 All right, five, four. Hello, and welcome to No Summary, Golden Thread's live stream series of conversations with artists that don't fit in a box. For those of you who may not know, Golden Thread is the first American theater company devoted to plays from and about the Middle East. We are based in San Francisco and next year we celebrate our 25th anniversary, which is amazing. That's crazy. I know. Yeah. Today I am so delighted to welcome my dear friend and colleague, Evren Ochikin, who is currently the Associate Artistic Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I could go on and on and on about all the amazing things about Evren, but I'm just so happy to be here with you and have an hour to talk to you and catch up. I know. Yeah. And I'm just... Hi, how are you? Evren and I were together at the beginning of the pandemic, so I feel like we had this really special bond because we remember exactly where we were when the world changed. Oh, God. And now... That's so true. Now you're gonna produce this play on the Zoom. Yeah. This is who I am, and I want you to tell us about it and how it's going. It's going okay. I'm here immediately from tech, actually, which is a totally different space for a digital play versus live production. I mean, we're all in our little boxes and a bunch of amazing technical folks and the actors who, you know, it's in their houses, so they're the ones doing all the work, the actual building and the camera set up and the lighting set up. I feel like my job is the easiest. I just kind of sit there and wait for things to be done and give opinions. But yeah, it's going really, really well. It's a new play by Amir Nizar Zwabi, who you know very well from Oh My Sweet Land, which you acted in. I feel like that was the project that I fell in love with his work on and met him through. It's another cooking play that Oh My Sweet Land for Golden Thread, we toured it all over the Bay Area into kitchens. This one takes place in two kitchens, one in Ramallah, one in New York, father, son, talking to each other while cooking as well. They're cooking fatir this time, a Palestinian dish. And yeah, it's been really, really lovely. It's a gorgeous, beautiful play about loss, grief, staying connected with your family across great distances. And what I really love about it is it looks at it through the eyes of two men and sort of digs into, in a really unexpected, beautiful way, ideas of masculinity and sort of dives into some of the stereotypical understanding of masculinity we have in the Middle Eastern cultures and then actually complicates us and challenges it in really beautiful ways. So it's been as weird and difficult and complicated as this format is. It's also been still, I found it to be quite soul nourishing at this time to get to spend time with these beautiful words, with these beautiful actors and actually talk to actors, just talk to designers, including James Ard who's a resident designer at Golden Thread who's doing my sound. So yeah, it's been really wonderful and we start performances tomorrow night on the fifth and then we'll see where we are, we'll see what people make of it. It's been this really wonderful, lovely process. It's just great to be in a, even in a virtual room with a bunch of artists, not talking about problems or not talking, because I feel like I get to be an arts administrator. So I spent a great deal of my little Brady bunch of square time talking about money and Excel sheets and planning and programming and all those kinds of things. And it's just been really lovely to touch base, back touch back to the artist's soul part of my person. How did you, because I don't even know how the play came about. Was it something immediate has written during this time, right? I didn't make it up. And how did you connect with him over it? Yeah, so Amir, you know, all my sweet land we connected to during that. And then right after I had gotten this job, I actually went to Minneapolis to the Guthrie because they were doing this really beautiful festival of Arab work in tandem with Heather Raffo's Noura which they produced, which was gorgeous. And they, so I went there because now that I work at OSF, I get to do those kind of things. Well, used to be able to. And I met Amir there. We had some great conversations. So, Placo and Willie Mammoth, Placo is in New York City. They had produced all my sweet land in New York at the same time as Golden Threat and Willie Mammoth, which is in DC. They commissioned Amir to write this show for Zoom or for digital distribution, I should say. At the beginning of the pen. At the beginning of the pen. They wanted to talk to him about all my sweet land, if they could do all my sweet land as a digital play. And he was like, that show has been done so many times in so many different ways. So they asked him if he would write a new play and against all wisdom probably for him because he's so busy. He did write a play, which is beautiful. And I think my name came up just because of all of those connections I mentioned. What's been really interesting is I said yes to this crazy experiment of performing a show live over Zoom. Well, it looks like Zoom. We're using many different platforms, but to look at digital play for these two companies and I was like, it's gonna be a great experiment. No one has done this. Let's try it out, right? And then as I said, yes, they were like, oh, by the way, ART in Boston signed on as well. I was like, okay. And then they're like, well, Johaj is gonna be the dramaturg, which I'm really. Johaj is the artistic director at the Guthrie and is Palestinian-American and has been such a wonderful support. And they're like, well, Joe Guthrie is coming on board as well. I was like, okay. And then I talked to Mataki Kerat, who's the artistic director at OSF to just clear my directing schedule with her. And she's like, well, we should be producing it too. So now it's my OSF directing debut and my Guthrie debut, ART debut. Well, like these are five companies that I've always, they're like, you know, bucket list companies. And I'm working with all of them at the same time, over Zoom on this play that will hopefully work because it's this huge experiment. So it's been this really, it's I guess one of those weird pandemic silver linings about our industry is that it's making this sort of collaboration possible. And it's allowing a play like this, which normally would not reach to these sort of big houses necessarily and reach their audiences to be able to do that, you know? And it's just, I do hope that, you know, the companies are building relationships with each other. I feel like I'm building relationships with all the companies. So I hope post pandemic, when we're back in the live production world or live