Okay, go ahead and get started. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you all for being on time. I hope you had a good time wherever it was that you went last night. I know we saw a bunch of different shows. I wanted to give you a sense of how the day is going to work. For those of you who haven't been here, we use this kind of fishbowl format and it starts each topic is introduced by a conversation at the table and then we break out and then a different group of people will come to the table around a different topic. The underpinnings of this if I do the research dramaturgy about it this is actually a conversation style I have to tell you because I'm going to be self-conscious of it all day. I broke it two times last night. I'm going to be listing all day. It's fine. I have an appointment at the dentist later. You're going to hear me doing that. Is that what happened? No it wasn't. This style is something I'm borrowing from a conversation that happens every summer near Albuquerque. It's kind of an amazing meeting of native elders from around the world and western scientists. They're kind of mapped what they call the language of spirit. These great minds gather there and they're Nobel physicists and leaders of all sorts of indigenous communities around the globe. They sit at a table and they try to find a language bridge between native ways of knowing and western minds. They use this thing that David Bohm developed which is a concept of dialogue. His, Bohm is a quantum physicist believed that conversation actually exists in the universe and that it's trying to come into our lives and it comes through if you have the right people the conversation that needs to happen comes through that group of people. It comes through the group of people if we all sit and if we listen closely to what's said and we listen to what's not said and if we're the person who has the thing that's not said to contribute that's when the speaking happens and so it's a very kind of woo-woo concept but we've been using it and it kind of works. The way that it functions in this setting is that the people at the table, well I'll have a prompt your job at the table is to try to just feed into that prompt the thing that you know about what we're discussing, the thing that might not otherwise be said. It's not important that everybody speak, it's not important that everybody be at the table but if we're open to what needs to happen the conversation will grow up through the table. What happens then is that you on the listening circle you'll catch the things that aren't contributed by this particular group but in the breakouts bring those with you. So for example this morning we're going to be talking about this brawl of the literary office and so that current range of activities that are comprised of what is going on in the literary office. We talked about it as do we need a new name that's a little glib. I was a little glib about that it's because my experience of it is that we're doing so many things that the literary hold it all but I want to get at this morning what are all those things and which are the things that are most important that are related to what literary offices are meant to do? What are the things that need to be done and have just arrived? Jerry Patch talked about it on our phone call before we got started. He talked about the literary office as a kind of magnet and all these shavings just keep jumping onto it and it gets fuzzier and fuzzier and fuzzier as it sits there attracting more and more shavings. So I want to poke a little bit at what those shavings are. And so that's what this group is going to be discussing what's going on in these institutions, what's going on in the your experience of other institutions and then when we break out anything that we've left off the table, we've left out at the table should come up into the breakouts. We'll capture that, Janice will have access to all those notes and ultimately what we should have is a pretty complete discussion of what's going on right now in the world of literary offices and how so that we can start to identify the things that we want to keep, looking for the baby this morning. Alright, any questions about that? We'll go back and forth between the table and listening circle, each of you, and the sun will be with us all day from the looks of things, so sunglasses totally, you know, they're cool with us. Please do it, otherwise it can get painful. And sorry to everybody who's watching online, we're going to be wearing our sunglasses. Alright, so off we go. So this first question. And a lot of this comes from actually I should just go back for my own work, why this is on my mind, how it's been on my mind. When I took over the, when the artistic development office got created here at Arena Stage, which was actually when Mark Bly left he had been a senior dramaturg and the literary office lived in the world of the senior dramaturg. When he left, he wasn't replaced. And all that moved into one department called the Artistic Development Team. And Janine Sobek at the time was the, you were still the literary fellow at the time. Yeah, I was interim literary manager. Interim literary manager at that time. So we sat down to try to figure out what are we actually doing. It was new responsibility for me it was a new role for Janine. And the theater was moving into a whole new set of activities that were seem logical to pull into this office. And we pulled a lot into the office. And so I've been wondering all along what are the appropriate boundaries for what gets pulled into the office. I personally have had a very broad curiosity about the artistic life of the theater and the life of the conversation between the audience and the work on stage. And we've done a lot of work there. And it's in the literary office. I wonder what, if you could talk, what's it done? You're at Willy. And Willy also does a tremendous amount of work between the audience and the stage. Is that coming through literary? I mean it's coming through literary it's coming through a new department that we've actually created as well that sort of overlaps with literary that's called Connectivity. It overlaps but is separate from literary responsibility. It overlaps but is separate. And we've realized that connectivity overlaps not only with literary but also with marketing. And that each of those departments share various that we all have dramaturgical responsibilities, we all have connectivity responsibilities and we all also contribute to marketing in various ways. And what, so in your day you are the literary manager? The literary manager of Willy. And in your day what are the various things that are going for your time?  It is very script centric. But it's also relationship centric I would say. And then it's also very heavy on sort of scouting work that maybe is more in the devised category of things opposed to things that are on the page and are being sent to us by agents and playwrights. So I guess that's my weekend in that show. I mean it's, you know, weeks vary in terms of what I'm actually doing in the office. And what's the bulk of your time spent? The bulk of my time is probably spent on I would say season planning. So script reading and soliciting scripts and maintaining the relationships. Those are what I spend my time doing for the most part during the week. But there are many, many other responsibilities of course. Who's doing the conversations with the audience after the show? That's a collaboration that happens. And it's an example of a collaboration that happens between the literary department. So between myself and Miriam, depending on who's the dramaturg on the show. And the connectivity department. So the idea is that we're creating playbills. We're creating an experience for the audience that includes a lobby experience, the actual show, and then discussions that might happen afterwards or beforehand. So it's really those two departments, the literary and connectivity departments, are tag teaming those responsibilities. And splitting up responsibilities when appropriate and when our interests take us. So for example, my interests with the university scene have led me down various paths working with universities in this community. On other shows, when I'm not the dramaturg, then connectivity sometimes takes up those responsibilities. So that's, yeah. What's happening at CTG Joy? Are you the literary associate? The literary associate. And how does that job? Mostly about reading scripts, season planning, developing work. We have a writers group that I love. You know that meets monthly. But we are also starting to explore some work about connecting that work to audiences. Giving audiences richer ways to kind of dive in. And these are recent conversations to a certain extent. But I actually believe that the work with the audience, allowing audiences to connect more fully and deeply, giving them ports of entry to that piece, actually think that that helps us in our season planning work. Because I personally believe that we have a lot of conventional wisdom in our field about what constitute risk and what audiences are interested in. That I don't believe are accurate. I actually think that very familiar, overly familiar work. I think you kind of hear yowls sometimes from the audience when they encounter unfamiliar work. That might just be certain outspoken people. Might not be reflective of the audience as a whole. And I also believe audiences don't like to feel stupid because sometimes they need permission to have their own experience of a play to piece together its meaning. They need to know that it's okay if they can't give a, like, rattle off a thesis about a play immediately afterwards.  