 It's really funny because, uh, yeah, it happens right now, yeah, you have to do it one more time. It's really funny because, uh, it happens right now, yeah, you have to do it one more time. Hey, how are you guys? Uh, Abby is just, um, you're all here. So, um, I've been in school for quite a while, and I've learned how to do this, but I've been teaching, so, uh, it can be a little bit brighter than mine, but, uh, yeah, I know how to do it for the last time. That's our thing now. Okay, so, um, are we on? Okay, so, uh, welcome to the New Place Symposium. Uh, it is, uh, forum versus content is your mama. And, uh, I'm very, very pleased to invite you. We are live streaming this on New Play TV, so I would like to, um, say hello to our hashtag universe. Um, if you Twitter or tweet, uh, you can log on, I mean, to the, uh, use the hashtag New Play TV and hashtag VAPF. And we're going to keep the house lights, uh, uh, I don't know if they went down, but if they did, uh, we can read them up a little bit. Um, uh, because, uh, there will be a conversation going on online as well as in this room. Uh, if there are questions, um, Kevin, are you going to field questions on New Play TV a year? Which one? Kevin. Yeah, yeah. Great, I'll throw them out. Um, so my name is Amy Neuler and I'm the artistic director of the Playwrights Foundation, and I feel a little funny standing in front of everybody, so I'm going to come over to here. Um, and, um, so, uh, we decided to do, uh, to do this topic, or because of a part and part because of the work that's on this year's Bay Area Playwrights Festival. And, um, by that I mean the work that each of the plays, we're doing six places this year, and it's not atypical of the diversity of work, certainly, but it's quite marked this year that each of the plays really follows a very specific, formal aesthetic. Um, each one has, the way, the ways in which the aesthetic, the form and the content speak to each other, inform each other, and deliver each other in theatrically speaking, um, is really keen and very specific. And so, thinking about what we'd like to talk about this year, it seems like a really, uh, great, uh, conversation to have. And I think that this conversation doesn't, it isn't had very often. And I think it's, as far as I'm concerned from, uh, the artistic director position of the Play Development Center, really is the topic, uh, for the 21st century, for a new generation of theatre makers. And so we're really, really interested in, um, the kinds of theatre that's being written, the form in which it takes, and the forms that are, the ways in which theatre is being articulated, and also the values that are being broken open, and the way we think about theatre, the way we think about the play, the way we think about, uh, the way in which we're delivering either a message, or a feeling, or a, kind of, a vocation of contemporary, or contemporary zeitgeist, for a lot of a better term, uh, that we're expanding about a lot during the course of the festival. Um, on a personal note, um, I come from, many, many people don't actually know this about me, but my early, uh, experience as a theatre person, theatre maker, performer, was in the dance. I danced for almost 20 years. Um, I was a modern dancer, and if you know much about choreography and some modern dance, it is a completely different kind of language, a completely different kind of vocabulary, um, that, uh, expresses theatrical ideas in, in very, very specific ways. And the form, the formal aspects of dance are completely, usually, completely overshadowed the content. And it may be not overshadowed by the right word, but deliver the content, and the delivery system is a completely different kind of vocabulary than language. And I've always been really interested in how, uh, language can, and, and choreography or language and theatrical form are, are wedded, and I have a very particular personal interest in that. And so when you come on in, I'm Tosha. It's nice to see you're informal here. Um, uh, so I, that's, uh, my own personal, particular interest in this, in the subject matter, and the panel that we put together today, um, I think it's going to unpack some of those, those specific ideas. Um, so, um, we have our, our facilitator, moderator, and fellow playwright, Lauren Gooderson. Uh, many, many of you know Lauren. She is, uh, playwright. Uh, she is a blogger. She is a Twitter, a Twitterer. She, um, she's been called ubiquitous. And her work is studying. And she's also, she's, she's a resident playwright at Clarritt's Foundation. She's an alumni of Clarritt's, has a lot of, uh, programs. And she also, um, she also is a teacher in the Play Institute. And when I thought about, uh, somebody to moderate this panel, she came to mind because she teaches a class called Play Mac. And, uh, she, I think she's been talking a little bit about what that means to her, uh, and carry forward from there. So we've got... Yeah, hi everybody. Thanks for being here, for being here, and for being somewhere in the world online watching this. Um, I was really excited when Amy asked me to do this. Um, hardly to hear what all of you are doing and talking. So I'm not going to not talk that much, um, so that we can really collide these versions and definitions that I think are very, um, distinct to each play, not, uh, uh, to mention each playwright and each project and each collaboration. Um, but what I, I, I love about this conversation is that form and content, obviously, you can't really separate them. You can talk distinctly about them, but I think as soon as you move content a certain way or move them a certain way, it tugs at the other. So in, in a play is, um, in and of itself, it's not just a story. By being on stage, it has adopted the form, um, of the medium that we're, we're involved in. So actors on stage is different than all the other forms of storytelling because of that. Um, so I think even the simplest, most realistic, if that's the simplest person on the play, um, has an inherent form that is reflected and, um, helps, uh, digest the