 Welcome everybody. I'm Rachel Chanoff, the Director of the Office, Performing Arts and Film. And we are thrilled and delighted that you're joining us for this event, which is part of the Arts and Healing, Thanks to Call Virtual Festival, which is co-presented by Cambodian Living Arts and Arts Emerson. And it's made possible thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan and the collaboration of about 50 other artists and partners across seven countries. This panel is about the Performing Arts dealing with the impact of a global crisis. And it's going to be a contributing event on Howl Around Theater Commons, which is a free and open platform for theater makers around the world. You might have joined us for our previous talk, one of our previous talks from the co-commissioners of Bank's Call about the development of a piece and how it took presenters from around the world to make it happen. In today's event, we're again convening an extraordinary group of presenters who are going to discuss the current situation and explore how a pandemic is impacting the global arts landscape. We're absolutely honored to have Bill Bragan moderating the panel. Bill not only has a brilliant curatorial practice, Bill more important even than his brilliant curatorial practice is he is a crucial player in putting together the international ecosystem that really opens our minds and opens our borders when it comes to the impact culture can have on social change and social good. So, I mean, he's worked at some of the most esteemed institutions, Lincoln Center, the public theater, now NYU Abu Dhabi, and has had a global influence on how we perceive art across borders. So, welcome Bill Bragan. Great. Well, thank you so much for the kind introduction, Rachel. It's really great to be a part of this panel. I want to thank Cambodia Living Arts and Arts Emerson for inviting me to be a part of the arts and healing virtual festival. Thanks to Plume Prem and Jean-Baptiste Fou. I'm going to start by just introducing our three esteemed panelists who represent three different continents. So, first up, we've got David House. He's the Senior Associate Vice President of Emerson College and Executive Director of Arts Emerson, Boston's leading presenter of Contemporary World Theater. Welcome, David. Next up, Emmanuel Hondre, who directs the Department of Concerts and Performances at the Philharmonie de Paris. It's a complex of concert halls bringing music awareness and learning to a diverse audience. Welcome. And finally, we've got Shen Wenpin. He's the General and Artistic Director of the Weih Buying National Cushing Center for the Arts that brings local, as well as international talents to Southern Taiwan. Welcome to all three of you. We're glad to have you here. Hello. Yes. So, I've been a long time found of Cambodia Living Arts. I was lucky enough to travel with CLP to Cambodia just over eight years ago when I was at Lincoln Center and we were a partner in the season of Cambodia Festival when it first came to New York. I also had the pleasure to invite Plume to a convening at NYU Abu Dhabi that was produced in partnership with Rachel Chanoff and her team at the office, which led to his ongoing relationship with NYU Lady. So, we're really thrilled to be a part of this. I've been personally tracking the development of Bansakul from a very early phase seeing early workshops. And although we weren't able to bring it to the Arts Center, I'm really pleased to moderate this discussion. To start off, I have a couple of questions just to set the context. And there's already been a full session with the co-commissioners of the project and we don't have that much time. But briefly, I was wondering if the three of you could each just explain your relationship to Bansakul. I know not everyone has presented it yet, but if you could talk a little bit about why you chose to present it and why work that's so specifically rooted in Cambodia's history, why it resonated for you within your own local community. And I'll start just in the order that I introduced you for the moment and we'll start with David. Sure. Thanks, Bill. And it's great to be here and to be talking about a project that has such an impact and made such an impact here in Boston. Our history starts a little bit back. We connected with a project in 2015, 2016, came to our attention and really was for us an opportunity to think about how we use this work to make more connections in our own community. We outside of Boston in a town called Lowell, we have one of the largest Cambodian communities outside of Cambodia. And because our work at Art Simerson is about connecting across difference, we saw this as an opportunity to leverage work and actually engage a community that we didn't have a strong and natural relationship with. And so we brought the project in 2017 and were able to present that work and took that opportunity not only to present that work to but to actually surround it with a number of different engagements that actually started about a year in advance when we actually met and connected with the Cambodian community. Many leaders in that community talk about the intent behind the project and their interest in partnering with us. And that developed into rich partnerships that then expanded the engagement work to include what we call a welcome to Boston event where we have local Cambodian artists actually welcoming the artist from the project to the city. We had several conversations and local presentations in the Cambodian community around the project and really leveraged it as a way to lift up this history and compare it. We talk a lot about our common humanity that we share and many of us in our cultures have had trauma and travesties as this one and not to talk about what separates us but what about these incidents actually bring us closer together. And so that work continues and we've continued to track and partner with CLA and their various projects and very excited about all that comes next for the work. Right. Well thank you for that and thank you for continuing to support the work and framing with this virtual festival and bringing it into the present moment. Amine Well, what about for you? The project in Paris came through Riti because as Riti lives in Paris once he came to us and offered the just a concept, a dream of a modern ritual ceremony and for me I remember the