Seagull Talks at the Monteney Seagull Theatre Center at the great Graduate Center CUNY of the City University in Midtown Manhattan. My name is Frank Henshka and I'm running the Seagull Talks actually since March when we talk to theater artists from New York City, from America, North America, the Americas, Canada and all around the world. We have done over 100 talks focusing on the time of Corona and how it is changing our lives, how it is questioning our fundamental essential beliefs and why we do it, what is really necessary, what should be done and what is wrong and what can be corrected and showing ways perhaps into how we can come out of this crisis, within a crisis or a crisis to come out stronger. After our short break in the summer we went back and looked a little bit towards theater performance and the political and the impact it does have on our communities and our lives and our political movements and now again we had one week break over Thanksgiving and we are back and we are continuing our investigation. We had this last month's sessions or week long sessions on the idea of dramaturgy, on new dramaturgies, on the theater of the real, the theater of documentary theater was Carol Martin, Peter Ackersall was here for the dramaturgy sessions and now we are having again a variety of talks this week and for next week and today we have with us a worker in the vineyard of the American theater which we think very highly of at the Segal Center and it is Sam Bogellum and he is a Canadian American we could now say theater director and translator and he founded something unique, he founded Cherry Artists Collective or Cherry Arts as we call it, it's up in Ithaca in New York state and for five years it has now worked up there and it has premiered place from Argentina, France, Germany, Quebec, Morocco, Serbia, El Salvador, also of course American U.S. place and it has been commissioned by the communities, they are deeply involved I think in the work out there and this is one of the things we've been looking at, how is theater changing, will it go on in metropolitan communities like New York City it will happen, Hillary Miller will come with us next week and talk about New York City and when it was declared as drop dead in the 70s and now perhaps also as a time where it is very, very hard to do theater in New York so what are alternatives we spoke to Stacy Klein from the double-edged sword out in the farm, we spoke to circus artists Aginio Barba was here, famously lives in that small town in Denmark and changed completely and we see Cherry Arts as part of this and he has directed a lot in New York City actually with the great Ohio theater where he is now a statistic associate and also New York Theater Workshop, The Atlantic, Club Thumb here and Jack and so many others kind of the hit list of all the important places of what we think he has directed, over 20 productions was part of NKATAM, he was great Lincoln director, Lincoln Center's director's lab and also he has taught at NYU Tisch, Hunter College, Sony Ithaca College and the great Connell University so Sam, normally we say where are you, what time is it but I think I gave it a little bit away but still tell us a little bit where are you at the moment I'm in Ithaca New York, I was just reminded, I was at a TCG college yesterday, I was just reminded that it is important to say that we are on the unceded lands of the Kyuga Nation but what we now call Ithaca New York among some circles and yeah I'm here at home, not at the Cherry Arts base although we chatted a little about how it goes there now, the theater is not open as a theater but we can at least show up there and do our administrative thing thank you for all of that, I should say by way of like disclaimer as one puts in one's bio directed or developed works at the following I have not directed major main stage productions at every big theater in New York although lots of developmental work in my time there I've seen very well, so are you directed directly in Ithaca, where is your theater located, tell us a little bit about Cherry Arts yeah thank you though, so the Cherry Arts base is in Ithaca and for those that don't know we're a small town with a sort of big arts presence because the town of Ithaca is home to Cornell University and Ithaca College and TC3 Tompkins Community College which is Tompkins Courtland Community College which is also a very strong community college and so it's got a very large faculty grad student presence here and so in a funny way like after you know some you know many years of being based in New York and freelance directing at regional theaters honestly my partner has a faculty job at Cornell and it seemed time to build a theater in a community of theater makers here around some of the sort of for me emerging as real exciting imperatives of ways to make work that aren't made so often in the US like international plays actually what we say is radically local radically global and formally innovative so those are our three collective thrusts so we basically we try to not like take place from New York everybody looks in New York for plays I lived in New York for a long time I love New York but we thought well there are a lot of other places that great plays are coming from around the world like what are the things that theaters can do even before all this covid situation that film can't do for example and one of those things an important way was to work in and about the community and the histories of the community and make work right where one is about that place and those people and so we aim to do a kind of very nearby very far away balance and of course the back balance like all balances has been upset now but that was the sort of that was the sort of initial impetus for a collective of artists who were by and large faculty members at the college which is many know has a really extraordinary theater program and Cornell which is needs no introduction so that's the sort of basic cherry arts landscape so do you have the space are you also yeah so both things are true we have we have we are a collective of artists and and in a sense it's the collective that is the theater producer we are mostly actors and a couple of directors and a few playwrights who fans of New York theater international theater know is in Ithaca a lot of the times teaches at Ithaca college and it's a strafford a wonderful Australian playwright some other folks and so we gather as a collective and read plays out loud often from other countries or things that we're developing in house and decide what we want to produce and and then we do that when we do it in a building at almost always at the cherry art space and so that's our sort of lovely home base it's just a you know it's just an empty box really often the industrial side of town it's a very small town it's all the parts that every city has we have our industrial district it's just very small and very close to all the other districts so like black box raw performance spaces the world over that's where we are and and that has become a really wonderful resource for the community the Ithaca has to we started this company knowing that Ithaca had already a wealth of theater the hangar theater and the kitchen theater both very like wonderful strong established theater companies the hangar does a summer season and like often family friendly big family musicals sort of idea although they do more and the kitchen advertises themselves as the kind of off-broadway theater of Ithaca you know smaller dramas and comedies and so it was really about finding a lane that was not occupied by already sort of taken care of and so it turned out that there was a real appetite not only for the theater that we make for but also the space itself which we always named an art space rather than a theater has been home to puppetry and sort of new opera and installation video installation we do lots of we present lots of sort of neo cabaret vaudeville burlesque type installations depending on who knocks on the door and has an inspiring idea how was the time of corona for you and your company and chariards is it close now what are you doing yeah the well so the theater is fascinating enough at one moment I thought to look on the website and since we are technically not a theater it's a disciplinary art space which is actually a government approved label we were allowed to reopen as an office space so that was great because you know I think we've all been feeling the difficulty of only working on zoom and only working remotely and so we have been able to gather our sort of very small skeleton team back in the space and so we have been able to start from one another what time do you start again what time I'm going to say end of summer in August that we had we took a little break in the summer and then when we reassembled we reassembled in person and yeah we put on we put on masks and we have to go to each other's table we had the air purifier put in the ultraviolet light air purifier put in our air circulation system and when I went into the space at night once and there was no light on and it was glowing this alien otherworldly light just to figure out that that was nuking the air at all times so this is a good tip to all our friends in New York if you clear this theater a multi-disciplinary art space then you have more liberties we once had the great Melanie Joseph was the founder and she came and introduced the book David Brun was the editor at Prelude and she said if I would be a young artist I would not stay in New York City she said it's no longer what it was it's hostile, you want to experiment it's not this is not the place it used to be so tell us is that your experience the time of grown-up artists are thinking what do we do, what do we don't do how was it for you? I wrestle with this question Frank so much because I arrived in New York I arrived in New York in 1997 and was there for over 20 years and at that time in the East Village you could show up with a bright idea and a little bit of energy and put on plays in Manhattan all the time and you didn't need any money and that's how I became involved with the Ohio Theater and eventually the New Ohio Theater and here and all these amazing places and it's funny I talk to the students here now I frequently go into Ithaca College or Cornell to talk to the students at the same time though even when you arrive in New York in 1997 you've always just missed the cool stuff like I had just missed Warhol in the factory so I'm suspicious overall about these narratives of the golden age and to talk to Robert which I did recently there are still lots of small companies popping up I think more than ever and who knows if this is true but the feeling of democratization of performance knowledge that is happening because of the internet like you know when I got to New York I saw things at BAM and downtown at New York Theater Workshop I saw Evo Van Hove in his first show before he was Evo Van Hove at New York Theater Workshop and I was just like I can never see this in Vancouver