and digital production world, right? Whatever post pandemic looks like that these relationships we're building, these connections we're building will carry on. That's the hope. Yeah. I mean, I think it's such a sort of rich fertile ground for deeper conversations. And what a way to collaborate. I mean, five companies coming in on a piece like this, I think that's really telling about where we are right now. Yeah. Yeah, and it's also, I think it's easier to sort of say yes to more experimental or what some folks might consider risky work, you know, and none of these companies are particularly known for their averseness to risk, to be honest. So it does make sense that it is these five companies from the larger theater community that's like coming together like this. These are the people that are in the front lines testing things out. They're the ones that are, you know, so, and the personalities of the artistic leaders certainly they are interested in and pushing for more risky, more inclusive, more experimental might be too far, but at least structurally or conceptually experimental work. So yeah, but it's also the thing that's really lovely to me is, you know, Amir is now back in Israel, so but was in Stockholm for a while and we have someone in Virginia, someone in New York, DC. I'm in Oregon. Our sound designer is in San Francisco. And there is, there is a sort of larger sense of collaborative possibility, right? And for some, a place that Golden Thread, you know, international work was, has long been our interest and it's something that is very limited by budget and visas and many, many other things, the list goes on. And this sort of removes some of that. It's not the same as having a person in our country, right? Performing for us and really getting to have that, I call hormonal connection with their storytelling, but at the same time, Amir gets to be in rehearsals with us, time difference permitting. And that's incredible. That is like an amazing experience for all of us to be able to have access to someone from Palestine who is Palestinian, who's written the piece, be there with us. And really actually, there's just that collaborative aspect that is one of the few gifts that we're getting through this crazy, crazy time. Well, yeah, I mean, it's sort of that common experience as well, right? The fact that we're all going through this and that sort of the quality and the focus that we get when we're actually in the room able to do something creative is rich. It's very rich. I mean, I know my small dabbles of creativity since March have really been live in me so I can imagine for all parties, it's exciting. And a challenge, you know, one of those sort of fruitful, rich challenges right now. I'm really glad. I mean, the number of times I've said this, I'm so glad I grew up at Golden Thread, like, you know, as an artist because one, the company itself is based on the idea that difficult conversations must be in the center of the work, not just on stage, but in the rehearsal process. Also, it's a company just how Taranj is built and how she's trained all of us that have come up through the company that like risk is okay, ambition is okay. So there is a lot not working, right? There is a lot of things that are odd and weird and impossible about this process, but I can find myself just drawing back on my experiences of trying to figure out how to make it work, you know? And when something is challenging to step towards it and see if we actually find a story, a nuance, a connection through that process of stepping together into the unknown. And, you know, if you worked at Golden Thread for as long as the two of us have, that's just second nature. You know, that's just like, that's just how I make work. And it's really interesting how, that is not how work is made in the American theater in general, right? That is those thorny conversations where that room gets a little tense and things are, people are not agreeing and people, but it's, you know, and that struggle around trying to get to some place where you're feeling like you're on the same ground again. There's a lot of fear towards that in the American theater which, you know, I think that's part of the whole we see you at American theater and the anti-racism work that's been so challenging for a lot of folks in the American theater is based on because we're just like not for an art form that is so based on communication. We're actually not very good at communicating through issues. And I feel like the whole industry is coming to where Golden Thread has been for two decades, is how it always feels. Do you feel like when you run a room now, though that's so implicit in your nature to sort of hold, I mean, I feel that with you but that's also, I know you and I've known you for so long so it feels like, there's no translation needed in that way. And so we know we trust each other in that way but I'm wondering in a new space, like a virtual space like this where you have a mute and now Palestine and your actors everywhere else, like does it feel like you're able to do that or you have to kind of work towards it? You know, it's interesting, this show has not felt difficult at all, mainly because I think a lot of us are Middle Eastern. So that's like a little, there's a cultural aspect to argument as love. That's just like, you know what I mean? That's just how we're built, right? So there's a little bit of that I think but also Yusuf Sultan who was playing the son we had worked together before, so he knows me. Where did you work together? Remind me, was it? In Tract for Heartland, Gabriel Jason Dean's piece about Afghanistan, it was the first time he actually got to play, he's Afghan and it was the first time he got to play an Afghan character, which was incredibly beautiful for him. But so he knows who I am from like having gone through a fairly political play together, Amir is Palestinian and fine, and as a person. And then Ramzi Faragalla who plays the father is, I don't know how else to say that he's like my people, you know, he's done a million of mono monsters work, he just, he jumped right in. So I feel like this has been easy in terms of, you know, I can speak to like moving into a space like OSF, right? I think what you said is really true in the sense that you know me, right? And there is common language. So when we're working together or whenever I'm working with anyone from Golden Thread, we start ahead, because you know me, I know you, there's like sort of mutual respect. There is a generosity towards the intention each person has, and when you come into a new space and especially when you moved away from home, right? San Francisco was home for 15 plus years. I'm literally, other than the Takigari who brought me here, I was