 Don't be shy back there. I'll be back. I'll be back. I'll be back. See you in a minute. OK. I'm going to sit back. I'm going to sit back. Ladies and gentlemen, now I'm going to go ahead and welcome you. It's my great pleasure, and I need to be sort of shy and pass this round with it. Yeah. I'm going to put me in here. This is called the Safe Conversation Series. It started last year and then we were actually, it's been kind of the highlight for me when I think about this conference. And what it is, it's an opportunity for us to invite two leaders in our field to get together and talk a bit about their work to each other, find out more about each other and ask each other questions here with all of us. And so it's my great pleasure to welcome Anne Pataniel, Lincoln Center Theater's drama term and director of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab. Welcome, Anne. As we talked about today at the Agena, the former president of LMDA as well, so welcome back. And also how around director and editor, Paulie Carl, is here to speak with Anne. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Paulie Carl. They're going to chat for a little bit and ask each other a few questions and then at some point I'll come up and we'll facilitate a Q&A with the audience to explore some of the things they talked about a little bit more. So then I'll hand the mic over to Paulie. Paulie, take it away. Anne is saying, you can talk away over the time that you're now. Thank you. We'll have a conversation with what we're going to play back now. We'll have a conversation with what we're going to play back now. We'll have a conversation with what we're going to play back now. So Anne, you've got a question. So I, you have this great video where you denistify John Churchill. And I'm wondering if we still need denistifying of the task that was offered or for, you know, do you want to reenact that video? So on this one, it's on the YouTube video, 27 minutes. Yes, it is. There's other denistification of John Churchill. Paulie and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about this conversation. I do think I've heard myself on the phone listening to John Churchill. It's not true. She let it. But I personally see this field go through a number of transformations. Perhaps that video was helpful a couple of years ago, so no one had any idea what it is. And we've gone through, I think, a matter of periods where John Churchill had been university. Well, we looked at it and we were interested about them, too, with the real entry in the phase. It almost astonishes me how many training programs there are. I mean, when I started in the field, no one had ever heard of it. So it's been this one group of a number of things. I mean, I think that there's no overstressing the basic importance of rehearsal work in John Churchill and overseeing a script office that has congenges, that is caring, that is prompt, and that is respectful. Every play that's ever written is like, you know, cut from the flesh of the author to the road. It's taken years to write and it needs to be treated with that kind of respect. And when I hear about authors who have different experiences with theater, I take it personally. But I think there's nothing to... I think there's nothing to do that well. And there's nothing to question. I think it's mind-blowing. I'll just keep asking you questions with your hand into the microphone. So, you know, I feel like the role of the drama because in my time as a writer, because I was watching it on the phone, it's really, you know, because it's a shift, you know, in ways, and that there's a kind of balance that seems like to me between the work in the room and the work outside the room with the audience and the conversations. And I just wonder how you see that in the role in terms of that. But where is the emphasis now in your work from Churchill? I don't know whether it's in my first job. I think, like I say, you always love the songs you loved in high school, and you always had to say to Eric that you had a high school. You know, you are formed in some regards by your first experiences of whatever those were. And my first job in the theater was, I was an assistant at Hastings, who was the Associate Artistic Director of the ACT in San Francisco under the great bill of law during the days of the best days of ACT, which was a high art theater which stood on the shoulders of theaters before it, like the ADA, back in Europe. You know, very conscious, very, this past, very high art. And I, too, am very conscious of the shoulders that I am standing on. And the very result I really focus a lot on, you know, your theater is an apprentice craft. It's like burglary. You learn, you used to learn by watching other people, you know, you're standing, you're holding a spear, you're watching how other actors do this, you're making use of your, you go back and see how other actors did it. It's something in the 18th century that just wants information, practical information. One of the things I love the most about the theater is that we are a microcosm of our society. I get an amazing, let's say a theory review of John Boyer, we asked the head of teacher's college to do a piece for us, but it was actually a race. And it's the only two places in the college that are not really segregated. You know, there are people with different tables and all of a sudden the only two sections of that are sports and theater. And that's true socially, as well. I mean, I work, and I know that so well, you know, there are people backstage, you've never been to college, there's seats, there's dressers, there's actors, there's directors, there's ushers, I mean, we are a whole microcosm of the world in a social way that I think is unusual. And not only do we say hello to each other, we get to work together. We like to work together. It's really cool. But this tradition, and that's in many cases, and this tradition about standing on the past and going back to the past is one that I really learned that I used to teach us, like the haircut, you know, that kind of was my first impression. And, you know, I think it's important to go back to, I just had a very exhausting and really depressing, or perhaps in a good way, eye-opening week, because I just got back from Washington. I went to the State Department, and the role of theaters, you know, art galleries, the role that we are playing in our culture has been really shifting rapidly. I mean, the first thing that I discovered, and I spent a lot of time in Washington, there's a lot of you did, you know, all of your timers did, on panels and lobbying, through NAA problems, et cetera. The Nancy Hanks scope, you know, the old post office scope, Nancy Hanks was a woman who looked like Lady Bird, you know, she taught, you know, Nixon, Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, and came to an up-end of the creating, you know, two-part, and she went after the creation of NAA, came to an up-end of that budget. The highest budget of the NAA ever was under Reagan. Thank her. She'd go along the hill, she'd, you know, take over the senators and the committee representatives and talk about the arts, et cetera. And thanks to her, you know, we have this support in our country. They named the renovating