first time we just imagined how could it take place in Paris. He had two aspects very important and very touching for me. The first one is the same as for David connecting the performing arts and the Cambodian community in Paris. In fact his community is very silent. We had a very numerous number of people coming in the 70s just after the genocide and since that time in fact the French people and the other communities don't know so much the Cambodian history, values, beliefs and so on. And for me it was a huge opportunity just to give them a chance to be a part of the global community circle we are used to invite as guests in the Philharmonie de Paris. And the second one was the multiple angles of that project. I mean when Riti was dreaming of his images connected to music it was something very unique because usually you use images and you try to connect and the way he was considering images and music has two major and important actors but not serving one to each other. The poetic power of the images was great because it was a mix of strength and violent images of lack of humanity but also very poetic and you couldn't make your own advice very quickly when you considered his images and the music on the other side was very peaceful and I remember that strange mix and I was totally convinced immediately by this and until 2018 when we hosted the project in May I kept that feeling to have a very strange mix of strength and peace and I understood at the end at the very end when I was totally transformed myself by the project but I realized that the other people were also transformed deeply by the project were changed we are moved that we had a very special experience in clearly it was a way to make peace after the war after the genocide to find to come back to humanity after a lack of a humanity to mix modernity and to pay attention to the tradition but a living tradition not something fixed and a piece of history something like a body you know and for me it was clear that it was another iconic experience showing that the current budget people don't live in their past but build their own history with the others with never a kind of conflict but looking for this I'm not a religious people I don't know if it's right or wrong but I believe in spirit and in human spirit and this show for me was very very powerful for that reason great well thank you for that but and now when pin my understanding is that you have not yet presented the piece but clearly it made sense to to bring you into this conversation so I'm curious why what's your relationship with bunksicle and how does this resonate with with you as someone who's not yet presented the work in this community yes I was introduced in in this project back in 2014 15 season when I act as a consultant to our ministry of culture at that time so they have built a southern east asia committee and they are and they are pushing a project names rainbow so just want to to build the connection with between taiwan and southern east asian countries and in in that case I was introduced to to this project and immediately I was so attract by by by by this program because because as I see the so this requiem of I immediately remember remember so taiwan's own history because so I I remember what was happened in the 40s when when the chinese chinese government earned back taiwan from japanese and unfortunately in around 1948 it was a tragedy happened in in taiwan so we called it 228 so that event was that incident was happened in on the 28th of february and everything was because of this a cigarette so a cigarette seller and so and and she she she caused some some rumor and and and finally so the result was the chinese chinese military came into the town in many towns in in in taiwan and and some so unfortunate happens and so many many many people dies and especially intellectuals and artists so and and when I when I see this project this program this this requiem I immediately think about it because this is also an issue that's so until now so now in 2020 we are still fighting with this historical event so how we we should see this and how we should evaluate and how how can we carry it into our future and this is one part and another part is how we how the aboriginal people in taiwan so live so in in our society so they they have been always uh be underrated and just in the past 20 or 30 years so we started to the artists started to to to know some more about our aboriginal arts performing arts and try to to uh to take take the elements to to to our works and so so for because of these two reasons so I I think this should be should be significant for us to present this work in in taiwan and unfortunately the national kaozhong center for the arts so should be open in 2016 but due to some construction problems as usual and so we we finally uh opened in the october 2018 but uh I as I remember so back in 2016 or 17 so we we did a tryout performance in taipei and in the taipei national university of arts and uh sung by taipei philharmonic chorus and many people was there and so they are so so impressed by by by this work and now so we scheduled this program uh to to be to to be presented in 2022 uh in in our venue in national kaozhong center for the arts right that's great I'm glad that you'll finally have a chance to present the work uh and what's I think was really striking about all three of your answers is that sense of how how so much of the resonances of banks are very specific to your local to your local circumstances and your local histories and your local communities but also really do speak to the commonalities as well especially in relationship to the historical trauma and we are living in a traumatic time right now under the kind of under the uh under the global pandemic of covid uh but it also is hitting uh different parts of the world in really different ways and uh and so again to provide a little bit of a context for our viewers I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about what is the current circumstance in your local community in response to covid and now that it's depending on where we are roughly nine months to a year since since the pandemic emerged what was your what was the immediate impact to your work at your art centers and how has that evolved over time and let's go in reverse order and start with one pin yes we are we are very lucky so thanks to