Hello, I'm Sean McGinnis. I run the open source office at Dell. But I'm here talking about things that I've been doing in the open-stack community for the last several years. And not that I've been doing, I've been doing it recently. A lot of this has been stuff that's built up over years of people making improvements and making things better. So I just get to present all the great work that's been done. So in the open-stack community, we need to release all the work that is being done. If you're not familiar with it, within open-stack there's quite a few different projects. They each have different deliverables, usually several deliverables per project. And we need a way to package that up and make that available to downstream consumers or whoever needs that. So like typical release steps, we need to be able to compile or validate, make sure that that source code is good. We want to make sure whatever we're delivering and releasing actually is something that someone can pick up and use. We need to take the repos. We need to be able to know exactly at what point any given deliverable was released so that we can go back later. We need to create whatever artifacts and this varies depending on what deliverable is. For us, most of open-stack is Python. So that's packages that PIP can install, our tar balls of the source itself, there's some node NPM packages, things like that. We need to publish those somewhere. It doesn't do much good just to create them. We need to make them available so they need to get published on a website. They need to get pushed up to a package repository where I can get pulled down. And typically, even if you're just doing this as something within your own company, you need to send some kind of announcement, let people know that there's something new that is out there that they can pick up and use. So we've tried to automate all these steps. This is something that's evolved over time. Initially, we tried to just trigger on new takes being pushed, which was great. That took care of a lot of things. That does take care of a lot of manual steps, but there were some issues with that approach. There was inconsistent use of versioning. We didn't actually follow Simver for a while, but semantic versioning, if you're not aware of it, simver.org, really great way to make sure that you're communicating by your version number if that version contains breaking changes or if there's just bug fixes. And if you leave that up to individual teams to do, you just kind of have to hope that they're aware of what those rules are and that they actually follow them. The packages that were being published weren't always what you wanted. They could maybe grab the wrong commit, miss something important.  And for stable branches, it's easy to go back and create branches, but if you know you're doing something for a past cycle, you wanna make sure you have a branch there and that everything's in place and makes it easy to make sure that the right changes are going to the right place. And publishing that, making that information available, we have releases.openstock.org. We wanna list everything on there. If that information can't easily be extracted, then it's a manual process of going through and finding what versions and where and getting that published. So we try to automate more of the things. And not only that, but make it a process that really fits into the processes that the developers already are comfortable with, with doing code reviews, pushing changes up just like they push code changes. So the process evolved where we actually are able to leverage that tooling we have in place for the development workflow. We use Garrett for code review, makes it really easy to have anybody propose something and then you can review what changes. And we have Zool CI that is great at testing these changes and being able to have dependencies between things, making sure that if you have a dependency that one change merges before the next. And the nice thing about Zool for us being a mostly Python project, it's Ansible, very Zool friendly, very easy to extend and work with Python with that. So our typical workflow for just code changes is that we have a check queue. So when someone proposes a change, that goes through check, tests are run like any kind of CI and those tests need to pass before you can even get beyond that step. And then once it's approved, it goes through the gate, really runs those tests again, make sure that nothing has changed in the meantime between when you initially test it and right before you merge that into the code base. And then it gets merged into the final repo, the code where everybody else can pull that down. So we tried to do the same thing with the release process and the way we do that is we have a YAML file for each deliverable. So each team, each deliverable out of that team has a YAML file that is per cycle. So there's a nice folder structure. You can very easily go in and see each cycle exactly what is released, which commit hash it is, all the information. It contains release information. It contains any branching information. And then as a release team, we were able to kind of spread the load of doing this release because then anybody can propose changes to this YAML file and the release team just needs to review that just like reviewing a code change. And then Zool really does a lot in there and what triggers that automation or what enables that automation of being able to run tests against these changes and go out and use the information that we capture in the YAML file to do a lot of validation. So what it really looks like is this, it's just YAML. We capture information like the name of the team that is responsible for that deliverable. We capture information about the deliverable itself that lets us programmatically evaluate certain things knowing what type of thing it is, like knowing that this is a library. There's certain things that we want to enforce for something that's a library. We have information if there's anything unique about the repo that we can capture this specific repo maybe needs to be called something else when we package it up and provide it as a deliverable. And then the actual release information itself where we can say on this commit hash I need this release version XYZ. And then if there's anything to branch we can also include that and what to call it. So it's all captured. Basically the idea here is that everything that we need to know to make decisions about the proposed release and know what it is and what the release name is going to be and all of that is all captured with any YAML file. And I know everyone loves to edit YAML but in that same spirit of trying to automate things that also then allows us to provide some tooling on the proposer's side. They can just run this new release command and tell us what series and what deliverable and what type. And then that is able to go and add that release information into the YAML file so that they don't