around the topic of community could you introduce yourself and your work? Okay, thank you, Amy. Thanks for inviting me to this and good morning to everyone. Good morning from outside Bangalore, way outside Bangalore. I'm Kirtana Kumar and I'm a theater practitioner like I'm assuming all of you. So what has been, Amy actually said, why don't you talk about community in the introduction? So what I'd like to share with you is that the pandemic actually affected an enormous change in my life because I moved completely out of an urban circumstance to living on my farm and to farming and trying to find new engagements with theater through the land. And one of the prime motivators for this was actually the migrant crisis in India where migrant labor found themselves suddenly walking across the country trying to get back home. So this was the direct correction and it was also a practical reason for moving back because the people, the farmers who worked on our land also wanted to return to their home. So this has been a really enormous change in the way I think about community and also the way I think about art making and theater making. So that's it, that's me. Wonderful, great. And also you're collaborating with the drama school Mumbai. Oh yeah, and right now as we speak, very importantly, as we speak, I have a giant JCB and earth mover and tractors outside my window. So if you can hear the noise because Jehan students from drama school Mumbai from the advanced course will be living with me for three months here at the farm in a COVID bubble and will be doing embodied work. So all our embodied work will take place here. And that's really exciting to have actors back at the farm because we've been farming sweet potatoes and tomatoes and lentils. And now we hope to farm some actors. Marvelous, marvelous. Thank you, Kirtana. And now I introduced you, Eric Ting, a very old friend of mine from way back when we were in graduate school together. And Eric is the artistic director of Cali Chakes. Eric, can I ask you to introduce yourself and your work with your company and the community? Sure, thanks Amy. It's kind of awesome being here. Like I feel like I'm in the presence of at least three teachers. Fred, Daniel and Amy, I think of you as a teacher too. So it's kind of really trippy. So looking forward to the conversation. But I am, I'm Eric, I'm he and pronouns. I'm actually zooming in from, we have practice here at my theater. So I'm zooming in from unceded Osage Massive Womack lands. Also known as the heart of Appalachia, West Virginia. And I'm actually here because my mother, I just try to be very transparent about things these days. So my mother passed away back in February and we are throwing her celebration of life on the 3rd of July to immediately be followed by my daughter's sixth birthday on the 4th of July to immediately be followed by our packing up this house and getting it ready to sell. So I find myself in this extraordinary moment of transition. This is the house that I grew up in. My mother lived in it for 40, 43 years. And so I'm like going through these things and finding just sort of like, I always think of objects as memory triggers. And so if you can imagine surrounding yourself in your boyhood home and all the different objects and all the different memories that are triggered by it, it's really something special. I'm the artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater which is located in the Bay Area on the East Bay in Arundah, California which is unseated Chichenyo-speaking Olone lands. And we're at Shakespeare Theater. We've been at Shakespeare Theater since 1974. But we've been at Shakespeare Theater in the last 10 years really committed to sort of an anti-racist journey as an organization. And I would say that the big turn for us has been when I took over back in 2016, we put a lot of resources and energy into seeing the world through the art that we made. And I think what's happened over the last year in a very kind of, I think, profound way has been a shift towards seeing the art through the world. And how we think about our relationship to it not as art at the center of things but as sort of our community at the center of things and art as simply one of several tools that we have available to us to, I think what we talk about a lot these days is the resilient communities and what does it mean to be resilient in that way? So glad to be here. Thank you for opening that space, both of you. And thank you also for the reminder. I mean, I am on unseeded Palawa land and I really appreciate that you have put it in those terms. I've never heard those terms before and I think that's really accurate, unseeded Palawa land in Tasmania. And I'd like to pick up on this thread of, you've both mentioned how you're, in some sense, what I make of it is working to give voice to or create a space for people who have somehow been silenced or who have been put into the margins. I mean, you mentioned your work as an anti-racist stance and Kirtana, you mentioned creating a space for migrant workers. I just really, I mean, these are such disparate issues but I really, I see them as connected and I'm just really would love to ask you to say more about that. If that's a theme, could you say more about it? What theater can do in that space? You can unmute yourself, Kirtana. Sure. So to begin with, when I was working in an urban circumstance, so I was working in Bangalore, my audience was a very, now when I think about it, it's quite a defined audience because it's an audience who has access to theater. It's an audience with a certain degree of literacy. It's an audience who many different things which come from a certain elitism. I found that the minute I moved out and also the pandemic, the pandemic like for you, Amy, I found the pandemic was, it just released a lot of stuff and it's been a really, really amazing time outside of all the tragedy. It's been really a time to rethink and to find new ways of engagement. But most recently, what happened was this, it's really, I didn't make a concerted effort to change my community. I did not, though our work at Little Jasmine has always been coming from the feminist credo. So it's always been intersectional. We've always, our work has always been on the crosshairs of caste and gender, sexuality largely. But most recently, what I found was this, working on the farm is a lady called Nagama. And Nagama comes from the Kuruba, a shepherd community from a Kuruba community and Nagama is non-literate. Nagama is about 10 years younger than me. It just happened that Nagama and I began a series of communications during the pandemic because I was in Germany and she was here at the farm. And we started, but she uses a smartphone. So she has access to the visual medium and she uses a smartphone. So we started a series of communications over WhatsApp and Instagram and on smartphones. And the first thing, the onset of this thing was that I was trying to explain snow. I said, there's this white stuff falling outside and it's really cold. And she was like, but what is it? It looks like white rain. Is it light? What is it? And this started off as a series of communications. And this has led to now, it's a multi-platform. It's a thing called Nagama's letters that I'm still in the process of assembling. But it includes a documentary performance, but it includes Nagama who's non-literate and me and with two women and with two women who still communicate outside of the