I don't know how I would see this and I don't know that that is true anymore for young creators and I would now I would rather go to a place where I would be able to get the keys to a warehouse and start making things in short order which was what New York was really like back in the day so it's I came here after you know deciding to build something and we wrote a little press release and we put it out and so we're making a new theater and we're doing this kind of stuff and the next day I got an email from Community Arts Partnership of our town saying we write your press release why haven't you been in touch with us we have money for people like you and I was like this is going to be very different from New York City this is not what would happen to you Do you own your space? Yes that is part of I mean you know I say this as though no strokes of great things were involved we do have a great good fortune to own the space basically I had bought a teeny apartment with help from my family and that apartment as they tend to do in New York skyrocketed in value and when it was time to build something it was like okay we can make a bare bones for a warehouse in a small town and that you know I started my company after many years of freelance directing and I did know some things that if I was going to start a company I wanted to have a space and so that all that came possible in a way that was very very fortunate and then has been you know I think one worries then that it's a vanity project or something but then it really filled up immediately with all of this amazing energy from the community and it turned out that there was a real exciting and exciting An ensemble idea you say you use the word ensemble which everybody who works in theater kind of dreams of so you have one? We do we have a collective it's very loose we spent a lot of time talking early on about what it would be to be a collective this is part of it there's the idea of being a theater artist in a way that is a full time job I think is really problematic in the US honestly especially if you don't want to live in New York like even if you do it like how many people really don't have a day job in our industry I mean certainly we can point to individuals who don't but most be it teaching and even I directs three or four plays a year for the cherry artist collective but I also run the company you know I do I spend I mean I traded in a series of day jobs doing graphics for bankers or whatever for the day job of writing grants and supervising staff and running a small company I prefer it I'm not necessarily better at it but in this case enables me to do to do the kinds of plays that the collective I want to do which is great so I have more artistic meaning but basically all of our collective members are you know if you're going to live in a place like Ithaca you're going to teach and then your teaching is like a serious part of your artistic and life identity I mean maybe your gardening is a serious part of your life identity but it's all things that you can't really do in New York and really the only place where theater work there where there's enough paying theater work around on the ground are these very big cities and it's not for everyone to live in a very big city on a lifestyle level so it's so we're a collective of professionals who are not working to pretend that our full-time job will be theater and that's an interesting I think piece of thinking that emerged from our brainstorming is that we're we all work regularly and have long histories working professionally and we all teach or do other things in order to live in a smaller center that affords quality of life I mean that's a long way to say that it also makes the collective quite loose because someone can go on sabbatical someone can have a year where they're working hard on writing a book or they have a very heavy course load and then they're less involved for that year and then they lean back in when they're done so it's a really it's a great community and I will say it's very isolating about the job of theater director and or can be and it's so great for me to program I mean I'm not saying everything we program it becomes tremendously popular and is a huge hit but I can say that it went through several rounds of readings with a large number of smart theater makers and there was enthusiasm from a couple of big roomfuls of those people and so I feel so then it's just a nice feeling where I don't I don't if if something goes over poorly I don't kick myself quite as hard as I might it's just the hive I'm such a I'm a big believer in the hive mind you know the wisdom of the hive brain so that's our so that's our cherry artist collective and we recently started when I first came to New York I interned and then worked at New York Theater Workshop so I love those people I noticed that they had started putting at the beginning of everyone's bio the New York Theater Workshop previous credits first and we started to do that shameless shameless fanboying and and it's so gratifying to start to see like long lists of cherry collective productions at the beginning of everyone's little bio you know it's like oh that's like a measurable sort of groundswell of work we've been putting together you hired artists, you produced work, you actors and everybody but what is you why do you do theater what's it working yeah I mean the question I mean it's a question at the best of times and now it's our real question I think I think my answer my overall answer to the wide is not so different from many other people's in terms of it's a kind of addiction I think to that feeling of bringing everybody into a room and like kind of addictions that has these downsides and you're like wake up sweating and going why am I doing this but um so that that feeling of getting everybody together live in a room at the same time to make something extraordinary happen it will only happen then that will bring everyone together is so potent and it really does beg the question like since we're not whatever we're doing we're not doing that is like what are we doing and the cherry has we've actually been very very active artistically through the COVID moment I think part of that was that we had done so much experimental work we were quite ready to look at a set of new set of parameters and challenges and say what can we make within this but boy it's a very tricky question why we're doing it I think I can come back to this feeling of addiction like we're like an I pick up the phone and say we can't tolerate this we have to make something everyone goes yes yes yes let's make something and some people maybe the same or people are like this is a time for reflection and this is a time to figure out what's going on but we that's not the way we've been doing it but it's very interesting Frank we did it we did one play we were the first folks in our area I felt proud of this to do an actual live performance where people came together and watched live actors do a thing so it was outdoors it was all socially distanced audience sat in a park in pods distanced from one another brought their own chairs we painted circles on the ground and the cast was far from the audience and we did so we did a big comedia style far which is not our normal sort of voice I guess but it was it was a blast it was really fun and and there was a huge outpouring of gratitude that was very moving and it was really great but at the same time that feeling of audience togetherness was very it was only an approximation of that like that we've read these studies of that everyone that people's heart beats synchronize in a theater which is an amazing image that's so moving especially now and I know people's heart beats did not synchronize in the park they were too far apart and so the losses of this of making theater in this time are like animal losses they're not intellectual you know we can all read plays still and we can all stream prerecorded plays and they can be done very very professionally but I do question how much of it is a kind of filmmaking of an audience base that wants to you know what was our production I think Marvin Carlson told me about it since Marge and so what did you do and just also now I think my kipei kwa friends at the at the delegation Taylor Gaines and Jean-Pierre Dion said you know you just did a work so tell us if you're able to do work what were the projects we announced a whole season we announced we'd usually do four productions we announced four productions and two of them fascinated if we do we do like international plays and they tend to be like structurally unusual relative to most us plays and so we looked at the two that we were going to program anyway and both of them seemed like they would lend themselves really well to a kind of live stream production and we do live stream we do it like you show up at the time that the actors show up and we press go and they're really doing it then and then we take it down and that you know they're all I'm fascinated by all the conversations around this again Robert at the New Ohio one of my longest standing collaborators in New York and I feel exactly the same way that there has to be something happening live why I don't know like you know could you tell if we faked it probably not so is it a ton of trouble yes so but we do it so that's so we we did this live stream production of a day a beautiful new play recent play by Gabrielle who's a young Quebec writer she's amazing and we did that that was a fun collaboration our local big old vaudeville house you know big old vaudeville house that every town has ours is the state leader it's a great organization and they have been live streaming concerts and so they have a really great like robust streaming infrastructure and so we rented the space and we'd put up four green screen booths and we and we streamed from there I wonder if I could I don't know if I said to myself I was going to pull up put together pictures but the morning got away from me for but it was four green screen booths two cameras per booth and a big camera up front and we live mixed the video we had to build a camera we had to build a computer effectively from scratch to accept nine video feeds at the same time and live mix them in real time so it was very exciting and again a beautiful play and it got it got what's been really interesting is we have sold more tickets to sold more tickets to this live stream work than we had been in in our previous season so there's something great about that how much did you charge and how much did you charge and how did people sign up we did a we did a sliding scale you know people came to our ticket our regular ticket thing and we just said minimum 25 recommended 45 to support the artist I haven't looked at the numbers of how many when we just said the power of suggestion when we just said 15 25 45 everyone did 15 as soon as we said minimum and suggested everyone did 25 so that anyone who's listening who wants to do a sliding scale but so yeah and listen we're a tiny company we don't