content and, and then produce it as well. So I'm really delighted to, to kind of figure out how human content are wed if they are, how they are fighting if they are, how they, um, to co-build and co-birth the stories that we love. Being a little sciency and math-minded, as Amy mentioned, um, I'm fascinated partly because it seems, I just read an article this morning talking about neuroscience and storytelling. And there's been a lot of discussion about this in the last couple of decades as neuroscience has gotten better. But one of the things they talked about is that a story, um, the human brain developed in a certain way, um, that makes story what it is. Um, we didn't invent it out of, you know, the, the air. It's because of the way we think, we interpret, we learn, we speak, um, we communicate. That story exists at all. That we want a story to start somewhere about something and some or someone develop to a point where that person wants something, see if they get it and what happens when they do or don't. That's kind of what most story is. That's what a lot of journalism is about. That's what, um, how you say when you did it school today or what a recipe is. You know, all of these forms reflect kind of that simple, almost biological, very much biological, neurological pattern that we expect. And so how that affects this form and content discussion. Um, and, uh, as I was talking with Laura, um, who's a fabulous dramaturg and a professor, uh, about this, that structure isn't the same thing as form, or is it? Um, and, of course, that, and structure is that, is that more content than form. Um, so I think all of this is, is going to be really great. Uh, we'll, um, lately, as I said, I wasn't going to talk in here and talk to you, Timon. Um, so the introductions are going to be brief so that we can, we can get to talking. Um, we have, um, with us, Abby Bash, who's a fabulous playwright and a director and her company that are spread out. So I'll let you all introduce yourself. Do you want to add these, uh, add these down there? Um, JC Lee is a fabulous playwright who is from the Bay Area. Just graduated from Juilliard. His plays are marvelous, hysterical, um, really smart. He's also a political writer in his blogging world, too. So keep in touch with him, uh, and, you know, the real world. Which is always nice to check in with every now and then, Peter. Um, we have Laura, who's a dramaturg, I mentioned Professor Mark Jackson, who's a, I didn't even know, I mean, your director and playwright and just general creator because, uh, probably don't need to introduce him here. His reputation is, is, um, deep and wide and wonderful. Um, and more of the, uh, Abby's group here. Uh, so if, let's start with introducing our, uh, the ensemble so we know who we're all talking to. And then out with Dylan. Sorry, we've sort of overtaken this stage. It's great. It's great. Um, so, uh, I'm Abby Bash. I'm a Bay Area director. And also, we love it. It's, uh, being actress, uh, a Golden Tantra, and a director in her own right. She, uh, she has come in to get us directed, and directed with me on this production. So she's a missing artist for us here. We're very lucky to have her. Caroline is our production manager and, uh, thrown to her at large. Uh, Paula is our resume composer. And down there, we have Molly Sheikin, one of our actors, and Stephanie Heedler, another actor, and one of our actors, of course, and maybe it's missing, which is why there are not chairs for me. Yeah. And maybe we'll kind of be a, a panelist as well, because there's, there's an interesting worker. So what I'd love to, to throw out, and we're just going to be chatting. Um, so we'll try to, ironically, be not super-formed, you know, so we'll be formists. Um, but the question that I want to start with is, um, just to put it out there, do you think about form and content as you're creating? And if you do how, and if you don't, when do you, if, if you ever do? Right. Just basically are, as created, in the process of creation, do you think about these things? Do you think about what would be other? Do you think about which one first, et cetera? And I think because we have a great, diversity of panelists and directors and actors and parameters, that whatever, uh, I'm just going to, Jay, I'm going to leave Jay to start. Um, sure. I, I tend not to think about it. I'm just, I think that my relationship to, I mean form, when I hear the word form, I tend to think of narrative. And to me, narrative is the means by which we derive meaning from the world. I think that narrative is sort of the natural relationship and it's the way we structure everything that we digest from journalism to politics to science. I think we are always seeking out a narrative. And so, um, the narrative for me is always sort of inherent in the work. I'm always sort of figuring out, well, what is the story I'm telling? And then I think depending on the story, an aesthetic emerges. So certain stories demand, uh, one's, like certain stories might want a very realistic aesthetic. And then I think some stories want a more abstract aesthetic. Um, but to me, the narrative is the thing that, that provides meaning. I think without the narrative, you don't have meaning for, for, for a wide audience. Yeah. We have this wonderful picture of, uh, like from Abby's play, um, Arctic Hysteria, which is on the front page in the day. Would you talk a little bit? Sure. I'll sit over there and perform. Uh, sure. Um, I think when I started writing a play, uh, the first thing that comes to me are images. Um, very strong images that I don't understand and need to figure out. And from that, when I start figuring out what I want to question or what I can't figure out, then, um, I think about how the structure of a container is. What's in Lord Clark's hall of the container and the content and very offensive style essays. Um, then I start, you know, how do I want to express this? What do I want to, how do I want to tell this? So, for Arctic Hysteria, and also for my work with kindergarten, which because we're such a