politically correct boundaries or trying to find open spaces within intersectionality where there lies tenderness. And there lies, and I'm really, because you mentioned Spivak Amy, there's a really, Spivak for me is also problematic. The last time I mentioned this thing about planetarity because it's sort of exclusive and it excludes people who don't read, for example. But I found that she has a really beautiful quote about otherness and I use it in Nagama's letters that the one thing that is anti-global is when we develop an ethics of otherness that is not cannibalistic. So with globalism, it was a cannibalistic ethics of otherness, but now if we can transfer onto each other and if we assume rightly so, that in understanding or in sharing, they're always transferring. If we understand that and say, yeah, that's okay, we do transfer, but we can start, begin the journey of empathy or the journey of compassion with the new ethics of otherness. So I find this really profound and this has really directed a lot of the new work including what you know within the hour of God, which was, it was an oral theater project and really depended only on the voices of actors and nothing more. So it was down to just essence. So I would say, yeah, I mean, that's it. That with Nagama's letters, I sort of, I'm trying to find something about this, about this quality. That's amazing. I've put that in the chat. By the way, anybody, please feel free to use the chat as a place for reflections and comments and even questions or so forth. And then after half an hour, we'll open up as a general discussion and people can unmute. That's a really brilliant, this ethics of otherness that is not cannibalistic. Wow. Eric, does that spark ideas for you what Kirtan has just said? I'm really curious about how you love your practice. I mean, I'm still unpacking it. It's great, you know, I mean, I mean, I think at least part of what I hear, right, is so we're a Shakespeare theater. So like, I think like, and when we think about the role that Shakespeare has played sort of just throughout the history of colonization and, you know, in this country, the manner within which Shakespeare was often used as a tool for a racing language and culture from indigenous peoples, like it was, that was part of, that was one of the things that was taught in these sporting schools across this country. You know, we, if you run a Shakespeare theater, if you do work around Shakespeare, you're often centering Shakespeare and you're sort of, and I think a lot of the conversation that we've been having, and this is where this conversation of vulnerable communities begins to come in, right, is sort of like, what is actually the practice of de-centering? Like what does it actually require and demand? And what are you even trying? So you have to name what you're de-centering first of all and then how do you de-center in such a way that you're not actually disappearing, right? And so we use the image of a circle frequently at Cal Shakes and a friend of mine who's a colleague of ours and a member of our artist circle talks about this specifically as what's interesting about the shape of the circle and specifically a circle is held by human beings. So you think about that regular acting exercise, you know, whenever, like, you know, like when you go up into a room and you tell everybody to circle up and then there's always that moment when everybody looks around very awkwardly at how poorly the circle is made. But like this idea though, right, that the shape of the circle is being held by a collective of human beings and that a center is actually a center, there's nothing there, but a sense of a center is being energetically held by each person and you're trying to shape that circle actively. It's a process. There's no line that you're meeting, right? There's no like, no one has drawn that circle out for you to stand at. You're trying to find that space and that process, that kind of energy, that space is the space that we're interested in being. And the only space, the only way to be in that space, right, is to find yourself in a way to kind of find a way to release yourself into the hole because inevitably what makes circles so hard to make is because people have a point of view about what the circle is and where they should be standing. And it's that friction I think that makes it sometimes very challenging. And so are you saying that Shakespeare is kind of the sense of the center? So people kind of, it's serving as a kind of catalyst for a sense of what role does Shakespeare play in that center? I mean, Shakespeare is like a cultural monument, right? Like so there's been a lot of conversation about monuments in this country, right? And when we talk about cultural monuments, when you think about what are the cultural monuments in this country, there are few as large as Shakespeare across all English speaking kinds of cultures and countries, right? And so this idea of a cultural monument and the sort of weight of that and the legacy of that is just the thing that I think part of this is about the practice of naming things, right? So even this idea of planetarity as a response to globalization is like it's all about names on some level, right? It's like we get to a point where certain language becomes stale because what starts to happen is everyone starts to sort of begin to follow it. So like equity, diversity and inclusion is EDI is a phrase that we use here and that's been now replaced by anti-racism in part because EDI became a catchphrase that everyone was suddenly signing onto and the more people signed onto it, the more superficial their relationship to it was, the more deluded it became. And so language becomes a method for shifting power, shifting the center of power, right? And so that's often why, right? We see the shifting in language coming from what is, I think historically, what I would describe as sort of peripheral communities, right? It's sort of, the center is gonna be the language that is best known and most strongly held. But when you start to change the language, that's coming from the outside and the really powerful choices shift the center. Wow, that's really profound. I mean, okay, so you're saying, one of the things that you seem to be saying is that you have to shift language to sort of keep people in a process of centering that as soon as they become too comfortable with a monumental center, then the process of creating the center seems to break down. Is there something about like that monument? I mean, I mean, it's just like, I will center Shakespeare for a moment because that was the beauty of Shakespeare, right? Shakespeare is making up language. He's making up language in a way that actually forces you to listen, right? And so this is the same case here, sort of like if you feel as a human being that you are unbalanced because of the language that is being used, that's actually a good thing. To me, that's a good thing, right? Like that's actually, that's a state of learning. A state of learning requires a state of not knowing, right? So you have to not know something to learn it. And so that edge that you're riding there, which we often refer to as the learning edge, right? These are our learning edges, right? Which is where we begin to feel uncomfortable. And where you begin to feel uncomfortable is actually the space that you wanna reside. And that's actually the space of change. Okay, this is great. So this, I feel that we're gonna