this building, they named it after her NAA center, that condo. The Romney platform had a section which called for the elimination of the National Endowment for Arts and Humanities. There's a small motion on floor of the House that passed. I look forward to the winner of all the money for Arts Institute. It did not go through the Senate. If it goes through the Senate, remember, it's going to go through and the bulk agencies will be closed. And the U.S. IA was down, you know, merged in the state of seven years ago, so it's been literally zeroed out financially. And our big artists, there used to be senators who supported us who would go along the hill. We gave a list of the Art Senators and there's one senator who passed away who was a friend of the senator who the artists go on. There's been no leadership from the NAA. We are just considered to be rich elitists who, you know, there's no reason that any money should be given to the arts. At the same time, the very reduced NAA would be the office of the same office that produces gross national products with the office of budget and statistics would be the office of budget management and the the art did not be part of this country throw off 3.7 3.7 trillion dollars into the American economy more than all sports come on. And this is not New York Bay's versus, you know, this is like around the country, so it's a huge factor in our economy. And yet it has no support politically. It was like somebody slapped me across the Bay to see where we were. And I realized, I don't know why you didn't attend the 13 years, you know, the work of all regional, you know, the regional theaters and your senators and your representatives with theater, and you would know them and they'd speak for you. So I'm still praying with the Bay and it's not praying for us and we are considered, you know, I guess like old and sacks bankers or something to a part of the problem which I don't think is here. I mean, I wonder, you know, it gives to me like one of the things that is is changing, you know, again the way I see it is taking with people and acting with age that art itself was primary and I wonder now if the art can still be the only reason it used to be that somebody curated and there were going to be people who come and it mattered because somebody curated and it was supposed to matter in ways of own estate. And now it seems like there is so much more emphasis on conversation and that's where I, you know, I might kind of step a little, for example, the drama surgical work was sometimes but also sometimes really just about the conversation and a kind of responsibility to be involved in a formal civic engagement that is, I think, really alive in the field in a way that I find really exciting and I guess I just wonder if you see that happening in the center and again, how that's informed, you know, the people you work with. There's a seminar on quality access. It was sort of something that came out of the discussion on the listservant and began to sort of about to do it, so I'm really fascinated by it but it's really a really thing and we're about to do this sort of collectively about the relationship between the state and the house and the secrecy and looking up again at the other work your audience and what's on stage you just connect so strongly that you're just like, wow, this is like the most incredible thing that I've ever seen and it's just amazing and that can happen the first that can be the first time I saw a performance and it's happened to me it's happened to musicals it can happen whatever but it's a magical thing it's what sort of brings us into the theater and I've always felt that that was the strength of our theater of the RR going back to the Greeks somehow people have come it speaks to something it's always connected there's no medium some actor from I was like they're all these statistics about everyone's watching these TV shows or these movies but what they're not telling you is that they're sound asleep on the couch while the shows are playing or going for good things in the microwave it's on but what's there to engage them with whereas in the theater when you're playing it's an actor and you know it's engaging or it's not engaging so it's really apple and oranges in some of the games and I had a friend who had my job at the economy process which gets 99% of the savings of budget sizes in the theater it gets 99% of the operating budget it's a single check in the country on January 1st Lincoln Center gets less than one tenth of 1% of its budget all state, federal and city sources are combined so I was like apples are more interesting in terms of money and he was in town and this was quite a while but we'd be suburbia by the way and he was completely flabbergasted he said my god you have a civil disturbance and 18 months later you've spent in the state play an unbelievable production and you've got the Algerian war and no one's ever written a play about it about three years ago there's something of theater that when you find it that seamenism when you've been created that has kept us alive for five thousand years and the theaters with subsidies and huge subsidies you don't have to worry about that well now they have to worry about it more than they did without a subsidy so you have to find an audience you have to actually the kind of theater that you're making with our wearing of theater or your audiences that is our talent that is what we do and that's what's kept this art form controlled by a much smaller especially now group of collectors and journalists and theaters and audiences as you all know are wonderful people they can be taken place that they have to take it they can also go from low places if you take them there you should get a business you know but it's hard it's a challenge and I think it's partially where we are I've been in the director's lab I've been meeting a lot of people who are from small towns small cities in the country so many of these theaters are starting in Las Cruces in Mexico in Missouri in the town of Missouri in Appalachia people are really creative theaters that have to actually talk to the people in these cities and especially for young people that's the tape of the arena whatever was created by an audience who loved the theater and went to the theater they just kept living they're still alive and every year they would add a little contribution to their subscription rule but thinking around to see what is the equivalent among the millennia generation that's that's the interesting question and it's not a generation without money it's so many years of generation without money that I think they're not to negotiate that what can I ask myself I mean I feel like I feel like all of our roles in theater has changed substantially I think we're all asking ourselves about how we ensure the relevance for our art form and I think that's truly any art form I mean how does it matter why it's relevant and I think particularly when it comes to the requirement of asking people to come together oftentimes to meet the comfort of their favorite HBO series and come together in the community for a shared experience that's not a given that people that they necessarily want to do it it's also not a given that they're going to make the theater