really kind of working with only people I had just met. And that's been the year and a half plus, year and a half plus I've had here, there has been a big process of meeting each other, people learning about me, people getting acclimated to my talkative, opinionated, lots of hand motions, ways and my interruptions and that my interruption doesn't mean that I disrespect you. There's just a lot in these leadership positions of introducing yourself and people, hopefully having a sense of generosity towards you to meet you where you're intending to meet them. And of course, this was doubly, triply complicated by the fact that we have a pandemic and our theaters are closed and a good deal of folks got to meet me while I was laying them off. So that part of it, I don't wanna underestimate the impact that had on what you're talking about, right? This sort of starting ahead and diving into difficult conversations together. Having said all this, I do feel really lucky because I'm working at Oregon Shakespeare Festival whose work in the equity diversity inclusion and anti-racism work is way ahead of so much of larger theater companies working in the US. I'm supporting a woman like Nataki Garrett who's a black woman and one of the foremost thinkers in these sort of representation issues. So I don't feel, I feel very lucky in all those things but it's still difficult. Yeah, I mean, and this is since we, so just to give you audience a background we were working together in Portland right at the beginning and I just think about the scale of conversations we were having because I remember we were rehearsing and we went up to dinner one night and we were thinking we were having a really hard time, right? Cause we're doing this really rich, hard language but a play that takes a lot of soul, nine parts of desire. And I remember just going to dinner with you and you're talking about all the different navigation that you were doing between texts. Meaning that that was the big problem sort of navigating all these moving parts. And then I just remember a little bit of a, when we start to hear about the pandemic starting and then I remember you saying, oh yeah, we're talking about a plan if we have to shut down and then flip it one week later, here we are just shutting down an entire, well a country basically in all theaters and that the scale for you as a leader and as an artist got like the lessons or the challenges got completely flipped on their head. So instead of worrying about costumes and lightings and props and sort of negotiation between people within rehearsals, it's how do we take care of our company members? How do we take care of our actor? How do we take care of each other and survive? And then that takes up so much of your soul and focus. We all had to do that. And that's such a huge task as you step into a large leadership position. And then so the artist mind, but has to get like a step aside for a moment. And then you get to do a project like this. And I just think, I wonder for you if it feels like a relief, it's sort of a space in your brain and soul that gets to play with, because I mean, when I think of you, Everyn, when I think of, anytime I think of you watching a rehearsal or a play, it's one of the sweetest things in the world. And one of the hardest things about doing a solo place was I couldn't watch your face because usually your face is like, it's so expressive. The way you take on it, it's very unique. I mean, a lot of directors are more stoic in her presentation. I wish I were. I'm so bad at it. It's like, I don't know how to direct without letting the play enter me fully. Yeah. It fully received the play, which is like when you're doing a play like Nine Parts of Desire, which is brutal or doing a play like this, which is not even remotely similarly brutal, but it's very sad. It's about grief, it's about loss in a way that actually kind of parallels my life in different ways. So I'm like, huh, like I remember Nine Parts of Desire. I mean, you were thinking about this a lot, right? Like, how am I gonna get through this run? Like, I just have to, you had to, we talked a lot about your self care and entrance and exit, we heard like rituals around the performance because it's just so hard to receive that kind of thing in your body every day and not let it impact you. But I remember, I think it was after our first read, I was like, how on earth am I gonna get through this rehearsal process? Because I know how I let this stuff in. And then, you know, so I had to sort of, I've learned over the years that as an artist, as you said, I have to do that. In a weird way, that's been a big learning for me as an artistic leader as well because my job, like so many others, I need to hold the space. I need to be a little stronger than I am for, you know what I mean? To be able to make sure the company is okay, the people have believed that we're gonna be okay. But that doesn't, that comes at a cost because I am an artistic soul. So if I'm dealing with people who are going through something or I'm dealing with people who are reacting to me in bad, unacceptable ways because of whatever they're going through or because they're assholes, you know? These are all possibilities in the world of leadership. I don't know how to go through those without letting it get into me. And that's been an ongoing learning process for me because when you go from somewhere like Golden Thread where it's a bit more of a family. So even if someone is being difficult, you know them, there's history to a place like this where it's just so large, you're dealing with new people all the time and you don't have the contextual information you have about people to be able to wrestle with whatever it is they're giving you. So it's been, it's all that side of me and I don't wanna shut it down because I think I'm a much better director and I'm a much better leader and a manager as the person that I am, right? Like if I can be truthful to what my instincts are, I'm just much more human and I believe in leadership as a very human act. However, having said this, as you said, for the pandemic it was so, that moment of closure was really interesting because the two of us and you know, Kirsten and like the folks who were making that play with us we had to really have a moment of mourning together which we tried and it was hard because it was just kind of so difficult to wrap our brains around and I immediately, you are totally right, I completely had to shut that off. Like that whatever the artist hurt I was feeling had to be like put away because I had to take care of the hundreds of artists and craftspeople that were feeling that exact same thing from the emails I was sending them, you know? So in that way it felt, it's been an