sell a vast number of tickets at the best of times so like we were doing Guthrie numbers but we were doing actually we were doing like solid off-off Broadway numbers like solid new numbers but the interesting I can say just to go back to the Marvin Carlson the outdoor piece because this was fun and this is like I think a product of our the good brainstorming our collective we want to do something outdoors one of the things we can do live stream outdoors and so we thought we'll do what what are forms that work outdoors and comedia is not only designed to be performed outdoors but to design to perform mask in a certain way the old Italian exactly committed a lot and so we found a play that was immediately post-committee and we had been inspired by crystal Pete who's actually a choreographer from Vancouver but now making a really extraordinary avant-garde work in the Netherlands and she had there was a piece of sort of going around Facebook called I forget what it's called but she she has ballet dancers in suits dancing in a very austere but extremely heightened ballet way to a dialogue that sounds like a David Mammoth play and they just dance it and so we hand this around we're like this is amazing well what would it be like if we did this in a different register say in a comic register so that is in fact how the whole play how we did the whole play that the cast was masked and I immediately discarded the idea of like trying to sneak up mics behind the masks like what a nightmare and so we recorded the whole soundtrack the whole play and this was great because our collective we had many of them are my age and older and we're being very you know understandably cautious about COVID but have done season after season at the big theater festivals and can like bang out an audio performance of a classic play like very fast at a high level and so we rehearsed for a week and we recorded the whole yes it was I skipped that it was a goal it was Carla Goldony who most people will know from the servant of two masters who he did write a hundred and fifty other plays and we spent ages digging through those because there's no real second place like all the other play like 30 other plays are tied for second place and they're a distant second so we found one called the fan that was just delightful and it's set out doors and it's like you know just a really goofy story which we all could use by then and so we masked the cast and I wonder I wonder if I could do a screen share because it was very fun to hang on to use these I'm being like a complete I don't know if I have oh yeah here we are oh I don't it's not enabled for me maybe you're able him in case you're listening yeah but go on yeah but it was really exciting like these masks that we're all have to wear you know even though hopefully we accept that one wears them and that it's important and it's your civic duty they're a pain in the keister and nobody likes it and it was really interesting and fun to kind of like claim the mask as a tool of expression and of comic expression actually so it was really fun to have one of our you know our designers so like funny mouths like cartoony mouths and beards and noses onto covid masks which enabled the cast was largely younger people to perform safely outdoors and then they could then completely like insanely heightened in a super heightened way physically embody the dialogue that they were kind of not lip syncing because there are no lips but body syncing too and in a way that actually no single person like you could actually have an old person's unmistakably older voice speaking while a young person in kind of the long beard could fall down the stairs or whatever so in a I mean in a way between that show and then this has been I have to say a very it was exciting it's been a productive sort of artistic time at the same time as it's so full of loss you know and so full of the things we can't do but it was but so so yeah you know there are all of these experiences are have been so exciting I mean by all I mean just even these last two the fan and then a day which are very different outdoors super noisy goofy and then this kind of like cool live stream that was very formal like it was all about sort of rearranging you know highly these feet and boomeraku or no you separated the voice of the actor from the yeah with COVID masks as you know it's a play with traditional actually over the time of our conversation we can put you in so you can show some images so tell us about your community what does work I mean you said you got an email right away but this was department are people involved do you know people on the street is it part of the fabric did it take time do you think it will take more time how does it look like and how just be honest how real is that Howard I mean it's real it's real I mean this I mean yes if this is the sort of is that does that really it really come from you know we bring playwrights over from Paris and Berlin and Montreal and Bucharest and and Salvador and it is like so it's so fun to to see people's responses who are in all cases come from very big cities some of them much less comfortable than even New York and it is like we have a lovely space we have a really high caliber of acting and design and and we have tons of like creature comfort it's really you know you can sit in a cafe without people coming by and maybe their audience members or maybe their supporters or maybe their other actors or other artists but it is a really I mean the it took me a lot when I moved to New York I have found a place I am never going to leave and over 20 years it wasn't a bad guess but boy by the time I was ready to leave the small college town has a lot to recommend it and you do feel you know if you are listening and you are aiming to I mean what I really if I built a space where I wanted it was to be full of people all the time and so when and I wanted to be not full of people I wanted to be full of people all the time stuff and it just there was plenty of stuff that is really exciting and people who didn't have a place necessarily to put it and so so it's been really really great I mean I think I will say like on an organizational level it's always tough like it's always tough to build infrastructure and ticket selling and administration is you know that's the that's the part that you have to do and there and I and in the US we are sort of under supported on these on these in these ways so you have to spend a lot more like building infrastructure basically is building fundraising so that you can build infrastructure and that's the kind of thing that you know like I'm not that's not what my training is but you know on some level it's just about speaking compellingly enthusiastically about your work and I can do that and I will say like for the I mean this is a real question like it is easier it's easier here than in New York like it is easier you know if if they said if they if young people have a connection to anywhere in the country like a mid-sized city I could imagine this project being a slightly bigger population because we cap out you know at a certain audience size given that our work is kind of boutique but yeah if people have a connection to some mid-sized city you're going to still have access to super cool work so I'm willing to do that you know but I think I think the idea of going to New York and trying to get attention there I think for me the upside of New York was about seeing stuff you know the hustle of trying to make work there and get attention for it you know was on the outside you know I think that I think that the awesome split would be like see some of the great especially international stuff that comes to New York or to other big centers and then make the work where you have some breathing room you know and where you have an audience that isn't that you can really an audience you can show something that they're not otherwise going to see I would say I'm just seeing a thing that makes me co-host I wonder I'll just show just the there's a it's just a picture of like yeah so this idea of just having fun with a mask with a COVID mask as an expressive device was a thing that was really fun to do and I have one other picture that I will that was the kind of like oops that's the same picture sorry oh maybe I feel like I'm there we go that's the sort of like dance number at the end of the show and it was it was all you know another I mean Frank in this in the way that you compared it to which I really appreciated it was really amazing to think about so all of these young actors are doing physical performances to vocal performances created by other actors and we wanted to be out of our way even for young characters we wanted nobody to be doing the same nobody to be voicing themselves because it just became an interesting concept and so the then during it there are downsides like actors would say you know boy it happens even you get into the run and you have a whole idea for a new take on what's happening in a beat because you still got the same dialogue but at the same time it was a way to reflect on this sort of intimate collaboration between two actors and we often did the cross gender or cross racial or cross ethnic or cross you know we try we or and definitely like different ages we we mix that up a lot and it was really it was really you know I don't know what it meant in the end except that it was it was a nice kind of chaos to inject and to in a way to reflect on like how do we express ourselves vocally and in and through our bodies and then how do those expressions speak to each other across different traditions and ages and all of that so that was like well you know in between just trying to figure out the funniest way to fall down the stairs or whatever this was in the park in the park in the middle of Ithaca and the town everybody could just show up it went registered it went through a little bit and it was tricky that was tricky because you know we were meant to keep the crowd the gathering to 50 and everybody knows if you're listing something for free you you can get up to 50% of no shows and so it wouldn't have been practical for us to say okay 50 people have said they will come therefore now nobody else can come but we all end up being pretty loosey goosey that we did our best to I would say the city worked with us very very carefully and effectively and they were very I mean they really liked they were like you know the fact that we came to them saying like all the live performers are going to wear masks all the time that's the thing that I think it's very hard to achieve and that was what they sort of needed to have be true at the time and in terms of socially distancing the audience and all that we did the things you'd expect and that all worked out great behind you if you have a couple of pictures maybe of your space your art space while we were conversing now what is your practice like let's say this week what are you doing well so a day the big one was kind of such a big project that right now I am I would say