For over 10 years, we have brought together every year a group of the most significant playwrights, great voices from their countries, young voices emerging mid-Korea and also very, very established writers. Because what we do need here in America, but elsewhere also, we need to hear what stories are out there, like musicians listen to world music, to watch the aircraft is vitally important to them, the same should be for playwriting. And often we do feel in the American scene that it is actually not really represented, if you think that over 50% of the New York City inhabitants are no longer white. If you look at what's presented on stage or what you see on the television, it's the stories out of there. Penn has been a great champion of voices from around the world. Penn is the writer of the organization, poets, editors and novelists, it was at the very beginning and it was always a political organization. And Norman Mailer, many, many others, were heads of the Penn International, Penn International Writers Organization. They have a Freedom for Right program. They really are the ones that keep out of prison. They also give out significant literary awards and this is most probably the most significant literary festival in the United States here, perhaps also in the Americas. Over 80 writers are right now at this moment in New York for this festival. We are part of this. It's a great, great, great honor for the CEDO Center that we are considered as partners and it fights right on our mission to bridge academia and professional theater, international and American theater. If you see the lineup, it is truly unique and I would say what we also in the Americas would be hard to find another festival with such a concentration of talent of really great writers and storytellers are to be seen in three days. We have nine readings. Nine readings. I hope you will all be able to come back. We will have three readings today. They will all happen in this space. There will be breaks in between in case you stay longer. The important thing is we always have the playwrights with us if we can. Judith Morris, Marvin Carlson, a grant which we got for the CEDO Center and Jusen and Jack Wooden. We were able to really bring them here which we couldn't do for all the years. So first of all, we would like to welcome Patricia Collelius from Australia. Festival, as you know, it's not just a subway right away. It's a long long trip. So she came here to be with you all in this room and also of course to support the bigger idea that is important to listen to voices from around the world. Paul Oster, Salman Rushdie, Michael Robles, I was created the festival to the Bush government where they felt it was a tunnel vision. Not enough voices were being heard. 95 to 96% of all books published in North America are in the English language. The four, five percent are in the rest of it. 50% are German or French because they are supported by the government so we really do not hear enough and they felt it is vitally important. It has become now a very important contribution. Again, thank you all for coming. Thanks for pen. It's a great start of the day. We were featured in the times today. Also, our festival was mentioned to many, many others. So, we also would like to say thank you to Paul for directing. Thank you so much. We have Christian, who is the producer who worked on this Michael and Brad. Thank you. So, we are, who is the assistant curator, Antje Ugel, who helped to put this together with me and then she was a very, very strong force in creating this festival. And Yu Chen and everybody who works with us there is also Bella from Brazil. Also, our staff comes from Taiwan and so we try to actually also really live what we think of as important. So, I also would like to read from our friends who asked us to do this at this moment. Now, we would like to acknowledge the Napi people. Upon whose land we are gathered today and we can pay respect to the Napi people and ancestors in the past, present and future. So, thank you all for coming. If you have a cell phone, please do take it out. I will do the same. And make sure that I'll give you all take yours, I'll double check. It's show Italian. It never rings in our room, so I thank you all. And Katie. Shit, by Patricia Cornelius. Prologue, lights up.               What contribution you made?    So? Too many fucks.  Way over. Too bad I like it.  Thick carpet of fucks. Way too thick.   What? You're not. What?  Using it well. Mm. Mm. Mm. Using it well? That's it, you're not.   You're not making the best of it. I know how to make the best of it. You wear it out.  You do, you wear it thin.  She can't stop.  She's coming.  It's probably the first word she ever said.  Cute, oh it sort of. I like little kids who swear. She's grown up with it. I guess. She doesn't know any better. Yeah.  Cunt comes later. Not that much later.  What, like three? There, the best. There we are. Just like them. I like them so much. They're like bullets. I'm a shotgun. I'm a machine gun. AK. What's the sharpest blade? A razor blade. I'm a razor. A switch. They're the strongest. I'm far.  Can't get no better. But no good if they're overdone. Ah Ray, what do you want? Just hold it down with you. What do you think I am?  Don't overdo it. I'm addicted. So am I. I couldn't give them up if I tried. No way. And who wants to try? They're strong. Power.  Tough words.  Frightening. Result for most.  I've seen it with my own two eyes. On the train or the tram or the bus. I seen someone talking the talk.       You got it. You with me. And they got their heads buried. They got sweat pouring, dripping off their foreheads. And they're squirming. And they're shitting themselves. And they're running for the doors. And they're ringing the bells.  Next stop, please. I know. I know. I've seen that. I've done that. I've never run like that. Yeah, who hasn't?   Life in them words. Oh, electrifier. It's sort of surprising. The words have been around for years. They hurt them. The words hurt them. Burn them. They sting them. Make them bleed. I've had them women go, watch your language, please.  I said, what are you going to do? Ring the police?   Looking down their noses. They're word bitches. Word.  What's wrong with the cunt?  It's not ladylike. Ladylike. It's not.  They don't like girls talking it. Who tell it? Like it.  They like us. Quiet. Like mice. They like us soft. Like kittens. Ladylike. Ladylike. They like us to listen. To their every word. Not talk. Say nothing. Just listen and nod our heads. Or joke. They think we're foul mouthed sluts. We are.    They think we're dumb. I'm not dumb. They think you are.  I can't. You can't. I'm not sure she can. Can you? Of course I can. Try it. Say something. All right.   All right. Come on. OK, OK, come on. Say something.   All right, all right, all right.  Here I go, here I go, here I go.  I got a problem with how we talk.  Yeah, that's right.    You were looking at him. I wasn't looking at him. I was looking like I was looking at you or anybody else who spoke. I wasn't looking at him.  I was just looking. Like, he said something. Like, when you're at the shop and someone says, can I help you?  And you say, yes, yes, yes. Give me, give me some smokes.    Sandra is fucked. Totally.  What are we going to tell them? The sound of footsteps, high-heeled words. The three women appear in silhouettes. They are completely still, listening, intently. A room. Anyone could save us? Like, God, you mean? No.  Like, someone says, you're right, you're right, I got you. Like, someone shoots a crocodile just before it gets you. Like, a doctor cuts out the rock before it infects you. Like, when you jump, someone's going to catch you.   Like, when a boulder is pounding down, and Superman comes and scoops you up into his arms. Like, someone grabs you. All right, all right. Sam, nothing's going to save us. Too late to save us.  We're past saving. Way past saving. Maybe someone could have saved us when we were little. Doubt it. When we were three. From the moment I came out, nothing could save me. Well, from the moment my mom got knocked up, nothing could save me. Nothing at all? A bedroom with a lock on the door? Cut down the shouting. In one of those houses I was in, a girl read books. Did that save her?  Drug's going to save you. Drug's going to save you. When they're in good supply. I used to think someone was going to save me. Me too. Pick me up and carry me off somewhere. Me too. And tell me good things. Like, you're a good girl. Well done. You did real good. You sat up straight. You didn't pick your face. You ate good, girl. You ate. You laughed in the right place. You're pretty when you smile. Well, you enjoyed yourself, didn't you? You thought about someone else for a change. You didn't spit in anyone's face.  You know that, don't you?  Are you listening to me? Look at me.  You're, you're, you're something, something. What's her name? What? Got to give her her name. This woman who could have saved us. What? Caitlyn. How about that? Caitlyn cuddles us. She balances us on her knees.  Caitlyn's got enormous tits. And all she wants to do is take us in her arms. Oh, yes, please. To make us happy. To smooth away the pain. To love us.   And from biting her neck and draining her blood. Caitlyn might have saved us. I heard of Caitlyn. For about a year I had her. When I was eight, maybe nine. I know I wasn't with her when I was 10. She had these huge tits. And she grabbed me and tucked me into them. I'd be standing there and she'd grab me. I'd be on the couch watching TV. And she'd grab me on my way to bed, to school. Just had to move.  She squeezed me every chance she'd get. She squeezed the life out of me. She squeezed me to death. Used to have to hold my breath. Then when I was 10, someone else had me. Couldn't she save you? No. Too far gone. What's she doing squeezing you all the time? Love, you mean, I guess. I never had one of them, Caitlyn's. Neither did I. I love her. I love Caitlyn.  The sit-up's straight. Don't touch that. That's a not-be-greedy-gotts-comma. Stop that, and stop that, and don't do that kind. One I had treated her dogs better than me. I had one I liked. She was nice. They growled at me when I went to get up and have a wee. Then I got sent back to my mom. That happened to me sometimes. It was the time I pissed my bed. I never had one of them big, titty, cuddly ones. Never could.  