interesting process of going back to the mourning of nine parts of desire and thousand and one nights and on the perifrieto at golden thread like all of the plays that I've lost through the pandemic as an artist I had to, I'm finding ways to mourn those that is outside of my scope as an artistic leader and then this play, it's like I have no time for it, right? It is a terrible, the thing about these jobs is that like it is actually stupid for me to direct, right? But it has been really interesting to see how much lighter I feel and how much more like myself I feel and how much more context that like I'm able to have a spirit of generosity to the people I'm working with, you know? Even if I'm up too late and waking up too early and in front of this darn computer for 16 hours a day, you know, it feels worth it because I feel nourished in a way. So I do hope that for a lot of us like artists who are mourning so much loss that we find ways to be creative in a way that gives us this, because it's who we are, you know? Nor it's part of who you are. So I hope that for you, I hope that for any artist who's watching, you know, it's just we just have to find the ways to continue to feed that part of our souls. Well, and I think the way you put it sort of that the language of nourishment, I think you forget. I mean, one of the conversations I've been having with so many friends is we've talked about this too, the idea of bandwidth and having, you know, in what I call the olden days pre-pandemic, you have more of a sense of your own bandwidth and you're like, okay, that's a little too much. We're done. We're done. But now it's like, oh, shit, that's too much. I didn't know I was too much and I took on. But what I'm trying to say is sort of the cost-benefit analysis is not always so clear, but sometimes you can forget when you haven't had the work for a while or the artistic expression. For me, because, you know, as you were talking about watching nine parts of desire, I often feel like this for directors and or I think about like my husband, like watching somebody's birth, going through birth is not easy, but at least you're going through it and there's this cathartic, there's this thing that happens and it's the same as a performer. Every single night that I got to do the show, which was five times, I got to, you know, like I got to break shit on stage. Like it was amazing to allow my body to go through that incredible cathartic run of just moving and getting crazy and then cleansing. All that stuff to me was like a ritual and I got to do it. But, you know, for directors or writers, I'm always interested in how that catharsis happens for them, you know, and it's, is it more internal? Is it a more, I don't know, it's just, it's mysterious and interesting to me. But I think about this moment, for me it's small, like the small pockets of artistry that I've had and I've been enlivening because I'm, you know, navigating motherhood and trying to figure out if I still have a business and all that stuff and the board and everything. But, but it's, it's, it's those, they really lift me, you know, or even watching and listening to people's processes has been really great. And so one of the things that we were going to talk about a little bit and but I do, I have so many questions about Amir's play. So I'll come back to it. But is this little process that you and Mona and I've been doing with her urgent drama piece, which I keep, I always forget the title of it. Something order. Yeah. Things in order. It's Mona play for me. Things in order. Things in order. Things in order, there we go. So just as a background, Mona months who wrote this play at the beginning of the pandemic for a company in Sweden, right? And, and it's a, it's a short piece. It's maybe four minutes. And it's, and so everyone, Mona and I've had these, they've just been like highlights in my little life. These very deep, but the conversation starts around the piece and then goes on to all these other places, which is what I love about theater of people. And then we're trying to figure out how to, how to present it. And so what we ended up doing was that I would go away and I'll record myself literally in a closet and pantry and send this little draft of something. And then we'll come back and have conversations and so I think I've done two or three iterations, but just that process has been, well, it's been a lot of things. A, I've gotten to know Mona a lot better and gotten to know your relationship with Mona a lot better because you two have a rich collaborative. We do. Life, right? I mean, you've done, is it two or three of her? Well, it's so funny. We've developed five plays together. I've directed two of them to full production, but two plays, one of which hasn't been produced, well, it's been produced but not directed by me. I was attached before a word was written. So she brings me in to some projects, right? Some projects where that makes sense. We swim, we talk, we go to war was one of them which was done, it was my last Golden Thread Show I think as a director. It's a, you know, I was, when she got the commission from Middle East America, I was attached. So I saw the incomplete weird swimming scenes she wrote before they made any sense. And, you know, and it's really interesting to have, like we're like a married couple or something, you know? Like with all the pluses, minuses, lefts and rights of what that means to people. I feel very inside of her world. She's very generous with me as a collaborator. I mean, she's, I think that's just the kind of writer she is. And it's a very two-way street and we can be complete each other's sentences. We can be ornery with each other. We can disagree very vehemently and then, you know, be in total agreement the next moment. So it's just, and it's been really interesting for me because I don't think you've ended up doing any of her plays ever in the thread. And it's been this thing in my mind, I'm like Nora is Mona's actor, right? And this is one of the joys. Actually, I have to say, like being an artistic director type, you know, associate artistic director, a programmer, which in a way, like my joy is putting people together. That, like that gives me, if I can find the two people that and then put them together in a room and magic happens, it's just like, oh, it's the best feeling in the world. And for a long time, I've been like Nora, Nora is a perfect actor for Mona. And then this pandemic made it so, because I told her, I was like, God, she sent me the Swedish version, the production, whatever, the film. And I was like, ah, you know, this would be so good with Nora in it. And she was the one that was like, well, do we, should we do that? I love it. I guess we could. And the thing about that