have a very rich conversation with everybody when we open up the room. I'm gonna throw another ping pong in, which is the fact that I perceive. Okay, so this is, again, I'm having to sort of generalize to sort of launch something that there's a increasing political polarization, perhaps in both, you know, in India and the U.S. I mean, is this some, so in absorbing the sort of bringing in the migrant workers, Kirtana, have you been addressing politics per se or is that something you let be, you know, in the background or how do we deal with this sort of increasingly rhetorical and divided political field? Yeah, that's a very interesting question, Amy. And this is one that we're having with our dramaturg all the time. So my dramaturg is Julia Dina Hesse, who's German. And it's a really complicated one because the perspectives, global perspectives are so divided to begin with. Let's just look at an issue of food and politics, for example, right? So now, Julia has really strong ecologically driven ideas about food and politics. Now, here, when I live in a shepherding community, and what is interesting is the question you asked us about who are your communities that love to address that in a bit. But in a shepherding community, which is also an impoverished community. I'm not impoverished, like not bottom line, but it's a poorer community. For them, there's no question of, this idea of being vegan or ethically being vegetarian does not play out at all. So it's a very, even dramaturgy itself is having to really rethink its ideas, right? There are no solid, there are no absolute ideas about how to go forward on this, which I find, like what Eric said about being uncertain, which I find absolutely the gift of the pandemic, that the idea that the global south should sit back and listen to the stream of consciousness stuff arriving to us from the north of the west has been demolished because it doesn't hold good. So right now, even with Nagama's letters, for example, Nagama, for instance, will slaughter a goat and eat every part of the goat, everything, the liver, the gizzard, the kidney, the hooves, everything, it'll all be used. For me, this is a really ethical lifestyle. It is a very beautiful way to live. And it's a really, it's a connected way to live. How do you explain this to somebody in the global north who's making an ethical choice to not eat meat because it's an anti-factory farming practice? So it places us in these very delicate points of negotiations. So yeah, and about whether one directly addresses politics, this really I find has to do with the audience because if I'm working to an audience of young people, oftentimes it's better to just raise questions and leave it to them to figure things out or to work their way through it. But sometimes I find that it's good to put it out there. So it really, really depends on the audience that I'm working with. And that's, yeah, so that brings us back to communities and who are your communities. And I'd be so interested to know from Eric whether he's found that his community has markedly changed because mine has, through the pandemic, I've moved so far away from an urban, sealed from a bubble audience. I find that the pandemic has opened it up and my audience is across the world or my audience is in Germany or my audience is my tiny village or my community is my young students and I worry about their mental health and what we do for them. So it has changed enormously. Ah, there it is, yeah. Yeah, I'm just, I, oh, go ahead. No, go ahead, I'll reply to Jehan after that because this idea- No, please, please, please reply. It's quite all right. I was thinking about that, Jehan, this morning because it seems like previous prior to the pandemic we sold tickets and we had a show in a proscenium or non-proscenium style, whatever in a beyond the proscenium style space. And people bought tickets and people came to the show and this was the audience we had. Now, working with Zoom and working with online platforms it's brought a kind of intimacy into the, I mean, it's really strange to say because without physical contact how do we have intimacy, et cetera. But I see into your bedroom or I see your bookshelf or I see what you've chosen to hang on your walls and there's a theatricality in that. There's an arrangement and there's a set of choices that me as a creator is dealing with as well. So it, I don't know. I'm not sure whether it's defined versus non-defined but it's made it different. I'm still figuring it out, but it's definitely changed it. And right now, because we're still just, what is it? Less than two years into these lockdowns and into the pandemic, I'm still discovering it. And I'm still discovering what are the ways to create risk, to create questions and to create interactivity. Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. Eric, did you want to go back to Kirtana's question? I mean, yeah, I mean, only, only as far as I, I appreciate the question and I think I don't have an answer yet. Like I think I'd like to say that, I mean, I absolutely, our audiences have changed since we canceled our season. So like, so the pandemic, the pandemic hit in the US in, in April. Of 2020. And it was shortly after we held our benefit fundraiser. So we threw the last big party in the Bay Area before the shutdown happened. And then we canceled, we ended up canceling our season a week later. So very, very quickly we made that decision because it just seemed very clear to us. At the time. So, so we lost the audience that we normally have, right? We lost the audience that we sort of spent, spend time with in person. And the other thing that happened though, was we did a pretty radical shift in terms of our programming. And rather than, rather than continue to produce art in the way that we had been and doing so in some kind of virtual format. We really began to sort of hold conversations, not unlike these to kind of lean into, lean into the sort of very challenging discourse that we found ourselves a part of and the, and asking very similar questions. And making that a resource for audiences. But I think, you know, we're, I guess the reason I said I don't know is because I think we're, we're coming out of it now. And so I don't know. I don't think that I will say like for many of our theaters, this is what I know. And this is maybe just secondhand knowledge, but in terms of what I've been speaking with my colleagues. Many theaters have found virtual programming to be largely unsatisfying in terms of outreach. Like it hasn't, it hasn't achieved that kind of global connection that I think some, some artists have been able to sort of find through this platform. And that's, I think because so many of our theaters are, you know, number one tied to their specific local communities. And then number two, there's just, there's just a glut of entertainment options. And, um, and I don't know that I don't know that I don't know, I certainly don't, I can speak for cows. I don't, I certainly don't think how shakes was able. Um, over this last year amidst everything else was able to sort of find that in road. And, um, and that's fine. I think that's okay. Cause I think we're, we're all shifting now into a hybrid model. The virtual platform, this space will continue to be a part of the programming model. Um, but I think, as you said, Cortana, um, the, you know, I think of, I've always say about the theater, the theater is the practice of being in each other's company. And, um, and