their destination I think all are in a conversation about you know audiences getting older and not being their place with another generation and I think we're all thinking about how we're in a dialogue about the relevance for our art form and so I feel like that challenge has awakened us as a community in a way that I feel really excited about I feel like there are conversations and activities happening in every single part of this country that is directly around the question of civic engagement and how the theater creates conversation and invites the audience to sit in a conference which is one way to do it but actually to lead that conversation and in fact you know here in Boston in my arts emergency work which is our presenting producing farm I just just had a conversation and just left that conversation of creating a whole neighborhood group that is tasked with leading the dialogue around ours shows next season and they're telling us how that will happen versus us telling them and I think there's something about the curatorial role in conversation as changes and I feel like the dramaturgical world is really critical in being a part of that exchange and so for me I feel alive and excited about feeling that possibility in a way that I feel like our work is just starting I mean I feel I'm 18 years into the business or something and 18 years in I'm like oh I see I see the future in a way that I haven't maybe seen in 5 or 10 years ago so that's really exciting to me basic elements of the drama of the job I mean our job is to nurture and bring into introducing theaters of small and large playwrights directors primarily playwrights and it's those playwrights who will be doing who will be speaking so it's not only having discussions once the play is about it's creating a repertoire and something that's been on my polygons of home you know I came to New York and started working in the theater at a time when there was a very strong cohort writers Charles Fuller Samuel Williams, Leslie Lee and there was a whole series of cars with little people getting to see how big writers you met at this E-brand all this Wilson came along and what we've seen is that there's a huge black lives in this country that we just saw raising the sun which was the fastest we could be shown in New York this year and I troll I like to do it of thinking of an African-American male writer who's been professionally produced and made things live and straight and mine is because I'm thinking of audiences, I'm thinking of audiences 20 years down the road just like when I worked at a job I worked with some women and others we had a two and a half week run and we had a shooter organization came and said we'll be moving but there's simply no audience for a show like this and there's no audience for a play about women at that time and while they've been proven wrong on one hand there's still very few plays on the other so you have quite a short time to move forward that you see on a larger scale figuring out what to do about that I think the wider, looking out creating things that reaching out to writers there's a hole in our leadership in our community and I feel like it's a hole that the drama-threatening community is sort of right to build I feel like there's a way that question of parody that question of inclusivity I feel like the drama-threatening leading that conversation with their audience, with their community, with their theater for a really long time and I was so heartened by you guys talk about this all weekend I was so heartened by the intervention of the Kilroy which is an intervention that comes right out of the relationship between drama-threatening writers and what that intervention meant if you know there's a lot of other writers outside and I see most of them outside in the intervention and because it took a hole and there was an ability for a group of writers and writers to provide a leadership that the field has changed in such a way and that the opportunity to have impacts has changed so significantly particularly with the ease that technology makes that happen and people can jump into leadership and have a voice and a single intervention which to my mind as I interviewed the group last week it cost under $200 is changing the conversation we're having about plays single-handedly now to me all I think about with that intervention is there has to be a hundred more like that that we could do between now and next LNDA conference that could change the conversation another because we have such a long, long way to go that it's even a thing we needed that we needed an intervention on the list of writers in 2014 is something a person can not get over but we did so there you have it that means we have such a long way to go and I feel like to me and again when I work in particularly when I work here that look is happening very particularly in being led by a number of you that sort of might follow you on Twitter, I follow you on Facebook you're writing for Holla Round you're meeting that conversation and I feel like I've always wondered why there hasn't been more room for drama books to be in top leadership positions in this country because I feel like facilitating dialogue is really going to be the most important skill set for what is 2014 and beyond I feel like that's actually figuring out how to take the chaos and make meaning of it and I feel like in a weird way that's what the Kill Royce did they just did a bunch of chaos and they made some meaning and it might not be the meaning that you agree with it might not be the people that are on your list but then they said they really opened the door for others to make other kinds of meaning and the challenge was to take that space grab it wrong with it and the list got me that intervention got me excited in that kind of way Amen I think your point is very now because as time has changed I was talking to somebody who was justifiably complaining about the fact that leaders of theaters are switched out every five years and in this country leaders of theaters stay on for decades and there's a very simple reason for that and the person we were talking to said if we came here to do that job would you have the same relationship with the people who are giving you that one million in here on your board or would they just walk away from you with the cultivation and the such to keep buildings open it's almost seven years out of the job at this point and England they don't have to do any of that it's all still lessons still provided by the government but I think what that does is it allows other people to come up with fabulously interesting ideas in England like the shed in the national or I can't remember what theater it just changed Ricky Featherstone runs what the World Court okay so the World Court she was asked to program her first season and she decided correctly all was a bad idea to announce what she was doing because he'll be the attack correctly I'm wrong she just turned the theater over for six months to 40 playwrights and they of course filled it and I think they used old tickets without even announcing what they were doing so you buy a ticket to Monday night and you go see something and there will be something there you can go a whole different way or you could be