process, that's been so lovely for me, is it's like what I, it's gonna sound fancier than it is, but like asynchronous creativity, right? Like we have these meetings where we talk and as you said, some of it is life, some of it is play, some of it is, we actually have you read it and do real rehearsal kind of. And then the idea is that you go away and then you make a thing and then you email it to us and we look at it and there's some notes giving over email. And then we meet again and we talked about what happened. We come up with some ideas, you go away again, you make a thing again, right? Like, and that has been, it came out of all three of us being so busy and not feeling like we could commit to like a full rehearsal process. But there is something about the flexible, floating kind of creativity of that kind of process that I'm curious about. You know what I mean? Like I actually found like the piece where it is right now from the last one you made, it's really good. So I'm like, this is exciting that there is a way like this to do a show like that, you know? Well, and I think what I love about it so much is because I mean, I think you know this about me as an actor is I often say I don't, I don't have the first idea. Usually when it comes to creative processes, I'm not interested in having the first idea, but I might have like the third or the fourth. And so like that process was, it was so fun. It was weird and hard in, you know, filming myself. I'm never comfortable with that stuff. But then all the stuff that came about in the process of making it that was surprising almost like what it would be like if you're on stage with a scene partner and they did something surprising. It was like, just to give you audience a context, this whole thing is about a pantry and organization of a pantry or shelves in a kitchen. So I would just be in my pantry and see stuff I didn't know was gonna be there and just sort of the mistakes of that. And that just is a reminder of the process of creativity and how surprise is so inherently important. And that also when you're, and I think Debra and I have to credit you and Toranj for this because you both have trusted me with things that I was like, there's no way in hell I can do that. I just, I'm not doing a solo piece, but you're the one. You're like, do you do this monologue of Youssef's? Here's this play. Oh yeah, I should take full credit for your solo work. Yeah, I mean, I've never ever imagined that I was. But then of course I realized that the solo work is such a misnomer, right? I mean, especially in the world of theater. It's like, I can't even say that I'm enough. I mean, especially the nine parts process, that team. And I don't think it's just because we went through a pandemic together. I mean, it really was. I mean, partially it was the space that you held, the artists in the room, but it was such a generous process. I mean, we worked on some of those lighting and sound cues for hours and hours and hours. And both Solomon and James just had this grace about the way they worked because it was, well, that's not good enough, let's do this. That's not good enough. And so what it feels like when you're part of a team like that and you're a performer, and I think this is part of hopefully, it's a shift that we'll continue to see in American theater is that we all have agency in the artistry and the final process, but nobody has one hand. Like it's not, you know, of course there's, there are things that are very Evern Ochikin in terms of directing, right? But we know it's all part of a big picture and that I was just so, it was such a lesson, not, I mean, a reminder and a lesson for me, but also I never felt lonely in the process. And that's for me as a performer, I'm a kid that like I like to be around other people. I wanna interact, I wanna feed off of other people, but it never felt that way for that show, which I wasn't expecting. Yeah, it's just kind of, I mean, also to throw it back at you, you're that kind of actor too, right? There's a version of nine parts of desire with a specific different kind of actor that would be only about that actor, right? And of course the whole thing was holding you up and propping you up and pushing you into places that maybe you would not wanna go to on a regular basis, but it is also really interesting how much at this point in my career, how I'm just want collaborators, I just want people who are not driven by ego, you know what I mean? Who are just actually want the best thing. They don't care if it's their idea or not, right? And the nice thing about having done this for what now, 18 years professionally, I've like collected people, that's how it feels when you're a director, right? Like you're like, okay, this is my person, my person, my person, and again with Mona and you, right? And it's always joyous with the two of your people, you put them together and it works, you know? And that was certainly, I think this is also just to give credit where credit is due. That was what was so beautiful about Nine Parts of Desire and that was possible because it was at Portland Center stage under Marisa Wolff and Chip Miller's leadership. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like, I think there is something to be said about how a space absorbs the values of its leaders. Like who Marisa is, has after a few years of her being there, has seeped into the wall so that I can create and I know that when she's asking me to direct, right? And she's that kind of producer that she's looking for my kind of room and my kind of artists and my kind of process. And when you have that kind of trust, then I can bring you on and I can bring James and, you know, Dina and all of these people, Solomon, who Solomon was, that was our first time, but literally one conversation I was like, yep, you're my people, you're staying, you know? So it's just a really, that process of, as you said, theater as a sum of many people's best ideas. And that includes both those people who are making the work inside the room, but also those who are holding the room around the context together. You know, sometimes you put amazing people in a room and it's still terrible, right? Like it's art. And then we have to sort of celebrate those processes where you put the awesome people in the room and like nine parts of desire, it works out. And it's not just works out as in the show, I was so proud of it. I think we made a really beautiful production even if people didn't get to see it. But it's also was a good room, you know? Like it was a good experience leading to a good product. And, you know, to bring it back to this is who I am, that has felt similar. There is something about that process that has felt similar. And I think, I keep