 This is the second lecture and in fact, it is a session titled in conversation with Richard Schechner. Let me first of all explain why I have placed this conversation in the second lecture of module 1, before starting the step by step discussion of ideas. It seemed right to place it in the beginning because of the key concerns of the course that have been articulated in this conversation. As perhaps you will slowly discover, the central urge in shaping this course is related to the search for the totality of our being. Very often, we become consumers of meaning rather than their creators. Through various critical and creative ideas, we would like to make a difference in this regard. As you listen to this conversation, you will notice that it revolves around reading, writing, performance in the context of the globalized world. In my view, this is a fitting start to the first module because it sets the tone for our own explorations. You may want to come back to this session after our discussion of many related issues in the other modules. The video course allows for this movement back and forth and we have taken advantage of it. My conversation with Richard Schechner has been recorded in New York University campus with help from Professor Satya Talwar, my husband and IIT colleague. Let me introduce you to Professor Schechner. Schechner is an eminent theatre director based in New York. He has been a noted presence as a professor of performance studies in Tisch School, New York University and he is widely seen as the founder of performance studies as an academic discipline. Through his untiring effort, he has supported dialogue on theatre and performance across various countries and cultures. He has argued for thinking of performance as an all-encompassing term with theatre as one of its categories. He has also been the editor of the prestigious journal, The Drama Review, which gave a platform for challenging prevailing restrictive ideas about theatre and performance. For a fuller introduction to his outstanding contributions, we would like you to check out the website that we have mentioned. You can actually check out many other websites if you get interested in Professor Schechner's ideas and his work. My conversation with Professor Schechner actually started way back in the 80s and it covered many, many cultural issues pertaining to writing and performance processes. Professor Schechner is a great listener forever ready to share his viewpoint. At the outset, I would like to thank him for sharing his ideas and concerns with us for this video course. It may be pointed out that Professor Schechner has spent a lot of time in India and for those who are familiar with his directorial adventures, which also actually has been a very, very important part of the counterculture of the 60s in the United States. His work on Ramleela of Ramnagar may seem anachronistic, but then globalization has thrown up many unpredictable areas of search and artistic combinations. In my conversation with Professor Schechner, range of issues have been raised by me keeping in mind their relevance for this video course. The resonances of these concerns will be palpable as you move on with the course material. Do take notes, undertake required reading and then examine the ideas critically. We would recommend follow up on the resources that have been identified by Professor Schechner to extend your artistic and intellectual horizons. So, now here is the session with Professor Richard Schechner. Alright, well, okay, so I think the performance has a broad spectrum of behavior. And if you think of it as a rainbow, a big art, you have on one side ritual, that's one foundation, and on the other side you have play, that's another foundation. In between ritual and play is this large art. It includes things of course like theater and dance and music, what we call the aesthetic performance job. It also includes things like classroom teaching, or a video game, or all different kinds of play, popular entertainments, film, performances in everyday life, such as when someone goes to an interview for a business, where you have to play a role of being somebody that the person who is offering the job wants to have work with them, or if you go out on a date and you're meeting someone of the opposite gender and you want to look nice and be good for them, so you are performing a role. You're actually putting on a costume, you're looking in a mirror, you're putting on a face. If you're a woman, you might put on some makeup to make sure your hair is good, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We all know that those roles are intense and to some degree temporary. As you get to know the person better, you kind of drop those things. Sometimes people are quite surprised. Oh, that's the way you really look. That's the way you really are. I don't think it's true that that's not the way people really are. People really are different under different circumstances. So you have play, games, sports, popular entertainment, performance in everyday life, everyday rituals, everyday ritual would be, what do you do when you get up in the morning? How do you walk your hands? How do you prepare yourself for the day? But then there's secular rituals, like when a president or a prime minister gets inaugurated, it begins office, there's also kind of ceremonies. When there are military parades in ball games, there are rituals that surround the beginnings and end into the ball games. The Olympics are full of rituals, because the winning athlete stands and then the gold medal stands up and the silver medal next to the bronze, the flags are ready, the national anthems are played, and of course there's religious rituals in Dupuja, or the service in a mosque, the five times a day called a prayer, or the prayers in a Jewish synagogue or a Christian church, and also some of the religions of humanity that are not the main great religions, things that are practiced in Australia, in Native America, in Africa, different kinds of religions, they're all full of rituals which are organized behaviors in which we are not exactly ourselves. So I would say performance is when I am not myself, but I am not not myself, I am somewhere between