Men. I had them. Plenty of them.  The tongues slipping between your lips kind. This is just between you and me kind. This is our secret kind. The stink of their breath.   Yeah? Well, boo-hoo. Never mind. I was talking, and she says, there's nothing can be done. She's too far gone. Forsaken, she said. Forsaken? I think, what's this forsaken? Forsaken, like something taken from the Bible or something like totally fucked? And then I know who she's talking about. You know, who is this forsaken? Who's too far gone, who's past saving? And I start laughing.   And no doubt about it. Spot on.   And it's about me. She's talking about me. I'm the one who's fucked. I'm forsaken. It's me. It's me. I'm forsaken. Me. Me.  Me. A room.  For sure. Her eye socket, too. I reckon. Other bones, ribs, collar bones. Likely. Stuff inside with the buddhas. Lean, maybe. Kid me. She'll have a bald spot where he pulled her hair out. I had that little girl back. I don't know about that. I could see it coming. Craig was just waiting for the opportunity. And she gave it to him.   She never shuts up.  Bite your tongue.   Can't she see that Craig's arcing up? Gone dead in the eyes. Gone too quiet. Looking at her like with that smile.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, on and on.       And in Craig goes. Don't hold him back, brutal. Brutal. She'll go back. She won't. You watch her. She won't.  Some girls break it on. I'd punch her the way she'd go on. Brutal. I love a good fight. That was not a fight. Shit, no. Not a fair one. It was a massacre. All right, I mean, a real one.  Even when I lose them, it's like I'm the king of the world. Take me out. Come on, try it. Mom, Bobby, how about a round? No thanks. We'll stop when we draw blood. No. Are you scared? Terrified. Oh, I think you are. I think old Bobby's lost her nerve. You're right. I've lost it.   Call me a pussy. I don't hear you. Come on. Didn't you hear? What's it got to do with you? She's my protector. She'll fight you instead. I've never seen you back down from a fight. I don't want to fight Billy. I've fought her. I don't need to fight her again. I've never seen you lose. I've lost plenty. Too many. It took me a long time to learn when to fight and when to go dormant. You fight someone who will not hesitate to smash you fair square in the face or the throat or the guts.   But if he's with it, go soft. Drop like a cake all your way.  Yeah, it's a risk plan, dad, a risk.  You hope he'll forget you're there.  Yeah, yeah, they do. Let's not go there. It takes ages to get over a beating. It breaks your face. It breaks bones. It kills a beating.  Like Sandra likes you. Sandra be crying for a long time. And a boy, a pretty, a pretty boy, about the same age as me, I'm four, I think, maybe more. I haven't been with them that long. They're nice to me. I'm not hungry. We're at the beach. And I've never been at the beach before. And I don't like it much. The sand hurts between my toes. And the water stings because my legs have got sores on them. I'm watching the boy, the pretty boy. They tell me he's my brother. And them girls are my sisters. But they're not. I hate that.  All some are family as it is.  They love him. They love him, this family. His sisters do anything he wants. And he wants a lot. He orders them about. He stands with his hands on his hips and shouts. Sometimes he smacks them and leaves a red mark on their skin. And then he cries because he's sorry he's hurt them.  And his head falls back. And he giggles. The pretty boy. Beautiful, really.  He's told me he's my father, too.  Because he's not. Where did they get him off? He picks up the boy and swings him up on his shoulders. And he stands at the waters that he points out to the sea. The father does as if he's saying to the boy, this is all yours for as far as you can see. The mother joins them, smiling up at them. Her eyes for the boy, the boy. Now his sisters are dancing around, adoring him. And there's this terrible noise. And it pierces their ears as it disturbs the peace. This terrible noise. And I can't believe it. It comes from me. Pain has come up like spew from deep inside me. They look around. And when they see that the noise is mine, they laugh. And are drawn back to the beautiful boy, forgetting me. Later, the boy is alone, playing a game in the shallows. He's giving orders to the waves as if they're his men. And he's leading them to shore. He's lost completely in his imagining. Nothing to worry him, to distract him, to disturb him from this world he's in. A world I've never been in. I've never, not once, not even for a second. And suddenly a wave, larger than the rest, comes and topples him. And here's my chance. You got him? Yes, I got him. I've got him, too. I've got him. Is he struggling? Not much.  When are we going to let him up? We're not. Got to let him up sometime. Why?  Yep. Why not?  Don't let him up. I just want to frighten him a bit and say, well, that's enough. Better hurry up. That's enough. Gone. You stay with my family, Mom? Not wrong. They didn't like me. They wake in ambush. A room. When's the last time you cry? Never cried. When you were a baby, you would have cried. Nope. All babies cry. Do they? For a while, they cry, and then they stop. I don't remember crying. Even when I've been slapped or punched or kicked, been square-hipped, once I coughed it right on the nose, my eyes watered and tears came down. They weren't real tears, not real ones. You've never been in that much pain? I don't feel pain.  No, I'm not making it up. I just don't feel much. That's why I don't bother with slashing up. It does nothing for me. I don't get any release. Bullshit, come here and let's see if that's true. I'm happy to hurt you. I've got no time for tears, OK?   I don't cry.  All he had to do was look at him and he'd cry. He was the house punching bag. You pass him in the hallway, you hit him.  He cried and someone would hit him and make him stop. And did he? Course not. I faked it plenty of times. I taped it on.  I'm going to miss. Don't touch me. Don't touch me. Don't. Don't. Please. Please, please, please don't touch me. How was I?  That was very good. It should be on YouTube. Thank you.  Don't think I did. What about crying because you feel bad or sad about something? Oh, no. What about I have a sad film? No. What about for yourself just because you feel sad about life or something else? No. Is that weird? You never feel sad for anyone? No.  Do you? Yeah. Sometimes. I think I do. I feel sad for my mom. Not so much now, but when I was young, I felt sad for her. I heard you. What?   You did not.  When was this? Oh, when we were in that busy unit one time. That was a long time ago. Where was I? You weren't in that one. Now everything's fine with my mom. I see her all the time. You see her. I saw her not that long ago. How long? He's up. Were you? I'm just interested, that's all. I don't know. A few weeks. Months ago. Really? You death or something? When's the last time you saw your mom? You kidding? Never see her.   Oh, I don't get it. My mom does not deserve to be loved.   I'm not angry with her.  I never think about her.   Why bring my mom into this?  She's a junkie just like my mom. Yeah, that might be the case, but I love my mom. You do not. Of course she does. No, she doesn't. Billy, she does. You don't, do you?  Oh my god! I used to cry when I got hurt, but not for a long time. You don't cry because you feel sad? Oh, I don't like it crying. It's a waste of time, so I decided not to. You never feel sad? No, not really. Nor do I. I think it's all a lie, this feeling stuff. I don't reckon most people feel much.  I don't really know anyone who's kind. Do you? There are kind of people that name one. I don't know their names. Because they don't exist. What about that Caitlyn? Caitlyn is weird, not kind. There are kind people, lots of them. Like them who give money to the poor. Exactly. Or Africa, where people are dying from starvation.  Oh, am I?  They don't have to, don't they?  They are not kind. Yeah, they're taught not to be kind.  Looking for someone, anyone, a room. I want a horse. I want a dog. I want two dogs. So they can keep each other company. I want a house, a big one. And I want a pool and a barbecue. And I want curtains on my bedroom window and a bed queen size with sheets and duvet, a fridge. And I want it full of food. Open it and stuff falls out. It's so full of cheese and margarine and ice cream. In my life, I want- What right you got? What? I'm just saying what right you got to want all this. I can want.  What makes me think you can want and want? I can want. Can I? She can want if she wants to. Who are you to want? I'm just mean. I'm like you or anybody else. No, you're not. Leave her. I can want if you can want. I don't want. I don't want nothing. I do. I want things. I want things. And why do you?    Adults want things. Like you're not full grown. It's like you're on your mommy's tits.  I don't want like that. It's like you're not whole. Like you've got pieces missing. You're needy. Wanting isn't needy. I'm not needy. I just want a few things. What? What is it exactly that you want? I want us in a fridge and stuff. You're just wanting. You're wanting. You're wanting what? I just said you want too much. No, I don't.  Yeah, I'm all right. I'm all right. What's wrong with you? Nothing. What is so bad about your life? Nothing. Just the wanting. Something. Wanting. Wanting. Wanting. Ralph, that sounds like to me. What about a baby? Is there anything wrong about wanting me wanting that? You want a baby? Yes, I think I do want one. It's natural to want a baby. Oh, natural. Most women want one. I do not want one. I said most. What for? What do you mean what for? What do you think? For the cash you get? No. Then what? To love it. That's why.  You want a baby so you can love it? What makes you think you're going to love it? Because that's what happens when you have a baby. You love it. Did you love it?  Did you?  What are you talking about? Bobby had one and she didn't love it. You had a baby? Yes. When? Can't remember, years ago. How old? 12. What happened to it? Don't know. What was it? A baby. A boy or a girl? A boy or a girl.  