the thing about that is that it sort of like, I don't know, I just, it's funny. It's funny. I, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just, it's funny. It's funny. I, I, I, I, I love, I'm a total tech geek. Like I love, I love, I'm, and also an introvert for the record. I'm a such an introvert. And anyone who's ever met me in the last 30 years is going to tell me that I'm a liar, but I'm a total introvert. And, um, but I'm an introvert with like extroverted tendencies. So, but this last year completely sent me back decades. So I'm like, I'm like all, all over again. I'm like, I really don't ever want to leave my house. I'm happy to sit in front of a screen, hang out with my daughter, read books to her, do you know? And like, like just, just like, I live my private life. And so, so much of what I think this next, these next few months are going to be for many of us. Um, certainly in my community is it's going to be. Um, re-learning. Oh God, I, I so, I so understand what Eric is saying. And what's, what's even crazier is because we live on the farm. We've really become like a tiny little unit that's. Yeah, complete bubble. So yeah, it's going to be a huge, but also the hybrid model has, is for me personally, it's really exciting. And with young people who've been on it, who've been on social media and have been on the internet for so many years and who knows so many tricks. And I'm just learning so much because I find the theater lab youth, creating things with them. For example, last year during the summer, because they couldn't do, they couldn't do a summer camp here at the farm. And they wanted to have summer camp. We created an interactive zoom piece called the case of the missing ring where they prerecorded on zoom, they performed this first part. And then they had an interaction with a live audience. And then they played the third part, which was the result. But it was so fun doing it with them because they were really into using this tiny screen with lights and with miniature props and really you like using it so creatively. And even with the edits and using all the filters like zoom now has all these lovely filters they can use. So it was really fun and using twitch to create theater. So I learned a lot just from teenagers, you know, just from watching how they use tech and it was. Yeah. Programming the whole new rich. It's a whole new rich journey because we rethink, and maybe that's a good thing because we were so stuck. I don't know. Not Eric. I'm not saying Cal shakes because already you're working with such a marginalized community and the work is already so, so rich. But I feel that the urban model in India was really stuck in a proscenium space and with a proscenium philosophy. So it's where it easier to do copy some 사� myths, the following Conditions that were easily discussed to be Musk's topic. What, what, what is really good about기� الدoco, whatever. Experimental whatever and it's also, it's also. To me. Okay. It again, this isn't in India. India situation to me. I am dead tired of us depending on our heritage. I think this is bullshit and I'm just like, really like we talking back constantly to this amazing heritage, I don't, it's, it's, to me, I think it's become a habit. It's not, it's not alive, and it's just an easy habit. So I feel we need to find new practices. And this is a great way to find new practices that don't remain in the old elitist proscenium mold. So, I'm delighted that you've mentioned this habit, because it seems to me that also what you've identified are habitual audiences. And, and, and I'm, I'm very curious about how habitual audiences interact with some of the experiments that you're doing. Right, because that seems to be part of what happens is when we're talking about serving multiple communities. One of our communities is a is a habituated audience and can be very upset or shocked or distressed when, when we start changing the game. But, but this is in the moment of inflection point where we start to really open it up so people can can speak and so forth on mute and so we'll continue dialoguing it's zoom is sometimes a little bit challenging like this but I'm going to go into the chat, and I'm going to read out the sogo you you you commented a while back about the cannibalism that occurs within communities of struggle this is a really interesting notion. Are you still with that do you want to unmute and talk about that or, or, because I don't see you there but are you, are you there with sogo. Maybe not. Hi, I'm here. Oh hi. Hi, hi, hi. Hi, hi. Sorry, I'm in cake town so yeah, just in the middle of the night. Thank you. Nice to be here. And I was just thinking about how community, at least as I conceive of it, and from from a South African standpoint from a South African point of view, and maybe from a global South point of view, maybe I could push it that far but I choose not to for for a more localized point of view is like the communities, a sense of community often derives from the idea of struggle. And I think that this this idea of otherness being cannibalistic, often then manifests itself within these, these communities that that come about as a response to struggle right. So these, these feminist spaces then become like spaces of oppression Olympics, or these blackness spaces then become the spaces of who's the best black, or whatever the case might be because there is a particular kind of addiction to and I think it speaks back quite productively to Cortana's point about about a marriage to heritage or to pseudo ideas around a romantic, euphoric, beautiful, wonderful pre colonial time that none of us actually know much about and you know, that marriage to that struggle, perhaps is worth starting to think about evolving past. I don't know. Yeah, but those are the ideas that were floating around in my head when I made that comment. It is fascinating the way it rejoins what you were saying Cortana. By the way, if you want to raise your hand then I then I can make it more easy if you want to say something just find the emoji raise your hand and then I can call you call call you. Cortana or Eric do you want to do you want to say anything in response to what was so good just said or, or ideas that might have sparked from that. Yeah, well, I think what was so good said about the addiction to oppression or the addiction to struggle it's really, is really interesting and we could unpack that further. I don't think anyone cares because, especially during the pandemic. There's been so much virtual signal virtual signaling as well right even in the making of art. So it's, I don't know I'm thinking about that it's interesting. The conversations that we have a lot internally at our organization. Sort of, we've been we've been in the process of an account like we've been going through an accountability process this last year is how I talked about it a lot. And part of that is sort of about, you know, naming just what it means to be in the business of making theater which is sort of a very capitalist thing right and and the business of making theater is about making something new. And then following that up with something new and then following that up with something new, and that what starts to happen is it just kind of reinforces this very transactional, very transactional relationship right where it's sort of like, and here's the next big thing and here's the next big thing and here's the next big thing, what falls away and all that is