thinking, as I've been yammering away, it's also direct, like when you have the kind of honesty that Mona Mansour's work has or Heather Raffa's work has or Amir Nazarjavi's work has. Like when the words on the page are that kind of honest and that kind of generous, it sort of forces you as the words collaborators to be honest and to be open and to give up a little bit of yourself into the room. You know, so I'd also have to say, it's easy to do that with nine parts of desire. It's easy to do that with this is who I am, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, yeah. I mean, I think I read, so I read it. You essentially, it was just so great. And it made me, I don't know, I settled into it really easily. I think there's so much about the world that felt familiar, not only that, but also the language. I mean, the difference here was that there were people having conversations versus Oh My Sweet Land where their conversation's happening in one body. But yeah, there's just sort of qualitative there's this qualitative aspect to it. There's just full of love connection and then there's humor. And then there's sort of that, I think it's around just coined it as like tenderhearted challenging. Yes. You know, and I think when that language exists in a room which, you know, I will say is cultural, I'm just gonna go out and say that it's there's something that you can like you can rest in and play and push up against that maybe gives context to the whole, to the whole team, you know, if people can kind of come into it. But yeah, no, I really love the piece. I can't wait to see it. I mean, there's so much I have to laugh because, you know, my parents are living with us and have been for a few months and my father is little known to many people like the prep cook often, like he shop stuff and gets precision down and like there's this training that has happened in the kitchen, a lot of people don't know that Middle Eastern men get in the background. But there's just other just as quality to, like, I just can't wait to see the scene. So all the cutting the father at it, that's me. Yeah, like all that like busting out and like being almost professional where like a son doesn't actually know that part of his father. That was really exciting. But what I wanted to ask you was did Amid come with the full play and you read it or did you, okay. So you didn't do any workshopping of it or anything? No workshopping we did. We had a really interesting process because of Amir's production live production which is now shut down again sadly that he built in Stockholm and actually for me the OSF gala that I had to host and help produce. So we took two weeks off in the middle. So it was this really interesting. It was a little bit like the nine parts of the entire process, right? We had about two weeks of rehearsal, right? And I was able to do like a really rough draft staging. So we worked on the script and just like barely held together staging. The actors were able to go away, get off book, really get into it. And then we came back and we've been sort of revving up to opening and that process. So the first two weeks felt a bit like a workshop I would say. And I think this is probably true for Amir's a lot of Amir's work. The work was done as in we knew what it was. Does that make sense? The changes we made were tonal or towards making it more of what itself was, what it was but it didn't feel like one of those processes where scenes disappear and all of a sudden this character is a totally different person, that kind of thing. So it was all there. I do think some of it is also because it is a play that's very personal to him, not in terms of, it's not autobiographical and by any means, I don't think he writes that way but it's the kind of death and illness of a parent that it's dealing with is very much his experience and is very much my experience. So there is something really personal about the play which makes sense that it would come out to complete a little bit. It was something he was living with, thinking about imagining for a long time so that the play sort of came out the way it did. But yeah, it's been a really, I mean, Amir, it's so interesting that this is where the masculinity idea is really interesting to me. They joke with each other and it's this very specific kind of joking that clearly you know, I knew, I'm like, I don't know how that works. And then because of what they've gone through and because of the unspoken truth not to give anything away that some things that have happened between them, the joking is like on edge. Right. And sometimes they're joking and then are they joking? Wasn't it? Wasn't it? And the play sort of does such a beautiful job of building that tension to where the ending happens since this, you know, again, I don't wanna give up too much of what happens in the play but it, again, I agree with you that that's cultural. Like in a weird way, the way the play builds on itself feels very Middle Eastern. It feels very Palestinian, I would assume, I'm Turkish. So I can't speak to that specifically but it seems very recognizable to Joe Haj and Ramsey who are both Palestinian who are involved in the play, right? Like there's something and that's what's so exciting about working on something like this, which I'm so used to doing at Golden Thread and now I feel lucky that I get to do it in these more, I guess like wider mainstream spaces is when you get our team together on a show like that, when you get the two of us together on a show like Nine Parts, we can actually go ahead and start ahead, right? We understand it and we're not gonna have to talk to Amir about house. This audience, will they understand this translation work that has been put on top of so much writing of color, artists of color that not only do you have to like bear your soul and then you have to like translate your soul for other people, which is just a really dehumanizing act to welcome people into the room and then tell them that you don't understand them. So it's really lovely that there are these spaces now that we're able to create for ourselves where we don't have to do that translation. And I feel that I feel really good about. If that makes sense in terms of if you were talking like do you hold the space a specific way? Yes, that is the non-negotiable for me in the space, right? I don't want Amir to have to translate himself. I do not want Yusuf or Ramsey to feel like whatever organic response they're having to something has to be shifted for the audience, right? Like for, because the audience can't handle it or it doesn't make sense to them. It doesn't fit into whatever preconceived notions the audience has about Middle Eastern men, right? Like I'm really interested in us continue to create these