It was a long time ago. You mentioned a baby. I forgot. She had one and she didn't love it, didn't you? No. Do you think about it? No. Do you want to see it? No. Do you think you'll ever see it? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want a baby. It loves me.  Why are you being so mean to me? I'm not being mean to you. Are a bit mean. No, I'm not. A bit mean.  You know, I'm trying to help her out. I wasn't so much a mean. I don't want her to be disappointed. Forget it. Forgive me for thinking I might like to change something. In somewhere, is that it? You want to change something. I wouldn't mind a change.   You want droplets.  I don't want nothing. I don't want to change nothing. I don't want from now. I got no wants. Just ask. You know what?  I'd sneak out early in the morning. Real early, like almost dark early and cold. And I think I've got to do something about this. I've got to stop it.  I'm sinking in it. I'm stinking of it.  And then he'd drive me, sometimes way out. Or sometimes he'd pull into a nearby street and park under a tree and then I'd buck him. And I'd think, I got you. I got you. I really got you and start to feel real.  Something wrong with that. No, there's not. There is. What? Something I can't put my finger on.  Something doesn't have it. It doesn't, right? I felt great. I felt real. I did. I do. Sure you do. Sex is great. Yeah, great. I love sex. I love it. Yeah, sure you do. When was the first time you had sex? Are you kidding me? What? You don't ask that. Why do you want to know that? What's wrong with you? You don't ask that. Okay. You don't. I said okay.  When was the first time you had sex? Oh my God.    Got it. There's your answer, Samantha. We can't remember. I don't like these. I don't like them. I never wanted them. I got no use for them. They're ridiculous. Stupid.  They're a scene. And then bits, they're all of them. They've got nothing to do with me. I used to be slim. Beautiful slim.   I never wanted this. It wasn't for me.  And I've delivered it. This mistake. This wrong, the wrongness of this. So out of luck.  This is not mine. This has nothing to do with me.  This is too much.  This bleed, this muck, this stink. That's not mine. That's got nothing to do with me.  Not me. I've got great tits. I've got great tits. Yeah, not bad. Not bad, they're good. Who says? I've been told lots of times. I've had them yell out of cars. I can't tell you how many times I've had them grope in at them. They like them that much. I've had them making gestures at them from across bars. They're too small. No, they're not. Yeah, I'm letting you know they're not that good.  They're like pancakes. They are like squashed.  I'm sorry to be the one telling you the truth. I like them. That's good. I think they're good. That's good. I like them. Good. Yours are perfect, I suppose. They are.     Heart-shaped?     Oh, I've got great legs. I've got great legs. You have not. I think with my legs. Yeah, you've got cankles. Cankles? I have not got cankles.   I've got sex appeal.  I got it like if I don't tap. I've got it. They can't keep their hands on me. They can't. And want me. Sex appeal. Who the fuck's the bomb?  I don't look like a bomb. Yeah, you're sexy as a bomb. That's you.  Uh, no way. I'm alive. I'm on fire.  Blank it off. They resounded a run. The three women emerged from the dark edges. They run together like hunting dogs. A room.  Oh, here we go. We know, we know. They don't weigh in. Yeah, yeah. They're not in for the count. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't play and don't mark the ball. They don't kick, hit, they strike. No goals. Yeah, yeah. But they're whining. And they're crying. And they're bitching.  Yeah, well. Who is talking shit?  They're full of it.  Yeah, well.     What can you say about them? Nothing. Yeah, well, that's. They don't do anything. They don't make anything. They don't have anything.  Yeah. Always want to be looked at, to be seen. Talking too loud. Talking obscene.   Oh, drinking con. They're tits being bit. Like they love it with that one. And that one. Yeah, queue it up. Bring it on.    God, they're orange faces. And they're smelly armpits. And they're stinking holes. God, stop up screeching.  And their tits all jiggling. Thinking there's someone. There's nothing.  That's it. Shit.   And hey, hey, hey, hey. What's with all the things? Yeah. What do you mean, they don't do this? They don't do that. Yeah. They can't run. They can't fight. They can't save themselves a big try. I used to run. Who from in events? I run lots of times. But you stopped.  But what they've not got? Not got love. Not got respect. Not got kids. Not got money. Got nowhere to live. On and on and on about what's been done to them. Oh, he did this. He touched me. He jumped me.   No one's listening.  It's not fair. It's not right. Oh my god.  Face it.  All right? Shit. Who's you? And all of them they. Yeah, who are you? You forget? Don't you know? You're them too. How come you forgot?  What's with that? Oh, quiet and laugh. Got nothing more to say. Not really. You don't, do you? Oh my god. You do. What do you call them?  You got a dick?  Give us a love. Oh, what's wrong?   Get it out. Do you really think you're not one of us? You can't. You honestly think you're not a chick. Oh my god. Oh my god. You do. You think you're a man.  Pull down your pants.   Sam pulls Bobby's trousers down to her knees.   What are you?  You want security?  I'm sorry, what?  I didn't hear you.  That's right. A room. You shouldn't have looked at him. I didn't. You did. I didn't. Yes, you did. No, I didn't.  We saw you. We saw you. All right, you did.  I can look at it if I want. Why did you? Why not? Because you wanted him. Nope.  She made a girl offer tips.  You did. Well and truly.  What she done to you.  Bitch.  We're here because of you. It's true. No, that's not why we're here. You started it. You did. With your little game. You got Sandra all bothered. You got her all hot. I'm doing the collar. No, no, no. What's that got to do with what came later? Because she's at Craig. Adam and Adam. And then he snaps. And he batches her. And I repeat, what's that got to do with what came later? Craig bashing Sandra. Craig smashing Sandra. Sturred us up. Unsettled us. Gave us a hunger. Oh, a hunger? Yeah, kind of. Yeah, kind of.  Get that. Exactly that. Looking for something. Anything. Someone. Anyone. Anyone. And she came along. She came along.     Because of your looking.  You've done that to me. What? You've tried to con on to all the blokes I have. You never had a bloke worth looking at. I'd have a lot more if it wasn't you looking at them trying to take them off. Believe me, I don't look at your blokes. Mick. You looked at Mick. And then he didn't want me anymore. Oh, Mick. Please, don't make me sick. You can't help yourself if you slut. What did you call me? A slut. You want to say that again? Slut. Slut. They're in for the fight. Slow down. What have we done? Shhh. We're tight. Real tight. We're right. We are right. We're not right. We're fucked. We're night night. Go ahead. Don't let me think. Yeah, you think.  It's wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong. What are we going to do?  Oh my god. What's she done? What's she done? She done nothing. Nothing. She was just there. Yeah. Yeah, just there. Yeah. In the wrong place. In the wrong time. Yeah. All right, who's seen us? No one? Who knows? No one. Us. We know. So? You're not going to go blabbing. You're not going to say nothing. I'm zipped. Nothing to worry about. That's it. Just something snapped. Snapped. Can't go back. Can't go back.  We're right.  We're right.  We're right. We're fucked. In a lineup. They'll split us. For sure. No, they won't. Will they? For sure. They'll divide us. No way. You never would have done it if it wasn't for her or her this day. Who was it? They gave the word. Who gave the first kick? Who's the leader in all this? Who's the bad apple in the barrel? They'll ask us to spill our guts. I'd never do that. Be over it. I'd never. Yeah, lots of rats say that. I'd never. We're in this together. They'll split us. They'll send us far, far away. No phone calls, no contact. They can't do that. They can do whatever they want. I'm not going anywhere without you. You're going wherever they want you to.  I want to be with you. They decide. Not you. No, I don't want to be without you. Well, we're no good for you, they'll say. Yes, you are. You're good for me. Of that influence. No, they're wrong. They don't care. I do. Do something. Tell them it can't be. Sam, what did you think? That they'd keep us together? Yes, I did. They'll split us. We won't see each other again. Are you?  