collaborative unit, I usually will create, um, a structure for a script, and then we explore it. I did last summer, I wrote a play actually in Denmark. Um, I watched the actors, they experimented stuff, and I read the room, just tons of it to space. There are almost no stage directions in my script because the actors are in the stage directions. Um, and the composer, um, and, um, so, so yeah. Um, so that, so my first step is thinking about the image and then I, um, about the structure. Because each of the structures, where I play, it's kind of just a bit different. So, um, yeah. Um, hey, yeah. Not sure what to jump in with. I mean, because in a way, it seems like we're talking about, uh, form and content. We're just talking about theater in general. I never thought of doing it separately. I mean, it's, the problem seems odd that we didn't have to ask a good question. You know, because, I don't know how. If you go to the theater and there's nothing there, there's no form to see, you're not going to be able to understand what content is. So, um, it is something I, I think about, to think intuitively, like you were saying, and, um, um, that it starts from, what is the subject matter of the piece and what's going to capture that best and sometimes that means it needs to be advanced. And because that's going to be the most articulate way to express it, and sometimes when people need to talk, but to each other, because that's going to be the most articulate way. Um, to be quite generally. Um, for me, I mean, I don't know what you've been talking to as a writer, but I come from a slightly different perspective because I work as a dramaturg and as a director. And, um, for me, I do think about it all the time because I feel like whether you're a dramaturg or a director in a play, you have to be in an intimate conversation about what is the dramaturgy of that play. And so you have to be thinking about the form between the content and also that other element of structure. Right? Because, um, for me, the form is, like, just kind of another code word for the style. You know, we do realism, we do hip-hop theater, we do this, that, and the other. Um, but then there's that other question of the structure of the play. And I think that that's something that I think is an important conversation to have whether you're working with a playwright as a dramaturg, or whether you are looking at a play with or without the playwright in the room as a director in terms of understanding the architecture of a play. Um, and I think that's incredibly important today in the 21st century as we're getting all of this media and the way that people take it, information is really different. And with your grounding in science, you talk a lot about, and you think a lot about the way the human brain takes in information. And what we're starting to find out is that all of this media that we have is changing the way that we take information in it. It's changing the way it's changing our brain history. It's changing the way our brains are wired. And so this question of structure, I think, and form are really important. And so for me, when you're, since you mentioned you're on one of your Susan Lloyd parks, when you're looking at a Susan Lloyd park's play, you have to really look into what she calls her whole of history. And, and she, I think, is a good for emerging playwrights who have questions about how structure play, or what is the form of her play. She's a good person to look to, because you can look into her whole of history. And right there is where all of her form, content, and structure are mirrored. So you can look into her whole of history. And you can see sitting there, virtual, wrapped sometimes. And you can see Samuel Beckett sitting there. And you can see Amiri Baraka and Amin Sakashenge. And then you can also see, in terms of, of content, the big ideas, the big figures, inside of there. And I think being able to break it down and understand it on that level so that you can get to a successful production means dealing with all of that and figuring out how those elements talk to each other in production. That makes sense at all. I mean, understanding Susan Morey Parks's where she fits in, sort of, as an African-American artist and the homage that she plays to, to, West African call response to, but also to some of the experiments from Black Arts within the sixties and seventies that we can very draw up in and Sakashenge. And I think that's really important if you're going to do the play well to understand how she marries that with some very rectangle sort of alienation techniques. And I think when I see productions over the world that are successful, it's been because they have directors and dramaturgs getting in. And when I see productions that don't work so well, it seems like they haven't really understood how that all comes together. Because, yeah, I think that I agree with that and I think that it's true because form gives content meaning. I think without, without form, without a specificity of structure, content has no meaning. It's sort of like, you know, I think what, you know, and when you look back like the last century of work, you know, there was sort of a push to test the boundaries of narrative structure and say, what can we do? How can we break this structure down? And I think actually what it taught us was that you can break it down but to successfully tell a story there has to be an awareness of it and that the form is going to give the content meaning. If you content without form, it doesn't have any sort of expressive value for my money. It has to be within a structure, a narrative structure when we're in, we can sort of observe it and say, oh, this is the story being told and that is, that's the way in which I'm going to run. I do think at a certain point sometimes that it's the breaking of form that suddenly becomes content because when when the play happens to the hero, heroine, main character and there is a formalistic grip that they're doing or the architecture is making a lot of points whether it's dreamlike, whether