to our to the effort effort of our our cdc in taiwan so because we had experience with us back in 2004 so now so people are some somehow we are prepared aware about about the virus and when it appeared so our cdc reacts very fast and the result is that uh and certainly we we have we have we have also experienced a difficult time for performing arts uh from i think from march to may and then we are so we are so lucky that uh already at the beginning of june so the government announced that so now we can do performances and but step by step so first so we have to to do a separate seats and very very soon so already from the beginning of july so we are allowed to sell the full house performances and but even though so during the difficult time in march from march to may or even june so we we we tried many things and thanks to the construction to to our venue the way we in national calcium center for the arts we have a lot of public space which is outdoor but with under roof so we are able to contain our our our program for example so the man three dance program outside and and and also so we we offer we we we turns the live performance tool online activities so already at the beginning of april so we start we initiate a project names a musical offering so we took the famous theme from musical offering by Johann Sebastian Bach and we encouraged people both in taiwan or abroad to make improvise make their own version of this work and put put put them all on youtube thank you and i'm curious and manual on the kind of more general contours how much does that track what has been happening in paris i know that there's there's there's been some opening and closing and i'm curious uh without maybe as much detail on the on the programs but in general what are where are you seeing uh happen within your institution and within uh within the kind of the arts in in france overall uh you're right we stop we start we start and it's horrible since last march um what we learn from the crisis is as french people that we are weak uh most of the time because um it's not easy for us to be unified and to have a consensus when we have a crisis so musicians especially we're um living in a kind of um fragile context because um we lost music on this on stage um it was not easy for them to to be together and to and to ask together to live differently so they spent in march april and may months being separated from each other and then without music and then after three months they realized but it was very late that they have to um resist and to keep music alive and then we work with them and we work together and i think um this crisis learned how to be together more even if time were very difficult and for for the french people it was also something important an important time to show how music can make sense for the society um many artists are waiting for the audience and the people to come to them and to listen to them and in fact they don't know their audience they don't know the people uh attending their concerts and now i think things have changed because um when music was stopped they just had to ask themselves okay uh if i really need to be as a musician on the list of the necessity on the priorities of the nation what can i bring for the people um not only being on stage and offering music but what sense does it make for the others um can i be a part of the of the global efforts and how and they they were not used to think like this before um and i think it was a good um um um consciousness global consciousness um in september october we had more hope after the the summer of course and of and then uh we're back in the tunnel we are still don't know in in one week we can start the concert or not so okay we are back to the tunnel but we kept two symbols and we thought we need messages so so i observed that many concert halls uh wanted wanted to be safe and to be focused on important and major masterpieces or pieces of arts um our choice was to put contemporary arts first and we kept two operas one was in october list by stokhausen it's a crazy uh experience it's just you know it is it's a everybody dream of um i think least one day but nobody achieved in fact because it's too long too expensive but we we just resisted and um we kept um montag it was just uh no it was the instead and that's crazy opera and the the name list was a way to bring light to that terrible moment and the second opera was an opera by du sapin um a recent one uh composed three years ago pentezile it was also a kind of myth and very dark black black and the music was black so in that context we had light and darkness um in the same month and i think it was a way to to be like uh in alexandria um to show something like a candle somewhere a big candle and two candles um and everyone can make sense its own sense with these operas um at the end if i try to to understand what i um learned for that uh pandemic you know better the people now and probably it was also the same thing with bang so-called um during a war during the crisis during your strike during uh something difficult for everyone you know deeply the people after that or during that when life is easy in fact you don't know the people you you know people can be superficial or just um the outside of the people but in the crisis you know inside great well thank you for that and there are a couple of things that you alluded to especially in terms of the the fragility uh of the artist in the audience and some of the themes that i'm going to want to circle back to uh but you opened and you talked uh in the beginning about uh about the kind of the divisions within the society and how people were uh were responding in different ways so that feels like a good segue to go to the united states and to uh to boston so david uh how about how about things sir around everson college sadly um uh the the segue is appropriate in the sense that we struggled with how to respond it's not that we didn't know the answers it's that we struggled to figure out what was the right answer and so we find ourselves still quite compromised in this moment but our um moment of reflection and pivot happened in back in march march 13th i remember the day and we had heard news earlier that things were happening but on march 13th we had to send our entire team home to start working in a new normal um this was a time of incredible anxiety and