You do. You are. You are. You're crying. End of play. Yeah, that's good. OK, well, thank you very much. Thank you for such a wonderful reading. That was really exceptionally wonderful. So my name's Peter Eccasord. I'm the executive officer of the PhD program in theater here. But I'm also from Melbourne, Australia, which are you born here in Melbourne? Which is where this play comes from, this wonderful play that we just saw written by Patricia Cornelius. And Patricia's been able to come over on the long haul from, it's about, I don't know if you've ever been there, but it's a very long flight or series of flights to get here. So thank you so much for coming. It's a real pleasure to welcome you to Siegel Center, to the Graduate Center and to New York. And to hear this play that is, I've read the play, and it's done, had a very good season in Australia directed by a close friend of both of us, Susie Dee. So it's very interesting to hear this play, I think, in a different vernacular. Because I think one of the things that Patricia's work is very good at is writing in vernacular language, writing language of very particular groups of people, working class people, outcasts, and in this case, really, I think a very particular group of young women who would be, I think, in sociological vernacular turned at risk. I guess risk is a big thing in this play. And in this really nice reading that was directed by Katie Ball, so thank you to you. And we've got Britt Faulkner, Shelly Ford, and Elise Liberton doing really a superb reading. And I'll come back to the question of the language in a minute, but just to begin, Patricia, I just wanted to ask you a little bit about where this play came from. How did you come to write this play and what was the context for it in the Australian context initially? Where did you see this play going? It happened in a larger context with actually two other writers and a group of directors and all female. And it was a response to the question of actually women in theatre and about how a lot of plays in Australia and elsewhere were engaging with a very powerful men in theatre and the men taking the stage in a very visceral and physical way. And very exciting. People loved it and I loved it, but there's this extraordinary sub-absence of women kind of being able to take the stage in a kind of real and in the sense of a physical way. And so we were developing works and they became separate. And I went with this one further and further and I was absolutely kind of looking for a very unsentimental and kind of true picture of the women that I see in the trams and who might actually both fear and love. But in my tram, local tram is quite famous for going down. I don't know whether a tram is like a very local form of public transport in Melbourne. And tram lines run into different parts of the city and depending on your tram line there's all sorts of demographic associations about the neighborhood and the class of the neighborhood you live in. And trams have very different atmospheres, I guess. Yeah, so my tram is a really great route to picking up some drugs before you get into the city. It's kind of fabulous and tough and great for a playwright. Okay, but also the underclass in Australia is growing daily. And that underclass is, it's an appalling thing but it's also a frightening thing because a lot of people are very angry and a lot of people do shocking things. And I was all that stuff I wanted to address. It's really interesting because we know that there's been a very strong conversation about the scarcity of women directors in Australia and theater recently. I think that conversation's also taken place here to a degree. And that the Australian vernacular voice was developed through a series of male playwrights in the 1960s and 70s. And the Australian theater is very famous for this iconic generation of often working class playwrights or playwrights writing in the working class vernacular but they're all male with one or two exceptions. And it took another generation and people like yourself to begin to explore this very similar sensibility from the point of view of women playwrights, women directors and women running companies. Patricia's had a long involvement in Melbourne Theater going back many decades and is the co-founder of Melbourne Workers Theater and been involved in very strong productions that really do capture the kind of fractures of society, the moments of anger, but also I guess the moments you have a capacity, I think, to dwell in these areas in a way that is extremely human. And I think that's something that's very interesting about the play, this particular play and also the use of poetry in the play, I think it's really striking because this is the play with all the swearing, an extraordinary opening scene.  It's a beautiful scene and it was so wonderfully performed but there's this question of language and poetry, I think, in your work, that's something that's very interesting. Do you have anything to say about that? Have you thought? I think slice of life plays where you get that absolute accuracy in language and the fact is that swearing or the vernacular can be really tedious.  After a while, the ugliness of it kind of wears you down and so kind of think the poetry, the grungy poetry kind of steals or enables you to, the authenticity of the language and the power of it without it kind of wearing you down. I think a few people wore down by it. Not two. I was like, I think if you come to a play, really old play that's called shit, you kind of know that you're in for something that there's a sense of mourning in it. I mean, there is a long history of vernacular poet, bush poet, kind of, which doesn't have a very good reputation in I guess theater or literary circles, but what that becomes in Australian theater is very interesting, the generation of playwrights who use this language in an incredibly fluid kind of and very beautiful way. So congratulations on that. Katie, coming to this play without knowing anything about the context of it or the background or I think you met Patricia yesterday or the day before. This morning. So this morning, what were your impressions of somebody who has to turn it into an accomplished reading in a very short amount of time? Yeah, it was, I had no idea what to expect.  And the whole process starting from when I began reading it through today has been a continual evolving discovery of the play both in terms of the depth of the content, but also the structures that Patricia has put in. And I think the first thing that jumped out of me on the page was the incredible energy of the writing and it hooked me right away with that first monologue. But then there's this amazing stage direction that describes these women like snapping their fingers and sort of strutting their stuff and having like a secret homage to West Side Story. And there was something that made me immediately lean into that. You know, like first of all, who are these women? Who are these characters? But also who is this writer? What is this mind that's putting this world together? So I had no idea what to expect. It's sort of like a treasure chest that kept opening. And also Patricia is one of those writers that I really love as a director who doesn't tell you everything on the page. She just says that there's a series of scenes that happen in a room and a series of scenes that happen in another time and another place. And so what was really rich about our rehearsal process was discovering the story of what was happening. First of all, what is this room? Which we didn't actually know when we started. Where are they? We came to feel like they were in prison. But what is the event and how does the event play out? And what are the steps of those stories that happen outside of the room and the way Patricia's put those, layered those two times on together? So I think we still came to today with still a ton of questions that would be really exciting if we could go into a real rehearsal process. We could keep discovering. But the play really does give those answers to you as you dig into it, which is really fantastic. It really struck me that the language really transferred extremely well into the American context. Yeah. And I don't know what you thought, Patricia, but I was kind of watching this play with kind of two minds because I could see the kind of Australian connections and the use of language. Just quite different use of language to I think American English. We were curious about that going into it if we would sort of run into stumbling blocks. And while there are Australianisms with some word choices, the pace and the rhythm is really exceptional. Completely translates across continent, I think. Yeah. Just to ask the three actors, Britt, Shelley, and Elise, how you felt coming to this play? Were you one? Because you seem to inhabit the roles really, really wonderfully. So. I was struck by, I also had a lot of questions coming in about how is this, how will our experiences as Americans inform us working on this play by an Australian playwright and was immediately struck on the first day by the really terrible fact that in most countries in the world, you'll find young women who have been classified as unacceptable. You will find young women who are in a situation that these characters are in with struggling with a lot of poverty and very few resources to navigate all the things that life is throwing at them. And that aspect of it is, was very easy to enter, even being someone from a different country than the playwright. And that was my first in, because I recognized the women in this play, the people in this play. I think I was just excited, so excited to use these words as a woman and as an actress. I don't know any other characters who get to talk like this. So entering in that way, being like, oh, my inner monologue, running to the train, my frustration is somewhat similar to this sometimes. So that was my end. Katie, kind of, what I loved about working on this piece is that the language was able to hold our experiences so fully. And the way we worked on it was a very physical way, which I like as an actor. So, yeah, it was great. It's such a gift to get to express anger in this way in such a crafted way and figure out the humor that also lies in a woman's experience in this world. Just how hilarious it is at times when things are so desolate and sad and heavy. So that was a gift, yes. I'll just say one thing that I knew. I've known these women for a long time, that we share a graduate school background, and I knew I wanted to get in the room with people I already knew, because I wanted to be able to have the comfort level to be able to say, like, okay, so grab your tits here. And that was really important. I wanted that to be our zero so that we could be comfortable to really explore. And we're all college-educated women, and these are not college-educated women. So that was one of our first big conversations. It's not that their intelligence level is necessarily lower, although that might be, we might discover that, but their education level is, and how can that be one transformative key? Yeah, there's also a... I mean, a number of us have worked in, I guess, community theater outreach programs with people with various difficulties in their lives. And we've reached a stage where just people's emotions are very unstable, and very often their bodies are actually underdeveloped because they've experienced hunger or they've experienced a lack of affection or they've experienced very dystopian relationships. And the Australian sociologist talks about a politics of this, where he says what happens when the mother is a torturer, when somebody grows up in that environment, and he uses that as a metaphor