need to manually edit it. That has the smarts where if you say type here is probably the very useful thing. I think type is, is it a major release? Is it a minor feature change? Is it a bug fix? And just by telling the tool this is a bug fix it is smart enough to go and look because we have all of that history already in the repo in the releases repo. It can go back and read the existing deliverable file and see, okay, last version was 1.5.0. They're requesting a bug fix release. Therefore I know this is 1.5.1. So it encapsulates a lot of that logic into the tooling so anybody within the community that needs to do a release can run the command and they don't need to know all the little details about how those little decisions that you need to do to decide what version number and things which file and things like that. So here's an example, new release for the train cycle for the sender deliverable and it's a feature release. So this last little part there, if you can see that it just added another version. It automatically goes and because I told it it's in the train cycle by default it'll look at the train branch and pick the most recent commits. So it gets the commit hash and because I told it it's a feature release last version was 1.1.0 and it knows, okay, now I'm gonna bump that up and call it 1.2.0. Makes it nice and easy. So now that they've made that change they're able to commit that code and submit it as a code review just like they would do if they're adding a Python file or whatever, what have you. And then as the release team that makes it really easy that we can go in and we can see here's the specific thing that's being added to this file which honestly because of the automation in place and the jobs that we were able to run in CI don't really need to worry too much about this because usually if the YAML is messed up those jobs will find that. But it's still easy if we wanna look at it exactly what's happening here. You can look at that and because it's done as a code review it highlights exactly the differences in the file that are being proposed. But we do leverage those CI jobs. Just like our development workflow we have that check and gate queue that runs tests and there because of all of the information that we capture in the YAML file there are quite a few things that we're able to automate in a validation job that looks at the change being made so that we know things can pass and then we know if we approve that change everything's good for the most part. But I'll go into some detail about some of the other things here that we can't. And then once it gets through check passes we do a review make sure everything's good approve it it does those tests one more time through the gate queue and that's when that actually merges it kicks off some of the automation that actually does all those tasks I mentioned in the beginning of packaging things up and then doing the release. So I can dig a little more into that. So this is what it looks like in the Garrett UI it runs these jobs reports them back. One of the useful things is building the docs like I briefly mentioned because we have this information in the YAML file we're able to extract that information and automatically use that to publish to the releases site so that we have all of the release details on the site. So because those docs are really integral to doing our release it's part of our overall release process we want to make sure that we can build those docs. So we use RST and Sphinx to generate those there's a Sphinx extension that we have that will read in that YAML file and from that extract all the information it needs to plug into the actual documentation itself and then that's what gets published on the website all automatically. So we wanna make sure that those docs actually build if there's some error in how they've entered information in the YAML file likely the docs will fail or there's some issue that we need to take a look at. So we don't want anything to be passing tests and look happy if it ends up at if we actually approve that there's going to be issues afterwards. It's all about catching the errors earlier in the process and making sure things are right. There are a bunch of validation checks and this is where there's a lot of benefit. The, this is some an area where we've been able to build up over time because there are certain things that we know we need to look for. We don't have to rely on the release team as a code review to know or to remember to go and look at all these things. So there's validation jobs just to make sure that all the information is good. The job will actually clone the repo of the deliverable and make sure things like the commit hash exists which has actually been a very common issue that I typoed something if I didn't use that tool. Something's not quite right here, especially on stable branches. Maybe they want to make a change or a bug fix in a stable branch but they merged it into the master branch which will be the next release and forgot that they'd need to take that extra step and actually backport it into the old stable branch. So this is a great way, right away it sees, oh no, this commit hash is not here. So really prevent some errors there. Make sure that the package can be built, readme files don't have any errors because that's used in the package publish package information. Make sure that there's permissions. This was a common one. Everything's built, everything package is fine and then we go to publish the package and oh, we actually don't have permissions to do that and by that point everything else is all done so this just makes it easier right away. We can validate, oh yep, we can do this and version numbers, things like that. So this has been an area as we've run across different corner cases and different things that oh, I never thought of that. We can add that into our validation and then it's able to go and check that automatically and we don't have to be as humans remembering, oh I should check this, make sure this weird case isn't going to happen here. It's all built in. And this is, I think one of the most useful things. This is all about automating how this process is done but there are certain kind of subjective kind of just things that need an actual human to take a look at. So rather than just leaving that up to us as a release team to go out and check these things, at least we can use the automation to pull all of the things that we need to do, that we need to look at into one place so that when it comes time to evaluate this release to see if everything is good. It's not a matter of going to five different places and pulling together information on our own. The automation has already pulled that into the output of the job. So it makes it much easier. We just pull up the results of that job. We're able to see all of the commits that are included, any requirements changes. And those two are really useful because one of the most common things that we might