Is that part of what your I feel like, yeah, I think that, you know, we well, I'll tell you where this comes from. Is that when I was at Steppenwall I ran the Posto Discussion Program and I would actually leave the Posto Discussion during the period of each play. And I could literally see for certain plays that were not the type of work our audience was expecting to encounter. Over the course of the discussion as they had permission to kind of, to experience something that was new, you know, I could see actually their experience of the play changing through conversation. Like the mood of the conversation could totally shift and it's just about giving that permission. I mean I think ultimately it's the work of the entire theater. I mean I think the work is not just the work on the stage but it's also how we get people into the theater, how we get to prepare people for the experience and there's a lot of different ways that we do that. What takes up most of your time? Right now most of my time is it's reading plays. And are those, is that coming Agent Submissions? We do have a 10 page open submission policy. It's my intern that reads those plays. Those submissions. Lauren, I want to pull out a play right here. We haven't yet heard much from the players. Represent. What's your experience? I feel my sunglasses on. What's your experience of the literary office from your role as a playwright? Yeah, I've actually been making some interesting, well I find them interesting. Just kind of reactions, depending on what people are talking about. I think for me some of the interesting things literary managers and dramaturgs, so in production working as playwright orientation to an institution. So if you're working in a large institution having, because it's hard enough to develop a new piece of work. If you're not working with a director you know well or actors you know well. So it can be very, you're already working on something new in a new place with new people. So how can your team be team like and get to know each other so that there is the safest place to develop that work so that playwrights feel, have a bit of kind of inside or sneaky information about how it actually works. So that if there is something God forbid that's wrong or there are stressors that are coming out there's a way to know how to deal with them. Even if that's kind of like make it seem like it's her idea and it'll have you get in those conversations. Right. And just you know how the coffee maker is weird too. That's very helpful as well. So I think that's one thing that we haven't talked about because it might feel more like I don't know if it's babysitting but kind of, but that's helpful too. Babysitters are very nice as well. So I loved what John was talking about this connectivity department. I find that really exciting being a words person as we all are. I just love that. I think that's the playwrights should be there. That sounds like the department I want to be in. And I think when you talked about lobby experience I've been thinking a lot about going into a theater. I mean and some of them are as beautiful as this building which kind of is an experience in and of itself. But I wonder how playwrights might be involved in that the imagining of that. Because that might be you know a lot of my plays say are science based or I'm from the south and so some of them have this southern thing. And I can go here three things that would be awesome if you're doing a play about science or if you're doing a play about the south you have to have boiled peanuts in the lobby or you know something that could really give people an extra little, I don't know, but something they can take away and swag like. And right now in the places that you've had productions and you've had a number of them this year where would you go with that energy? Would you take it to the literary? Is your concierge really the literary office? So two of the smaller companies it would be their ADs. So Rachel May at Synchronicity and Marissa Wolf at Crowded Fire. Their companies are small enough where they are the kind of they steer things. So I would take them and sometimes we've actually worked. We've done some fun stuff. Particularly in Synchronicity I was involved in their marketing outreach which got a little bizarre which was wonderful and I think perfectly toned to the play we were doing. So that was neat to see that. And then others yeah I think it goes to, again it's that the orienteering that happens with the literary manager too that can go I have this idea I don't know where to go with it. I don't know if it would require three levels of board approval or if we can just make it happen. So I think that's great. I also think playwrights have a lot of opinions I'm going to speak for all of you, sorry, about marketing. So I would say I mean the literary office of the future might be the way for the playwright to say please God let me help you pick the logo or the design or the picture or the font or let me for Bear I immediately, and this was actually a writing exercise I was doing while I was trying to find the tone of it anyway, but it ended up writing some what ended up being very useful material to describe the play that a lot of theaters have used so the exact phrasing which you know I approve of that so sure everybody use it. So I think that's another thing. I've also been thinking about from a playwright's perspective the literary department being the source of the invitation usually, the source of the welcome and whether that's something as lovely as commissions or development and readings and festivals and all of that and also this idea of lobby experiencing and all of the experiences around the play I think playwrights have a hectic ton of ideas and opinions about that I mean it's the world started with us so we get it in a way that maybe there's some side features that we can add or main features and one thing that was very impressive to me when I was working with the Kennedy Center was they paid for my earliest ideas so it wasn't a here's a commission or we're thinking about commissioning you go ahead and write the first 10 pages or write a big one thing they actually paid for three significant at least page to two page long summaries of brand new ideas and they gave me actual American money for that which I think a lot of playwrights would agree that's hard coming up with the brand new idea it's not just the time to write the full play like that's the hard work too is where do I even start and how am I going to crack into this and so I really appreciated that and that was the end of what they had their expectation of it and if they were going to continue with it they would do something they said here's we're hoping to commission you we're looking for science plays about science plays for their theater for young audiences apartments so Greg Henry and Peter Kovak were behind that and it was just here are three ideas and I spent a lot of time on them and I did you know when you're drafting ideas I tend to fall into dramatic writing sometimes would be a little bit of this and then here's a couple bits of the song and then here's one of the scenes and here's a big moment I think it's hard work that's real work that's what playwrights do so it was nice to be compensated as well as and then it went on to be a full commission for production but before that point just to go this isn't just the free stuff that we do which I think so much of the especially for those playwrights who don't have those relationships you do a lot of work before you hit send or submit and that's that should be acknowledged as well a great work that's going on here is sometimes before we actually get to handle it to anybody could you talk maybe you don't have to do it now because keep a list running in your head of some of the bright spots for you in terms of literary offices that have really piqued your interest or supported you well Liz what's the literary office for me in terms of what I spend most of my time on I feel like it's two parts I feel like it's reading scripts so I tend to only have time to read one script a day but going out and sort of the general scouting I mean from New York there are tons of readings to go to so it's going to readings or making sure other people from my office go to the readings if I'm not going I'm making sure we're covering what we should be covering in New York and requesting scripts that sound interesting than I'm reading about in some context that are happening outside of the city and keeping up relationships often meeting with writers I don't know or having a sort of catch up meeting with writers I do know but I haven't seen in a while or you know or meeting agents I don't know or catching up with them and a lot of that sort of thing and getting back to people about plays once we've read them and considered them and then I also run our emerging writers group so just the administration of that takes up a lot of time and I do a lot of getting trying to get the work of those writers out into the industry so that also takes up a lot of time as well oh yes definitely so I feel like the sort of the general literary office in the emerging writers group are sort of the two general baskets for my time but then the other full-time employees very much part of the literary office is our artistic associate Jesse Alec and he certainly does a lot of script reading and keeping in touch with artists in the same way and he does a lot of work on the emerging writers group but then he also has other parts of his job like running the post-show discussion series we have for our public lab shows which is something I used to do and then when that job was created it moved over there and he works on our public forum series and does a variety of other things and then we also have other people who plan our readings and workshops and those people in the literary office they're in some other technically not but I think we all know there's obviously a lot of overlap and it's certainly not just the people who work physically in the literary office for us who are covering shows and reporting back on them and the whole artistic staff but you know at a certain level we'll get involved in reading a script and having an opinion on it and the person who's planning our readings and workshops you know there's obviously a lot of overlap between what she's doing in the literary office Madeline your job, your title's not literary Not any more What is it now? Now it's director of the ground floor and so a big smile and a big smile Talk about that Is it fair to say that people at this table have two people in your literary office? I have been the literary office myself since I've been at Berkeley Rep so I've been the literary manager and the dramaturg and that's been a giant issue because my day was largely taken up with stuff relating to the season so the script piles just piles, they just kept going and we so Berkeley Rep just opened a new play development center called the ground floor. I've become the director of that new play development center which is something I'm thrilled about and so excited