to describe a kind of political condition. But there are really very distinct physicalities associated with people who've experienced lives that have had such hardship, and I just think it's a rare feat for an artist to really be able to explore that in a way that is one very human and in another way that is able to show us something about that in a way that we can feel compassion and empathy, but also feel like we're not just being voyeurs on somebody else's really kind of horrible life. So I found the play really remarkable for that, and I think it's something to do with this balance of humour and compassion and anger and rage and fear that you've, I think, put into the text and that I think you explored in the performance so wonderfully. Frank, have we got time for just a couple of questions from the audience? Would anybody like to make a comment, or we've got a microphone coming. So we are recording this session for posterity, so please use the microphone. I was just curious about, you know, we see this from a female perspective because we know these are three girls, but there are so many times in the play where all the gender is really fluid. So we find that I think because women are supposed to be nice, or women aren't supposed to be mean, are some of the things that I think play into that. The gender, I thought for a moment, if they were all male, we would only be laughing. We wouldn't feel all of those, the mother, the women under oppression in poverty. If three males were doing this, I think we would only find humor. We wouldn't see the cut side. That is something I thought.  No, I sort of didn't. I didn't even give them a thought. It's not, I'm sort of, I feel like I was truly wanting to explore a female perspective and the females who are kind of fighting back and using language and have no sense of themselves as victims, so there's something powerful in that. But I'm not sure I agree with you that I wouldn't feel if there were three young men. I mean, obviously the pregnancy would have to be rewritten, but there's a sense of the vulnerability of people who have experienced nothing, but, well, poverty, but also been denied any kind of, any presence or any power whatsoever. I think that is sort of a genderless, but, you know, there are particular things about women's rights. It's very particular, of course. Thank you very much to everybody. I guess it's a question for you, primarily, as writer, which is who your influences are in terms of a kind of tradition of women writing in this way, because I kept thinking of Andrea Dunbar, Rita Sue and Bob too, the arbor, you know, her writing about working-class life on Bradford Council estates in England at home, writing in quite a kind of course language, but also giving working-class characters interiority because, of course, which is a kind of second sub-question about how we try to find balance between representation and caricature. So two questions there, really. Who are you drawing from in terms of your writing influences? Because I kept seeing Dunbar there and how we tread a fine line in terms of representation and caricature. There's no doubt that I've been influenced by many, many writers. But I think, I wish I could know when I knew about the evil of sentimentality. And so as soon as I was onto that, and there are plenty of writers that kind of provided that background to me, is that once you seep into some sac from kind of pity me, or this is what happened, they're all victim or a sense of romanticizing of characters, then the theatre that makes me sick is actually an insult and an occurrence because they're not real and it's some sort of cover-up that we are experiencing. What was the second part of the question? The second was about the balance. The fine balance between representation and caricature. He asked him that in a context of representing working-class voices. And I'm from a working-class background and this is a big discussion amongst artist friends at home. I think the experience mostly, especially in film, but in working-class works, is that you get that highly romanticized notion like we will fight, we will fight, and we will lose. But in the fight is glory and power, but we will lose. And so there's a kind of tradition where the working-class are kind of heightened and the fact that the loss is just slightly sad, but they'll rise again and actually the defeat of the union movement in the working-class has been pretty dire and people do not rise up again after they've been crushed. So I feel like the balance with caricature is always a dangerous game, is when you're writing, trying to find a voice that is truly reflective of a class. But I also think that the danger is that there's a kind of weird mimicry that you can be very accurate, but not very powerful in that accuracy. So the balance for me is actually talking about the humour again and being able, how far can you go into the kind of misery, and you can go quite far if the actual character doesn't kind of see it as such.   I'll be fucked. Yeah, who hasn't? There's a kind of flippancy that is kind of delightful really.  And those things are balanced. I mean, how it reflects in Australia, in Australia drama schools are filled with middle class, very overly or well educated young people who ought to be able to kind of transcend their own class in terms of how they're to represent, because I don't necessarily think everybody has to be working class to represent working class. But you kind of go, you know, the sound of them and they can't transcend their own class. And so we have all the problems with kind of finding, be able to find the voice because otherwise it's just shocking. And you just spend the whole time wincing. Yeah. Time for one more question and then we'll set up for the next... We'll be sure. Well, in that case, okay. Oh, sorry. It is interesting. I've never been to Australia, but I work in social service programs. I work in the Syringe Exchange active drug users. And this just ranks so true. The dialogue was so authentic. It was amazing to me. And what is beautiful about it is the time... I can't really emotional. You're seeing this really, I don't know if you want to say good side, but sensitive side of them at the same time. Thank you so much. Well, once again, thank you to the wonderful company of readers and directors. Thank you. So, I appreciate it. We'll be around for another couple of minutes if you want to talk to her.


Well, people come to me with all types of questions about the environment. I have been asked multiple times if there is any accurate yet a cost-effective way to monitor the environment without human dependency. And I would tell them, oizom. And today, I'll tell you the same. Oizom has a sensor-based hardware that monitors various environmental parameters like air quality, order, noise, weather and radiation. The real-time data is transmitted over the cloud to our data platform, where users can visualize and analyze it for actionable alerts, reports, and suggestive actions. Let me introduce all the environmental monitoring solutions. We offer four types of arm-made monitoring solutions – polydron, odosense, dust-stroy, and weathercon. I'll begin with polydron. It is a pollution-monitoring equipment designed to measure dust pollution, gases, noise levels, and arm-made conditions in real-time. It covers all the parameters required for calculating air quality index, the AQI. It is majorly used for urban applications like smart cities, campuses, roadways, airports, and several such applications. Foul smells are also considered as pollution, but certain types of orderful pollutants are also toxic. The odosense is an order-emission-tracking solution, targeting orderful gases like mercaptans, ammonia, sulfides, and BOCs. Its prime application is data-driven order management around places like landfills, dump yards, and wastewater treatment plants. But it is also useful for orderful industries like pharma, agri-chemical, paper-pop, and sugar industries. Did you know one of the most harmful pollutants is dust, scientifically known as particulate matter? This is dust-roy. It is specifically designed to monitor all types of particulates. It is capable to measure particulate matter ranging from one micron to hundred microns in size. This capability makes it a suitable solution to deploy at construction sites, mines, stone quarries, and ports for dust-surveying and suppression activities. Weathercom is our automatic weather station which measures all the weather parameters, like wind, rain, solar radiation, and ambient conditions. In addition, it also has capabilities to monitor special-purpose parameters like visibility, road surface condition, soil moisture, etc. This makes it highly relevant for critical applications like disaster monitoring, agricultural predictions, and road safety. The entire idea of OISOM was to create a scalable solution. Therefore, all our monitoring systems are designed for low-power consumption and can also work on solar power. The data monitored from the OISOM hardware can be communicated using various wired and wireless communication protocols. For wireless, GSM, GPRS are pretty standard, but it can also communicate through LTE, Wi-Fi, Lora, SigFox, and Narrowband IoT. If you opt for wired communication, you can choose from Ethernet and Moodbus. All our equipment are designed for pole and wall mounting. Based on the application, its strategic placement plays a very important role in performance of the equipment. We follow the US EPA guidelines for location selection and installation of our equipment. Calibration is the most important part of any analytical instrument. Each OISOM equipment passes through rigorous testing and calibration. Factory calibration is done by default for each equipment, whereas lab calibration is done by generating desired concentration of each parameter also as an option. To perform calibration in ambient condition, a co-location against a reference monitoring system is done. All these calibration processes are done before deployment. Post installation, spot calibration can be performed at regular intervals to ensure consistent data accuracy. To know more about any specific product, click on the product video thumbnail below.