have to go back and say, no, I think you need to change this is maybe they've called it a bug fix release but we look at some of these changes here and they've added a new dependency or we see that one of the commits that are merged into the repo really changes or adds a new feature or even removes something that makes it backwards incompatible so that we have that information and then we can say with semantic versioning, you've requested this version number really with what you have in here. I think it makes more sense to go with 2.0 or something which if we didn't have the automation pulling all this together for us would really be time consuming for us to go out and look at the repo, look at the git commit history and pull all that information. We, it gets the lead of that project and if there is one I release the liaison so that's part of decentralizing this process is anybody in the community can propose a release but if somebody just wants their bug fix available right away, we don't wanna just do the releases all the time we wanna make sure that the people that are responsible for these deliverables actually can be aware that a release is being requested and they need to be the ones to say plus one on the review because we don't wanna release something and then have that team come back later and say, hey, why did you do this? Why is this out here? This way we can make sure that we know who we need to get feedback from to make sure that, yeah, okay, this is good, we're ready to go. And then things like generating a release announcement we can see what exactly is going to be sent out to the community on the mailing list before it's actually sent out to the world and sometimes there's errors or something like that that we wanna make sure get caught. So after we approve the release request so that YAML file change actually does get committed into the repo that triggers some post jobs that'll actually publish those things generated HTML docs to the release site so then it'll be available out there it'll show that this new release is available and that's what this looks like here if you can see that it's a list of all of the deliverables all the services with the first release of this release cycle and the most recent release of this release cycle there are links to release notes that we're able to capture in that YAML file all this information that gets published out there very extensive information and we don't need someone to sit down and actually fill out all this information because it can just pull it right out of the YAML files. Taking process will get details from the commit and then it's able to add the tag to the repo and include all that metadata so that there's a lot of really good tracking in there and if because we know where bugs are being tracked for that individual project and what commits are included in that release it's able to go and actually update the bug tracker and say this based on information in the commit message to say this is now released and if it needs to it'll create the branch so no human is actually creating the branch the automation does it all. We will, we manage our requirements by if there are any libraries that we release updating before we have everybody start using that new release we run some jobs and make sure that doesn't break anything any unintended consequences so it'll propose a change to our requirements process it'll publish the package whichever it is and it'll send the release announcement. Basically what I go through there. So to go back to what that looks like so the check and gate queue those are just the validation on the change in the deliverable YAML file itself where we're able to get that information and decide is this release correct is it using the right version number after it's committed this release post release process runs that actually is what creates the tag in the repo and then that then will publish the package and get all the information out there. So overall ideas of what we do and then overall ideas of what you can maybe think about of how you can use some of these ideas for how you manage your releases whether it's a community open source project or something internally or your company. Automate those repetitive tasks if there's if you're doing releases for your whatever deliverable it is see what pieces of those of that process you can have a script to whether you can fully automate it and just have it taken care of or like our job that gets those changes have a job that can at least pull together information and minimize the amount of brain power that you need to expand on evaluating these releases. Automate security tasks what I mean about like about this is things like creating those branches pushing those tags in the get repo signing tar balls all of that we're able to offload to the tooling. So it's not a human that's making these accessing these secret keys and doing these things. We the tool does it and by the time the tool runs we know we vetted everything and then the tool can access the secrets that it needs to do that. No human needs to do it. Automate even the things that are manual as much as you can and then keep looking for things that'll make it better. The validation job that we have we've just kept improving adding new checks adding new things that really get rid of all those surprises for us and I think having using it and using the same workflow or very very similar workflow that we do for changes to the code of the project makes it a lot easier for everyone or anyone to be able to step in and then also do releases. So that's it. You can always follow up afterwards and ask me any questions. Here's my Twitter handle. I think we have a couple minutes, five minutes. So if anybody has any questions so I can try to answer them. Yes. You mostly think of the. Mm-hmm. It should always be, I had impotent. So the question was, is it always an impotent? GitOps should be something that you can do over and over and not have different results every time. Yeah, so if someone has put in a release and a version number and that YAML file gets merged we can make other changes to that YAML file and when that merges it, the automation will see what has changed here. It will not attempt to take that commit again. It'll see, it'll check. Okay, I have hash ABC version one, two, three. Okay, hash ABC has take one, two, three and then I'll move on. Same thing with branches, if a branch exists it won't try to do that again. That's actually kind of bit us a couple of times where something, for some whatever reason someone had to manually delete a branch and then we make a change that YAML file and I'll say, oh, I need to create this branch. So it'll always make sure that whatever is requested in the YAML file actually exists out there. If it already exists out there it won't attempt to do any other operations on it. Yes. Oh, good. Yeah. So the question is about where these YAML files exist whether it's in the repo with product or