buying this ticket to this playwright just to be going to buy into the new work place I'm thinking also politically I thought I said before reaching out to people in the community that you know bringing them to the theater I mean somebody needs to do that and that's been done in the past but as things evolve and certain people on staff are doing more and more and more and more work there's a lot of void to be stepped into and it's a void that needs dialogue it's a void that needs knowledge of you know of your community of what's going on of what people want to what people's minds are about what was on their mind I mean one of our little quotes in the book of Bob Dylan who was originally in his career singing Pete Sieber's song and somebody said sing your own song kid and when you sing your own song you hear that song but you know figuring that out and finding out and be sure it's powerful and that's what we do there are certain re-events that have happened in the last few weeks and there are all three things that I wanted to talk with Ann about you know as the discussions were going on I thought I wish I was in New York I would know I would have to explain this to me more and they all had to do with broadcasts you know from Ann this large discussion we began with who people think we are and what people think we're doing and why people hate us or the people that hate us why do people like hate us hate us it began with the Tony awards where we had plugged in person when it comes to Broadway it just started but I think my last few weeks began with the Tony awards and the next day I needed to talk with people who could explain to me what the fuck just happened what was that who was supposed to explain that who was it designed for where were we all that kind of discussion a week later a discussion broke open people may or may not have heard about this but event opera which does these international opera broadcasts on open live made a decision not to broadcast an opera that's being staged by John Adams and I had worked on that first production and the Met decided for its own purposes that it's not the way that opera did not represent what it wanted to broadcast through the world with its name on it and its own purposes were to face well which may or may not have to do with that but it may have to do with unitops or whatever that's also more a major labor decision but it was a big discussion about what we could do on stage but in a way we can't do with public what we can do inside our theater and what goes out of the theater and that some things are okay inside the theater but we wouldn't want people outside the theater to think that's who we are the third experience was a couple nights ago I went to I was very excited to see the Lincoln Center was starting to do cinema broadcasts and so I went to at least the first one that was anywhere where I was which was The Nest and I sat in a theater a movie theater with six other white-air gay men and I thought this is why they hate us this is what they think New York theater is that's who was there no it wasn't there but if any of those people in Washington had walked in it would completely affirm what they think we're doing right it's high-brow theater for gay people and I had to wonder what was Lincoln Center theater thinking was that its first cinema broadcast no this whole cinema thing is new because of the union situation it's just been changed a lot of broadcasts I saw that on television not in the theater but it came back to the Tony discussion of who people in America think we all know and also there's so many interesting things I went to the the old school of drama pre-drama preview critical we had a political criticism the idea was that you would run by appreciate the time for 12 years and his idea was that you train drama critics alongside playwrights and actors and if you look at the people from all the other programs during that decade or more and actors and the state theater executives, state managers signers it's incredible and not one person who graduated from that program ever found a job that's great yeah that's great I mean that's how close that profession is and just to get back to the Nance the critical other than Linda I mean there's so many I'm not thinking about John Law was retired the critical fraternity here is a fraternity and it's a gay fraternity and they love the Nance but maybe it's not a law fraternity where she put in a television where she put in a movie theater broadcast that's very interesting I didn't know that I didn't know that where did you see it in New York? no I saw it in the suburbs of Boston it feels like the conversation is spilling out so I'm up here to help facilitate yeah John I'm just going to start with every type of person and start community but what happens in DC it's not about the same thing like Vancouver or Berlin or Georgia and our community includes those folks who are in New York and I wonder if you could ask the person help I wonder if people in DC what if we should all of it this is a very important problem is your question why are we not only all talking about representatives or what we can learn from our internet like what we might learn from our international colleagues no actually I think it's more of a really interesting fact it's not actually it's just that I have a memory of our province and Vancouver and speak on behalf of my Canadian brothers we don't have a dissimilar problem our government is a conservative government run by Mandy Stephen Harper who in the last election made a comment about us being about the arts being a bunch of rich people to go to a bunch of gallows which I've really resonated with me when you were talking about that because I was like oh yeah we heard that up north so we don't have a dissimilar issue we have a different funding structure and that kind of thing a much different funding structure but are we to constantly be advocating for the larger impact that we have or can have I think it's very present and I don't know if anyone else from Canada wants to speak to that or or whatever they want to do and in the UK do you want to speak to that a little or just say hi hi I'm from Belfast I'm from here but I work there it's very similar it's very there's a lot of public funding but I say a lot it's like the smallest part of the budget you can quintuple this budget in terms of pounds no one would notice that amount so they would be like oh that's teeny tiny but what they do instead is they recently about four years ago they cut about 24% of the arts budget and now they're about to cut it again by 12% which is making sweet FAA difference in the fiscal situation but it's decimating the realistic availability of funds for that Germany and Italy too Italy as well? and Germany rough all over I just want to add that I think the question of the privilege of the arts in the sense that the arts are for the few is a problem to the degree that we brought upon ourselves and I think I think we're at a point I would say we have to I think we are owning it I feel like that is what the conversation is beginning to be about if you think that I'm going to speak very specifically about my expertise which is the American context so others can speak of the international context but in the