any kind of real relationship. And so like, so the other and I'm saying that and then I'm going to put something else right next to that. Right is, you know, we, because we describe our organization as a legacy white institution I describe it as a legacy white institution which is a different phrase from historically white or predominantly white. And I use that phrase very intentionally right which is that a lot of our cultural arts institutions in this country in the US wouldn't exist but for right the legacy of accumulated wealth is a direct result of the original land theft and labor theft that this nation was built upon. And so like, so that's just that's just the truth right like I think it's hard it's hard to it's hard to deny that it's hard to deny the sources of, of revenue that have supported that supported the birth of many of these organizations and the continued life of these organizations so so you have to name that you have to kind of come at that with a space of humility but it's also like so hard right because like the other thing that I talk about a lot is because I'm Chinese America I'm Chinese America was born in this country, first generation my parents were immigrants from mainland China. And, and, you know, for me. I talk a lot about white adjacency. Right. And I think like and I often find myself in spaces where I feel the need to name that because a lot of my work is about advocating for, you know, other communities that have historically had less privilege than perhaps I've experienced in my life. And the interesting challenge of this right so this is like this whole notion of oppression Olympic this whole notion of, I think this is what you mean by cannibalism but please, please forgive me if I'm wrong or correct me if I'm wrong but like this, this notion right that we begin to, you know, we begin to eat ourselves from the inside out, because of this, which is like scarcity right that's like the whole scarcity mentality when you have nothing. You just, you just, you just feed from what's there, and you don't see what else is possible. And so this, this idea of naming white adjacency, in a way that isn't about apologizing yourself to invisibility is like the challenge. Like, it's a challenge that I feel like every day, right, which is, I need to be able to show up with humility, but not in an absent way, because I see that happening. All the time right now, like I see that happening in so many spaces from so many different directions right where sort of like the impulse is to step aside. The impulse is to give way to the communities that are sort of that whose struggle is now kind of taking center stage, and the, but the process of stepping aside, often involve stepping completely away. Even if an allyship disappears right and then this whole sense of community disappears and to me that's tied to a kind of fundamental transactional relationship that we have in this country. Right, and that if we could find our way back to deep relationship that we could find ourselves back to a space where actually, and I think this is some I saw a question that you would ask Jehan earlier right, if we can find our way back to a space where, we're not, we're not connecting with people because of the project that we're doing, but we are in connection with people, despite the projects that we are doing. Right, what does it mean to actually be in that kind of like the sort of relationship that we create in a theater, what would it mean to be in that relationship with each other all the time. And what does it take to hold that and sustain that. I'm sorry it's 11 o'clock, not as late as it is. It was it was very good it was very good. Just to clarify Eric, I think the cannibalism thing. And the capital, because of the anti global or the anti globalistic or the capitalist framework within she frame within which is pivak writes about it has to do with the sort of the shopping around the shopping for culture or the shopping for food or whatever the, which is, which is with a lack of connectedness it just it's transactional. It's just that I can avail of this that are the other, but it's no more it's not emotional. I mean this is an interesting conversation about like, like, I mean, this is this is the catchphrase of the moment, apparently in this country but but when we when you talk about critical race theory. Right, like part of the conversation is specifically about this idea that whiteness is not like that's not an identity that's a kind of political. Like that's a, that's a structure that's been created and established but like it's not culture like there's no white culture. Right, there's like, there's British culture. There's, there's, you know, there's like, there's, there's, but there's nothing that like you would define as the culture of whiteness. So whiteness in and of itself is kind of like appropriating left and right all over the place. And, and yeah. I'm actually, yes. Can I pick up on a, so, Elizabeth, you've picked up on something that Eric said and I had picked up on it as well as an intriguing. Can you unmute and talk about connecting with people despite the project is the empty space in the center that was a question mark but it sounds like you're making a proposal that's interesting. Yes. Hi everybody. Hi. That's exciting of being here again. Yes, Eric, you, you said that you lost the train of thought, but it was the one when I understood more things of what you said. This connection with the people, this project, despite what's happening there. You know, it's like the project is not the objective it's like the pretext of being there so I wonder if that is what you call the empty space. So there's something there that is empty but is gathering us around. I don't know if it is empty or because it's totally full of something. So that's that's my question. That's interesting right because when I was coming up in my training. Theater was often described as church. You know I've shared that phrase I've said as much in my time. My experience of theater today is in many ways the exact opposite of church. Right, because theater is not theater has not been one of those places that people return to every week. I've seen with a group of people that they come to know you know whose children they see grow up in front of their eyes. You know who share the same song and share the same language and share the same sort of prayers like that is not the theater that I know and that is not the theater that I think exists in the world like I don't like I just don't. I just mean at some point we have to all be really kind of honest with ourselves about like what theater is. I think that theater is church, because theater, because like, and that's through the specific lens right of church as being a space that nurtures community and connection and relationship. And it's not the theater can't do it. It's just that that has not been my experience of it. And now we can say that that's in part because I'm a person of color, for instance, you know, and like, and theater has largely been a white space. And so, because of that I've never felt invited into that kind of relationship. I don't know theater from the point of view of a white audience member or a white artist. I only know theater through my own experience of it. But like my experience of it is such that, you know, we don't we are not given that space. And theaters process, I hear you, John. Yes, absolutely. But like in this country process last