about and when we were making this transition we had long conversations actually related to submission policy when your announcement came out, twittering talking and we really thought hard about what we wanted and what was right for us and it became clear that it was important for us not to close submissions so we went through all the arguments that make perfect sense to us about are our letters genuine are we really helping people, are we leading people on in a way that isn't fair and despite all the flaws in the system we feel like something Tanya was saying yesterday about what is our responsibility to our community, we feel really strongly that that is a point of access for playwrights that if we shut that down we don't know what else to offer them and we don't have a better alternative and we just sort of think that that's an important avenue to keep open even despite all of its potential for falseness and we do our best to mitigate that so with that we decided that it became very clear that we needed help in the literary office so we've hired a literary associate and her job now is largely to deal with the script pile and I'm a little nervous about that because I feel like that's a finite amount of time that she's going to be excited about that because we all know like the amount and volume of scripts that you're reading they're not all going to be fantastic and we're very excited when we find ones we like but reading scripts that we don't like is a little challenging so we'll see what that turns into in the future because I'm hoping to keep her interested in growing that's her job. My job now I actually get to focus on the work that we're doing which is great and I'm thrilled about that so I mean I'm in the middle of what we're building the program so I'm thinking about things like what does the website look like what the grant floor is funded by a grant from the Irvine Foundation largely and also some money and some other bits and pieces and one of the stipulations of the grant is this audience relationship piece of it which is actually a really tricky thing because ground floor is about process we have no the big centerpiece is our residency lab in July and we have no requirement that anybody do anything public so we're not having a reading culmination of the end providing people from around the country we're not having a professional week and we're not doing anything like that because we feel like it changes the process and we would like playwrights to just be where they are so if people want an audience and they are ready to hear a response then we're going to give them an audience but if they don't that's fine so the questions are becoming how do we communicate what we're doing to interested people and how do we talk about something that's in a very nascent stage if for some reason the writer wants to keep it private how do we get people interested and understanding the process of what it takes to get something from that tiny idea to a production somewhere down the line maybe up there or maybe somewhere else and I'm finding this very challenging so if anybody has thoughts about that so you're not, are you the supervisor of the literary opposite is there a literary associate and someone else and you? there's a literary associate a fellow and me correct so yes I am the supervisor and then the pieces that relate to this audience engagement around what's on the season are those also in the literary office those are also in a place of flux that I'm hoping to iron out in the next little while I've been living with the marketing department only because I couldn't do it I just didn't have time and this no one's really been particularly happy with that the marketing department's done a great job but they're very aware that they don't have access to the art the way I do and they don't have access to the actual people making the art so the intentions behind it how it gets created those kinds of questions they just can't really take ownership of even if somebody tells them the answer that's been a little tricky so we have somebody who's sort of, she's our multimedia manager which is in marketing position but she's starting to be our connectivity person and she and I are now working together to do things like pre-show, music, lobby displays, that kind of stuff so it's now living in a joint land which I think is going to work really well let's get a couple other things and then I don't have to call on you, jump in when you have the thing to say but Jojo and Patrick are both at the table, they're both an NPN folks and John, oh wow, an NPN at the table what's happening for your member theaters and are you functioning as a literary office for the member theaters? there are 25 theaters across the U.S. and their smallest one is two staff members Kitchen Dog and Dallas and I guess Orlando and earlier probably one of our largest members so it's sort of this wide range of theaters and we've had these, Jason who's in Australia and sadly could not be here, likes to call it a collaborative literary management so we have various programs that allow the sharing of scripts so we have an online reading room where any member can put and download scripts and share ones that they're excited about we have a national showcase each year where we have six world premiere readings of brand new scripts where people can share it that way, we have an MFA Playwrights Workshop with the Kennedy Center every summer so it's all of these so the various programs that are pipelines to each other and then sort of our flagship program is the Rolling World Premiere, our continued Life of the Plays Fund so three world premieres within a year play three separate audiences and three separate design teams and builds momentum to have a continued life after it so sort of through those programs we have a literary management that all of the staff members and I guess the two of you can jump in at any time No you're doing it, just fine. Thanks. But the hope is that we're going to have some sort of system in place within the next year or two that we have more of a online database for this collaborative literary management where we're not taking any how we're away from the individual literary managers or dramaturgs and they of course would maintain those relationships with their playwrights but I mean sort of what it seems a lot of people are talking about this idea of replication that a theater, Marin Theater in San Francisco is reading a lot of the same scripts that Interact and Philly is and so rather than having them read the same scripts we have sort of an online database where you can gather reactions from a couple people and then use that to sort of window down which ones you want and I think the strength of NNPN is that there's only 25 of us and so you really know the aesthetic of the other theaters and so through our programs like the National Showcase you get excited about a script and then spread it to somebody else who you also think would do it which is why the rolling world premiere works really well so we talked about yesterday a bunch and it keeps coming back here as the primary role the reading of the scripts and that seems to be the the biggest time spent for most of you and you move by what you said about we don't know what else to offer and so what we do is mitigate the potential for lack of authenticity there but what I guess what's the state of your hearts around the reading that's happening is it where you're on fire is it the grunt work is it what Delana you have got so at Company One in Boston we don't have a literary office I very forcefully advocated when I joined the staff which by the way it's a professional theater it's a small mid-sized company but we have a staff of under 15 people and we all do this professionally but it's all unpaid so it's all professional volunteer which I think is a big surprise to the people in our community because all the money that we get goes into the productions and some small amount of it so when I came on last spring there was a desire from the company to be more fully dramaturgical as a practice across the staff and so I came in and created a we don't have a literary office we have team dramaturg it's me and five young pre-professional dramaturgs and they make up a reading committee in addition to being production dramaturgs on season shows and being in charge of populating and brainstorming around audience outreach events our theater is really mission driven around social and civic issues aiming to put theater on Boston stages that reflects the multiplicity of communities in Boston so we don't do a lot of plays with white people essentially because a lot of other theaters in Boston do that so we try and do things that reflect the other communities that we don't get represented as a result the plays that we read we read a lot of great plays that we aren't going to do because they're not mission specific and so the way that we kind of try to deal with how do we get the plays we're interested in how do we reach out and find things is that my dramaturgs my young pre-professional dramaturgs comprise a reading committee and we use the literarymanager.org software I don't know if anyone else here has heard of that it's really great it's a software system online and you upload plays and you give all your readers account login information and you can assign your readers to certain plays and give them a due date and they get reminders that get sent out from the website and all of the reader reports are hosted right there and you can look at them all and you can see like three different readers may have read one play and then those readers can also get interested in other plays that are in the pile depending on what they've seen and what they've read before or is it the general pile? It's the general pile it's the pile of plays we share the task of finding scripts between myself our artistic director and associate artistic director and then my literary assistant who's one of my dramaturgs on my team and so all of us are sort of looking widely at things we're sort of keeping our ear to the ground all over the place and they go into our pile we do we have in the past accepted unsolicited submissions right now we're in the middle of refining our policy so we put a bit of a hold on it but one thing that we probably will keep from our previous iteration of that is that people weren't just allowed to submit a play they