unrest not only we were trying to keep and maintain the sanctity of the organization and the mission of the organization but we were also very mindful of the impact on our team the impact on our artist and the impact on our audience and so because our orientation as an organization is around civic transformation around being a an uh a useful tool for the city to transform itself we had always had a focus on the people being sort of people centered and so in this pivot we went home and the truth is we thought we would be back in like two weeks so we literally just left everything in the office and in fact we have we st patrick's days in march i think we still have st patrick's day decorations in the office right now um so we literally left thinking that we would be coming back in two weeks and realize that this is going to be taking very much uh much longer time so after we got over the initial shock we started to think about how we needed to pivot and so we as a team engaged um a recovery model which is basically five phases and this gave us a framework because in this moment it was easy to focus on all that we were losing and we were losing a lot we were losing revenue we were losing audience we were losing hope but we did not lose our spirit and so we thought we could actually look at this moment as a time of incredible tragedy which it was and we could also look for the gift in this challenge and we started to think about the triage how do we immediately safeguard our people and our um institution but also while looking at the future so we thought about it like as a hospital like triage which also think about the health and wholeness of the body and the future so we were trying to do the triage but we're also at the same time thinking about a new future we knew that we didn't want to go back to the good old days because in our country the good old days were not good for everybody and so we wanted to make sure that we were moving into this new normal leaving the dead bodies leaving the things on the other side but bringing all that's fresh and new and really reimagining how we can be engaged differently with our community how we can really elevate the artists as gatekeepers of truth words by Paul Robeson keep them at the center of this sort of moment so we actually were in the midst of a show we had to cancel the show we had two more shows in the season we decided as an organization to continue to pay those artists even though we had to cancel a show that was very important to us we know that artists are not necessarily considered essential workers but in our minds they are quite essential and we wanted to make sure that as much as we could that we could support their efforts and then quickly we thought about this recovery model which i'll go through quickly which is basically five phases it's first to clarify the situation that was our triage moment it's then to talk about mitigating so what are the immediate things that we need to do to make sure that people are safe to make sure that our artists are secure to make sure that we can keep things moving and then redeploy is the third phase of that recovery model what are the resources that we've been pointing in one direction that need to quickly shift to in a different direction that's both financial resources but it's also human resources how do we pivot our staff to actually be thinking about a new way of delivering the work that we do then the fourth phase is to reinvent the actual recovery model says that the fourth phase is recover and then the fifth is reinvent and we inverted those because we wanted to reinvent our future before we recovered to it so we thought about okay what is this new normal and how do we navigate and like everyone else pivoting to the digital platform we can talk about more about that and then our hope is that we will be able to recover not necessarily bringing all that we had in the past but recover into this new normal and so our team has really been focused and thank goodness for sound organizational culture that's been able to help us connect and stay connected to each other in these vulnerable moments we are still not able to convene and in fact we as an organization have decided that we won't try to return to live experience until the fall of 2020 and even then we are unclear how quickly people will want to come back into the theater we're also clear that not everyone will come back at the same tempo and so we hope to maintain our digital platform because even though we are planning for live experience at the same time we're planning as a companion but also as a you know a seventh venue for us to maintain that digital presence so that we're having basically two conversations that are going on with our audiences so that's sort of where we are in the moment and it's very unclear we know that the pandemic and that it will be darker days before they become brighter in spite of the fact that the vaccine is coming and so we hold on to hope and we keep moving forward as we deal with these incredible times yeah it's interesting so much of what you say resonates with my experience at the art center at NYU where especially the redeploying we made a very similar decision to commit to an entirely online fall and what we found is the roles of everybody within the organization actually play out differently as you go from an in-person event to an online event what does front of house mean what is the role of an usher what does your production staff do when there's no lighting how do you redeploy the lighting team who within the tech who within the technical production might have marketing experience so I have different different work I think hits different people within the organization in very different ways the other thing that that you mentioned that really resonated was about when you when you led with the fact that you paid out the artists whose shows were canceled and I think that was one of those things that I noticed right away as soon as the COVID pandemic became clear the severity became clear and venue started closing days started the utter vulnerability of the artist community became crystal crystal clear and how precarious people's existences were and not just artists but everybody who makes their living managers agents technicians you know the front of house staff all of them were were caught up in that vulnerability so it