we're all sort of recovering and we are we're in that sort of like week and a half of like and then we are and then and we're and we're like looking at fundraising and we do have a you know doing that like your annual fundraiser which is a small company it's like these are the things like you find yourself that's the price of making the work you know so and we're just starting on our in February we have our second live stream show that season we announced was like outdoors streaming streaming outdoors and so the second live stream show is a super cool play from Mexico Alejandro de Caño who I don't know if he's ever crossed your path and he's very he's very cool super smart chic young writer but prolific and this will be his first production in English and his play is called hotel good luck and in that interesting way it is called hotel good luck in Spanish you know the one absolutely untranslatable thing is the sound of the English language in a foreign language so I regret that we can't really say what translate the title but it's a great play about a kind of like it's like sort of lonely late night radio host guy who had like kind of like five people listen to his station and he and he has a big life loss and then goes into a kind of parallel universe thing of enacting what it would be like to not have entered that loss but then of course the other losses it's in a funny way as I recall it's been a while since I read it but rabbit hole that David Lindsay a bear play is about a speculation of the parallel universe idea and loss but of course it's that's in the sort of living room drama form and this isn't a completely kaleidoscopic crazy form so that's a good luck and loss is that's going to be an important scene from many to come let me ask you regarding the Mexican writer you know let's take some New York theaters let's say the signature playwrights horizon also New York theater workshop and to a large extent the public they are American plays in the of like North American you know mostly Godman and I mean there's the play company that has great international plays but not so many you are in Ithaca but you take pride and if you look at your production it's so international it's a global scale in New York is so diverse we have a majority of New York City is no longer wide I think 160 languages are spoken crazy and then on stage on stage why do you what's your idea behind behind your artistic vision and why do you do that are they not good enough you know I think it's so funny it's so like I I find that for my I mean to come in really personally I I'm a director right I'm not a writer and I'm not a divisor and I did find myself and I'm the kind of director I am I don't really come out of acting training I don't really come out of like let's find the deeper dive into this naturalistic scene between these actors so I found a certain point in my career I just was like they long story short for me personally the ways in which plays get written in other countries stretches a director more and an ensemble more it's not there boy that I I have struggled to understand why it is that in film for example the measure of your sophistication right as this may ask is that you watch international films you know the Angelica wherever you go to the your first right and it's it's all about international films and that's a measure of how cool are you like that you're not stuck in Hollywood and not that New York theater is a good analog for Hollywood filmmaking but is it like you know and so it's I have felt like there are planes Frank that like this play called George Kaplan again an English title it's called George Kaplan in French George Kaplan by again in Frederick Sontag that's been produced all over the world like 15 productions translated into dozens of languages we did not only did we do the English language from here but I translated it and like and that's three years ago we were nobody like how did we that was such a get but it's not perceived really as a get here because it was like what's the play from France you know I don't I have I so the part of the dawn of this was just traveling I would see we I spent a sabbatical my partner in Argentina and I was so knocked over by I mean basically the travel the lesson of travel kind of for me is always oh things that we thought were the way the world is are really completely contingent and only operate that way in my city and so just going to plays and being like oh my god look at the look at the crazy variety of things that people can put on stage in Buenos Aires in a completely different super sophisticated town that would just not be accepted in New York because they're just not what a play is or they're not good was really mind-blowing and super exciting and that is that was actually in a sense that when I came to Ithaca to you know broke together this ensemble that that was what I really wanted to do was to sort of say I'm not sure I've ever written in other countries and how and and and I do think there's a politics to it I do think that I mean we'll have to look around our political world to see the sort of toxicness of kind of America first and but I do feel like there's a kind of I mean I've had people who are firmly on the side of US theater should be more international say but you're just never going to sell the tickets I can think of two conversations with like high up people who are really in it who are like no one's ever going to sell them just like spare yourself the grief and then and and I and I remember again from Argentina as many years and five years over eight years ago now emailing a company like an exemplary really cool all New York company and being like I found a playwright in Buenos Aires who's crazy famous here and all through Latin America and she is a player who is exactly in this world like the voice of your of your company and the answer came back we have new American plays right in the mission that's just like what we do and I was and then I looked oh my god so many people have new American plays in the mission it's it's somehow I don't know why just to make sure it has it cannot if it's not American they will not do it yeah yeah totally it's like the government of the arts often is you know your client so little money out there you put in international collaborator you're out by default we got told that that we have to be careful about leaning too much on certain for certain government agencies we have to like I mean okay every application you spend it a little bit to the interest of the grantor but but it was interesting to be like oh we have to spin away from it can't feel like we're servicing international artists yeah who was the Argentine writer by the way pardon who was the writer so the Argentine writer was Romina Paula yeah we just did some readings for her oh great I have no idea what she has written since then she had a new piece that was well anyway I forget what it was called yeah and I mean she's like a novelist a movie star a rock star she's just like such a glamorous figure I was like bring her to New York no problem and everyone was like yeah it's very surprising it's very surprising and I mean there is I have been they're just like a certain number of hours of the day I've been dying I feel like many cities have a small alt theater company that is or would be interested in international play the people who do the alt plays maybe not the main stage of the given city but the alt stage or whatever and I would love to create a network where we can because you know I would say I spent a significant amount of time digging out plays from other countries and then we read them and then many of them are like good plays in that country but wouldn't resonate in the United States and we discard them like we find our way like we have a tricky little way to find a way to do these plays and now we've got like eight you know ten that we produced and I'd love for there to be an anthology or just a way to get the word out because that is of course the downside of making if it is one of making the work in a small community you know the size of your audience is limited and then that's the very interesting thing about this online moment because we sell so our I think a ticket sales fell 50% when we went to online streaming stuff but it was literally more than made up for by national level ticket sales and that really starts to make one go well when we are back in I think we all we always said the pandemic will change things but it was very difficult to say how but we were all like get ready things are going to be different and one of the things for us is like we're looking going why on earth like when we go back to it on like live on stage version we'd be crazy not to build in a streaming like and I mean foundationally build in artistically a live stream component so that people can have not the same experience but a full fully thought through artistic experience of the play streaming it at the same time that people are having the same experience of the play and that's very exciting for me actually you watch a lady Gaga concert or MTV or on HBO but you will still go to the concert and it's even better because you saw it you know and the differences and between it now it's stunning it's also a great testimony to the town of Ithaca that they said this is a company we like this is work we would like to do because it's something to do with us the university so you know it certainly makes it an interesting attractive town and what you know always has done but it has to be a real engagement it can be you know a pretend one and so in your ideal world you know what would you like to do let's say the Ithaca town say Sam what do you need what would you like to do what would be something what do you think what could you do there that you know there's an interesting there's an interesting moment happening of course with with we see you as well as with I think I mean anything in particular both other companies that describe the hanger in the kitchen are undergoing sort of organizational transitions that are coincident with this like with this thing with the with COVID and of course we are I mean there are elements of the cherry company infrastructurally that have certainly been shaken and destabilized like how what does income look like what is staffing look like I think everybody has been no company has come out of this sort of sailing smoothly along their trajectory and I think it is a real it's a real moment I think we can get away with a lot in terms of our audiences I think one thing I've noticed about us theater compared to but I've now seen a fair amount of international theater and talk to people about how it runs we are so box office driven that we are as opposed to funding from government etc or corporate sponsored we are we often are forced to program from a place of fear of our subscribers wrath and I think that is unfortunate but I think it is also in this case and I think this is a moment when any institution can turn to their subscribers and say hey we need to make some