American context we have created a theater based on exclusivity we've created a theater based on subscription models specific benefits for membership inside this club that club has in a sense one that I'm sure for multiple reasons I don't want to be the expert on exactly why that club has looked in a particular way it's been from a particular socio-economic class and I think we have to own the reality of that I think it wasn't made with bad intentions in fact I think it was made with many good intentions but it drew a class and it created a sense of exclusion and we are now I think in a period of reality around that we are doing things and are responsible for addressing that history and I think one can argue that in a strange way it's always hard to pinpoint when a thing like that happens I think the regional theater started with those intentions in mind and I think in fact it started with cultural movement but at some point it was not cultural a lot of people like to point to that that moment being the 1980s and Reaganomics and if you read Michael Sandel's book about what money can't buy he will also pinpoint that period where we began to make everything we commercialized everything we put our price tag on everything now whether that's true or not I think we're all dealing with whether it's the reality of that notion of exclusivity and again I don't think there was ever real intention in that but I think we're now at a point where we have to be very intentional about this question of exclusivity and the reason we've been dismissed very much as an art form has to do with that sense that we are serving with you and not the men and butters want to be serving the men I'm children is great I think that's the irony is that there's that 3.7 trillion dollar figure is that and all of you who work in theaters know that all of us are doing outreach in every possible way we can to young audiences who are working here with young people it's best we can in our education perfect nobody's sitting in their theaters thinking oh we just want people to come to our theater maybe we want people to sit on our board directly but no one who's working in any theater can know of things like this and I think that's the irony is that in a time when I actually had a little napkin that I wrote this video on and I can believe it I think there are 1,700 theaters in this country with an operating budget of 75,000 dollars or more so a small one out I mean we're everywhere we're in every part of the country and then somehow we are perceived as this one thing and I suspect thinking about this you know pointing this out to audiences that it also is tied into arts education I mean the the truest thing I heard in the last year was something I found said if there had been arts education in Colorado there would have been no column line in those days would have immediately taken in a photography class that you've learned about you know you won't swap me or the column line or totally not need to go to the basement and watch TV and go out and shoot something they realized they're just like everybody else with an artist you know but they were totally isolated because they knew nothing about art so I think it boils down to cutting those budgets I mean I don't think we are totally I think we are all working and successfully working and yet the perception isn't darn anything yeah I see there's lots of hats so there was Jules and Jane and Liz and Liana and Salisa and Heidi so we're going to start with Jules I think I was just going to say because I've been recently hearing about the term impact right and so thinking about counting the new beings and the notion of an impact as being something to try and connect and doing as a community and touching communities and all this kind of outreach but also then hearing from folks in the UK that impact is now something that's being used to evaluate and gather funding and so then impact is something that is sort of granting larger bodies that have I think a much more operational term of understanding of that as opposed to transformational I'm using that again to sort of say well you're not impactful enough and therefore impact is not drawn out to me it's not a conversation it becomes a commodity that then is sort of fed back into evaluation systems but I think really need drawn surgical intervention not that I want to learn another text to read in some sense but I think if we also leave our studies our surveys, our evaluations to other people and we're not actively constructing those questions about what are we measuring, how are we measuring measurements mean then we allow as you said before and that's conversation being defined for us instead of us defining it and that seems like an active it's one thing that we see people who are now curating sort of season announcements at the general parity level like collecting statistics and starting to see what the narratives are, what are the numbers what is the data and making those public and that part of a public conversation to tie back into how is the work being done, who's funding it who's coming to see it is all part of one big conversation and often times led by drama terms or people who are not in the artistic echelon but are at the work level right and really wanting to see how they can intervene in that particular which is a point of leadership that might not be at the top but it's certainly at a kind of critical level I just think that part of what I'm a little frustrated with in terms of going back to the notion of theaters physical theaters and I don't see that as the future the millennium generation my students are very interested in immersive theater and in site specific theater and I'd be a lot more interested in hearing about how drama should concern the more sort of site specific kind of trend that must be happening and I think that might be part of what we're missing here going back to history I mean to say now no theater has ever been created and I don't think any art forms have ever been created television, film, you know no theaters have been created by some you know existing power person choosing somebody it's always been created in the way it's never been created by a young person penetrating an existing organization it's always been created by people usually young who see the world in a similar way their friends, one of those director one of them is a creative playwright one of them is a writer, some of them is a designer maybe some of them are in the bar like they did but also at art theater you know you also see Shakespeare and LaVio that scene, there's some kind of scene several people went to college together and they start to make theater together and the new group the group for you know SF to act group and they come in and start presenting usually in a small venue that there are good things coming out of that so I see now you know I look now to what you were just saying young people coming out of school who are speaking in a way to their peers with material created by their friends that is attractive to their peers and frankly whether it happens in a big building or not, the reason that the big building was because a lot of people wanted to see the work so they go to big buildings to accommodate them but the more important