Events are not like events in HTML. You'll learn that very quickly. In HTML, we might have something that looks like this on click and we give it a string that does something like alerts one claps. And because React is not HTML, we don't do these strings, we will use expressions. So we would put that in the curly braces as we do with all of our expressions in JSX, provide an anonymous function that then calls alerts one claps or one clap. So if we click on this, we should see an alert, right? Nope, no alert. So why not? Well, the second difference is that these attributes or props are camel cased. So we can't do a lower case on click, it's going to be on uppercase click. Now when we click on this, we'll get the alert that we expected. So the two big differences are that we camel case these. So instead of on click, all lower case, it's going to be camel cased on click. And we use these curly braces to provide an expression instead of a function in strings. Now this applies to all types of events that you might like to use. So on mouse enter is one of the hover events. And we can do the same thing. So we'll just say alert hovered. Now I don't actually want that, that would be super annoying. So we will carry on without such nonsense.


I'm representing, I think, one of the greatest countries, but probably the smallest today. And I'm actually very thankful to Jeff for not distributing the time to talk here, according to the size of the population. I calculated it through. It would give us Luxembourg 1.5 seconds to talk. Now, this is where Luxembourg is. So it's 80 kilometers north house and 60 kilometers east-west. And it has 500,000 people. Five hospitals, five research centers, and we have a budget of about 5 million euros per year to do genomic science medicine systems biomedicine. I think in terms of the context, it is important to know that 10 years ago, the country did not have a university. It was established in 2003. And all the young and bright students that wanted and could go to a university were actually very proud of being able to go and get scholarships to go to Brussels or Vienna or US or ever. And it's almost the culture of the country to say we need to send our young people out so they come back and they have seen the rest of the world. So there was a lot of resistance to build the university and the resistance came from the academics. 10 years later, the game has changed. The country I think is becoming proud of the university. And so there was a decision made to put, make it research oriented. And about five years ago, there was another decision made, namely to set priorities and focus because in a small country, in a small university, you can't do everything. And one of the priorities, the other one is telecommunication, security, reliability and trust. There are some banks in Luxembourg. The other one basically was to go for biomedicine. And if you just, how do I move this forward? The right one. The rationale was that Luxembourg has undergone a couple of country F-cycles in their economic development. 100 years ago, it was basically an agricultural country with some wine at the Moselle. And then about 150 years, 100 years ago, a steel industry came up, which in the 70s, 1970, reached its peak with more than 40,000 people working there out of 250,000 people at the time. That went into declines. You know, there are still 5,000 people working in the steel industry and the banking business came up. There were more than 250, 280 banks. I think there are still 150, 280, which serves the country well. But things change. And now, this is what happened in 2005. The decision was made to basically rebuild the entire steel industry. Down, this is the steel campus. These are still the furnaces here that are now more monuments to transform it into a city of a university and business. And this is where things go. There was an investment of basically in dollars of about $200 million. This is probably the biggest construction site currently in Europe. And this is where I work, right here. This is a bank. And those are student houses and private houses. This is the main building of the university. And this is the humanities building and the mathematics building is coming up here and so on and so forth. So if you come over, visit, it's worth taking a look at it. Now, there was a question about vision in terms of genomic medicine and personalized medicine. I think one of the visions and the scares is that there needs to be another future in terms of economy. That's why I was sort of a little bit sensitive about the question that my Belgian colleague asked, let's keep business out. In terms of the expectations, there isn't expectation that health insurance, wellness is not only a cost factor, but maybe also a business opportunity. Now that's not the only incentive in Luxembourg to build biomedicine and personalized medicine, but it's one. And I think it's important, at least for me, and the expectations that are built into our institute, it's in this context of what do you give back in terms of economic? It can be saving money, but can also be attracting business. So there are always two coins of this. So I was charged in 2009 as the founding director of the LC-SB, the Luxembourg Center for Systems Biomedicine. The name that they had given to me was Systems Biology and in four weeks I changed it. I said I want to work on systems biomedicine and it served as well that decision. And the concept is basically not unique. It's what I think every center in this time of age does. It's combine experimental biology with technology platforms. Make a big, that's why it's red here, make a big focus on computational biology and then reach out to clinical research and clinical implementation. Now the reason why I point this out is when you have 500,000 people in a country, you cannot compete in being a role model in terms of large number of patients. You have to have a different unique selling point or a competitive advantage or where you can contribute to the international community. So don't expect from Luxembourg big cohorts. You might expect a pilot small and beautiful because Luxembourg only has one health insurance. I come from Germany originally, 35, a zoo, competing and hating each other. So that's a very different context and I think there's a big chance in Luxembourg here. Now I had to make a focus. And a focus in terms of a disease. So we can't cover all the diseases although most of the diseases occur in Luxembourg. I made a choice and I went for neurodegenerative disease. Within neurodegenerative diseases, I went for Parkinson, not for Alzheimer. Although there was some friendly pressure for me to go into Alzheimer from the political side. I resisted that because I thought the door into understanding neurodegenerative diseases four years ago in Parkinson with 15 familial genes known in Alzheimer only three at the time is bigger and genomic and genetic medicine. I thought I had a better quick start and that's what we needed, a quick start because otherwise the politicians lose patience as you know. So I'm not going into this at all except to say the focus that we currently try to push and implement is become a strong driver and get on the map in bioinformatics, computational biology and systems analysis which is mainly network science right now. And I'm convinced, we heard this in a couple of talks today that one of the big challenges is in making sense out of genetic variation in a non-linear system, extremely complex, progressing and changing the topology and the dynamics over time. That's what we are facing with and I think climate modeling is peanuts compared to what we get into this. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. I think we can learn from them a lot. So we started just as an exercise to get on the map and create pathway maps initially. And so this is where we sort of see ourselves right now in Luxembourg and the cohort studies. So a lot of the themes that are discussed today, we need and want to tackle by international cooperation. This is where we feel at home and this is the quick way of validating genetic variation and then of course we have this back and forth and ying and yang. So this is basically, I showed this slide one more time. That's, this is where I think we would like to contribute to this international consortium make sense out of genetic variation, be it whole genome sequencing data, be it integration, be it the development of integrated maps, not just sequencing but all the other omics, clinical data, prior information, machine learning essentially. So I'm not showing any in depth here. I just want to say I also had to make a decision for which technology to go for. The first decision was not going to sequencing but invest heavily in sequence analysis. I did go for one technology which is metabolomics, headed by Carson Hiller. I think in terms of this context here and maybe in the work groups we discussed is a little bit more. We have invested and I think we're getting the first fruits from that into in vivo metabolomics.  And I think there's information in there which we should harvest from genetic epidemiology and cohorts and we can talk more about this in the coffee or at the beer or in the workshop. We have built up a SNP validation tool and I just want to point out this was just, we are in a couple of European consults here on epilepsy because of the bioinformatics. But our fish facility, because of this we were able to make a functional validation of a genetic variation in a family that we sequenced with Travesy and Traum, genetic inherited epilepsy. And so very quickly within three months we were able to make that contribution. And we also built up IPS and have started to build up IPS from patients and so on. I'm not really going into this. So again, the question is how, what kind of know how can we bring in which I'm fully aware hasn't reached the clinic yet. But I think we are on the way. So we went into bioinformatics, recruited Rana Schneider from the EMVL facility in Heidelberg who was running some of the bioinformatics there and went into pathway analysis and network analysis as some of the focal points. And start to try now to make dynamic and kinetic models. This is about electron transfer chain in mitochondria because that seems to be one of the hallmarks in Parkinson's disease. Probably in others as well. I think it's very relevant from cancer, Warburg effect and all these issues. And I think it already brings us into some questions of co-morbidities at the model disease model level. And I come back to this in a minute. Now they recently in April this last year, we recruited Ines Thiele. And Ines has done a community-driven effort to make metabolic reconstruction worldwide. So this is the point that I want to make community-driven, worldwide curation and disease model or