changes and these changes can be for better artistic outcomes there social justice outcomes better community engagement outcomes and we can sell that to the subscribers everything is out the window we live through a global pandemic things are going to be different and here's how they are going to be different I do think it is an opportunity to say we were already experimental and we cracked open our creative processes even more in ways that will endure I think so maybe I hope it is a time where we can come out and really having dug deep and learned things and been forced to innovate and then we can hang on to that innovation and I don't want it to sound cheap because I hear a lot I despair sometimes when I hear people like people saying idealistic things and other people echoing those hopes and I know those echoes are false are like lip service because I know there is no way I can implement that but the path of least resistance is to say absolutely that is a great idea and we are going to do that I feel like I have seen that it is disheartening because I do think a lot of real things can happen and I think it will come from the shatteredness of the model now and I hope that people take seriously I hope the people in positions of greater power than me are taking seriously the possibility to reinvent things it had an impact it felt on the streets black lives matter was it felt in the town of Ithaca it felt it is very we are feeling it in a very specific way we feel in a very tough way because we are a town with something like a 3.5% black community it is a constant churn even at the universities where faculty of color come or staff of color and after three years this town is too damn white and I am out and that is a self-perpetuating self-fulfilling prophecy and that is a response to acts that are very custom to having on the show and that is I think myself a lot of people didn't want to believe that was true we are all hearing it because we are all university people or spouses or whatever and it is completely not true I am admitting that I kind of had that complacency and it is completely not true and it has been a terribly racist situation for a lot of people who have come here under good intentions and so for us it is just about trying to keep the community diverse and we are also an ensemble who is made up of members of the community and so how do we diversify the ensemble is a thing we are taking very seriously we are doing international work how do we make sure that work is not all like Europe and we want the work to resonate not to be homework but a great play to have a great time so how do we then make sure it is not all like Germany, France, Canada Latin America has been very fruitful we have wonderful collaborations in Latin America so that is helpful but the global south aside from South America we have not yet gotten into the Middle East so that I would say has lit a fire under all of us to try to create a community of fracture, rupture destruction frankly to build something up that is more equitable so what inspires you what are you in this time do you watch online theater, films what do you read, listen to how do you keep your mind sharp no boy recently I am getting outdoors I read a couple of novels after the show went up that was great I read a couple of novels what did you read I read one great novel called Paul transforms into a real girl it was super queer it was like a sci-fi gender fluidity it was great, it was super fun and then I read an Anne Patchett novel almost like too much of a lovely product and then you realize after you are like she forced some bitter pills in that beautiful Anne Patchett packet so that was that's what I read recently I missed doing pottery that was a great way to kill somewhere it was a great collective let me show a picture of the art space how does it work can playwrights send you plays can you rent it out can you rent it out you could when events were allowed this is the art space it's denuded form we've got sort of like modular platform system and chairs and all that it's a brown box so many universities in black boxes they suck the energy out of it it's a plywood box and you can see the canal we have a little view of the river which is super nice so I would say sadly the US based playwrights don't send us plays we're not on that list and so we won't be able to read them but we love you and we are pleased by how much support there is for US playwrights in US theater companies even though I know it is not an easy road but the people who if anyone is listening to this who is like a cool theater company awesome, weird ass, super cool international plays, give us a buzz and we can like trade some ideas and yeah when we're producing come up to Ithaca and check us out yeah who knows what might come out of this corona time that is spaces like yours I was going to say oh check out like the I'm sure obligatory plug check out on February, hotel good luck by Alejandro de Canyo is going to be really beautiful also live stream very different from Adé movie of your space that actually that one we're actually also doing from the state theater which is kind of cool I mean I think that one we're going to do we're going to do a lot of interviews of cuts between different cameras and this one I think is going to be one long take like one person moving with a camera and one, two and two actors but how interesting that smaller places like relatively smaller can go in big spaces right something that would have been unthinkable before to go for four evenings absolutely to use resources and spaces maybe also that could be something for the future that small companies might use the thousands these out and they're going to get 50 or 100 audience members anyway that's fantastic Sam really really thank you for joining us we think it's important to democratize as you said the access to the arts access to healthcare access to the education access to the arts of fundamental human rights and I think because of the funding structures you know the regions outside the very very big cities having a little bit of a harder time so you're doing a great service to American theater there's also a great tradition of great regional companies and this produces high quality work and innovative and also is exploring what is being done in other places so it's a real important contribution that you're making so really thank you and it adds a bit to the puzzle of what's going on in the time of Corona in American theater and also globally and there are so many cross connections tomorrow we will have with us Helen Shaw the critic the great one who was also once our very great curator she was always seeing what is she observing and from a point of view of a critic and then the great Gordie Furtman who was a professor of theater but a drama to a teacher director but mostly concerned with on-site as she called it you know theater of site specific but she calls it on-site to do something on the site where you are with international overview so she will talk about many other things about that this was a really illuminating thank you for sharing congratulations it's easy to pass to zone in and out hey this is what he does but you have built this over years after 20 years in New York you made a big decision now you have worked 5-6 years there it takes 7 years to get something started but it's an important thing to say also for young artists as you said really think about it as an alternative to the metropolitan supremacy idea from there it's as valid on one way it's true on the other way it's not first you want to be respected by your peers and then by institutions and by cities so I think so the most important is to do good work and perhaps to develop work and the time we live in now this is truly something that is working and you can do productions and even New York theater workshop whatever as far as I'm at because it's a difficult thing and they can't you know not their fault but it's impossible by the structure but you decided to work in another structure so really really thank you and to our listeners thanks for taking time out of your busy life there's so so much more on when we started in March early on so it was very little in these conversations we're happy to see more and more but it really means a lot that you take the time and listen to it and thanks to Hal Run for being so patient with us for now over 100 talks the VJ also to Andy Lerner from the Seagulls thank you and Sam good luck and are you going to go back to the rehearsal today or tomorrow in that space? I go straight straight to the theater from here absolutely wish you all the best fantastic good luck and really congratulations congratulations to the city of Ithaca also you know to us


Pet Nation of America, wow. Mark Cushing, he wrote the book, and he is the CEO and founder of Animal Rights. Animal Policy Group. Policy Group, which is much more important. And he joins us, where are you? You're in the East Coast, Mark? No, I live near Scottsdale in Arizona. Okay, better, much better in my opinion. Thank you for joining us today. We wanna talk to you about the Animal Rights Group, a rather animal policy group, and we wanna talk about what you're doing and what's in your book. And we wanna talk about the relationship, the bond between animals and people, especially in the time of COVID and the time of families that disappear to the far corners of the earth. So first, I'd like to just tell you that I learned early that the remarkable thing about dogs is that they were our first friends. Am I right? They didn't get to live in the caves with us for no reason. They got to live in the caves with us because they had certain characteristics that made us want to have them there. You're familiar with that? Can you talk about it? Well, yes, I mean, that is the original experience of what we call the human animal bond, which believe it or not now, the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine Library has 32,000 entries relating to research and discussion of the human animal bond. And it's actually the secret sauce that explains as far back in cultures you wanna go why people and dogs or cats or other pets get along the way they do because your oxytocin level goes up, that's the source of happiness and calm and joy. And your cortisol level goes down, which is anxiety and stress. And that's a physical chemical process in the brain tied to engagement with pets. It's been studied and re-studied and confirmed. And so it's not surprising going as far back as you go. But the truth is for a hell of a long time, dogs became laborers and hunters. And they weren't just having fun around the campfire, but they were given a chance to roam and live more of a dog's life as we used to know it. Cats had a rough time.  