eight weeks, four weeks if you don't include the performances. That show goes away and you start all over again with new people. Right. And if you're lucky, you work with the same people a few times a year, if you're lucky, but you're not actually working with them. I just need to say something back to that, which is, yeah, even that where you're saying theater process last four weeks or eight weeks, we're still tying it down to the need to make that product. We're still tying it, we're still tying it down to the project and I think we need to unshackle ourselves from that as well and go back to this thing of how do you have the ongoing continued engagement throughout. And that takes us into the realm of what has also been boxed in another space, which is theater and applied theater, or, you know, things like that, and it's not it's all part of a continuum. So, I just, I mean, I know we're preaching to the choir here but I just think that we have to. We have to also just, even when we go to the next thing well okay see it as a process but we don't, we don't then make the mistake of putting ourselves back into a cul-de-sac by saying but my process is only lasting four weeks because then as soon as you say that we decided the project. Can I, oh sorry. Can I just ask you all know this two loops theory, Katana Institute, the, I'm not Katana, the Burkana Institute, sorry Katana. The Burkana Institute. It's the two loops theory, there's a video presentation of it. If you, if you Google it. It's a really fascinating theory of change. And, and basically, what they say in this like in this presentation on this video if you watch it, it's essentially this is a woman from the Burkana Institute, giving a presentation around the petroleum industry fossil fuel industry, right. And what she's saying is the theory of change around the two loops is that there is a primary, there's a, there's a kind of primary industry and then there's an alternative industry. And the way that a primary industry is replaced by an alternative industry happens in this kind of shape of two loops. And the idea is that when you see a primary industry kind of like an ascendancy, right. Even in time is that as that primary industry is an ascendancy, right before it reaches its apex, right, where you begin to see an introduction of alternative industries like something starts to happen. Just as this primary industry is reaching what will ultimately be it's kind of like top point. And in this case it's like renewable energy, right. And what starts to happen while that's happening while the primary industry is still reaching the top and the alternative, the alternative energy is coming in. Right, the alternative energy is struggling like hell like it's like it's failing left and right because there simply aren't the resources for it because the resources are being eaten up by the fossil fuel industry in this case. But there's a certain moment in time when the primary industry hits its apex. Everybody realizes oh shit, this is not the way to go this is like this is all this is all going to start to fail. And you start to see it failing and you start to see climate change you start to see all these things that are starting to happen right. And that starts to come down as it's coming down all of a sudden that alternative industry is like oh yes, give, give, give, give, give, and it starts to shoot up. And as it's shooting up and the other one is coming down right there is this phase. This is the thing that I want to talk about with this with this to Luther there is this period of time, which I love. And I think the reason I came to this was because this was also with my mom. Right. It's, it's a hospice period for the industry. Like someone in all these other things that everybody's doing someone has to be responsible for like hospice care for that that primary industry that is now in decline. Right in order to let it go. In a way that allows this new thing to take its place. And I would argue that that's where we are right now in, at least in the US, in terms of the industry of theater and I think what you're saying Jehan is the art of theater and I am absolutely with you on that. Right the art of theater is never going to go away, but the industry of theater as it's been shaped by capitalism by the kind of withdraw federal funds in this country by the NEA for by like, you know, and it's as it's over time a tool of like a political tool. You know, that industry is failing. Sorry, I didn't mean to go off but what's the one going. What's the one coming up. Sorry. I mean, the, that one's failing and what's the one that's coming up the alternative one is. That's the question. That is the question. Okay. I mean, I have ideas. I mean, Fred, you've been raising your hands and Falguni's been telling me you've been raising your hands sorry I didn't notice. Could you, could you unmute yourself and speak. Thanks Amy, I couldn't find how to raise my hand, but I know how to raise my hand. I'm speaking not as the choir as Jehan mentioned, but but as a dead white man. And in some ways I am already dead, not because I'm older than all of you but or most of you perhaps but but because I'm concerned with this issue of what's the meaning of life and death and what causes to experience death before you actually, Eric, have to mourn somebody or go through the process of dying. And I believe the theater attracted me in my house in days, because it grappled with such questions in a very deep way sometimes and certainly the Greeks and Shakespeare and who knows what primitive progenitors made a kind of ritual or theater that that took us to those places and although I'm sympathetic to what Kurtana said about, you know, getting rid of the legacy of indigenous or, you know, Indian theater but I've been, you know, not never having been to India I've been deeply touched by not only the traditions of Indian theater but also of Indian philosophy, and the way they encounter such deep deep deep questions. So I guess my question is for each of our speakers is because the, the, you know, I'm still teaching in academia and I've been alarmed by how purely political the discourse has become. In other words, anything that has aesthetic concerns or that has existential concerns, or that has deep psychological or, you know, metaphysical concerns is completely suspect considered retrograde considered, you know, antithetical to the need to make make all sorts of political actions which I consider quite right quite righteous I'm totally in support of. At the same time, that's not what has appealed to me about theater. So, I've seen a lot of Eric's productions and they're transcendent there you know he's a great artist and a profound artist so I'm not criticizing your work, but I am criticizing or at least questioning the level of discourse which I find from a deeply human level superficial. It's not politically superficial. I mean I just had dinner with a couple of trotsky it's last night for Christ's sake you know I mean, talk about discourse but you know I do question that and I've sent you letters about Brecht even Eric which, although you didn't respond. I don't know Brecht performance, but I even questioned some of the adoration of Brechtian politics and contemporary theater, and the thought that that's what theater is all about so anyway I open it up to any kind of response, you know I'm throwing down the gauntlet. I'm totally in I'm down I'm dying to respond, but if you go first