modeling efforts to make metabolic reconstructions. And we just published just a few months ago a community effort to develop a Parkinson's disease map in joint cooperation with Iroaki Kitano in Tokyo to use almost a wiki format to basically click in and use intuitively what you do when you want to find the NIH in Washington, DC. So those are some of the European grants where we work. We are, they're all bioinformatics computational, more or less. And now the question, what does this have to do with genomic medicine? There's just a grant in preparation, I hope we get it, looks good, to establish a national center of excellent research in early diagnosis and stratification of Parkinson's disease. And Frank Claude from the FNR, the Four Nationales Research is here who can tell you much more about it. This is a 12-year commitment in Parkinson's disease research with an extension, probably into AG and others, from the government side. And I think this is extraordinary. And we have all the players in the country. I mentioned just that there are five research centers. This is including the Biobank. It was a big investment made into the International Integrated Biobank Luxembourg. More than 60 million euro going into this. The LCSB, the hospital, and the CRP Public Research Center, Santé Health Research Center. And this is happening in the next few years. So I think the commitment from the country in terms of moving this into early diagnosis and stratification with the hospitals is a big one. And so I think we are quite privileged. But of course, I can't, I'm not sure I can convey the expectations that has put on us. Rescue the economy, change the healthcare system, by the way, bring up good science into the country. So I think I stop here. Those are the groups I'm not going into. It's an interdisciplinary under one roof. That's the key message of it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rudy. I'd like to just ask you maybe one question. And I may have my facts wrong, but first of all, congratulations on what you've done in 10 years. It's pretty, well, okay, four years. I was going back to where there was no university. But to what extent do you attribute what you've been able to do with partnerships with other countries? And I'm thinking specifically of the investment that was made with TGen and Institute for Systems Biology. I noticed that you didn't mention them, so I'm just curious as to what role they play. Yes, I did mention them. They have run out more or less, but they were absolutely instrumental. So just for the people that don't know, there was I would say about half of the entire money that was named the American Project, which was with three different American partners. And one of them was at the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle with Lee Hood. I think personally that was the most productive one and really delivered. Very, very well, so I don't mention the others. But that's a personal thing. Things really worked out very well. We basically, I sent over seven fellows into these institutions. And they stayed there for two years and then they came, come back for three years. We call this knowledge transfer. That worked extremely well. Now the way European institutions work in collaborations is sometimes a little bit different compared to this continent. So I feel we were very lucky, not lucky, shouldn't say that, but it happened that the increase in funding happened into the recession and it's good to invest on a stock market when everybody goes, the thing goes down. It gave us a big opportunity. So the doors internationally for us were open everywhere. We are now heavily collaborating, continuing with Hiroko Kitano, but also the other I didn't mention that we are going into imaging. Cellular imaging, IPS cells and others. We do this with the Gladstone Institute of Stephen Finkbeinach quite a lot. And immediately realize the challenge is image analysis. Again, bioinformatics, all these data. So yeah, it was absolutely essential.


Alright, so we have a bunch of stuff to look at it here. Let's take a look at this shot. It's a longer shot With the monkey Going down here It's pretty cool. There's some spots here and there I think in terms of weight and snappiness we could kind of push Well, that's that one and then we're gonna take a look at the fox animation here cute It's pretty cool all right and Then you are also asking About how to animate things here with some screenshots. Alright, let's go one by one First I would say I usually actually use this method It could be Kind of it kind of depends on the complexity. I usually do this and then do the offsets with the hips and the chest controller When the character has to turn but if you get really long That so far has helped me the most if it's a shorter shot and You know, there's not too much movement I guess sometimes I do hips and chest only and leave the main control control at the origin but I don't know I don't remember many times when I did that just because then sometimes I get lost in too much separation between the hips and the chest and it's also if suddenly the shot changes and I have to move the character into a specific direction where you know Like it's pretend in this pose and there's a bigger jump or I could pick a turn or suddenly has to walk instead of being static Then it gets pretty tricky because I don't want to cover a long distance animating hips and chests separately, then I prefer the main You know the main controller like here that can move the character forward and then I just Do the offsets and the breakup separately with the controllers. That's kind of how I approach it. It's mostly Future-proofing it might not always be the best. Sometimes that might have been the better approach than the main controller approach But so far, you know, there's there always so many changes at work It's rarely to get a shot and do a version of two and then you're done So I prefer to do kind of a future-proofing and it's being ready But ultimately you can always constrain things locators bake it out and bring it back to other controllers I mean, there's always a way to fix things but As a whole I would say that is my approach Now looking at reference for this here, it's cool. You got all that stuff here. It's neat little shake or it's like they'll break up between the Heco's first goes all the way back as a as a cute little Move back there and then you have this one see her Getting up again. All right So and you're mentioning that you're not going for photo reel It's still not super cartoony. So I think looking at reference is still pretty helpful and to me this is Probably the biggest thing is where you can show your cartooniness in terms of your snappiness But it seems pretty real up until here With that faster pull in there, but it's cute. I like all of this It's great. Yeah, I think the only thing There's no reference for that. I know that just visually there's something about those back legs being so far apart And I think it would be something where the steps would be Closer together. That's why it's not always angle out this way So it's a bit straighter and then that on that last step You know, you can take a step out into that pose for balance and a nicer silhouette So you got these guys separated. That's kind of my only Only point there. I think it would be cute if Once he turns here To have an ever so slight where is he he goes in there? Okay, so as he goes in here Now actually curious how you're doing the That stuff in here if you're just doing a bird is vertices Pulling these are pulling Some form of the former on the surface. It's nice a nice little detail But anyway as the creature looks over this way and this is happening here Be kind of cute to do a little bit of of lifting over that surface just a little bit of a like a faster move up so that it Catches the foxes attention and because of that I will make that head turn just a bit sharper at the very beginning just a bit more of a reflex down to look and then You can do another one just another little move on that surface and that makes him go.   I really like that. That's all really great. That shake is great Yeah, I don't know on that koopy Curious maybe maybe there is reference that has exactly that it's just something that seems Hey, very lini over this way with every leg like angle like that And then towards the end how that back leg is just always so out There's just something that visually feels like you want to be closer together and then on that last step get into this And they're just those changes there And I wonder if you kind of push since you're not going before the reel You can kind of push potentially the the ears back or Something like a post change in the ears to get into this just kind of like it's almost like eyebrows that go into a new emotion It's like what is that? Let me see and then as this happens same thing you might bring him back to be You know Slightly more alert streamlined there Some things in the ears Since you have awesome stuff in the snow already, you know here Pieces of snow come with it and a drop it kind of cool not needed obviously at all. It's not that important But yeah, that's the only thing I would have some interplay between these two in and so that the audience can go back and forth and kind of Motivates and changes the behavior. So it's not just we're just looking at the fox all the time That's kind of it's kind of what I have for this All right, and then looking at the monkey. So at the very beginning When you already have this like he's cleaning himself and Getting ready and then he hears something so to me what I would do is I would start with this Which is a nice line and as you go down even if it's subtle Up until here he would still go in a bit just start to lean him down a bit more and I would look at I Think that's pretty okay in the island. Yeah, and then as you do this It's a bit more there's more involvement So then I will probably go even further down and doesn't have to lean all the way down But my point is that right now as you do this this I don't feel there's enough And it will give it, you know a bit more movement It's not so static because there's a lot of arm movement and then the whole thing just feels kind of stiff also if by the time Here imagine the mouth could be here.  