it's musical, whether it's, I don't know if they have direct address ability, they can have access to the audience when they can. It's when those things change and break immediately that it suddenly becomes emotional for people watching and invested in that feature and I think that's one of those kind of fault lines that's really interesting and I've actually seen some of your thoughts about all of your work but especially now because I am finding out that there are these physicalized moments that felt even though they were doing something that had an intellectual it hit me intellectually it was when it was broken and the form was shared or the physicality was shared on stage that it became an emotional thing and it became suddenly that something because we do we're not only just telling stories but we're trying to hit that party it doesn't have that heart and emotion it can be gymnastics for theater you know it can be very lovely or shocking or very midi but it's when that form can inform the form can inform the content I need the reason you're telling it like what's happening to this person who is this person why do they want it so much that very you're doing some productions more too if you're doing others so I'm I'm kind of very interested in keeping us in order to figure out what is the intellectual exercise of it and the intellectual bravery of doing something formally and then where it lands and maybe some of the actors and performers can talk about that as it landing emotionally the actor of the place I was going to ask actually if anyone in the company actors yeah and ask me because we've worked together since 2005 so four productions together and each piece changes and the way we work changes of each piece and work on so I was curious to hear from you know the actors you know how that how you approach the form different each time because of the contentions or if you had that experience if that question makes sense I think in our relation like in this play we're doing right now it seems to me almost like our form there's a story there's a content there I mean there's a kind of sort of loose structure behind it but when you put our form which in this play we've laid over or laid over you know ice dancing game show sort of moments all kinds of forms that you may not recognize as a spectator and it fractures our content in such a way that you can build it back up for yourself as an audience and that is I think where emotional content comes from that's and I think that it really has been what you said about how we process information now in this age where it's so tailored to you everything you want is right there and you can like I said very very small verticals that's why our play especially this one for me seems very suggestible and exciting because you can make whatever you want out of it and there's still some content because it's made out of some of these small particles yeah because I think you have a theory and then you fracture it and use different forms and it's chronologically there's linkage that happens just because you're watching something and then you're watching this thing and if that kind of hyperlinks yeah in fact that's part of what that article I remember an article of right now it's what spindles off of it that the way the web works that's it it's a totally different kind of theory I think it also affects the way and we've been talking mostly about new plays right now but I also think it affects the way in which we increase the classics because I came to sort of theater a lot of people start out the classics and then go to new plays I sort of started out a new play development at the Magic Theater and at the end of and then moved on and started doing dramaturgy on the classics over at Hellshakes and you know I can honestly say as an audience member that when I go to quote unquote the well-made play from the 19th century nowadays there is nothing I want to see less then talk talk talk talk talk talk talk the stage goes black people in black screw around and change the set and the lights go back up and we just pretend that didn't happen because my brain has been rewired by all the media so that when that happens I want to go like this and change the channel or I want to go time check the email you know and so I think it affects even the way that we produce how can we produce these great works but they don't feel like museum pieces so they don't feel like this is the year that's good for you because you need to know the classics how can we do that thing that our Toe talked about about not making it a museum piece but really making it a piece of our living culture today to reflect the community that we live in because that's what makes that stuff great right I mean we did plays in Shakespeare's plays and I hate to inform this to most of the Oxfordians that it was a performance but if we did plays exactly the way Shakespeare did in his time it would be a very peculiar experience and I think a lot of people would just be you know it's this idea what yeah really but I think it would also be this very debilitating experience for an audience where I think a lot of people would just or if we could go back and do plays just as they were done by your companies I think I would frankly be at first five or ten minutes intrigued by the differentness and then a little war maybe and so how I was always bothered by this notion of authenticity can you find an authentic Shakespeare it's like they weren't that interested in that in Shakespeare's time so why should we be kind of strange about it now so I think that this this conversation about form and content and how to reach in a temporary audience is something that you need to have not only with me but with the classics as well I think that's that's a conversation about time in my opinion I think what the social media sort of explosion that everybody's like let's tweet in the theater now it's like I really think this is actually a conversation about time and it's our relationship to time right because I think we live in an age where we