since. Oh, please Cortana. So, I mean so many things in what you said Fred, thank you so much for that provocation. Number one. Okay first, but the life and death to thing yeah so that's been on my mind as well which actually, which is why I think the in the hour of God link is somewhere here maybe you'd be interested Fred. I think maybe you'd be interested. But when Jehan was speaking and then Eric was speaking earlier I was really thinking that the moment that is on us is to rethink up theater pedagogies. And what it is we offer students and what to move away from the skills model into a model that is much more philosophical and to reply Fred to what you were saying. But actually, it's not that I load Indian philosophy it's not. I load the practice of deadness. I load the practice of habituality, where you know when we're not thinking something through, but we're just doing it because that's our glorious past, and I really there are so glorious past. So I want to know why did a harking back to a glorious past that is a Hindu glorious past glorious past or whatever glorious past that is. So I think that, and especially because we're in India today we're really living in, in times of fear of this huge right wing uprising. Who's does to really consider what past and what tradition, and to also act in an alive for me theater is also being alive. Aesthetics is very very a very high concern, but it's also being alive to the moment, and to be critical of the moment and seeing what's going on so. And the other thing is, a lot of a lot of material a lot of content that to the West is beautiful and moving and touching comes with a very very feudal and very castus dictate, which doesn't allow women in which doesn't allow lower castes in, which is very cast written that if we want to be modern and we want to go ahead in a modern way. Who's has to think about these things. So what appears aesthetic to somebody who's not living in the culture may not include the beating to death of somebody. I mean, for instance, let me also share with you that theater practice even contemporary theater practice, if a practitioner of a director is working with a traditional form for example, or is working with form that you might have heard before, which is, like, say, let's look at down to which comes from money poor and which to the West is very familiar. It's a didactic feudal form. It's a form which involves a director standing in the theater with a stick, no less, and beating the ground and beating the legs of the parties of the actors. Now, the thing is this we make choices do we wish to go forward in this way. You know, and what is it do we want to create museums of feudalism because they're pretty. So it's a kind of it's like choices we have to work with constantly. So while I love I really love and there's so much about Indian philosophy. I really hope all if you look at in the hour of God because for me that was really a pandemic creation, it was a creation for the pandemic, and it's based on sure have been those philosophy of life and death. It's not that I'm a verse, but I need to be alive as a creative practitioner I need to be alive to my immediate circumstance, and to the communities and my communities are shifting so often. So that's the only thing that's what I offer in response. That's great. Thank you. Eric, did you were going to respond to right. I was, but Daniel has his hand up. Oh, sorry, Daniel. I wanted to respond to Kirtana with a question, actually, because I'm very involved in the intersection of pedagogy and students, because that's the life I live. And when you say when you when you pose the question, what do we share with the student what do what what in fact do we ask the student to work on. I've spent a life trying not to and say this to my students not to fuck with their poet. I try to give them delivery systems so that their poet can be as articulate and as loud or as soft as it needs to be. My job as a teacher. I've tried literally I've tried to to not tell them what their poet needs to say, because I feel like I, that's terribly pretentious of me to think that I could. I mean I know what my poet needs to say and I spent a lifetime creating work that in fact some with Fred yelling my poets desires as as an instructor, or as a as the guy with the flashlight in the room I don't tell people any more than I'm a teacher. I tell people I'm in the room with a flashlight I focus it on something, and we all look at it, and we discuss what we see. And then we discuss the delivery systems that we could bring an audience to actually contemplate that thing, the intersection of the ceiling and the wall, a perpendicular. And then we talk about that. And it has led me, and I think it has led my students to talk about what's in the room, which is terribly topical, it is the community that is in the room it is. And so my, my question, because I, because I would love to work with you. Because I want to be on a farm to I, I, and the whole idea of farming. Huh. It's an open invitation I would love that to really for each. I can, I can make it happen my student my my school will send me anywhere. They're amazing. Do come I cook. I'll bake your bread absolutely. Well we're going to talk. But the question is what, what is our responsibility with the student. Daniel I feel exactly as you do that it is to shine that torch on that thing and to not fuck with the poet. Absolutely I might my question about modern pedagogies has to do with the old skills delivery method right which is you do bodywork you do this you do that you but what about. Okay, so this is it at the place I'm coming from is this, I lost a student to suicide, less than a month ago. And I just this has really made me think that you know while we do all the stuff about skills and about text and all of this. I'm just saying, as theater practitioners, are we also giving people a wonderful way to live, and to get past the darkness, you know, because there's that as well how much within our pedagogy, how much time do we, do we care to spend on that. So that's but besides that I agree with you on everything you say because yeah I'm totally in sync with that. Yeah, yeah, no that's it that's all. Um, I guess the question that I might ask is like, and I don't think of myself as a teacher so this is just that's so with a grain of salt of course, but I guess my question is, what makes us think that we have the tools to offer. And I think that these students of path through that right like and I think like, you know, I don't like this is the thing like, I mean, Daniel Fred, you both, I mean I named this at the very beginning and both of you are have been extraordinary influences in my, in my path and my journey without question. And, and Fred I appreciate the nice things that you said, and I see your hand, and I just want to say Fred like, you know, I, I don't know how to answer the question that you've posed. But naming just what I believe to be a truth is that your lived experience is very different from my lived experience. And what you think of as universal, and what you think of as like, like what you are interested in what you are passionate about does not need to be what I am passionate about. And the fact that you sometimes come at me with a kind of like critique, right, it's always that there's a compliment and there's a critique of like, why did you make that choice because I feel like it makes it less is actually saying to me that my lived experience