stories, these characters, these beautiful connection pieces as ourselves. Yeah, yeah. Like as just do it. And then I actually do believe that it works if you do it for real, you know? And I have enough good examples of it working to be able to, like I have proof, right? So I have hopes that, you know, that feels very non-negotiable to me as a director if that makes sense. Yeah, of course, because then it's, you're not doing this sort of internal censorship. Yeah, that's the worst, we all do it. Yeah, we do, we do. Sort of anticipating what might get met or, you know, trying to guess reactions as opposed to, you know, this is just what it is. And there is a lot, I mean, I won't speak details about the show, but I really love a certain aspect of, I always love it when characters like ours or any character of color sort of presents this opinion that might seem, I don't know, dangerous to our own is what I'm gonna say, you know? Because I think that's, like just full nuanced people that we don't have these monolithic stories, like they're this sort of this cultural undertone that we can share, we can talk about that, but we can talk about it all at once. Like we don't have to be this archetype or this archetype. And I really appreciate that about the piece. This one, actually, there have been more moments in this play than in a minute. Actually, this was very true for We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War II, right? So there would be a moment where like, let's say Yosef would be like, but I said the exact opposite of this five pages ago and you're like, yes, you did. Because we all do that. That's like, that is true. I mean, we do that. And they're both true in the moment that they happen, right? Exactly, yeah. And the thing about it is I agree with you that, I mean, we've, and these men are very, there is a delicate, sensitive nature to the two men in the play that is just very endearing to me. And it's, in a way that son is me on stage, right? Like in terms of his immigration experience, that he is an artist, people back home don't quite understand what the hell he's doing with his life. You know, all of those things. There's a lot about me that is reflected in that character and it is, I haven't seen myself in that kind of fullness reflected on the American stage before. So it's really lovely to have that experience of how create that, right? But also to be able to create it in a play that is written by someone like Amir that refuses to give up the nuance, right? Because I don't actually need a better version of myself on stage. Does that make sense? Like someone who's better than me. I would love to be able to see myself reflected on stage in my full, flawed, weird, contradictory self. It's who I am. And there is, even if as you said, there are like someone will say something and you're like, oh, I wish you hadn't said that, right? It would be so much better if you didn't say that. There is actually at the end of the day, I think the play works because they do say it. And the play moves me personally as an audience member that I get to be every night for a minute because of that. We have the writers, we have the directors and we have the actors now to be able to lift up that complexity, right? Like we've been working, there's so many of us who have been working so hard for so long on our craft so that we can do that. So now it's all about like creating more and more opportunities so people can flex those muscles for themselves and for the folks we're watching, because that's how you change the narrative. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to think about 25 years of it and existence as a company and how rich the community is now. And which means there's more maturity and then there's also all this new blood, which is my favorite, because I always joke like, I feel like an auntie at the stage of my life, which I love, I try not to be patriarchal. We are aunties, we are fully aunties right now, Nora. Just so you know, whatever bright-eyed young artists sells we had when we first met 10 years ago, no more. It's good, it's fantastic, are you kidding? It's so fun to watch because it's, you know, I just feel like, oh, let's look at a lot of these cool people are doing, but... I also love being the man in a weird way. Like it's, there is a younger generation of Manasa, Mina, Middle Eastern, whatever we're calling our umbrella these days. Artists who are so much more intersectional and have a very different kind of comfort within the anti-blackness, anti-racism conversations and have a different idea around queerness and gender politics, and you know, and the thing I love about it is because they're Middle Eastern, I'll claim again cultural aspect to this, they're not nice about it, right? They're not gonna be nice to me because I'm successful Middle Eastern artists, like they'll challenge me and I can see like, oh, you think I'm a little old fashioned right now? That's exciting, I have never been old fashioned, but I'll be old fashioned for you, right? Like this idea and Terange talks about this a lot, has talked about this a lot, and Nataki Garrett at OSF talks about this a lot of being a ladder, right? Like that's the image that Nataki uses. She's like, I'm a ladder so that the next black female, whatever shared identity that they have with Nataki, artistic director can go higher than me, right? And that is something, I think I know you live that way, I know I like, I try to live that way where I'm like, yeah, call me an idiot and do better, right? Like that sounds fantastic, you know? So I'm really excited about that next generation. I think I'm really curious, I guess I should say, like I can sort of see where we're going, but I have faith that we will go so much further than I could actually imagine at this moment. Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, I can say that for sure. I mean, having a nine year old, like, you know, like, I mean, just already. He's nine? He's nine? That's two old. I know. Tell him that that's two old. Yes, I don't accept this. He always just, he's like, listen, I'm a nine year old that still sleeps with my parents. I'm not growing up, like this is the response. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. But I had one question because I was, when you were talking about the rehearsal process, and I'll just say, I loved the gap between- Yeah, I wish we could do that all the time. Did you guys like it? Did the- We loved it. Yeah, yeah. There's something that, this is really interesting. It's sort of like doing a show twice, like you've done a tour. There's something about the space in between that this is something I just love about our artistic process, or I'm so contemplative and weird that way, but meaning I need things to really settle in on this almost a cellular level, right? So there's something about when we staged the piece and we kind of cracked all the technical nuts and bolts. And then when I went away and kept working on the text, it was like, oh, oh, it settles in, it settles in, it settles in. So I don't know, I just came back much richer and ready to work in a different way, but did you all felt that way too? I mean, Ramsey, the actor who's playing the father was like, can we just do this forever, like this kind of break? Because I do think that this is part of the capitalist economy in which we make art, right? Is that there is like, we need to make it in as little time as possible and as quickly and waste as few resources as possible, right? Like that's just because the nonprofit theater is so drained of resources and has been for so long and will be even more on the other side of the stand thing that we're all built to make shows in four weeks, right? Like that's literally what my training is over however many years, right? I can put up a show in four weeks. That's my, you know, as if that's something to be proud of. So what you end up having on stage is really ends up being the first impulse you had as a director, right? You get to have like your first impulse and that maybe if it's a shorter show, you can get in like impulse and a half, right? On some moments. Whereas this one, I could like really live with the play. And as I said, build it up, we got to a place. I saw the final run through. I was like, well, that was tonally wrong, right? I was like, that was not right, cool. I got, and the actors worked on it but they could get off book. And as you said, be at a place to do different kind of work when we got back. But also I could sleep on it and think about it and spend time in the text and read what was actually underneath the lines in a way that you can only when you're not worked rushing to a finish line, right? And when you have that space, yeah. You know, you're a smart person. I'm a smart person. I can come up with better ideas if I actually have the time to expand my thinking. And that's what happened for this one. And I just really, really wish there was, and this is very much part of the, we see white American theater demands, right? Like that there's more space built into the processes because it's just the white supremacy of that deadline driven culture. And it doesn't allow you to treat people as people. It doesn't allow you to take care of a bit, access needs, new mothers, like all of these people get selected out of our processes because our processes are so rigid and so packed. And I'm hoping we're doing this at OSF, really trying to figure out what rehearsal looks like, what tech looks like, what these processes look like that can create more space around the work to allow people to live and do better work, you know? Yeah, I mean, such an opportunity. It really is, I mean, it's gonna be super interesting. This is what I will say, like thanks to Nataki, thanks to David Schmidt, who's our ED, I feel very empowered and excited to imagine a different kind of world when we come back, right, that like, if we actually keep it the same, we're saying we will no longer be here. That's my take, that if we don't change it, it will actually go away. OSF, theater, name theater company. And I'm just, I'm worried that there are a lot of leaders or theaters that are not looking at it that way. They're looking at this moment, like we just have to like hold on so that we can go back. Yeah. And I just don't know if there is going back. Yeah, I mean, I think that it'll be a while till we have regular audiences in our house. I mean, we're gonna have to, we can't go back. That's the way I see it, but I understand people adhering to what they know as opposed to what they don't know. But I agree with you, I agree with you. And the hard thing about it is like that going back, whatever we're going back to, we all loved it. I mean, like, you know, we have chosen in different ways to make this our lives, our livelihood, our passion, our center of our universe. So we love theater, right? But it's not like it was like always amazing or really that great for a lot of people, right? Like it is also a space, we have been an exclusive space that has purposefully excluded whole swaths of people from our rehearsal rooms, from our audiences, from our behind the scenes, donors, board members, you name it, right? That's why spaces like Golden Thread was created and has thrived for so long is because it's acting against that, right? So as we miss and romanticize about theater in the olden days, this is actually a moment where we can also remove a little bit of that romanticization of what we used to have and look at the bodies hidden in the closets and clean it out, you know? It's just, as you said, it's just such an opportunity and I'm really, really, really hoping that we all sort of step again, step forward to that difficult conversation so that we can make it better. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna say inshallah, but- Exactly, right? Not in the Turkish contest to the Arab context, like hopefully that really will happen. Yeah, that's the thing, for me, I don't know if this is Turkish or just me, when I hear inshallah, I feel like my family used that when it wasn't gonna happen. Right, right, right. Like, oh, we'll see you next week, inshallah, means there's no way we're seeing each other. Leila Bak, who's the writer I work with as well, is, she uses inshallah all the time and I'm always like, oh, this is not getting me the same way. Oh, everyone, it's so fun to talk to you. It's so easy, I could do it for hours and hours and hours. You're the best, Nora. You too. And just on record, I wanna say thank you for being who you are as an artist, but also for Golden Thread, because I don't know if everybody knows that along with being an amazing artist, you're the board president, leading us through this crazy transition of, you know, taraj, leaving us. Congratulations, taraj, and it could not be in better hands and I'm just so thankful for you. Thank you so much, Ebron. Again, it's a lot of teamwork and I feel really honored to do it. Really honored. Yeah, we're lucky, we're lucky. Yeah, we're lucky. Thank you for being here to do it. Thank you. Friends, we've come to the end of our time and I would just wanna thank Hal Brown for hosting this live stream event. The recordings of the session will be available on both Hal Brown and Golden Thread's websites. Many thanks to our live stream technician, Wendy Reyes and Chris Steele for managing the live stream on Golden Thread's Facebook page and many thanks to all of you for joining us and to you, Ebron, of course.