have so many options on how we we could theoretically spend our time I can spend an hour a night on Facebook I can spend an hour a night on Twitter I can spend an hour a night watching television I can go to the theater I can go watch a sports game I have so many options available to me and I think that when you retreat back in history people had less options like in London when Shakespeare was there he was telling me I guess we'll go to the theater because that's like the only thing we can afford to do and he had to be scared me yeah and get mixed in public executions public executions yeah public executions or animal the execution children and I think that the real question when I'm sitting down right on play now I instinctively feel like wow I don't want an intermission in this play because I know that for myself when I go to the theater intermission hits and I'm like alright I'm going to go on Facebook now and literally I disengage from the dramatic event immediately and I think that this question about form and content and our relationship to classics and how it's played out now is really a question about our attention spans and our time and that's not to say like oh it's awful nowadays we can do when I used to walk two miles in the snow and be able to walk and play I don't think we've done that I just think we have a different relationship now and so the question is just how do we negotiate that relationship and how does structure communicate with that and we do know from the scientific studies we've been done that people really particularly people can't purchase for that for people anymore I mean in Shakespeare's day people would go to church all day long whether they went to or not because it's a lot of you know and they would talk all day long and you used to listen to hours and hours of long rhetorical arguments and taking in that information and memorizing it we just don't do that anymore we don't learn that way and so kind of being aware of our audiences and how they take information and how they respond to it and it's so important that we're having this conversation about how plays are what would add to that I mean maybe an argument with a little bit is that I feel like we tell ourselves that a lot and we're told that a lot and kids especially are told you have too short a kitchen and that way they'll buy more shit from people but in actuality you know if you interest the kids they'll be interested for as many hours as you keep them interested I think it's an idea that is true perhaps because we buy into it a lot and we promote it and allow it to happen but I sat next or I sat next to a kid he was probably 14 and with his hamlets it was about three and a half hours and in the end he was so mad he booed the actor playing the hamlet and he didn't like it and I thought wow he didn't have any trouble sitting through that thing and he didn't even like it that apparently you know it's not in this country I don't imagine seeing a teenager like that around here but maybe because they're not getting an opportunity to do it or they're the attention span that we all have which is our lifespan is not encouraged you know the mere idea that's well I should if there's no intermission in it then if it's feeding the story then that's great but the idea too and you hear people talking these terms make sure it's 90 minutes and there's no intermission or people won't pay attention if we encourage them to think that way they'll do it but if we say here's that seven hour play and they'll change their the way they think about it but assuming it's good you know both the 90 minutes and the seven hour play there's actually an interesting quote that Jonathan Cowell wrote recently called Great Lengths I think and it's about theater experiences I forget that I think he said if it's up to three hours people get very upset once you pass four and a half hours they relax totally and they go into and they're like I'm gonna leave here for seven hours okay then they have no problem but they go well it's two and a half hours and there's an intermission they go you know just because they're conditioned that there's something about sighting for yourself you're going to commit to a certain amount of time that you you become miraculously patient regardless of what you will tell us well I agree with that state I mean I think I don't think what I meant to say was it's a question of ADHD and I think it's a question of autonomy right like we just I think it's just that we have so many more options that we that we could theoretically do that I think our relationship to time is just different right I think because I've sat through a four and a half hour of time there and it was probably the greatest day I've experienced in my life you know what I mean and I was in a room full of lots of different diverse people and they all felt the same way so it's it's simply a question of well how does that change the relationship to time that we have how does that affect the way in which we tell stories I think is is active just a large part not necessarily we can only tell stories in X number of minutes but how does it how does the fact that people have other options affect the way in which we tell stories I think that might go back to that content question like the content is so rich so beautiful or so true or so in you know raffle or something intensive but I think people will have a reaction to it whether it's seven hours or nine minutes that you can hold it in your heart you can it's that thing that you're gonna be thinking about months from now you know so I think that keeps the it's not just let's keep breaking form and break it it's we well you can break it but as long as that emotional truth or as long as that depth intellectual depth or the figure and the start and exciting you know I think content is an easy thing to kind of to twist whereas you know form is an interesting thing to twist and an easier one to kind of break off and attach here the legs up here you know whatever and kind of go okay let's see but they're still so awesome whereas