had to fill out an application that asked them to talk very specifically about where they felt their play matched our mission because we were getting a lot of plays that weren't mission specific and we are a really tiny company of reading the stash pile I have other things like I've got production dramaturgy and doing big thinking and season planning and all kinds of other stuff so we have been asking playwrights to bear the brunt of talking to us about why they want to work with us rather than just sort of that machine gun strafe effect of like I'll send my play out to 20 theaters and hopefully one of them will bite we don't have enough capacity to deal with that so right now we're in this place where essentially we have a lot of people doing the literary work and we have no literary manager which I'm really enjoying because I don't want to be the literary manager I spent a long time as a literary manager as like Madeline did in one person literary department at a major regional theater and it was soul sucking in a way that I can barely describe so I think this stuff around like how do you deal with the pile and how much do you spend reading oh man I mean I spend a lot of time reading but I'm reading stuff that is more curated along with what she said we allow our playwrights to self select in a way based upon our mission we look for plays that are about historic events persons advances in science in particular and that tends to limit how many plays come in the front door to begin with they can decide whether to send to you or not we have an open submission process and I don't want to shut that door we find a lot of our writers through the open submission process in particular mid career writers Kathleen Cahill Bill Downs William Zury Downs for example our two writers Bill just we just had his play The Exit Interview and in the showcase 2009 at the for an MPN so far we have six theaters on board for rolling world premiere through that and that was an open process that brought that play to us How many scripts are you reading are coming through that self selecting we do the ten page thing myself and my associate artistic people are submitting yes and bio and yada yada that you know and we ask for a cast let's break down so we can see if it's even doable and Mark my associate director new played about and I split that reading of those initial submissions and then we ask so we usually get between two and three hundred of those and that's really kind of doable you know that's not a huge amount of initial submission for you know 15 pages total each between the two of us and then we open we ask for full submissions we let them we ask them to submit those electronically and then we actually sort of farm them out to the staff and we have a check out system and we have all that so we track them and know where they all are and you know we have certain staff members we know we can trust we have certain staff members that we go I better look at that one and that's more you know I actually look at all of them when it's not something that we directly look at but something else I wanted to mention too and this is about an MPN is which I think is really important is that we also have an import-export policy within MPN so in terms of being our own litter in a way our own literary department we are expected within I think is it three years to either import or export a play from another member theater so in that way we also keep the ball rolling. And the vast majority of the theaters import and export at least one year if not more.  Well it's an interesting question for me too because I think so much of this conversation is very specific to an organization's mission and vision of what they're doing and because at arena we do also focus on a great deal on kind of classics whether they be lost classics or musicals and making them contemporary there's kind of a split of the reading as far as new work as well as many classics that I certainly have not been as familiar with than I'm trying to do for it so I mean it's very hard to say a number just because I think that it certainly happens as part of the rolling season planning process and my kind of continual investigation of it but so much of the work now has been dedicated to kind of this relationship with the audience and the engagement of the work at hand and I really love what Madeline said about kind of being able to focus on the current work of the season in a way because I feel like that's broadened as far as having more dedication in for each show for what the dialogue is with the audience and then also the piece of institutional dramaturgy as far as what's the dialogue with the staff and so I think that that has increased so I don't know Is it ten? It's more definitely more than ten. Is it hundreds? Yeah I'd probably say hundred if not you know a little more than that. Well new plays and of lost classics So I have a question maybe Lauren for you we talk about this the pile and it has a lot of different monikers. How does it feel to you to hear about the pile? I'm very glad you asked that I tell all of my students and anyone who would bother to ask me but also colleagues we don't really submit in that fashion to institutional theaters because I kind of why I submit to Madeline because Madeline is a friend and a colleague and I trust her opinion and you know I submit to Pat because Pat knows my work but it's not like I'm just going to send it to Steppenwolf and go I can't wait for them to respond It's when there are such incredible specifically designed play new play development institutions so submit to O'Neill, Ohai, Sundance, I mean on and on and on and a lot of these institutions of course all of you know have development programs within so if you're not submitting to Ground on the Floor which that is an open submission development that's an entry point that they say please knock on the store whereas the other ones it's like we love you please don't put the pile there so I'm not afraid of the pile because I don't find myself in it in that way I think when I find myself connecting with new theaters it's either recommendation Madeline tells Liz or something and we start a conversation or you know my agent will set up a meeting when I'm in a new city and I'm like oh you know I've always wanted to meet the folks at Old Globe or I've always wanted to meet the folks at etc. and then I start a personal relationship with them and just ask them specifically what are you excited about what's going on I don't even try not to talk about I want to know what's up there because each institution is a different personality wise and it is based on relationships again that's what I keep thinking is like the pile doesn't really do that much good now Pat's one of the few people that I've said that I've heard that has found new relationships out of that pile but everywhere else it's like let's talk about a new idea or meet at the O'Neill or in the swing around the bonfire those conversations seem to be more productive than I'm going to submit those 10 pages We can't be friends with every writer but we can be friends with a lot of writers and we were talking about this last night in terms of letting playwrights be their advocates for other writers as well and you know Steve Yackey was I told this story yesterday was so kind as you recommend Lauren and Ross Maxwell another writer that actually is a friend of yours as well to us and you know to his detriment because they got accepted into our festival last year and Steve did and he was really pissed off he was thrilled for you guys, he really was but no it's true that's my favorite thing to talk about besides the new play Smokere which I love to talk about is other plays playing playwrights that I adore and that I'm secretly jealous slash inspired by those writers and I think it's a good thing to ask playwrights I'm excited about who you're reading so you might find some new Don't we owe something as theaters to the writers who don't have the benefit of being far enough along to have that privilege I mean I think you have a definite privilege which I think is amazing and also is shared by a lot of playwrights which is those personal connections and certainly as somebody who works in this drama I so value those personal relationships with playwrights because that's how I figure out what's going on I also feel like if I'm not, if I can't find a way to get access to the playwrights who don't have other entry points and I can't find a way to do that in an organized fashion that makes it not onerous for me so that I don't end up hating those unnamed playwrights who keep sending me their work, like I don't know yet how to figure out the best way to do that. But that's the O'Neill and that's the places that say please send us your stuff and we'll read it blind submit there, I tell everybody, there are 10 websites of places that say submit, submit, submit, submit, don't bother sending it to the alliance or the major lord theater in your city, send it to those places and because it's not just there is an open submission politics because y'all know what you're doing, the point is to find those new voices and I didn't have that privilege when I was growing up in Atlanta my doubt, I will submit to Bay Area playwrights every year and O'Neill every year and I'll submit all of these places and that's where I started those earliest relationships was in that context I'm also the casting director at Orlando Shakes so I really am oriented towards people, I see people as people and not a script or a headshot and resume and we have an open casting call as well and every year I find new people in that way too, it's not just agent submissions, I like the idea of there's got to be a way to control the flood water but also you know, quality will rise and that's how the opportunities arise too I think. We're going to need to break out here in a couple minutes but I need to get two more questions on the table so bear with me and if I cut you off because I got it out in the air and I want to keep going but soul sucking comes up and I wonder, people talk about it somewhat in the past sometimes or like Madeleine you talk about you have a new job and you light up, is that condition of the literary office that we just have to accept as endemic to the literary office, what's the soul sucking thing do you have a... Well I guess I just feel the opposite I mean I feel very fortunate to