question is what is the work I mean as I say to the directors over here, who are your roommates because everyone is sharing purpose and purpose with five people do they go to the theater and what are they doing why are they not that's that's what we are it seems to be right here it's not so much subscription versus membership that's a debate from 20 years ago it's singing a song that people want to sing you know to kind of to follow from that maybe to disagree a little to keep the conversation energized I I I'm feeling like what is the work is only one question now among other questions and I think that would change and so I think the work matters tremendously I think excellence in the work is always going to be a key part of what we do but I think why the question of why the work is a question of now and I think we're being asked that question in a way and I think we are being asked to justify our relatives and I actually feel comfortable with that question and I think that this issue of I think that now is civic dialogue and civic engagement and it's about a theater of of me and a theater of our communities again I'm just going back and forth between this other room of civic activists in Boston who have felt outside of the conversation in the theater the entire time the theater has been in Boston now that's not a whole I don't mean that in every way, shape, and form but there's a divide in this city that I can speak very specifically to of who has felt invited to the theater and who has felt uninvited to the theater and I feel like that and I think there's a lot of progressive addresses so don't and I don't think our time is going to be only there's a lot of really cool things that I know I'm talking about that honey can do is the great things happening there so there's a lot of work being done I think that's our work of now our work of now is that civic dialogue and that the work and the dialogue have to live side by side so I guess that's how I see it now Leanna and then Salisa and Heidi you want to stand up just so everybody can hear I had a clarifying question for Leanna is that theater specific? I believe it is all not for profit arts activities so museums offers you know I mean there is that it's all more people go to art visits and go to professional football so Lisa I think I think this conversation is really interesting and that we're not talking about aesthetics particularly populist aesthetics so what I say every time I'm in front of the Woodruff Arts Center board which is not a theater board but is an arts center board is I don't even say what I do I start out and I say who watches parenthood who watches parenthood in this room who I ever watched Glee who's watched Glee who watched House of Cards people from the playwriting program that the Alliance Theater Runs called the Candida National Playwriting Competition write for all these shows they were discovered because of our competition that's why we're important and seeing that's all I have to say you know I also think the American Theater has a lot of frozen to just get on a train and pass the spot okay I mean I'll have to figure out how to do that but I do think that there is a popular train filled with theater artists that theaters have trained and nurtured and watered and loved who are amazing and they're writing these amazing texts that are defining our generation you don't think if you have a kid under 10 you know frozen is only definitive if you have a kid under 10 but if you do have a kid under 10 there are maybe not but I do think where the populist art forms in America right now are in a golden age an incredible age and most of that technique is coming out of theater but I think that we as a larger theater community are sometimes allowing that wonderful wonderful art to pass this by without credit and now is a great time to own the work and own that you can't create some of these beautiful populist texts if you will without real skill and rigor and ability to listen and ability to understand the audience and that's coming out of our community but we're just letting it come out of the community and waiting goodbye. I guess I just like to ask a question about whether this question that the political elites think that theatrical elites don't deserve funding because they're elite or whether there is actually a recognition that theater is about public discourse and that actually I feel in Canada at least that Stephen Harper is very aware of how the arts stimulate public discourse and is intentionally squash in public discourse in an extremely dangerous way and I feel that there's a question because we have a lot of impact at the civic level and we have a lot of interesting conversations at the civic level and progress at that level what do you feel the responsibility is to acknowledge that actually there's Princeton studies about the fact that the United States is no longer a democracy I feel it's a similar analysis in Canada our voting participation levels are record lows and so if the theater is a process that teaches us how to collaborate and teaches us how to make decisions collectively what is our responsibility as theater artists to acknowledge the political situation that we're really in that lobbying actually may not be a very useful tactic when the powers that be at least in my country are completely aware of the power of theater and are completely committed to silencing it well I mean just all of a sudden money belongs you get that word but you know I mean I think the answer to the question is that all of us come from different parts of the country or from Canada and we have there are public figures who are mayors or representatives or city members in Congress they're just people have they ever been to your theater do you know them have you ever do you have any connection with them so that you can say that very eloquent thing that you just said and it's not just that you're just wearing some nice beading around but you know for more higher-paid professions but political diplomacy I mean the sending over of Alvin Ailey and I can't remember who else Alvin Davis has positions in the West Astro in the 1960s completely changed that content in terms of its governments, the governments that were elected, that's still the the American Center in Paris in the 70s which is the living theater and everyone from being red and popular you know where they're totally transformed the whole French you know the whole French cultural elite into rapid America it's nothing more powerful than cultural diplomacy but they don't think about that unless it's on their mind they're talking and they're all from in some place you know where you are and somehow that involvement do they come to your theater the only president who's ever been to the theater is and he's not been great on arts he's a mom he actually went he came to say Joe Turner is coming home that was a pretty scary night black president at play just after he's elected given the history of what happens in theater many many personalities have come to theaters but the Kennedy Center why that was great and he just took it in the dialogue a lot of people a lot of people lost elections because it was a lot of money because some people run a picture some people supported money to pay