content is I think that rich thing that we kind of know it and you go oh this is a play it's funny but I didn't really like the characters or something like that you know I didn't feel real to me or I didn't feel like a matter a love story you know all of those things seem to be more content more like do we care about these people are you fighting for something big or is it so funny that you're fighting for something so ridiculous you know that you love it and it's a more nebulous kind of non-scientific space of do you like it do you believe it I do think that people can help with this problem that I was talking about where a lot of it is I mean we do know that our brains are being rewired by some of the stuff but a lot of it is culture and I think one thing that theater companies and educators can do is to help particularly younger generation with some of these skills when I teach in the classroom one of the things that I make them do and they hate it that knowledge you have to write and express yourself in something other than a sound write or a tweet but I also and then when you have done that I ask the class okay so what was that about and what's really interesting is that it is true there is an inability to sort of listen and think through things and just on that basic level you know it's a skill that it is a skill that it has to be worked on about you know buying me something to do for a prior ten minutes and then say okay what just happened what's really surprising is to find out and that's interesting for me to think about as a theater artist what we're talking about very important content about what other things can help support that storytelling besides what you were saying just in the mirror and in which ways we can get that out there oh yeah I wanted to sort of jump on this whole bandwagon of a sort of media internet-raining wire and think about the factor the factor is the liveness looking after is that and I actually when you're saying content is essentially what we connect to our form teaches us I believe how to perceive that content and that form and using that form to break the concept that people perceive on every day that they you know just have ways of their fingertips finding ways to have silence in performance finding ways to have engagement between humans that is live tangible not only my problem we have a wide human interaction being in the center of what we do otherwise we don't really know you know so I think that to that liveness and finding ways to surprise people with form for me personally as an artist that is why I am interested here I'm interested in breaking people recognize this classic form so that plays off and start with the conventional moving around like the way we're doing now something unexpected and ask the audience to really enjoy it and laugh like you guys are heroes when I am too and I am with you and I feel live this play right now we're jangers in Australia it's all about temporary badges and it came from reading about Eskimo's going insane at the most dark and desperate times for 24 hours we can tie down to a slide and remember nothing and I felt like I wanted to do that too I think everyone in our company who has done this play is that we go insane during the play we have art of hysteria which is a period of an hour and 15 minutes and the audience goes with us and the audience gets angry and so there's a release in that and so the construct the form of it and how it's told invites people to experience something anyway but but I wanted to sort of talk about the liveness the liveness of the essence of this and what we do is just about the culture but it's about challenging people to break that and connect to each other I'm curious but I was wondering if we could have some of the period of people who collaborate to the play about how that sort of affects their process how do you guys perceive and not only here but how do you perceive when you're working with colleagues in theater and performance how do you perceive forms as forming because you're not working with writing things you know you're receiving your script I think it's a really interesting opportunity and it's important because I think we do have a physical figure but even not what is the idea of a physical physical figure or a traditional script we want to call it form provides a perfect opportunity to provide whatever is going on in the script to provide a perfect audience I think through the performer because giving form to what is written allows whatever is going on for me as a performer doesn't have to necessarily match what's going on for the audience but it provides the form provides a meeting place for that to happen and those two kind of consciousness areas can collide and perhaps create a meeting hopefully and it gives the audience a chance to create a script Could you give a concrete example a concrete example a specific you I have so any so for example I don't have a script and there is any kind of amount of text and there's written in any form based on the playwright and what I've seen in the script and what I've created is an actor where my impulse is created in any form to that whatever that is with my voice and my body and gestures and anything that I I can create and shape to find I can direct the presentation and so what I'm experiencing on stage with my performers isn't necessarily what you as an audience member are experiencing by seeing me on stage and I think this provides a really unique opportunity for the liveness of the form I'm creating a form out of something that's on a page technically for you to see be seeing this and have an experience with me having an experience together but the experience I'm having maybe would be very different of course but it provides an opportunity to have this shared experience and hopefully we'll have some community kind of I get it does that make sense oh yeah it makes sense before you say but what I'm asking for is a show that is really now a hit and to isolate a moment this is here for me I write conventional scripts so I'm really