myself and someone who is not, and I play back and forth among these, even an actor in a film or in a theater piece, when the director says stop, they just become another person. When they say go, they become the person that they are. So we're very well trained from early on to perform these various roles, some of them we perform professionally and underline and point out now I am playing a role, and some of them are quite unconscious. I am sure students will have a lot to think about. Can I turn my attention to your work as a teacher? Sure. And what has been particularly interesting to us, when you talk about it during the course of the three discussions, is the fact that you went back to Seattle for your experimental work also, and you talked about the kind of vision that gives you this plus the fact that you've done vows and you've also done just being in this case, would you sort of give a sentence of what goes to those resources? Well, of course I was attracted to the Greek tragedies when I was a very, very young man. The first thing I ever published in this commonly journal was an essay about Gryffindys Vachy, which I later made that play into Dionysus in 69, a very famous experimental performance. Ten years before that play I was, that production I was writing about it. There are two reasons really that I was drawn to the Greek. One is historical and one is thematic. The historical reason is that it's probably the earliest formal theatre we have in the world. I mean, it's earlier than Kallidasa and the Sanskrit drama. So we don't know, there might be something else discovered, but it's like 2,500 years ago and they were fully developed plays. So being in the theatre I want to say what were the first plays that we know as fully developed. But there's a Greek myth that Venus is born fully grown from the head of Zeus. So these dramas are like great. So they may be very early, but they don't in any sense seem primitive or unformed. They seem like they're fabulous. They're finished and they involve the whole community through the chorus, but they also tell fabulous stories. You know, this would be almost all of them, the story of Antigone, who would rather die than see her brother dishonor, who fights against the unjust king, who in a sense loses, Crayon, loses his daughter-in-law and loses his own son, or edifice, who is such a just and good man that finds out and trying to do the job, let's say, of a policeman, investigating who murdered the former king, finds out it was he that murdered the former king. I mean, you just sense, still sense, thrills up and down my spine to realize that I am guilty of the crime I am seeking to find the guilty one for. And the Greek tragedies also deal with people who are not evil. I mean, in some sense, in Shakespearean, I'll get there, Shakespeare deals with good people and bad people. In Greek tragedy, almost everyone is good, and they clash on their goodness. And that's what happens in our actual life. It's not that we're so bad most of the time. There are great villains in the world, of course. Most ordinary people are not bad. But when they clash, when two pushies clash, when you have to decide between, am I going to side with my child on this or with my spouse on this? And I see both sides, but I have to decide, and one is going to be very angry with me. What do I do? I love both of them. So, Greek tragedy raises those questions. Shakespearean raises... I went to Shakespeare because I am a native born English speaker. So, if the Greeks were the earliest plays in world theater, the earliest plays in my Western tradition, then Shakespeare is the greatest writer in my language. And to be in the theater and not confront and deal with the greatest writer in your language, I mean, it just doesn't make sense. And also, the great thing about Shakespeare is he's free. You know, you could just go online, and you don't have to pay any money to read these plays. You have to pay money even to go into a great museum. So, you have to pay a little bit of money to see the Mona Lisa. You don't have to pay a rupee to see and to read Shakespeare. So, why everybody doesn't read Shakespeare? I don't know. He's a great storyteller. He has great characters with both comic and tragic. I've been particularly fascinated with Hamlet, and I've done three versions of Hamlet, what most recently called Imagine, mostly about the philia. So, I get involved in these plays. And the other plays as well, the Faust story, the story of power, and Marlon's Faustus, Dr. Faustus, was a great play. I've also been very drawn to modern playwrights, like Chekhov and Brett especially. Now, I know Brett is very important in India. At least he was when I was there, because he's a playwright, first of all, who draws on Asian performance traditions, not necessarily Indian, more Chinese, but certain qualities of performance that are non-European, that are Asian, namely that the character and the player stand next to each other. They don't merge. In realism, they merge. In brettian theater and in Chinese opera, perhaps in jatra and some other traditional forms in India, the character and the actor stand and comment on each other. And Brett also has a highly developed social sense, and the sense of justice and social justice, and he writes great dialogues and finds stories as well. Both tragic and comic at the same time. I've directed Mother's Courage of Children, which is a tragic story, has some kind of element to it, is a tragic story. But then there are other plays, like The Good Woman of Sichuan or Caucasian Truck Circle, which, you know, explore, again, these human dilemmas. So I also am attracted to drama as such. The theater, because it's about behavior. I am not an artist. I'm not a reflective artist so much. I mean, I do drawings and I know books, but I'm not a visual artist. I have to put down on paper and make it still. I like the paper. So being a person who's interested in the paper, I'd be glad to see it or film it. Let's go to your work in India. Okay. I know we've set a vast area of concern. But in retrospect, since you've interacted a lot with Indian and other practitioners studying around India, in retrospect, you have a few comments from the kind of value