work at the public and I feel fortunate in relation to literary offices having enough staff to read all the piles so I think for me it hasn't been soul sucking and I still have faith in the pile but I can imagine many situations in which it would be and I understand So maybe it's a thing where part of what you're talking about Lauren is find the places that have faith in the pile and engage there and there are places and for all sorts of good reasons that theater is called the public theater the job of O'Neill, the Sun Dance, Ohio you named some of it I think that the soul sucking comes when the pile is disconnected from the artistic director and then when the pile is disconnected from the work that you're actually doing in the theater it is about faith in the pile because if you feel like stuff that you read is going to actually have an avenue to go somewhere then you have that energy but if you know that what you're reading is never going to go anywhere and you're just doing it in a bubble I think that's where the soul sucking comes from So we didn't talk at all about this as a sprawling set of responsibilities this is really focused on a very small set of responsibilities not that they're not overwhelming in terms of how much work it is not the case that in the role of the literary office is blurry and sprawling I think in our theater well as I said no literary office but the dramaturgical team there is a lot of sprawl but it's by design so it's because we want that sprawl because we're trying to create a dramaturgical sensibility within the company as a whole that moves out into all the departments and I've been really lucky that the staff I work with at company one has been really they instigated that they brought me in to do that as opposed to me not getting on the door and demanding that there be dramaturgical sensibility but as a result it also means that as I said I have five pre-professional dramaturgs one of whom is in charge of outreach, one of whom is in charge of literary, one of whom is in charge of being on the staff community outreach and the cultivation of events that are outside of the walls of the theater so like out in the community so there is a ton of sprawl and we do like a lot of video work as well these days thanks to Raphael who inspired us last summer and there's a lot of stuff we're doing but I think it makes us stronger and actually makes the reading that we're doing more specific like when we're reading through the submissions because the entire reading department is in charge of all of this sort of dramaturgical work of the company and the community it means that every single person who's reading feels really connected to mission and so we're doing way better I think. We're reading more slowly now but I think we're reading more fully. You're sprawling, is that just my sprawling? Totally sprawling, yes. Yeah, I think definitely a lot of sprawl and it's been very interesting to navigate because I feel like so much of it is in this experimental phase that we're really testing all of these things out that we either imitate or steal from other companies and thank them for it or we're working on our own and it's really been exciting for me to at least see the different dimensions in which dramaturgy can permeate in that sense I do think what's really interesting about this whole conversation that we keep on getting back to is this notion of kind of the scarcity and abundance of the office and how that can pertain to the overall support of the mission and the vision because I definitely agree that I think being in an office with you and Aaron and now we have Laura and other fellows and interns who are populating it which is awesome but I mean to try to manage the notion of open submission policy with all of the engagement with all of these different things when you have a few people or a handful of people trying to dictate that I think for me it was more of a following a direct choice of well let's try something that we feel our energy really gravitates towards knowing that it does maybe lose something in the process but feels more connected to the mission and the vision of where arena is at this time but it is a curiosity mind as far as if you were to have more people just generally kind of in this dramaturgy literary staff could we accomplish everything or is there still an issue as far as John and Lily you birthed a new department and so the way you're dealing with sprawl by creating another department? We are and in creating that other department Miriam and I you know in early four and a half two years ago now had conversations about having to give up some things that I feel like we were both a little territorial about that we thought that oh that clearly falls under the responsibilities of the dramaturgy and or literary manager mostly dramaturgy I would say in retrospect now but in doing that I feel like we have freed ourselves a little bit and given we've been able to go deeper in terms of what both of our responsibilities are within the artistic department in terms of season planning and rehearsal room responsibilities and all that kind of stuff but it will say that yeah we have purposely at woolly I think of not drawing lines in the sand and saying this is your job this is my job and go I mean it's more about the blurriness is okay and that we've all had to come to terms I think with that and we've all had various levels of comfortability with that as well okay let's go to the first break out you guys you have on your card the what group you're in so the questions on the table about whether or not the function of the literary office is sprawling and if it is that something that needs to be addressed the nature of the pile and submissions in particular love to hear from the playwrights about your relationship to that pile and that process and the sense of the balance of time and pulling into it a little bit what we talked about yesterday about the origins and the role of the literary office where are we


So as I said before, these next few videos, I want to help out those people who are feeling a little lost and depressed because of all the doom and gloom they see on social media and why I don't buy it and why I fundamentally disagree with the people who are trying to push it.   All of these platforms have algorithms that are designed to trigger your deepest loves and hates back to back to back to back to back until you literally have no emotions left to feel. And they're designed to keep you there all day until you're angry and sad and then you realize you were not productive at all the entire day and now you're even more sad.   The cute cashier that you have a crush on but never talk to because you're shy, she's still there. The guy working on his laptop doing remote work with his usual dark coffee is still there. The cute girl reading her favorite book in the corner is still there. Kids playing with their dogs in the park across the street is still there. The world is not falling apart. Your perception of it is. It's not an accident that all of social media is always telling you about the next big emergency crisis that is going to end everything. Do you ever wonder why? Because the answer is actually quite simple. When people give up on the future, they default to being miserable and live in the moment. Miserable people who live in the moment do not save, do not build, do not practice or prepare for the future.  Keeping people miserable is a business strategy to keep you consuming garbage. Now some of you guys might remember last year in one of my videos talking about some New Year's resolutions and how this year my goal is to get shredded abs because I've never had that and I want to try it. Now I'm not there yet, but I'm on the way and let me tell you something I've learned while being in the middle of this journey.   As soon as you start to plan on how to save money for retirement, you start to realize you don't really need to buy that much to have a healthy productive day. And this is the key point you should remember.  It's very difficult to make money off of a population that is saving and investing in its future. That is why you are surrounded by doom and gloom. Everything around you is telling you to yolo. You see it's hard to sell coke and alcohol and beer and pizza and donuts to people who are investing in their health. It's hard to sell the next trend in fashion or shoes to people who are saving up for retirement. It's hard to sell therapy to people who are happy. This used to be about selling what people need.  Like when is the last time you heard a song that had lyrics that sounded vaguely like this. Let's all be responsible, always study, don't live on time, only to drink water, keep you in the ground. Of course songs are not like this. Songs like this will never be allowed to be popular because if too many people did that then businesses would lose massive amounts of money. The new strategy is to kill the future.  Let's buy this bottle from this hot chick we'll never talk to again and get so hammered tonight that we will waste all of the weekend. That's the mentality that makes sales that businesses profit off of. It's easier to make people spend money if they don't think money is going to matter in the future.   And this has been true since the dawn of humankind. The old saying, misery loves company has been a natural part of the human persona and it will continue to be a part of the human persona forever because despite how much technology is changing, people do not change. Most people will default to the easier option most of the time and it's much easier to bring everyone else down than to bring yourself up. So consider taking at least an hour break from social media every day and spend that time with friends, with family, with loved ones, with some homies on discord. It doesn't matter.  It really helps keep things into perspective for you. There's a lot you can do right now that will help put you in a better place in the future and I promise there will still be successful artists, writers, dancers, engineers, directors far into the future. Maybe the workflow will change, maybe the size of the teams will change, but they're never going to go away. They're going to evolve the same way they have in history. And if you want to know why art jobs are never going to die, join me in the next video. As always, hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.