There's not much of a change But if he's lower and he goes up and gets back into this There's a bit more contrast and a bit more alertness and a change in the in the in the body there Again speaking of body There's a pretty big arm move here and I would incorporate the shoulder a bit more and then by now definitely have more Movement in the chest and why the Y rotation? It seems like that arm move is a bit isolated there And I will probably on that leg move start with a rotation up first on the hip and Then go up and I feels like you're really scaling and stretching and translating that pelvis So to me I would wait till at the very last moment in here where Both legs go up and then kind of squash into this but right now this feels more like you're translating the chest It feels just a bit strange So let's go back here There's just some tiny detail things where this feels like an IK hand Because you got your orientation of that forearm here and this is the wrist and then this goes straight But the wrist is pretty much in the same orientation There's no rotation in this angle. There's no change there There's no probably do also a finger change. I know there's a relaxation in the pressure there, which is cool But because there's nothing else it just feels like this is Mostly the same pose in the rotation throughout until around here So it's a bit more detailed work Do the hand seems better and then When you had those jumps you have a couple of those in here I think what I would do is I will probably get into like during that section Just speed it up a bit. I would zip into this hole. It's just a bit faster at the very beginning It's a bit more zippy and then you can hold this and then you can zip down a bit more right now There's just an ever-so-slight feeling of floatiness just because Especially that drop. It's just and I'm talking to three frames. It's just a bit zippy here hold and a bit zippy you're down and Because you are zippy you're then you could potentially bring up the eyebrows a bit Bring the ears back a bit just kind of a for a visual stretch It's not zippy enough to do a smear, but just a bit more so it doesn't feel like well once you're here. It's just kind of I Know it just feels a bit too stiff and just overall the timing It's just ever so slightly floaty Right there. I think you can push that since you are pushing it already. I think it's great I would just push it a bit more What's cool though is that you got compression here on the toes So as you put pressure on here, it would squash this and you got the toes that go out You could potentially even push out a tiny bit more Definitely on this guy just a bit, but it's cool. I like that you have that in there Then at the same time This suddenly feels fast where I feel like you want two or three frames of hang time and then drop Let's watch this. Let's see Yeah, just a bit. I know this is so picky, but like I like to shot a lot Some super picky notes, which obviously do as you wish with them But there's just something where once you get to here what that drop suddenly feels like he's really being Pulled down, but not in a zippy way like it would be here. It's just something That just feels suddenly light and Probably also because you get into this where the couple things were not you have to do that Ginormously huge chest and head drag Boom and on the compression a crazy overlap But that being said I will put a little bit in there And then adjust probably the hand the arm pose out to here now you might run into some twinning here So might not be the best Example drawing wise, but what I'm reacting to is how you got that shape and color Going into this just kind of like that hand grows out of that head Even this feels better if there's anything where you can show No, even if it's down here Maybe that wrist is bent even more and then you got just that might already be different enough But it's that and it's the idea the bent head here That also starts to feel like that head and that chest feels a bit Locked so that by here I will lead with the head more bring the head up to get into this That's cool That's cool Right through here feels a bit light right there Yeah, that just feels only slow. I think I'm reacting to how long it takes for the legs through here To get into this and it's also you're hitting this pose and this orientation and it stays put because it's so slow Especially on that impact I know that to me just kind of stands out more so I would speed that up and And have you can I think you can have that over one frame that he's so fast That's cool. See here. I think here Think it's pretty cool. Hey, I mean he goes pretty fluently up and stops And I wonder if I will I would try not the end. This is a huge note But I would try to bring up that route a bit higher maybe to here so that you can drop a bit more It's a bit more up and down And I know they can have fluid moves and just stay puts But I think I'm reacting to how this goes up and then this drops this upper section But then once you get up here with his butt, it's just kind of that's a distance. That's a distance It seems like suddenly locked through there Giving this a bit of a stiff feel while this moves a lot where I feel like this gets a bit too isolated isolated so I think if you do a Bit of a bigger turn in the Y in terms of your hips and then as you bring that head up That head that left leg up take that hip up with it and a bit of up and on in the route Just giving this a bit more break up. That's cool. That's cool It's cool hold Something right through there. I think it's if he swings here And goes out what I would try to do I would try to not overlap the hand and that legs You don't have that that line that goes into The leg there. It's a bit too much overlap even through here I will start to separate these and you might have to cheat on a frame-by-frame basis So that's a bit cleaner and the silhouette But I will bring this to a point where the legs are a bit more bent especially that left leg You can see that bend clear so that by the time you go out This section you will go from bent legs to Straight legs and it's kind of like he swings hip and the any straight into the leg to get that Forward momentum into this Right now it feels a bit magical How he hangs on to this and then suddenly there's more momentum going forward I would initiate that moment a bit more with the legs and the hips That's cool And I think that sudden drop there over one frame something where I would You want to delay that by a frame. Yeah, it's pretty fast. There's just something that feels very poppy as you go down And I'm mostly reacting to The relationship with that head angle the irritation is always the same This all kind of stays the same for quite some time and then it pops down over one frame Even here you could have a drag in the head, but then once you go up here There's something again in that head where you have some stretch But then it gets into this and then it kind of stays put There's something about that something move and then when you go up here where I feel like either you want to bring the head back a bit open the mouth just do a bit of a Just something where you have already that ginormous move which I still think is a bit pop You can probably reduce this by a little bit That's just me, but there's something of let's pretend this all stays and you got that round that That son snap There's something about this face never really changing that makes this look weird Again, this is very subjective, but I feel like once you go into here you could go into a bit of a open eyes open jaw just more in the face That has just a change and then get into this and I know you have it here But it's just something where it feels just so Especially through here, which feels almost bored I don't know there's something where I feel like you could do more during that hold since you have a hold I Do like it here because it's so fast and it gives us a bit of a change and you just kind of feel it as it goes through That's cool. I'm a big fan of that Careful here. This feels a bit weird just visually how everything moves to the right and then we have a bit of a Stickiness in that framing it else kind of stays just gets away from us and then suddenly pops forward and Then stops again. Let's be careful here spacing wise You might have to move the camera bit so that you can have this more gradual fluid Transition into that with that stop. There's just something visually into these 2d space how? big shape going forward forward and then receding away from us while not really going forward anymore and then suddenly popping here to this and Probably with all that for momentum Here I would cheat and bring that in that head out here even if that elegance Elongates the neck but there's so much momentum and it stops and it puts that arm here to stop that momentum that I think the Rest up here would still have more momentum forward. Maybe the hair can go forward a bit It's gonna cheat that a little bit and Then into that stop and then back to this here There's a big arm move and I see something in why but I think you push that this way in the shoulder bit There's something about this feeling very separate Even though I see a movement because I see the texture on that chest here getting bigger But even through that I'll probably bring that elbow in a bit just feeling how arm reaches up Involves a rotation up in the chest and then that will influence this I just feel like once you get to here. This is a shape that doesn't really go away Despite movement here. It's a bit more connected body mechanics All right, I guess it then this cool. I like the roar Or Might even experiment with once you hit this Here's that line and then At the end that line is up here Just a little bit of up in the chest translating up but also just rotating the head up a bit. It's just a bit more Right now just feels like I hit this pose I'm holding it and I'm just adding shake versus I'm starting somewhere and ending somewhere else a little bit to continue that aggression and movement forward Right so that that line would basically like this to me We'll be here a bit forward and a bit up and it's subtle just a little bit all right, I Think that is it for me I'm looking at that last pose. I wonder If you want to do a little bit out this way, how far are we at the end? Okay, it's got this Has a nice lean forward. I'm just curious. How would it be? If that arm, you know, if it was here to give this a bit more of a Triangular shape for a bit more strength. You still have that nice line of action there I'm just curious. This could be something to explore and also takes away a bit from almost the parallelness of it. I wonder if that and Then with that line, I know there's something that Nicely flow into into the head so that you put that potentially even bring the shoulder in a bit more Well, where it's something where might have that So you have that's your outline. So we got that negative space there But then overall gives you Not that much of a bump there All streamlined in into that head All right, that is it. I'm gonna be quiet now. It's a long critique. I hope it was helpful and that's it Thanks All right, there's an email you can sign up you can start whenever you want you can submit whatever you want You get 16 submissions either way and like and subscribe would be awesome. All right. Thank you