to a sign in the cultural world. Right. Especially, you know, because of this whole positive sense of organization. Right. Well, it's a very topical expression. Let me just review briefly my experiences in India. I came to India first in October 1971. I'm sure that's before every one of the students, probably before their parents were born, not only before they were born. And I came there, and it was my first time that I was outside of the European-American spirit. And so I was very shocked in a good sense. It was just different. But I stayed in India at that time for four months. And during those four months, I really saw a great deal of particularly funk and classical performance because I was fortunate enough to meet the very first week I was there. I met Suresh Abasthi, who at that point was the secretary of the Songheed Natak Academy. And we took to each other. We liked each other very much. And Suresh said, he said, what do you want to do here? And I said, well, I'm not so interested in the Taj Mahal or the Jaipur palaces. I mean, it doesn't, it's okay. But I can see them in a picture. I'm not interested. I want to see behavior. I want to see performances. He says, good. I will make letters to all these people. So under his tutelage, I saw Jatra and Chao. And of course Bharat Natyam and Kuchapuri and the Katak, the classic dances. And I saw a temporary theater and Pan Bhattara Theater in all regions of India. So I traveled as far north and west as Kashmir and as far south as Kanyakumari and I hit all of the great cities. I was in Kolkata. I was in Chennai when it was called Latras. I was in Kerala, of course, which I returned to. I was in Bombay when it was called Mumbai. And so I saw performances there. And I learned about India several things in that first trip, that it is at one level a unified culture and at another level many, many, many different cultures. So in a certain sense, India is a model of its own globalization. Let's put it that way. India is not India. And it was probably even more so before the partition between India and Pakistan. The final months that I was there, I was in Kolkata and it was the time of the Indo-Pac war and the liberation of Bangladesh where Bangladesh became independent. And I got very involved in the politics of that war actually as I protested the presence of the American Fifth Fleet, I think it was, there to support Pakistan. And I was in the liberation of Bangladesh where it was independent of Bangladesh. So I was involved in Indian society and culture at several levels. After that, I returned to India many times. I saw and continued to study Ramlila but not all Ramlila. There's particularly the Ramlila of Ramnagar which is right in front of the docks of Ramnagar, it's in Karanasi. And I've lived there and I've lived in India for as long as 11 months in a stretch and the last time I was in India's family a year ago when I was at a conference in the Karanasi. And also I directed Cherry Kavakicha, which is Cherry Orchard at the professional repertory company in that Indian drama. And then I brought mother carriage and her children which was, well, actually I did mother carriage earlier, which was the introduction we did here in New York to India. And we toured it to Bhopal and Moksnow and Calcutta and Bombay and Delhi and a small village near Calcutta, Sinjol and again, Avasti was very helpful in that. So were many, many people and actually the end of this week Nisar and Amal Alana are going to be my house guests. So I have very close friends and Nisar designed the set and Amal the costumes for Cherry Kavakicha she's the head of the National School of Drama her father was Andrea Al-Ghazi who started the National School of Drama so I'm very deeply enmeshed in all of that. And in terms of globalization you know I probably don't have politically correct report but my viewpoint is that ultimately at our root we are all one one single genetically speaking whoever they were was very few people in Africa and then we look at these trees in this garden is one root and then look at that leaf over there. So they're very, very different but at root they're the same. So at one level I feel that globalization is a return to a certain kind of root it's a return to the difficult proper recognition that we're one species. At the same time we don't want all of them to say the least. So the problem with globalization, there are two problems with globalization or let's say challenges. One is that is the classical of to not be exploited colonial exploitation exists or existed and global exploitation existed. So does national and local exploitation. Exploitation unfortunately cannot be localized among one group or one system. It seems that human beings do take advantage of each other and there are generous human beings and they're selfish ones and people act generously and don't do what they act selfishly. So to accomplish the collaboration of globalization without the exploitation of one past human being the other problem is this level you don't want to make the whole world a plug transplans in the airport with all these the same brands the same clothes, the same language and so on. So I feel we need to find some way to not to get over the national phase I do think that the national phase of human history has caused a lot of bloodshed just like the intensely religious phase has caused a lot of bloodshed. So to perhaps keep nations, perhaps keep religions but not to kill over them and we have to if you look straight in the face more blood has been spilled because people say you believe the wrong thing or you're in the wrong place or any other cause or maybe disease is an equal cause but disease we make progress about we have 6 billion people on the earth now instead of 2 billion because we've conquered some diseases but we haven't conquered our wish for power we haven't conquered or so globalization which features trade and cooperation at one level is I think in balance from my point of view a good thing if it could be made and again I think of India as a model I'm all for Hinduism but I'm not for Hinduism I'm all for Islam but I'm not for Sharia in other words it's a question of a certain kind of balance so whatever you want to call it