That was their job. And they were on ships coming to the US originally to do that job. And they did that job, Jay, in the cities in the East Coast and the Midwest for nearly a hundred years. They were basically the sanitation workers. Then one day public health arrived as we know it. And they were fired and insult injury. They were mass euthanized to the tune of millions of cats a year. So I call cats the comeback kids. I mean, they went from that to having, you know, 90 million pet cats in America treated as royally as dogs are treated, you know, and it's a good story. It's a funny story, unless you were a cat back in the day. But I'm sure. So I was telling you before the show that there's an ad on cable TV all across the channels involving a fellow who's trying to sell car insurance and an ostrich. And whenever I see this ostrich, it's a personal, but I've been meaning to ask somebody who knows about this. So you're the one. Whenever I see this ostrich, I love this ostrich. And sometimes the ostrich is wearing sunglasses, you know, decked out in some kind of outfit. But I always have a physical reaction. I mean, it's physical. I can feel my body reacting. And I'm saying to myself, this has something to do with what we're talking about. The bond between animals and humans existed a long time and it's physical. It's deep in our DNA, don't you think? No, it is. And it's, you know, academic researchers. It's not just like your grandmother's flu remedy that you wonder, is there really any science to this? There's an actual science shade behind it. And that's what you're experiencing. And it's when that oxytocin level goes up, it puts you in a mood to laugh, to smile. You know, you're receptive to the idea. And so here's the best example. One of the real triggers to this whole pet nation, this whole cultural change in the US was when Subaru and Nissan about 20, 25 years ago. And I still can't imagine the CEO of those companies going along with those, but they ran the ads that they were gonna run for the next year, you know, millions and millions of dollars, right? And what were the ads? A retriever in the passenger seat with the window down in a car along the California Coastal Highway and the retriever smiling. And not a word was mentioned about the car, its performance, any feature of the car. And I've gotta believe the CEO said, so where's the ad? What are we doing here? And the agency, Brilliant, said, actually, we just want them to see a dog and associate it with our brand. That's all we're doing here. Don't get complicated and don't overthink it. And I mean, I think it took such courage to say, okay, you tell me this is what people wanna do. Well, you flash forward two years ago, I remember the Hyundai ads over the Christmas holidays and they had five Hyundai's silver from tallest to smallest and in front of them were five dogs, tallest to smallest. And they didn't care if you looked at one car, right? They wanted you to do one thing, see the dog, go, hey, that looks like, and connect it to the Hyundai brand. And that was it. And that's you looking at the ostrich going, I don't know what they're selling, but I'll buy it. It looks like, you know, there's something about this that makes me trust it and enjoy it. So here we are. And you talk about this in a dynamic fashion. What I get is that this process, this phenomenon of the connection of the individual and the pet animals or maybe animals in general is increasing with the complexity of our society. Am I right? Oh yeah, it's surging. And it began in the childhood of baby boomers and any baby boomer watching will remember on Sunday nights what you did. You made sure you watched Lassie, the greatest dog ever. And my puppy on puppy heard that and it's not true, Louie, of course, you know. And here's the amazing thing. The author, the original author of the story that created the dog named Lassie was a friend of Charles Dickens. Okay, well, Charles Dickens wasn't around in the 50s and 60s and 70s.  But that dog, what did it do?  And it began and then you had old Yeller and you had Rin 1010. And then you had Scooby-Doo cartoon dogs and suddenly we had animals, but mainly pets, cats and dogs everywhere. And they were fun, they were useful, you wanted to have them. And what that led to was they came inside. So dogs and cats particularly that mainly lived outdoors and in a climate like Hawaii where we live here in Scottsville in Arizona, you could see most of the year that was possible, but they came inside and people began to spend more time with them. And that's when that human animal bond was triggered. People just noticed they felt better, they liked it. And then dog owners decided, well, that's not good enough. I'm just gonna figuratively take our dog out the front door into America. And that's what happened over the last 20 years. Dogs went places we never could have imagined, places that said no dogs allowed and suddenly hotels, hospitals, my favorite example. 25 years ago, if you saw a dog in a hospital, there'd be a nurse or an orderly chasing that dog down the hallway and out the door. You can't find a hospital that doesn't have an animal assisted therapy dog today where the dogs are part of the therapy and treatment of the patients. And that's accepted as good medicine and good science and it's lots of examples like that. In 1988, Mark, my wife and I went to France and I'll never forget this. And we went to a place in Loire Valley, it was called the Inn of the 12th century, albergue du Giam Siak. And we noticed in the inn, in the restaurant there, everybody had a dog sitting under the table on their feet. I had not seen that in the U.S. in 1988 and realized that the French really had an edge on us that way and that there was really no hygienic reason not to have the dog.  And I think that's catching on. Do you know that that's catching on in the U.S.? Well, first of all, there was always a joke that the French treated dogs better than kids.  It was interesting in France, they didn't take it much further than restaurants. What was unique to France was just this, that you would see a dog inside of a restaurant. In the U.S., virtually all restaurants allow dogs only on the terraces like in Hawaii or here in Arizona outdoors. They don't allow them inside. That has not really caught on the way you would think it would were dogs or otherwise everywhere in the U.S. So France hasn't stayed as vigilant, if you will, and people haven't pushed the boundaries there the way they have here.   Just the fact that dogs are literally everywhere. Let's talk about your book for a minute. Why did you write it? Well, I was approached by an agent and she knew that some major publishers and we ended up being published by Penguin Random House were really interested and intrigued by get the inside story of how this all happened. How do we go from where we were with pets to where they're now a centerpiece of families they sleep on top of the bed with pet owners. They're not only not outside, they're not on their little bed next to the bed. They're right on the bed and basically the culture flipped upside down about pets. The economy of pets grew at a staggering pace. The number of pets grew at a staggering pace outstripping the growth of population in the U.S. So they wanted, and I've been thinking about a lot of the topics I've been involved in the industry, Jay, for about 15 years, but I can't see. I wasn't thinking of writing a book but talk with an agent I was introduced to. And I thought about it and I gave her an outline which was pretty much the book as I wrote it. And the publisher looked at the outline and said, yeah, that's the story we want told. With a lot of data, a lot of facts and figures to just give people things to think about. And so I wrote it in 2018 and 19, basically. Why do you want them to think about what's the takeaway? Well, one of them will surprise you. I don't think we have enough pets. Why do I say that? Because of the human animal bond, because of how powerful, of course, that is in a positive manner in people's lives. And then the companion of that, which is the social capital of pets, there were studies done in Perth, in Western Australia, San Diego, Portland, Oregon, and Nashville. And they were blind studies of what makes a community and a neighborhood work. Trust goes up, fear goes down, people meet their neighbors, they're not as isolated. Just what's the glue? Churches, religion, school, sports, music, culture, politics, whatever you want to say. It was pets. And each of those cities, it came back pets. And so my view is we could have more pets. We shouldn't require people to have a pet, but barriers to have a pet. So apartments that don't let you have pets, which I'm sure you have in Hawaii, like we have in the mainland. Sure. Those barriers should come down. I mean, basically I call pets the cheapest medicine in the United States to make people healthier, happier, and make communities work better. Sure, sure, absolutely. It helps bond the family.  It helps, it helps you love. And it gives you love. Those things are not easy to achieve without a pet, actually. So can you read us a paragraph you think would be emblematic of the kind of prose, the kind of message you want to send with this book? Well, I can't. A paragraph. I'll tell you what. I'll tell on a donkey. I'll, I'm going to read the first paragraph because it kind of tells it. Or I could go to the last chapter where I spend three pages arguing with the Pope, Pope Francis I, we should talk about that later, but I'll read the first paragraph. Okay. And the book's available on audio too, by the way, people like to listen to a book. But it's on Amazon. I can find it on Amazon. And Barnes & Noble and all those. Okay. Two strangers meet in a park, each walking with a dog on a leash. They don't ask each other where they work or live or went to college or about the kind of car they drive or their favorite football team. They say one, perhaps two things. What kind of dog is that? What's her name? 20 minutes later, they know everything about each other's pet and then partways as friends. Not have each other over to dinner friends, but friends who look forward to seeing each other and their dogs again. Oh, that's so true. And that's really the essence of this. And it's true in small town America, small town Hawaii, in the middle of Honolulu, the middle of Manhattan.  