leads me to the next question which is about as you're doing the triage and as you're looking at the different strategies there are so many different stakeholders that a performing arts organization is trying to account for so your artist community is one your audiences are one your institution both the parent institution and all of the people that you work with every day as well as your funders and all of your whether it's government partners or donors or so on and so I'm curious building on David on what you said maybe from manual how did you balance all of those different stakeholders and are there other are there other stakeholders that you were really considering in your action plan as you responded very very important question because I think if you compare Boston and Paris the situation the understanding of the situation is very different we always wait for from our government to how to act and we don't look enough for our own responsibility of acting ourselves depending of the general rule but in that situation we were waiting for rules during weeks so in fact we had no choice we have to react immediately we more or less we had to change and to switch as you explained David exactly to to support the artist to save this and this and to keep some resources and to send this and this so in two weeks it was we were ready and we were so surprised to be ready but on the other side we also realized that to have online activities was very important to keep a link between communities but it was very very difficult to to find something human in this new technology because you mentioned institution audience artists they were not used to be together through technology more human more artistic link human link physical link so we had to learn something different a new process and still being human and not being too too efficient and with a lack of humanity um that was something very difficult and still I'm looking for a better situation because I feel that for example my team is somewhere but we came back to our own lives without feeling now how is the global goal spirit experience it's difficult for us to to be together in the same time really together um because you separate so many things when you answer when you write when you talk okay you can talk other some meetings but then you lose the people and you lose the flavor of the collective group when you're in the same place audience artist or team of an institution of course you you feel so much you communicate without words you see there's body language everywhere you have a kind of a breath a common breath this common breath was invisible I don't know if it disappears or not I don't know I still don't know and I also feel many of my colleagues they lost convictions they didn't trust in what they were believing in before and that's a big a huge responsibility to try to find this common spirit back I like it David when you talk about the new normal interesting question the the the the last normal doesn't inspire anyone and we also realize as we we are still dreaming of something more intense more equal more appealing to something not better but different and change but what we want to change not what we are asked to change but to take the responsibility of the change the yes to assume a choice and that's that's I feel something very important for the artist even for the audience now they want to choose because during the crisis you don't know you don't follow the the global rhythm the global energy the global process you are more face to face to your personality identity choice and then uh you have a real part of the process perhaps more than before because we are during the crisis and then um I felt that before the the process the yes the process was stronger and the people perhaps weaker now it's the opposite I think that the conversation about the new normal some people have been talking about returning to normal while other people especially during the during the height of the summer certainly in the US when the Black Lives the Black Lives Matter movement was really was really expanding and expanding globally there was also a lot of calls of saying no return to normal is exactly wrong because that normal was broken and so now there is there is this reinvention of finding new ways and and navigating and identifying where those where those failures were within the systems I think because Taiwan has recovered more quickly and is is into kind of you were talking earlier one pin about the multiple modes in which you're working where you are gathering audiences in person together at full capacity you're still doing online work and as you're at sort of a different phase from the other two panelists I'm curious how you're thinking about which projects belong in what in what context are there different intentions that you have as you're programming now in kind of in the wake of covid how is that affecting your artistic choices as well as the sort of the strategies of how you present something and how you how you speak to your audience that that is different from what you did previously yes certainly even though that's in Taiwan is with fortune that we can do performances as usual but still so the foreign artists are not so free to come here because we keep this 14 days quarantine policy and and it makes our arts markets not so funny because because the arts markets you need some new elements so you you cannot always see the local local groups local programs you you you always want to see what's what's what's different from from abroad but but in now so we are forced to to face this situation so and and we are we are also glad so that we are encouraged and not not only by our safe but also from our supporter what i mean is so our government the ministry of culture so now we we would like to reinvent so how the local groups they can grow up so to grow up grow into this new normal because so we we cannot still live in the old good old days so what's what they always do the traditional opera so what how they always do so now we have to so we are we are forced to to think and to to invent something new and probably with technology and but also from from the spirit so how how we can so how how we evaluate now the word and so where can we put ourselves in in the new world but as a conductor i i still have to say so so i miss the so when i think thought think back friend in