This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. The picture behind me is, wait, I got it, it's... Lu Shan. Lu Shan. Lu Shan. Okay, and we talked about him before, and we meaning I wanted to find everything this time. Yes. Professor John Davidan, a history professor at HPU, and he's the author of a book he's been working on for some time, which is The Limits of Westernization, which is on the table, you can see it, okay? And this is very important, and I guess a core part of this whole investigation is what we're going to talk about today. Yeah. We talked about World War I, we talked about what I would recall as a sort of vacuum after World War I, and we had all these people trying to figure out where do we go now? What do we do? How do we fill the vacuum globally? Right, right. You know, it's sort of a really interesting time in the 30s, an intellectual moment, if you will, and I have this vision of these guys sitting around in coffee shops, sipping coffee with spectacles, talking about intellectual... Actually, no. No? In the period, especially in East Asia, in the period of the 1930s, especially in the late 1930s, to be an intellectual in either Japan or China is a pretty dangerous business. Yeah. Government didn't like it. No, not the Japanese government, not the Chinese government, so many of them were thrown in jail, some of them were killed, they were beaten up. Why at the wrong end? What was wrong with it? Why was it so threatening? Well, I mean, they said the wrong things. They criticized governments. That's probably the biggest thing. So last time we talked about, who's sure, this major intellectual who became the Chinese ambassador to the United States in the 1940s during World War... Very westernized type of guy. Well, he was, but he was... So he was an intense critic of the Guomandong, the Chinese government, the nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek, and so they didn't like... They never threw him in jail. He was too powerful to throw in jail. But they hated the criticism, and he was just harping on them constantly because the Guomandong was corrupt and all kinds of problems with their rule. So... But so up to this point, in the 1910s and 20s, then what you have is East Asian intellectuals constructing a modernity which is... Looks actually a bit different from Western modernity. The sources are different. They're looking at Confucianism. I remember Wang Yongming, the old guy in one of our previous... Yeah, you mentioned all of these names. It's so interesting. But you know what I get is after the turn of the 20th century, after the war, and the vacuum of the war, and the tumult in China, and the spheres of influence that had such a threatening effect on China from the west, people there and here and in Europe were looking for a better world. It was Wilsonian, you know, and it's looking over for a better world. And these guys were bent on that. Yeah. So, well, you have these different views. But you also have some agreement about basic principles of modernity, progress, scientific rationality, and human liberation. We can only have them today. Right. Right. They're nice ideas. They're good ideas. And Wilsonianism is, of course, a part of that. But what happens in the 1930s? So you've got that platform. You've got these differences. But you also have the similarities of these intellectuals. Both east and west, they agree upon these three ideas. Were they in touch? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So they agree upon them. In the 1930s, their faith in basically these, what I would call the articles of modernity, those three ideas, you know, progress, human liberation, scientific rationality, right? They begin to lose faith in those ideas. Or they reconfigure them in such a way that they don't even resemble the kinds of notions that we were thinking about earlier. Why act with the things that make them give it up? Right. Why do they move on? Obviously good principles. Yeah. So a lot of reasons. It's complex. History is complex. You've heard that before. So in order to understand that, we have to go to Charles Beard. And if we can bring up a picture of Charles Beard. Beard is maybe the most famous intellectual in the history of the 20th century in the United States. He represents all of the three ideas. He's a progressive. He believes that science can solve the problems of humanity. He's a political scientist. And he's a historian. And he's the only person in the history of really well the history of the United States who serves as the president of both the American Historical Association and the president of the American Political Science Association. That's how important he is. He's this huge figure. And so this will be in the 30s. This is this is his scholarship starts really in 1913. He publishes his first major book. He's a professor at Columbia University. Okay. This is his first major book, a critique of the Constitution making of the country, saying that it's all the Constitution was a compromise made on among economic elites. It wasn't this idealistic document that, you know, so so he's a he's a major critic and he's a skeptic from the beginning. But he also believes in these three things. He believes in progress, scientific rationality and human liberation. Right. So he's he's working he's he's involved in reform efforts and he's trying to make this happen in his world right to make the reforms that will will that will solve the problems that will bring on modernity. Right. So he goes to Japan in 1922. He's by this time he's resigned from Columbia University. He resigns in World War One. This is really amazing. He resigns in protest because some of his colleagues have been criticized and have been released or fired from Columbia University because they refused to sign loyalty pledges concerning World War One. I got to say that I so admire a guy who would do that. You don't have that so much. His job was not threatened. Yeah. I mean, it was so selfless and courageous. Yes. So so by this time, Beard is actually is working for the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, which is an organization that studies cities and and tries to reform cities to make them more modern. Beard is invited to Tokyo to study Tokyo and recommend reforms that would modernize Tokyo. This is watershed right there that I can. I can tell you what you're going to tell me. Okay. Okay. So he gets to Tokyo and what he realizes after his trip is that Tokyo is actually a very modern city already. Was that the answer? Yes. That was the answer. So so what happens is Tokyo actually modernizes over a very long time period. Their transportation systems, their sewage systems, their water systems, they're actually built in way back in the 16 and 1700. They've got they're actually a more modern city than many western cities interesting in that time period. But nonetheless, you know, Beard goes there and he gives lots of lectures and everything and he makes a few recommendations which they mostly ignore. What were the recommendations that he might have given to them, which they didn't know about and which they ignored? Right. So one of the things is in Japan generally and in the Tokyo politics, the political system was weighted toward elites. The way the mayor was chosen, the way council people were elected, there were a lot of people who weren't allowed to vote. Women were not allowed to vote. And so Beard said, hey, you've got to get women involved in municipal governance. That was one of his recommendations. Yeah, that's a pretty feisty recommendation. Which they ignored. So Beard goes home and then in 1923 the Kanto earthquake takes place and it destroys much of Tokyo. And so the mayor and the council invite Beard back to help in the reconstruction of Tokyo because of course the destruction of the city is a major opportunity to build it in a way that is more modern. Sure. So Beard makes a few recommendations the second time he's there, but honestly he doesn't have much of an impact. This is the limits of westernization. Right. Americans, back in the U.S., there's a New York Times article that talks about how Charles Beard will rebuild Tokyo after the Kanto earthquake. Americans think that he's going to lead this rebuilding effort. Beard actually has to put an editorial in the New York Times saying, no, no, actually none of that's true. I'm here to help. When's the last time you saw that? But Beard says, you know, the Japanese have very good engineers. They know what to do. And so there's this, there's in a nutshell part of the problem is the Americans assume that they're going to be front and center in shaping East Asian modernity in Tokyo in this case. Yeah, yeah. So Beard says, no, no, no. Okay. So he knew a lot more about Japan than they did. He did. Yeah, yeah. And so, so Beard is, so, so, but he's still this proponent of reform and progress and scientific rationality. But Charles Beard goes through an evolution which, which really causes his own intellectual crisis in the late 1920s. One of the problems you mentioned, Wilsonianism. Beard was a big proponent of Wilsonianism before World War II. But after the war, Beard realized that Wilson's call to