is less than yours. I know that's not what you're saying. But that is what it comes off as being. And that's kind of like this, the challenge that we find ourselves in right now is simply that like, you know, I like there's just, you know, I think it's like this whole question of how do we make space for different lived experiences because for so long. And this is, this is, this is a risk of pedagogy because I have been students of teachers who have taught this way, which is that there's only one way. If you follow this way, your world will be opened to you. Right. And nothing has pissed me off more. Right. And I've seen the rigidity of that and I've seen the fragility of that. Right. And so like, and to me it's like, I appreciate Daniel you're saying about like, let's, like, how can I give you tools that allow you to actually take that lived experience and shape it and just like that that's all like that's kind of what like, and to me that's the that's the future of the theater that's this new theater that's this new thing right, the old thing is this like idea that there are like masters, and I use that word intentionally. Right that there are masters that somehow we are all sort of meant to learn from. And it's not and I think I just I'm just posing this kind of like this challenge this idea that there's number one anything even like universal, this idea of universal, like also angers me. Right because universal almost always, almost always reduces an experience of someone. Right. I, I might I sharpen. Can I respond. Yeah, please, please. Well, I prefaced what I said by saying I was a dead white male so you don't have to worry about what a dead person says to you. And I sincerely meant that I admire your work. But I've, I do feel that for myself and for others that to not be responsive and open to critiques, and there's our capacity for insight and growth so I'm sorry if there's some element of critique what I'm saying. But, of course, you, you and everyone, whether they're, you know, whatever their origins are has a different experience from me. I've experienced antisemitism and had to run from my life when I was a kid by it from gangs of people who wanted to kill me for killing Jesus so you know I have some level of empathy but no deep understanding of what it means to others. On the other hand, you know, I understand I'm privileged, but I'm not that's not what I'm talking about when I, and I never use the word universal. I was talking about, I think I said existential which is a pretty shoddy word also. And I said merely political I'm all for politics I'm all for making political activity for through theater the Greeks did it Shakespeare did it. It should be done. Of course it. It's necessary, but the merely political is something I've always had a problem with. I don't feel you do that Eric but I think the discord the contemporary discourse reduces the notion of theater to something which is akin to that it becomes a form of politics and that's, that's certainly one very important aspect of it, but not the only one. And I might add that years ago I would they asked me to write recommendations for the MacArthur fellowship and I wrote some including Daniel actually you sorry you didn't get one buddy, but you know and I surely would have written one for you Eric if I knew you back then but the second year they said your recommendations were great could you write a new bunch of them and I said, I quoted William Blake I said you know we're led to believe a lie when we see not through the eye. That's born of whatever William Blake said that we really are perception changes absolutely everything and he was a very political kind of poet guy, but I think art has the capacity of changing or at least working with people's level of perception, which is not the same thing as political discourse or intellectual discussion. It's actually goes to the roots of the way we experienced the world through our minds our bodies and our thoughts and dare I say our spirits. So that's something of what I was saying, you know, not to say you're defunct in that. Okay, this is a marvelous dialogue I'm delighted that as curator I have to raise my hand. I'm going to send us in the last five minutes back to a comment that came a lot a long time ago, because I would really like it if Manjari had a chance to speak and ask her question if she still wants to. Manjari are you still interested in asking about what theater practices might reduce the cannibalism in the audience that's an interesting understanding. If you want to unpack that in the last five minutes. Are you still there Manjari. Yes, I am. So it would be interesting to Jehan sort of already responded to my question but it would be interesting to hear what the speakers have to say in connection to their own practice, and how this plays out for them and what sort of, you know, things that they keep in mind while making their work and while presenting their work so that it does not become a sort of consumer and product kind of relationship between their work and the audience. And how basically what I've already written how how did they define the kind of experience of. Yeah. Wonderful thanks. We might just have time for one of you to respond would would either of you Cortana or Eric like to respond to Manjari. I think Eric. Are you sure. So, Cortana mentioned museum earlier. And another thing that I say a lot is that we are a theater and not a museum. And what we mean by that is that, you know, our practice is not the preservation of past practices. It's something more immediate. And it's a sort of like, and, you know, so often people say that they want to go to the theater to escape the world. And what we say is we go to the theater to let the world in. And to me, that is often the most important thing. So, you know, the theater that I make 10 years from now may be very different from the theater that I'm making now, because 10 years from now will be very different from now. To the extent that we are able to make choices to create frames for the work and the discourse that allows the conversation of this moment to be alive in the art. To me, that's the most important thing. And how you do that is like kind of this is manifold. So for our part, we're often in conversation with members of communities whose experience directly intersects with the work a year or two years, three years before the work happens on our stage. So we're working to understand how the play comes from, you know, their point of view. To me, that's like so important, right? And so like, and it's important that the artists that are participating in the work have accessibility to the experiences of the characters that they're putting on that stage. It's important that the audience, right, be filled with people for whom that story actually speaks to. Because the alternative is an audience who doesn't understand that story. And historically, there have been artistic choices that, like, direct the story to that audience. So what does it mean when you actually have an audience for whom that story is written for. But those are, I mean, that's, that's the simple, simple answer that question. This is absolutely marvelous. Cortana, what I'm going to say is you don't know this, but we have an after party, which begins now, basically. So there's not a hard stop, it would just stop recording, and then we keep talking and anybody, you know, can keep talking. So I'm going to officially. That's what I'm recording.