for this so it could be a very highly charged debate I was on people in Los Lobos because my mother's family was a cattle venture so I was sent to see the senator from Montana by another TV star who would also have cattle and this guy had won his election on the motto his campaign soldier was Montana the last best state and that had been a title of a collection of short stories by Montana writers which are of many good ones published and funded by the NGA and he was voting against the NGA the other thing I'm a sort of I'm not much of a top down person so I never start with the politicians when I think of political change in the field and so I tend to think more grass roots and I really think there's an opening for the democratization of theater that I personally feel wildly excited about and the best example of it I think happening in this country is a whole movement by Latino theater makers there's a group of Latino theater makers that's become quite large now creating a Latino theater common and I've watched that unfold how long has the privilege of being supportive of that movement but mostly by providing some tools for the community to use it their access and that community has self-organized it's used the resources that it had as a community it's had very few dollar resources as time has gone but very few dollars and mostly it's taken the resources that each member of the community has they've created a real movement they gathered here in Boston in October-November it's the largest gathering of Latino theater makers since 1986 they're in the process of starting an online journal they have a big festival coming up in October for a month in LA they have another festival coming up in DePaul and it's now with hundreds of people they have a really fascinating organizing structure they have a rotating steering committee it's unfolded over a period of a year and a half to two years and so I look at movements like that I've watched they're making the world they want to live in and I think that they've gone to Capitol Hill I mean, not again, not saying that's not valuable but I'm not sure I think they might not have more voice at Capitol Hill because what they've done is seen the way of their problem the difficulty, and I really feel this acutely and I know personally is that challenge in the theater between the eye of our physical careers and the community that we're trying to come and bring together and it's a real struggle only watching this group it was a lot of artists who have put in a lot of time have really struggled to find their individual voice and realizing that the possibility of finding their individual voice would come through the way of building their community is it's always a balance and attention but I feel like we actually have some really good examples of how to democratize even in a moment when the country looks as more democratic as in history I really should just take you a look at and talking to people that are part of that community and just two other things I mean, which again it seems like it's no longer it's part of our job to bring this onto consciousness which is that there is this same period and I'm just still I'm hard to understand you know, celebrity is worshiped like the second coming of Christ I mean, it's just weird and so we have that power I mean, there are people we train them, we work with them and then they even got onto you know, special victims unit or something, I really recognize but we know we have their units and so what we felt like you know, were coal miners you know, for some reason seems to value so that's one thing each period we have this in a lot of strengths that we just, people are studying the arts I mean, there's just an explosion of arts programs people are coming out I mean, when I started there were very mass programs, technologies they can't adjust but they're still going to those schools that's what we've been talking about we've been talking about having a role, a great side and yet it's not being advantageous we have time for a couple more questions Daniel and then, yeah I just want to ask a simple question do you both either do you think that the regional theater movement in the United States and Canada has run its course and if so, what as personally as a dramaturg do you think you'd like to see growth replace it? Mike's my goal is not to get into any trouble at all because of the conversation I feel that may happen now I mean, I think that it's a challenge of the regional theater movement it's a challenge of any movement and the challenge of the regional theater movement is that there are many resources that are there and that makes that important institutions in our ecosystem because they have access to things like space and expertise and a moderate that is important to us as a field and I feel like the real struggle for that movement is to figure out how to take how to unleash those resources for the benefit of more people and I think that's a huge responsibility I think there's tremendous in that responsibility in the movement and it's a balance and I think the conflict comes in trying to survive and also share time with the history and those are two instates that don't happen very easily and so the survival instinct of the regional theater movement the sense that and I certainly did in 2008 in the hardest way the sort of protecting of resources and the sharing of resources and I think that's the struggle for the regional theater movement what I think is important about that movement is it was one movement and it's one model and I think as someone mentioned there's a lot of other models and a lot of other ways of making and I personally am emboldened by the people that are dividing and starting companies and coming out of Chicago for a couple years there's a million young companies and again we're always bringing in people's interest to try and bring in something rather than to make the world that they want to live in and so I feel like the world of the regional theater now is still very important to this culture and it will prove whether it is meant to survive that time will decide and the leadership will decide but I think what's more important is what that movement does is that we need to repeat or get in the way of what other people need to do and then it's no longer that when the devil's determined our relatives as a field we will determine all of these artists that are coming out of these programs starting companies and making work and doing things I mean we just published this funding on how a lot of the two artists making work in a back of a truck with actual commanders and I think we spent too much time thinking about whether the regional theater is our data or not and I think our data is actually in the hands of all these kind of all the people in this room in the conversations that meet in general with our community about what's next for our field we were in a TED talk right now at a TED conference we would not be talking about this country and how communities in this country are working economically and why and what's on the surface doesn't there need to be a locus of universities research institutions cultural institutions and people so that people want to live in those places so you know I think just the economic