march until june so i i was also giving a concert without audience i i miss the the this is not only about the connection between musician for or in my case musician and the conductor but also we want to feel the the breath from the audience i think these all together make us so and make our old life beautiful but i still think so even in a new normal probably in two or three years so finally we will well we still have to to to take take back these old good things but in the same time so we we also so we also open an opportunity to to to find or to search a new possibility and to embrace something new for example the the use of the technology especially now in taiwan so the so the government is pushing very very very hard to to to install the 5g environment and and i believe that so we can do something with this 5g technology to to make that all this a r a r v r stuff so more human i hope and and so so this is what i feel great and and i think that really speaks to you know the magic the thing that we're all missing as people have committed our lives to creating events that bring audience audiences and artists together in a shared space at a shared time and that exchange of breath which is what we live on and it's actually where the risk actually literally lies right now and in a piece like bansakal which really draws from the idea of a requirement or a collective ritual and the importance of that to art as we're looking at substitutes and online and ar and vr alternatives are their strategies and i'll put this out to any of you that you've employed to somehow replicate or create a new version of community a new sense of the presence of the artist and the presence of the audience in a shared space and in a collective experience are there some some things that you've done that that you say yes this is actually a key to how new work might be created in the future going on that you want that you want to pursue even further i'll say that i'll start bill i i will say that we are very much experimenting with all kinds of new forms one of the important activities of our organization is it's supporting artists through residencies and we've done that mostly through our physical spaces we have several spaces and we invite artists to come into those spaces to actually develop you know rehearse do whatever they need to do and in this new moment we didn't want to give that up because we but we went to the artist to say what is it that you need in this moment and some artists as you might imagine quickly said okay these are the tools i need many said i need more time some are still thinking about how they plan to operate in this in this kind of new digital space but we have found some successes and an opportunity to connect artists to communities in ways that we hadn't actually explored it's not that zoom and skype didn't exist pre-pandemic we just weren't thinking about it in this way and for example we hosted a fundraising event where we invited probably 15 artists from around the world who were delighted to be in community with our artists they came to the event online and then we broke them out into small groups at tables with the various staff members as well as artists i'm sorry as well as our audience and they were able to engage in a rich dialogue or what's what there's challenge with what gives them hope and the artists were able to speak with the audience about what they were looking for so there was this wonderful exchange i can't say that a project developed out of that but certainly there's something about that human connection and i would echo what wenpen said about there's something quite powerful about the power of awe and the experience of vulnerability in that moment and how we're opened in that vulnerability to connecting across difference and so part of what we're challenged by and have an opportunity with all the wonderful technology is not how do we look at the tools that we have but what are the tools that we haven't developed yet in our sort of technology world that we as an arts community are on the forefront of we are part of that ideation phase and not the you know recipient of it after it's developed how do we think about technology that don't exist that allow us that human connection even across the digital and i would say that it is not our intent to say we're completely going to digital because again as humans it is our instinct to be in community to connect with each other and that's part of the beauty of what we do is the gathering and the convening and so we certainly want to return to that aspect of it but when we return there we don't want it to look the same in our country and so many of our venues the audience is homogenous and you don't get that brilliant you don't get that exchange that we are so desperately in need of but we're trying to figure out by following the artists instincts around what are the tools that are going to be needed to actually create that kind of connection create that opportunity to develop new work and push the boundaries and ask new sets of new sets of questions and so for the other two panels from Edo and 1pn are there some tools or strategies to use the tools that you've employed that have been successful in trying to transform that experience for your for your audiences so and so it's successful as our so our situation in COVID-19 in Taiwan but I do I do find out something so that's the artists and the art group so so now they are they really they recognize that so some some essential element of what they are doing so because I feel that before COVID-19 so they used to to stay in the room and so we want to compose we want to create new things and and and they are not always thinking about the audience so which means who the people who are who will be seeing their work so they they they usually don't care but through this COVID-19 so I do find out that so now they really care and they want to they want to make steps to to the to to the people to to it to the audience now so as a center for the arts so we supported artists as a lot of artists and especially in a COVID-19 so we supported as a more than 50 50 groups as of artists and now we saw everyone they want to go to the people so not like before before there was a I want I want this I need a room and I need this financial support and I need this uh technical support and we want to we want to create a great