democratize the world was taken by the European powers as a call to grab more land, as a call to, to take more. I think he was right. More colonies. Well, so what happens in, in the Middle East is the Ottoman Empire falls apart. And the Europeans sign a secret treaty called the Sykes-Picot Treaty, 1916, right in the midst of the war. Well, no one knows about this. But after the war, it divides up the Middle East into French and British spheres. So he wasn't kidding. It's imperialism. Yeah. This was, this was real. This was true what he said. So the only way that, that everyone knows about this treaty is, this is complicated, but it's interesting. The Bolsheviks win the revolution in Russia. The Bolsheviks have decided that these Western imperialist powers need to be outed. So the Bolsheviks released these secret documents that the Russian government was in on, including the Sykes-Picot Treaty. So Beard is outraged. He said, oh, this is not Wilsonianism. This is Europe. This is just more European imperialism. And I aided and abetted it by supporting American involvement in World War I. So he reverses himself. So he being, he begins to be skeptical. Now his skepticism on international relations is accompanied, of course, in the early 1930s. You have the Japanese becoming very aggressive in East Asia. He had been a big proponent of Japan. But with Japan's takeover of Manchuria in 1931. They could turn you off. That's right. He got turned off at that. He, he began to denounce Japan. Then of course, in the United States, there's the economic crisis. The Great Depression. What a great time to have a break. Okay. Okay. So we can just sort of dwell on that language. Okay. And then fill up the chasm of history in the 30s. Yes. That's John David Ann, history professor at HPU. We'll be right back after the short break. I can hardly wait. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hello. I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of the Japanese broadcast of Think Tech Hawaii. I'm from Niijikara on Monday, every Monday. In the Japanese community, in the Japanese community, I'm hosting a program where I can share useful information, news, and guests. Hello. I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of the Japanese broadcast of Think Tech Hawaii. Hello. I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of the Japanese broadcast of Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of the Japanese broadcast of Think Tech Hawaii. John David Ann, history lens, the crisis of modernity, East and West, the 1930s, and what you're describing, John, you can still see elements of these things today. It's a very formative process in this period of time that you can still see. Absolutely. Anyway, we left it with a cliffhanger. So the Great Depression crashes the American economy. And it also, so Beard was this guy who believed that science, and for him, political science would deliver an economy that grew and grew. Historical progress, the line going up all the time. Well, the Great Depression, the line started going down. But if you were there, or if I were there, 1930, before the Depression actually began, you'd feel the same way. Yes. And of course, today we still feel the same way. Right? There's not going to be a recession. The economy's going to keep going up. Science will carry us through. Right. So Beard becomes a skeptic of progress, of science. And he has his own ideas about human liberation. Beard, Charles Beard becomes, so he critiques science. He gives a talk at the American Historical Association when he's the president called history as an act of faith. Let's show that picture of Beard right now. If we can see what he, we can look deep into his eyes. There it is. There's Charles Beard. And you can see he's got a collar like a preacher. Charles Beard, he's a professor of history, but he really is in many ways like this. A great statement about Columbia. Yes, right. Well, Columbia had its own problem. It had its own problems in the morning paper today. But anyway, go ahead. So Beard becomes a skeptic. He also begins to believe that the international system is very dangerous and he becomes an isolationist. He argues that the only trade the United States should have is essential articles. Everything else should be done on barter and the Americans should not be interacting with the outside world. The budget of the military should be cut to the bone. We only have 14,000 troops in the army at that point. He has compared to the millions who were in uniform during World War I. That's right. And Beard thinks he has the ear of Roosevelt in the early 1930s, a big supporter of Roosevelt in the first election. Roosevelt disappoints him, bigger government, bigger military, especially the Navy, which Roosevelt builds out in the 1930s. And so Beard becomes a fierce critic of Roosevelt and maintains this position that isolation of what Beard calls American continentalism. That sounds like isolationism to me. It is, but basically the argument Beard has is that we can get everything we need in North America. Nationalism? Yes, nationalism, but also an idea that the Americans North and South America should be self-reliant and should stay away from this very dangerous international system. Was he known? Was he famous? Did he have traction in the American community? His books were the best-selling books of his generation. He was the dean of American historians. So yeah, he was the best-known historian of his generation. So yeah, he had a lot of traction, actually. So Beard becomes terribly disillusioned and at the outbreak of World War II, he accuses the Roosevelt administration of having known about the Pearl Harbor attack beforehand. He's the one who starts this conspiracy theory about the Pearl Harbor, which is alive today. Oh yeah, a lot of people repeat that. Right, so there's no truth in it, but Beard believed that the Roosevelt administration knew and just kept it from the American people because they wanted war against Japan. So that's Charles Beard. And honestly, this last act of Charles Beard, the conspiracy theory, really destroys his career. I mean, he's quite old at this point. He dies in 1948. Oh, he does a long career from the 1913, you said, 1948. He does, and he writes throughout that career. So he's really a remarkable intellectual. Why do you say it destroyed his career? Well, because other historians say the guy is crazy. The guy has lost his mind. So yeah, he's really discredited. The other problem is we don't have any evidence that that's true, so this is a big problem for Beard. This is a big problem for any academic, isn't it? You can't make a statement like that. You can't come to a conspiracy theory like that without any evidence. But Beard, of course, he didn't have a job at an academic institution, so he didn't have that risk. He was independently wealthy. He had this farming operation in Connecticut that had made him wealthy, and his books made him wealthy. So he didn't have anything to lose by taking a flyer. Except his reputation, unfortunately. And I think he really didn't understand that. But Beard, this fierce guy, very stubborn guy, high collar, like a preacher, unwilling to compromise. Now, when we think about Beard's kind of his crisis in terms of modernity, well, that also happens in East Asia. It's a different kind of crisis in East Asia. So what happens in East Asia is, especially with the relationship between China and Japan, Japan is increasingly aggressive with China. China is increasingly falling apart in this time period. There are concerns about Western imperialists taking even more control than China, maybe once again threatening Japan. So in this atmosphere, you have two important intellectuals. You have Yoshino Sakuzo. We showed the picture, but we can bring that picture up again. Yoshino Sakuzo is a, he's an intellectual in, there he is, dapper in his suit and tie. He is the foremost democracy advocate of Japan before World War II. Yoshino is a professor at Tokyo Imperial University. He leads protests in the late 1910s and the 1920s. And he was not thrown in jail? No, not in that time period. Maybe there was a certain swell of support for that idea. There was a lot of millions of people joined in his protest. Was that really for democracy? I may have a definitional problem if you use that term. Or was that just to be Western? No, this is actually the key to Yoshino's thought because Yoshino looked at Western style democracies and said, you know what, this will not work in Japan. And so his idea of democracy is what's called Minponshugi, which is the people's sovereignty, which is kind of not a completely accurate translation. But so what Yoshino said is, you know what, Western system, the sovereignty is located in the people. But in Japan, we have an emperor, so we can't locate sovereignty in the people. The emperor is still sovereign. But the emperor, in Minponshugi, the emperor should, by virtue of his position as emperor. Should listen to the people. Should care for the people. And then what you can do on the bottom, the people themselves, you can push for all kinds of, the same kinds of democratic reforms that are taking place in the West. But with the understanding that this is a kind of functional democracy, it's not sovereign democracy. So that's a key insight. It's a little thinking in Europe, you know, that if you had the power and had the money, you had an obligation to take care of them. Right, right, right. Yoshino's very serious about the democracy part of this. Now, Yoshino, he's a very popular guy, he's a very important guy. The Taishou Democracy Movement is really, he's the head of it. But he makes this terrible mistake. He knows that he has enemies and he knows that he would like to speak out even more freely and have more power. And he's not paid very much at Tokyo Imperial. So he quits his job at Tokyo Imperial University, takes a job at one of the major Tokyo newspapers, begins to write these scathing editorials. Against the government. Against the government, very critical of the government. He had been, all along, been critical of the government, especially the government's, you know, lack of democracy in response to the, to its rule in Korea, its empire. So Yoshino, so somebody high up in the government calls the editor of the newspaper and says, this guy has to go.  