future of our country involves the regional theater movement whether it's in the building or outside the building but once you've moved when it's in sale on your land then you know what do you do and that brings me back to this education subject now you went to college with these people who are making computers who are running businesses you know that it's not like you're coming in and it's not all of you it's not like you're completely foreign it's there's a lot to work with there and the city of Spitsburg is an example where you have the beginning of a locus of things people want to work there small theater stores that's how Seattle always started for each product it was a combination of business and orange and after business people want to do things and they want to do we're going to go here and then over to Mark I'm coming from Israel and I find many think it's the crisis you're describing in my country and your country and I think there's a fundamental thing which is nothing neither the money nor the the space nor the other things and this is the fact that theater reaches a stagnation the moment when it stops half itself why does this art form exist at all because when it becomes self-evident when it becomes something organized that has no justification to exist in the world which is covered by so many forms of media and if you look at all the the points in history where theater was invigorated where it started again it was when people asked themselves for instance in a group in America or in what makes it possible in Poland or post drama in Germany so when theater people asked for the help, who we do this who needs this and that's like young people don't know who they are they don't see the justification of the existence of this old fashioned stagnated form of art and as soon as somebody reinvents it, they'll all go it's so close conversation about 160 years ago let's see a total of democracy in America a huge total and he predicted a conversation he was talking about theater in America and he saw these very formative pieces that he was watching and he just said there's always going to be this schism between behind the wall and popular culture and he predicted this what was going to happen over this isn't the first time this has happened over and I remember vividly I came out of jail in 1980 my first job I was so lucky to work with this great great leader of the American theater Zelma Tishan I learned more about drama in Turkey and I asked her about the arena stage and why she's not doing new plays there it's a great white hole there Gengel Jones Jamie Alexander I said why aren't you doing new plays there anymore but now that's why we built the second stage the creature and they stopped actually after four or five years to do new plays there suddenly we're all there this bound head of the the birth of off Broadway in a way a problem is in a way we can't worry about it we've got to somehow just the other people coming out they've just got to make these other companies they've just got to do work history and great drama in the last 25 years there's been many ways about sometimes people just doing that or funders stepping forward and saying I'm in fundage and that's going to happen free drama happens that way it only happens occasionally but by God it happens sometimes it just happens the question becomes these people down there in DC what kind of we're sitting there and we're saying we've got to do something most of them really don't worry about a legacy a cultural legacy they really don't you want to look at those people those senators who represented this in Oregon and say you know you've got this astonishing thing there in the middle of Oregon that's produced all the way aren't you proud of that? go for it the NEA I mean this is a gem you've got Brian Frantz here two more questions and they'll be from Adam well I'm certainly proud of the work that we do in Art Theater in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and with our student body I would say that the most theatrically rich work that I've been involved with in her past year has been the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina where I got myself arrested last July woohoo it's because that is a movement that has come out of an absolute need and I think that goes back to what Gad was saying and a number of the topics that have been brought up in today's conversation I feel a little shy speaking out because I feel like I'm one of the young people in the room but speaking to myself as a young person and as a theatre maker and who knows a lot of young people who aren't in theatre in terms of the outreach, like outreach is great but when I go to the theatre often what I'm looking for is an experience that's what I'm looking for when I go to the movies that's what I'm looking for when I go to a concert and I feel like very often if I go to the theatre for example where I'm based in Toronto if I go to the theatre like Canadian Stage one of the large regionals I often don't feel like I've had an experience like 30 or 10 o'clock and things so like I go home now and I just want to put that out there because we haven't talked a great deal about aesthetic and I think that's actually a good thing for a conversation like this to leave that out of it but as someone who wants to go and have a really awesome time at the theatre and leave feeling totally energised I feel like I don't often have that experience and so I just wanted to put that out to everyone Sarah you just said and I feel like it's sort of an important part but I think if that's a bad experience I think you can do a thing for me and I love working with you Black and I'm glad you talked with us I'm deeply invested in having a culture and I think there's a lot of minuses with exciting writing happening and being a platform that I rely on about the way in which digital media allows for us to have a media that we can the question is like why do we have to do it? and that's exactly what some people are talking about you're right, some people feel that and if you feel that's what you should do and if you want to make a chorus line make a chorus line the great musical of all times people just couldn't get enough of that or comes to be Tokyo which is a very difficult 12 hour piece and you've got to be good you shouldn't go out of your theatre in before you know feel like that's your jobs are to make it compelling whatever it is that you can develop that it's just some outstanding piece of work that you're all loving and they all have the same goal to involve the audience and the level of conversation the excitement that this in conversation has the conversation between the two of you was fascinating and exciting and clearly energized this room towards conversation and the nice thing I think we're going to wrap up the formal part of it but the nice thing is we have another half an hour where we have another session in this room and I would love for that informal conversation to continue but I would like to thank everyone here for being here and thank you to HowlRoundTV for making this conversation accessible to people outside of this room as well especially as I would like to thank Ann Catanio and Paulie Carle for inspiring me and I believe that our wonderful