so my view is that over the third thing is that globalization is not moving away it's not going to be just like Luddites in the 19th century said get rid of the machine well that was nice and maybe a few people could go and live on our farm but we're surrounded by machines we're not going to get rid of genetic engineering we're not going to get rid of globalization we're not going to get rid of world trade we're not going to get rid of that iPad you're holding in your hand which is conceived in California manufacturing in Shenzhen China and Seoul wherever so that even though somebody may be opposed to globalization we're always participating in it I don't know where this shirt was made but it wasn't made where we're sitting I don't even know where your clothes were made but possibly in India which is a great place to make clothes but possibly in Cambodia or Thailand or somewhere so it's not going to go away so the question then is how to make it serve human justice how to make it serve all right I have two questions one is not any new experiment in the form that students should see especially in the face of with science and technology well yes but I don't know they should go on a website run by a group an American group called Builders Association and in GDR we have a big interview with them I did an interview with their some of their artists including Mariah Weems who is their artistic director and they work very very closely with the most advanced digital technology and and performance and one of their pieces which is well documented is called Aladdin I don't know and it features actually people in this theater here making calls to India and talking so it's both live and media at the same time and they have others about the recreation of jet airliners and those experiences they're very much dealing with the very very contemporary media revolution that means that people sit in Bangalore answer the phone pretending to be American thinking of performance in other words they cannot have a British Indian accent they're supposed to sound like American and they say hi my name is Tom well their name may be Satya or their name may be Guruji or whatever their name is not Tom but since they're dealing with people who will be more comfortable with people who are like themselves they say that now I assume that if an Indian caller calls they say hello my name is Satya in other words the idea is to be like the caller so this group deals with these not only this they do a whole series of performances that technology group speaking then there's a group called the critical art ensemble CAE again my journal CDR writes about them and they deal with genetic engineering and recombinant DNA from a performative point of view they both are very critical of it and they examine it and they play with it then there's another group called the yes man I don't know if you know the yes man so the yes man is a performance group that kind of pushes the great corporations to own up to some of their crimes so for example this one will be of interest to people in India Union Carbide owned the plant that gave off the poisonous gases in Popao about 10 years ago so killed thousands of people and they've never never paid the relatives of these victims of what they should have and they've never really acknowledged that they've committed a great crime even if it was accidental it wasn't a crime of meaning to commit a crime but some crimes like edifices are unintentional so the yes man pretend to be Union Carbide so they went on television and said hello we are the CEO of Human Carbide they dress up and they tell me something and we are saying to the people of Popao we are apologizing to you and we are distributing 5 million dollars and of course the next day Union Carbide has to go on television and say they are not really us we are not giving any money and so they are exposed so the yes man is a group that you really have to look at so those are three critical art examples of builders association and yes man that I would think that the students are interested in this new kind of performance by far to look at Hi, my name is Richard and you share with us your favorite something like this about the business well right there's not going to be again my favorite I don't expect you on reading at the present moment I've gone back to some old writers so at the present moment I'm reading Dickens and I've never read Dickens since I was in high school I didn't read him then so now I've read David Copperfield Great Expectations and Bleak House and The Tale of Two Cities I like him as a storyteller so he would not be one of my great writers I think but he's pretty good and then I also read Virgil's Aeneid which is an ancient story roughly at the same time that the Ramayana was being written about the fall of Troy and the establishment of Rome but if you ask me in terms of contemporary writers short story writer I like very much is Flannery O'Connor who is very very good she's not contemporaries three generations ago but she's very good then there's Paul Oster who is contemporary and I've worked with Paul in the theatres his work is very good of classic people classics of the European novel of Flaubert and Zdendal and Tolstoy I like Wintergross and some of his work there's a new writer called Jeremy Latham I like there's Panuk wrote Snow or Panuk I like Salman Rushdie you know I'm not so different than most people my real field is not literature so I read for pleasure I don't read when I read the drama or when I go to the theatre I'm doing it for pleasure it's also a professional when I think of a novel it's simply because I want to read something I've also read some non-fiction that I recommend Steven Pinker who's a Harvard psychologist who wrote The Better Angels of Our Nature about violence and The Divine about it it's a very significant book I don't know if you know this book and I think it's a very interesting book one of the few books is it changed my way of thinking so when I was talking about globalization I was thinking of his five reasons why violence is relatively declined and he gives these reasons of feminization and global trade and democratization I think it's a very powerful book I do so much goodbye