Well, he didn't kill him. Well, yes, it's good that they didn't kill him, but honestly, he becomes impoverished, he loses his influence. And he dies poverty-stricken and ill in 1931. Interesting, because he had no platform to advance his theory. He had no protection. He had some protection in Tokyo Imperial University. He had none there. The interesting thing about Yoshino's ideas is, Yoshino believed that within the, what he called the international system of democracy, because he believed the world was going in the direction of democracy. He believed that Japanese democracy would be unique. It would involve their empire, their trade system within their empire. And then, of course, this functional, Minpon Shugi functional democracy back in Japan. Where the emperor takes care of the people. That's right. So he believed that there was this unique system that Japan was building. Now, his student, Royama Masamichi, now we can bring up a picture of Royama. He's, let's see if he shows up here. There he is. So Royama Masamichi is, he's a student of Yoshino. He comes to mature, he takes a job at Tokyo Imperial University. He becomes this very important guy in the, in the 1930s because he is a part of, of Konoe Fumimaro's informal cabinet. Kind of the cabinet of intellectuals. He's the head of that cabinet. Student of Yoshino. Royama argues, you know what? Yoshino's idea about a Japanese unique sphere. Let's take that further. And he argues that Japan is building a unique, regional civilization in East Asia. And even more, because of this, Japan, because of the unique nature of the development of modernity in East Asia, with Japan at the head of this empire, do not need to follow international laws. International laws do not apply to the Japanese empire. How does it play with Manchuria? How does it play with the growing imperialism, violent imperialism that was happening in the 1930s? So Royama's a moderate and he argues, he doesn't like what's happening in Manchuria. He thinks Japan's empire can be peaceable, not with military intervention like in Manchuria. So he argues a moderate position on the Manchurian question in 1932. But his ideas fit with increasing Japanese militarism in, in East Asia because Konoe becomes the prime minister of Japan in 1937. He picks up Royama's ideas and said, you know what we're building in East Asia? We're building a greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere, which is essentially a cover for Japanese imperialism and military aggression in East Asia. So through the 30s, through the 30s it was evolving that way and his sense of moderation was losing out. That's right. And the war hawks. He quits his job at Tokyo imperialism. Because he's frustrated. Well, he's frustrated and a colleague is fired. So it's a little bit like Charles Beer. Really? It's Columbia and Tokyo University. So Royama's a very important guy. He's this bridge to a Japanese empire which is very aggressive. But it still is defining itself as a kind of unique version of modernity, its own version of modernity in East Asia. Yeah. They were ideating Western style. Well, they were, they were, they had accepted the idea of modernity, but they were saying, no, this is not Western modernity. This is Japan modernity. This is, this is our own style of modernity and therefore we do not need to follow international law and follow the rules of international kind of the international system. And indeed they don't. Sounds like China today. Well, this is part of the reason why China can do that because they've for a long time, they've been building something that's quite a bit different than Western style modernity. So yeah, China today in many cases says, well, international laws don't apply to us. It sounds like you're defining the end of the 30s, the end of the intellectual, the intellect process that happened in that period. And so as the co-host of this show, John, maybe you should state where we are. Give us a snapshot of where we are say 1940, the end of the 30s, and tell us what we're going to cover next time. Okay, so one more thing before we do that. Liu Shun, back to China and Liu Shun. So Liu Shun is this intellectual. He's also experiencing a crisis like intellectuals in Japan and Charles Beard in the United States. And Liu Shun believes that the Chinese past is bad, that Westernized modernity in China is bad. He wants to create a kind of nationalist modernity in China. And there's Liu Shun right there. And he's a very important intellectual. He's a writer. He writes a short story which would have won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He refuses. He doesn't want it nominated. He's a critic of the communists. He's in the Chinese Communist Party. He's a critic of the Guomandong or the Nationalists in China. No one escapes his sharp critique. He's a very interesting guy. In this discussion, you've named a number of people who did that sort of thing, including Beard. They stand up for what they believe in. Even at great risk. We need more people like that. No, absolutely. And these are public intellectuals willing to risk their lives to tell the truth. But so all of these guys are suffering from this crisis of modernity. Essentially, their faith has been broken. And so in the 1930s, I think that's what you're seeing. And Liu Shun, he dies in 1937. It would have been interesting to see if he had lived on such a sharp critic, such a strong international figure for China. Maybe he could have helped shape Chinese communism in a different direction, or maybe Chinese communism never appears. That's kind of stretching it a little bit. But at any rate, so you have these intellectuals who are suffering through this major crisis of thought in the 1930s, and modernity really takes it on the chin, so to speak. It seems like progress is dead with the Great Depression. It seems like human liberation has died with the Holocaust in the West and with Japanese atrocities at Nanking and the rest of East Asia. And it seems like scientific rationality, which was supposed to deliver progress and human liberation cannot be trusted anymore. But the war comes and destroys the landscape of East Asia, the people of East Asia, and it really in some ways kind of wipes out this crisis as well. So in the post-war period, you begin to see new narratives about the strength and the progress of modernity and scientific rationality. So it reasserts itself. There's something hopeful there. But where are we leaving this and where are we going next time? That's what we'll talk about next time. We'll talk about the post-war situation and the way that it's both history, the way that intellectuals began to reframe modernity after World War II, but also the way that history began to be written after World War II and written in a way that didn't fully kind of square with the facts and allowed us to think that westernization was the only thing that happened in the 20th century East Asia. Thank you, John. You're welcome. It's always great. History is wonderful.


So how do we use this knowledge to our advantage? Why is all of this important? Well, first just being aware of it, understanding the influence of our network, understanding how norms are passed is huge. When I made this realization, when I started to see as I grew as a person and started changing some of my habits, changing some of the things that I held dear, my values even, and I started to remove people from my life and surround myself with people who shared in those values, viewpoints, everything shifted. So when we surround ourselves with people who share values with us, share outlooks with us, it can have a compounding effect. And we now know that norms are the most powerful at the center of our network, weakest at the periphery. So if you want to design your network so that you're well connected to all of those that display the norms that matter to you, the norms that you appreciate, all we're saying is start to loosen some of our connections with the negative norms, the negative viewpoints, the negative influences.