job great work but now no so now they they ask for for him can you support me to let me find out more a new new new new audience I want to be close to to the people to the community and so and we are very happy because we have so so many programs with with community and now so they are so they are willing to do to do everything with us so for connecting the community and and I think this is great and and I really hope that the artists they also learn from from from this COVID-19 experience that so so to know what's what's what the essential of arts performing arts and to share yeah and Emanuel what what have you what have you done to tap into that sort of essential that essential role of the performing arts and what's what's actually important essential I don't know but in fact as we lost many concerts we felt so ashamed by this situation that we it was a kind of necessity to create something new for the new normal life and if I take one or two examples we saved in March and we postponed the a new competition for conductors for women conductors for friends it was very important because we don't have that tradition of affirmative action or this kind of to support equality so much because we believe in the quality of the republic which is more or less achieved but we feel it's enough but in fact the classical field suffers a lot and especially composers and conductors are very unequal so we decided to work as we have no concerts more on that community how many female conductors exist how do they work how do they learn how do they talk and I think it was very very fascinating what we knew from that experience because during five or six months we were we devoted a lot of our time to this new project it was the first edition of that competition but also I created also an academy we also created a network a kind of alliance between Romania the US in Dallas or in Baltimore with marinels up and you know usually I don't have that time and so much time to really go deeper in the subject and to try to help so much so it's a kind of example of I hope a piece of the new normal future we can have because especially we don't want to come back to the situation before which is so unequal and its technology also helps us to be more international because usually when we work on these communities and these challenges we are too European or too national but not enough international and global and it's so easy and it's so quick now to do this kind of meeting like today even to work quickly like this and I I feel guilty because I didn't do that before enough because I thought it was so important to come myself and to spend time and to socialize and to know better each other of course it is but in the same time we are less efficient perhaps and less powerful if we work so much from the physical reality sometimes you can be more efficient and direct with the new technology as we do today probably can you imagine if we would have imagined to come to I don't know the all of us to Taiwan or to Paris or to New York wow you wait and you wait and you it's a huge investment and so on so I think it's it's not bad to try something different and to go deeper in our beliefs yeah I think that that's something I've been thinking about a lot the fact that here we are in Abu Dhabi and in Taiwan and in Paris and in Boston and in Cambodia and in New York and we're all having this conversation that we could have easily had through this very same platform a year ago but we wouldn't have done that and I was in I was actually in Melbourne at Asia Topa at the end of February this year and it was just as COVID was emerging there but also all the Australians were talking about all of the fires and their country's been burning and the environmental impact of the kind of work we do and the fact that the discoveries that we're making right now under the most tragic of circumstances are actually offering us opportunities to deal with the fact of the environmental the environmental impact of this kind of transnational work the limitations of borders and migration and visa issues and lots of different obstacles and so there are things that we're gaining we've lost an enormous amount the most important being the incredible numbers of human lives that have been lost to the disease and that's something that we need to hold to the center but also how can we transform how can we be resilient how can we take this moment and hold on to what we learn and what we can grow from and what we can turn into something else and I think that this conversation and this festival has been a good example of that I think Bancicle and the work of Cambodia Living Arts continually speaks to how how trauma can be transformed into art of really profound moving depth and so I want to thank you all for sharing your thoughts I wish we had more time but thank you all for being here with us thank you to Chen Wenpin thank you to David House thank you to Emmanuel Andre and I want to now turn you over to the producer of Bancicle again Rachel Chanoff of the Office for Performing Arts and Film and thank you all for joining me Thank you Bill and thank you to our brilliant panelists who are all such forces in our cultural landscape global cultural landscape so thrilling to hear you all think this through together so and just to echo what Bill just said it's so crucial to find the opportunity in the crisis and what will all take forward I know we've all been talking always so much about access access and usually we're talking about price when we talk about access or do people feel comfortable in our esteemed venues as access but this has been as everybody has evidenced a real moment of instead of bringing people to the art bringing art to the people and I know that's the kind of access that will take with us when this crisis has abated so very interesting thinking thank you all our next event is you'll hear and see new works that were made specifically for this festival and then we'll have a discussion with the next generation of artists so please you know stay tuned for the grand finale of the festival and you can also go to Bancicle.CambodingLivingArts.org to view this panel and everything that's happened at the festival all the panels and you'll also find information about Arts Healing 2020 Challenge and we invite you to join that so thanks again and we'll see you hopefully at more of the festival