looking at and I'm having a particular process I'm just wondering if you can isolate a particular moment where you are creating this and and maybe very different from what I could see but yeah that's the question well it's it's personal quite honestly I think I think because our impulses are our personal our personal feelings but I when I'm when I'm reading a script and whatever my personal impulses grade this thing that is shaped ultimately by the director it comes from personal personal experiences or personal my personal response does not be emotional necessarily it could be physical or whatever so I can think of many opportunities in the script that happens constantly but I I choose to keep those to myself but I'd be very interested to see you know I know it's always interesting to talk to audience members sometimes all this time when you were doing this thing and I I was thinking of this and it's really interesting to see what connections people make so what I think I think what in some ways if I can reinterpret what you're saying slightly from perspective aside from the personal connection about the life I see you talking about specifically I mean that both of them I haven't seen the play but I know Abby's working so I'll talk to the audience actually which may perhaps the idea is that the play the play that she's written in particular has both been oh she has a clip alright so you guys see it you're so excited to be here and you're saying you're not well I'm sorry and you can share the very least of what you're gonna say okay um uh the idea that that the play presents in a particular form the content of the play is delivered by its form is what I was going to say and that and that the form I don't know what the word conventional means anymore because I think I don't believe in it. But what I do know is that it is a form that Abby has invented that allows for the content to be delivered to you and received by the audience. And that I'm really interested to see what that is and perhaps even define it. I think what I do as a director with the work that I do, and I do have an example, which the story itself is one thing and it can be delivered a lot of different ways. But as a director, I'm going to say this is the form. This is the formal, I don't know, structure is the right word. The structure means something different when you're talking about a play. But the structure of the performance can say that way. This is how I'm going to tell this story. And it could be defined, maybe it's defined as dance theater. Maybe it's defined as theater with music. Maybe it's defined as poetic, imagistic. Maybe that's how you define that form. Maybe the form of this play is imagistic. But within that, how does that inform how the story is told and what you get from it? Does that help? Yeah, can you see some of it? Yeah, sure. And I'll just say, I mean, the building on what you're saying, actually the structure of this play is written in a series of New Yorker stories. So every little scene is a little story. And then it comes together with this master story. I think because I'm very interested in the idea of story, you know, what is a story in a live performance? It's, you know, one once in a movie, another once in a novel or a book. There's a little video that's cut together. It's not a continuous, but maybe a different kind of moment that you can talk about. I don't know if it's too loud or not, so I'll just do a quote here. Fine, so let's share about the headphone output when we're back. What? We've tried on Mars, but it was fine. So I think I'm under a headphone output or a computer. Headphone output? Output. Output. You get the volume because of the time volume. The headphone output works. I just think it's a good question. While this is happening, Andy, this is a dress-up-your-question about express ethnicity. In terms of what an actor is doing versus what an audience member is perceiving and responding to. In working with one actor on a piece, there were two interpretations of what he could do. He had a relationship with another character, and it could have been, it was a gay relationship, and it could also have been that he was mad that his guy friend had this girl after him. And the circumstances of the show, we thought it would be interesting if it could be both at the same time. So I just asked him to choose one or the other to play it, and then if I could ever tell definitely what it was, like going up that chain something. So I never knew what he chose to play, but he was doing something specific, and that gave him something specific to do, but then also allowed for the audience to have multiple possibilities. Yeah, and I think, you know, I just read, I can't remember what I was reading, but I just read something. Oh, it was Patti Smith's book, and she was talking about how she couldn't be an actor because she felt like actors in some ways were martyrs to their cause. They sort of sacrificed their whole selves to the dramatic event. And what I think is interesting about that and also this conversation is the sort of contextual ambiguity that we get at the moment, you know? What's going on for an actor personally doesn't necessarily have to be the perception of what's going on for an actor in the audience. And I think that that gets to the core of this conversation but also a larger conversation about the nature of what art is. I think art is about negotiating loneliness in a lot of ways. You know, we're sort of trapped in our brains and the only way we have to express ourselves is through language and language is a really, really shitty way of expressing yourself. Words are very inadequate and I think that art is a great attempt to connect and these sort of moments, this whole conversation about form and content is really about that and it's about this moment that we were just discussing when an actor sort of has that collision of humanity moment on stage with the audience or with someone else on stage. I think that's when we start to get at that sort of, that beautiful comment that Lauren was talking