And 10 years ago, you would have motioned to a policeman and said, hey, can we get these dogs off the sidewalk? And now it's like you go out in the street, you tiptoe around them. But in truth, everybody's smiling, everybody's enjoying it. And that's been the secret of the emergence of dogs and arrival of dogs in public places you'd never imagined because in truth, 70% of the people around those dogs thought, hey, that's fun. I'm going to bring my dog here. You know, how cool that is. Indeed. So the animal policy group. Correct. What kind of policies are we talking about? Is this a nonprofit? No, no, I can say that it's aggressively a for-profit. Okay. I get asked that a lot. No, I'm really fortunate. I have a team of nine that are in all different time zones of the U.S. that work with me. And we represent the biggest players in the pet space, veterinary, pharmaceutical, food, pet smart, the retailer, veterinary colleges, many, many other groups connected to pets and the states, including Hawaii, pretty aggressively in Hawaii, we could talk about that. The states regulate veterinarians and they regulate pets and animal welfare, not the federal government. The federal government regulates cows and pigs and chickens and food animals, but not pets. So we handle for people, all the issues and companies mainly, I should say, all the issues that come up regarding pets. I also do a lot of work getting veterinary schools started and accredited. And then I've created a number of industry associations like the Veterinary Virtual Care Association, which promotes telemedicine now in the veterinary space and other organizations. So I tell people I mainly hired to change things because it was a sleepy industry, kind of a sideshow to America 25 years ago, and then things changed. And particularly as millennials showed up in Gen Z's, they now own 60% of the pets and they're front and center in their lives and they want the same thing for their pets, healthcare, nutrition, you name it, that they have for themselves. And the pet world really wasn't ready for that. So you had a lot of barriers to pet ownership and my clients wanted to see more pets and thought it was a good thing and also a good business.  You know, we got a great idea. So win, win, win. Well, I hope so. I got in accidentally really in 2005 and six when I was a lobbyist and lawyer in Washington, DC and I solved a problem for the industry in Congress and I figured that was it. I enjoyed it. I'd go off and do my other work that I was involved in. And then the phone started ringing, honestly, and the coalition that was involved represented the industry to my great good luck. And they foolishly concluded I knew what I was doing and I could get something done for them. So it led to a year or two and then suddenly I was doing nothing but pets, which my kids forever kid me about. They never saw that coming and it's been fun. And it's accompanied this whole 15 year stretch where pets became so important and so prominent and then COVID hit and it's been like steroids. Since March of 2020 in terms of all the issues, we don't have enough dogs. People I'm sure watch TV ads and think that can't be true. Well, we can talk about that. We have a serious shortage of veterinarians in the country. You now have big cities in the mainland or it's a two day way to get into an emergency clinic. So imagine having your dog hit by a car in Los Angeles and literally not being able to get a veterinarian to see your dog for two days. And sadly there've been deaths. And I've been doing interviews with affiliates in San Francisco and LA because they had friends in that predicament the producers did. And so there's a downside, not everything's happy and perfect with the world of pets as much fun as we have with them. Sure, before I asked you more about that, I wanna ask about the reference you made to the Pope. You know, let's we forget the Pope. What was that reference? Okay, and this my mother devout Irish Catholic is she passed away a few years ago and she knew I had this viewpoint before she passed away and she had a time magazine cover of Pope Francis the first on her coffee table in her assisted living in Portland, Oregon. And I mean, I know right now she's listening. She's like, Jay, don't let him tell you the story. Just ask him something else, but I'm gonna do it because it's a fun story. So let's start with this. Every Pope takes a name for themselves. So if you became Pope, you wouldn't be Pope Jay, you'd pick a name of a saint and that would become your name. Well, he picked Francis the first and he specifically picked St. Francis of Assisi. Well, everybody know you're not to be Catholic to know that's the patron saint of animals. There are St. Francis of Assisi churches all over America. I can picture one in Manhattan and one in Santa Fe that stand out for me.  And it's like the staff person for the Pope forgot to tell him this because here's what he did. He gave an interview to a journalist from Argentina and he's from Buenos Aires and he criticized the culture of pets. And I think he was thinking mainly about America. And he was very critical of the money and emotional time that people spent on pets. And he had this theory. It's called, you're familiar with this zero sum theory. His theory was this, if you love a dog and you love your cat, it takes away and you're not able to love and be kind and compassionate to people. It's like, it's one or the other, it's a choice. And it's frankly absurd. No offense. I would argue, yeah, I would agree. In fact, there's two things about that. There's no evidence that people that own pets are less generous, giving money, donating time, doing things for people, right? And there's great evidence that pets bring the best out in people that they take in many cases, extreme introverts that have a hard time even being social. And because people want to talk about their pet it makes them comfortable. Well, then he went further. So I did a blog about that back in 2015 and had some fun. My mom, you know, she was still alive and didn't want to hear about it. She was like, don't want to hear about your pet there, Mark. My mom, by the way, wasn't really a big fan of pets. Flash forward, he didn't stop. Then he began to give sermons saying, will be the couple that go their lifetime together as married couple and don't have children and only have pets and you're going to be let down. It's going to be a lonely end for you. And I thought to myself, well, first of all a lot of people don't have kids. I am to have five kids, but a lot of people have kids. And that's a little churlish right off the bat. But to say that having pets leads to, you know that lonely last decade or last year, whatever, no. Again, sorry, Pope, no evidence of that. It actually seems counterintuitive to most people. So... I had a client who was well into her 90s and her pets kept her alive. The day after her last dog died, she died. You know what? It wouldn't surprise me. There are, there's now a wonderful nonprofit I'm on the board of called Pets Piece of Mine. I'm not sure if it's active in Hawaii. It should be because we're talking, I'll make sure it is. And they work with human hospices, you know where people go that are at a stage often of cancer where they know that they have, you know a month or two months or maybe six months. But there's no realistic hope of survival. And they arranged to have their pet brought in and they arranged to have the pet adopted when the pet parent passes away or the owner passes away, right? And the staff are trained not to get upset about a pet in a room. Well, the truth is they have fun too. And the quality of life for that last month or two, you can imagine, you know I mean the first video I saw I was in a room of industry executives. There was not a dry eye in the house cause they showed people and they showed people what their dog and what it meant to them. You know what? They went out of the world in peace and calm and content. And they didn't worry about their dog. They knew that their dog had a home to go to. So I think the Pope needs a corgi or something he needs to get down on one of those $100,000 Renaissance rugs he has in his Vatican chambers. And I think he'd have a different take but I have some fun with that. And like I said. Well, it's a great story. My mom. Let me flip this over a little bit, Delmar. So you have a lot of people adopting pets and they come from all places. They come from breeders who may not be humane. They come from ASPCA and humane society organizations who may, I don't know about humanness but that may not yield a perfect match, if you will. And they take these pets thinking as we have been discussing, this is gonna help them in their personal lives and give them love where maybe they don't have love. But they're not capable of handling the pet. And the pet is not a good match for them. And thus, that leads to abuse in some cases. And I'm sure the animal policy group would be concerned about that and try to protect them either through humane societies or ASPCA organizations or the like. But I guess as we develop more pets in our society, query, are we developing more abuse too? And by abuse, I also mean, you know, abandonment. Because that's very tragic. Well, there are so many situations you hear about. Lots to comment on there, a very, very good point and appreciate your raising it. So I'll just give you some random responses to it, the different aspects of that. There really is not evidence of a significant increase in abused pets because of the increase in adoptions. There's a lot more vehicles and services available to teach people how to handle pets. And that was always part of the problem. People didn't know what to do and they get frustrated, the dog goes to the bathroom on the carpet and they wanna take the dog back. There seems to be less of that. I will tell you what there is though and this is very disturbing but it shouldn't surprise people. There have been studies done, academic studies, multiple ones that show many adult felons that are sexually and physically abused women started out abusing animals. It was almost like spring training or prep school that you would, and I remember as a kid, there was one guy down the street and he thought it was great to put a firecracker inside of a frog. Who would do that? Who would do that? Who would do that? But you know what? People did that. So what we've learned is that if you see a child mistreating a pet, get involved right away with that kid because there's more going on than just the sadness with that pet but this may be in spring training for someone that when they're 18, 20, 25 are doing worse things than that. It's interesting the idea that pets get mismatched. There was a slogan used and it's not used anymore. It's called adopt, don't shop. It was a moral argument that you have a duty to go to a shelter and get your pet rather than go to a breeder. You know what millennials have said? We'll get the pet we want. We're gonna study. We're gonna read about the pets. We're gonna think about our lifestyle and we're gonna figure out what we want that fits us. And if we go to a breeder, that's our decision not the shelter. Now with COVID, it turns out the shelters are pretty close to empty in most parts of America. Not everywhere. I always have to point that out but in most areas and most urban shelters are empty so you don't have the choice anymore if you wanted it. So it's a very dynamic situation Jay and it doesn't lend itself quite to an older fear. That argument, you didn't make an argument but that theory about it was probably more true about 10 years ago. I think it's less the case today. On the other side of that, you can really love a pet too much. I suspect that some people really become completely devoted beyond devoted but dependent. Like I mentioned this 90 year old woman, her life was dependent on her pet. And, okay, you wonder if there's a point out there. And then I add this, there are people