about earlier. Can you just go film and cover kinds of media? Can you say that for a while? How do you feel that film and other kinds of media changes what you're saying? Well, some people just stick a film on stage and show that and that's one obvious way to do it. If there are other ways to ask questions and I hope I did this a lot and talk about this a lot. How do you do it plus a film stage or how do you do it plus a cast? Figuring out what is, you know, some way, the stage of film life without visually trying to do something that literally creates that effect was the theater version of it. But I'm saying incorporate on the stage. On the stage. Yeah, I'm talking about, you know, sort of going to, I'm thinking because I'm looking at this image, I'm thinking a little bit more about performance art and the influence of, you know, I sort of a warrior on performance art and theater and it seems to me that one way to really break the form is that you actually incorporate some kind of a two-dimensional media and I just wanted to give you guys a group dealt with that. It's interesting. I mean, I remember I saw the Wooster Roots Hamlet a few years ago which was a really interesting sort of, they had Richard Burton's Hamlet film which was pre-edited in various ways which I put on the back wall of the set and then the actors were sort of trying to match what was happening in the film as the film was playing. I mean, that's a simplification. But I really just think it was a conversation. I mean, they were trying to have a conversation about our relationship to the two-dimension versus the three-dimension. I don't know that there's any sort of definitive verdict. I would not want to think people would say, oh, it never works or it's guarded. I think it's interesting. It just depends on the relationship and the conversation that's trying to be had. And again, to go back to bringing this back to what we've been talking about it's a conversation about form. What's the context of the film and what is the conversation and what is the dramatic event that's trying to sort of be communicated through the use of the media? That have used film in part of life theater and I don't know if it's both a drama tour and a director and this is purely my own opinion. I think they work best with what you're doing is using the film clip to make a comment on the lack of blindness. I think it works best with what you're doing is using it to show kind of the special thing we have going on in theater that is the blindness. I think specifically about community morals when she had jokes and push-and-pop babes by Yusuf Elgendi which takes place in an agent's office and in the middle of the play is a guy doing a screen test when she's asked to sort of do this ethnic drag of a terrorist and he decides to open to the stereotype and try to prove a point and I talked to Yusuf and I said hey how would you feel about us actually having a guy who's auditioning for film in live and have the audience watch it online as the actor's doing it so they can see the difference and then we can focus on what it is that the camera is focusing on versus what we're seeing live and it made Yusuf like to love that idea and it made that scene so much funnier because we had the director doing things like this the actress thought she was doing a bit of a statement with the law law and Yusuf did it and yet the director is kind of putting in on parts of her body and showing the fragmentation of the female body in the media and so it was this sort of negotiation that was making a comment on that before that seemed to work it works best when you have the two forms in conversation with each other in that way that's just my perspective I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't want to sound I have a will-send to you, you know that's not everything I've got these discussions and also relationship folks in a symphony in a way but like if you set it up in a way that the director would be yes it's very exciting but like part of the mind is that I like about doing it like this is that we're so used to auto-tune we're so used to these interventions and ways that are different than what we are where it's like having something that's just about a presence that's kind of embracing some of the symphonicness of the tools that are available to us in a symphonic way but at the same time looking at the ways that close our body on stage in which getting behind that is really taking in some of this form of actually enacting something in form of a very spiritual form so musician what is part of the concept? I mean it's funny because like of course there's a lot of problems when we were talking about duration things like that the one performance that really comes up very clearly to me that is a nice embodiment of getting our own content because we can talk about forms and stuff but one of my favorite examples of form and duration is Eric Santini's Flexations which is literally the same pianist that we've been using before hundreds of times John Keecher organized the first performance of this in the 1960s and met people like and one of the and David Tudor's and one of the things that he did when he set this up in that first two minutes that you know about the piece you know what you're going to get from the rest of it and it's so different right than if you just put it on your iTunes and have it looped over 300 times like it's something about having just the differentiation in that but then also when they sound the performance of this you pay a certain amount to go into the theater and the performance takes 11 hours or so and then so at the the longer you stay the more money you get back when you enter the theater so they set it up so that people can sort of like lounge around and just sort of you know it's very very informal but then also there's some nice odd and away to say that this is kind of you know there's this agency of you being here that works for you and then did you want to talk about your sure but I kind of I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I