who have lots of money who say to themselves, I wanna perpetuate this pet. I want to take the DNA from this pet and I wanna use CRISPR or some kind of advanced technology and clone the pet. And I want him to look just like the previous pet. I want him to act just, I want him to be a duplicate of the previous pet. Now that's troubling on a moral ethical basis but I wonder what your thoughts are about that. I mean, maybe that's over the top. It sounds over the top. It's certainly not an industry yet. You're not seeing, I can tell you, I live and breed the world of pets and the business of pets, including every new way to make money involving pets. And that's not a visible trend but I'm not surprised people do that. The truth is, you take, there's a lot of designer breeds now that have oodle at the end, labradoodles, Australian, cockapoo's and so forth. You hear all sorts of things, right? The backend of that is a poodle, right? And why do people like poodles? They don't shed. And breeders can turn out perfect labradoodles and they do tend to look alike. So you wouldn't need to go to that length that you described. You can find a breeder that probably has a labradoodle puppy that looks exactly like yours. But let me give you the shocking news. You know what the street price is today for a labradoodle in the Western US? Thousands. $4,500. Wow. And that leads to a question that I deal with all the time, namely, do we run the risk of dogs becoming a luxury item as we have fewer dogs and shelters and we have breeding breeds so skeptically as inhumane and not a legitimate occupation. So this will shock you. The CDC came out in 2019 and said that we have close to a million, 100,000 dogs coming in from foreign countries to this US, to the US every year. And guess what? Less than 3% have any medical or vaccination or veterinary records. So they're not coming in the front door through customs. And somebody said to me, well, how can a dog get in here? And I said, well, how do you think drugs get into the US? Do you think the cartel checks them through TSA at the airport? No, there are a lot of wheat fields and there's a lot of range land in the West, in parts of Hawaii, not maybe as much in Hawaii. You can land a plane and get out of there at midnight and nobody knows you were there. So the point is we're at a complicated stage where people want pets. We have spayed and neutered to a fine art. The supply is reduced. The man went up and breeding is a frowned upon, you know, in many minds, disreputable activity done behind 20-foot laurel hedges and no one really knows what goes on inside the breeding operation. And that's a collision in the future, but not the distant future. I work on that issue, Jay, almost daily, but every week I'm involved in, you know, how do we get past the current kind of roadblock we have in the traffic jam about how we get pets? Because if you don't solve it, dogs do become a luxury item. You know, you can't make $50,000 a year and go spend 10% of your annual income on a labradoodle. You know, that's not a viable choice for a family. And so we don't want to get into the situation that we're not in yet, but you can see that scenario unfolding if we don't come up with sources of dogs that are less expensive and accessible.  Charles Dickens look into the future where we may have a decline in our economy. We may find that a certain percentage of the population of this country doesn't have a lot of money or has less money than it has now. And we may find that whether or other disruptions separate people from their pets and their pets are out and about, roaming wild. More pets out and about than, you know, in the home and more people in the home not willing or able to take care of them. And so you have wild pets. Is that a possibility for the future of the country? I'm the last person to say anything is impossible in America's future right now. It seems, you know, you know, what was the Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times? Well, we certainly do, but I would say this, the in 2015, so not the distant past, a study was done, I was involved in and it was a national study. And it showed that people in America that had annual households that had annual incomes of $30,000 or less, which we would consider to be the poverty group own dogs to the same percentage level as people that made $100,000 a year or more. So just six years ago, we were at a point where money didn't seem to divide dog owners one to the other. That's probably changing. So I think some specter of that future Dickensian vision is possible, it's possible. The good news is we have a growing culture of volunteers as well as businesses wanting to provide services that can be affordable. You can own a pet, you can feed your pet, you can even get veterinary care on a modest income. So because there's so many and the industry's gotten more robust and it's using technology efficiently or more so than it used to, we probably have safeguards to that happening, but I'll tell you one thing, you have to, it takes two dogs to make a puppy. All right, let's just not surprise the audience. Okay, we don't grow puppies in labs, laboratories and reading. Are labradors from laboratories? There you go, great, I was waiting, I was trying to tee that up for you, very great response. Here's the thing, dogs are gonna have to be bred somewhere in the world. And let me tell you about the million or so dogs that come in from foreign countries to the US every year. They come from some pretty rough neighborhoods, all right? They're not coming from Paris and Rome and Ottawa, Canada and Sydney, Australia. I would just say pretty rough hoods. We have no clue how they're breeding dogs there, how they're training them, what kind of disease and if they don't have medical records, you don't know what you're getting. I'm happy for those dogs a million or so a year, they find a home in America, good. They hopefully make a family happy, but there are issues there and we aren't gonna be able to put off too long to sitting at the table, both sides, pro and con on breeders and figure out, what are we gonna do here? Unless we're willing to see the price of dogs, reach a point that the average American family can't afford them. Cats aren't in quite the same league, but by the way, there's even more and more pressure on demand for cats. We have two cats, my wife Natalie and I and a puppy. And I think a lot of Americans are discovering, you can't take them outside the way you take dogs outside. Cats, the old saying is dogs have owners and cats have staff. And I've always thought that that nails it. A cat'll look at you and say, pet me and then they'll say, stop petting me. Come over here where I am, stop. Don't come any further, they go where they wanna go and it's part of the joy of a cat is just seeing how condescending and willful and willful, but they're fun. If you don't have a cat, you're missing out on a very interesting species and lots of fun too. Sure, and they can get along. But I wanna make one comment and I wanna ask you one last question because we're almost out of time, Mark. The comment I make is what I get out of a more complex society that we live in today, not only in the US, but elsewhere is sort of a breakdown of mental health. And you see that National Association of Mental Illness has got more cases, there are more problems in the community, which I would describe to the decline of mental health. And I think that's just a condition as the way it is. However, that also calls for pets because pets are therapeutic for sure, for sure. Nobody would argue and that we need pets for national, if not international mental health. So they play an increasingly important role in an increasingly complex society. That's my view. I would imagine you hold the same view. I hold it and you have a great deal of science and social facts behind you. And I'm now part of a group that are gonna be pushing Congress to do something that you may say you're kidding, but it's right in line with what you're saying. The federal government in the US subsidizes or directly funds all sorts of wellness behaviors, stopping drinking, stopping smoking, good nutrition, better exercise, right? Wellness activities, right? And we have all this data behind us showing that if you do that, you'll live longer and you won't need as much medical care and we'll all be better off. Well, the same can be applied to the ownership of pets and the care of pets. And I think we're at the point of saying to the government, you wanna make an investment that makes Americans healthier and makes communities work better, help people have a pet, help people take care of a pet. 10 years ago, I got laughed out of a congressman's office who said, you're kidding.  You know what he did next? He popped open his smartphone and said, but by the way, look at my puppy, I'm gonna do something. And I said, bingo. I said, you know, you wait, now 10 years later, we're not laughed at with that argument. So you can make the case that for people in need, the relatively low cost of owning a pet, maybe I could say the best cheapest medicine we can provide. So it's a great note to end the show on. I think it's gonna become a policy debate that we're in the middle of is to say, what can we do to make it easier for people to have a pet not harder and less expensive? Yeah, and I want to end the show with something you said earlier because it really touched me because you don't want to have a designer pet. You don't want to sit around and agonize over what breed. You want to look deeply in the eyes of this animal and find a connection. And if you adopt a pet that may not be your favorite breed, your favorite, you know, object of, you know, adoption, the pet will appreciate you all the more for it. It's a religious experience for you to adopt a pet of the Humane Society, a shelter dog. And in a funny way, that's a richer experience than finding a labradoral. Well, pets seemed to provide unconditional love. At least dogs do cats. I think they do. They just don't let you get too cocky and take it for granted. But the truth is, it's unconditional and at the end of a rough day, you know, what's better than a dog in your lap or taking a walk or whatever you do with it. So enjoy talking to you. I'm glad you showed an interest.  I am indeed. And I think that whatever love you're given to a pet, you're gonna get that back and more. Mark Cushing, thank you so much, a pet nation. And one more flash on the book and your website again. markalkushing.com for my author website and animalpolicygroup.com is kind of a mouthful, but if you wanna see what our business does, but I think if you get the book you'll enjoy, you'll learn a lot and you'll laugh and some good stories and it's all about pets. So thanks for the chance. And my wife and I hope to be in Hawaii sometime in the near future. You know, it's not as easy to travel these days but congratulations to you to have a great show in Hawaii. So appreciate the time. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Hello, hi.