elsewhere. We have a releases repo. So it is a separate repo by itself which is nice because then it contains a lot of the automation, not all of it but a lot of the automation exists right there and then there's within that repo there is the directory structure of deliverables, the name of the cycle and then the deliverable.yaml file which makes it a really nice reference. Everything's self-contained in this releases repo. If you're someone out in the community you don't care about releases you don't have all these files in your repo. You need to know to go to this releases repo to make this change and propose the release. Yeah. Any other questions? Yes. Just rather a comment and a question. As a consumer of this process for the past few years and I still remember five years ago that I was involved into myself and the current release with the L at the time about an hour sitting together on IRC and figuring out every single step to get the package out there and the last release what we did on November I think it took me about five minutes total time because the release team had the patch already. Only thing what I had to go and do was check the comment hash I go like, oh, this is not the right one. I know we still are pending merging one more half comment. Once we got that into the repo changed the hash in the review tooling and my team was done. I didn't need to worry anything after that and I knew that everything was published and out there when the time it went online. So it's just amazing how much a bunch of automation and verification can help from the actual man hour spent on so-called simple tasks as a release. Yeah. Which isn't nice but it definitely wasn't five years ago I think it has to release the offer. Great to hear. Well, for the sake of the recording I just really summarized that about a few years ago took about an hour of the project lead and the release manager together to get everything in place to do a release and now this last one took maybe five minutes of time. So that's great to hear and that's exactly the benefit of doing something like this that we're trying to accomplish. Good. To what does the learning curve to use to request a release or to okay well I'll go through from both so from the consuming side on our releases.openstock.org site there's documentation reference documentation it says with using and then that kind of goes through the steps as a consumer of this automation of here are the things that I need to do to edit the CMO file and request the release through doing a requesting a code review and then for the release team getting people on board to participate as release managers it's really there's a bit of a learning curve because they're like I said this is something that we've added more and more validation over time every time that we found something that hey we could have checked for this ahead of time. The overall concept is pretty easy to grasp and then if anything goes wrong or if you need to dig into some kind of change it's just a matter of knowing where in the automation in the scripts you need to go to look at it. I wouldn't say anything's too overly complex it just does things like check out the Git repo and does some Git commands and the rest is fairly basic Python code. Reviewing those release requests takes a little time just knowing for that semi-manual step of just knowing all of the information that's included in that job output what do I need to look at what does it mean and just understanding things like semantic versioning. Good question. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you.


Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal here bringing you a video again from Jerusalem I guess the world's only capital city where Hebrew is the official language I want to do another video today regarding this grisly business of Learning Hebrew that everyone who moves to Israel unless you come here with perfect Hebrew But if like me you were born in a random town in the great backwaters of Western Europe and Ireland You're kind of coming at it from a much more basic level and for me personally It's a kind of ongoing process one thing I would say about Hebrew I'm gonna try not for your too far off topic on this video. Is that it's a dissent? I think personally, it's a deceptively Hard language by which I mean if you compare Hebrew to Close Semitic languages modern Hebrew. I'm talking about here such as Arabic Arabic has in just in the alphabet three forms initial Medial final you say I Hebrew's a cinch Less less phonoms or sounds in the language to grapple with But the more you get into it you realize there's a lot of meese in Hebrew There's an awful lot of learning and it is it quite a difficult language I think there's an official grouping of languages according to difficulty And you have like the romance languages which are those stemming from Latin like French and Spanish Which as anyone who studied them in school knows if you know one there's a good amount of crossover to the others Then you have this the Chinese and Scandinavian really at the top But Hebrew and the Semitic languages like Arabic and Amaraic are quite far up there in the scale of difficulty so Yeah, you have to sometimes give yourself a bit of Forgiveness because I've been here in Israel for seven years and I'm to be honest ashamed of my Hebrew And I periodically hit myself on the head and say no you have to you have to do more and You know you just look around at the Anglo bubble and you say do I really want to be hanging around to see these people for the rest of my life That was a joke, but um, it is definitely a key skill in Aliyah learning Hebrew and I've been uploading recently to YouTube some of the resources that are out there I think personally learning a language through the means of television and Songs is amazing way to learn it You can if you can track down the lyrics of popular songs in Hebrew or even older songs I used to do this for Spanish. I would listen to the Spanish chart music print out the letters the canciones the Lyrics and translate words. I didn't know and you're probably you're probably gonna be you know Bias towards colloquial language And same thing for television versus formal language But it is a really effective way to learn because once you do that translation work You can listen to music at the gym and you're actually revising vocab without even realizing it So it's an amazingly effective anyway Another resource I want to talk about is Morphix and here is Morphix Now for those who haven't yet become acquainted with the strange paradox of Israeli internet websites They all look like they were built in the 1990s by a high school student doing a favor for his dad and they all cram as much Pixel banner advertising that also tends to have this kind of very 90s look as there is room for So it's a little bit heavy, but don't be detracted. You just need to Make liberal use of the X button. We got rid of the kid now They're trying to sell us a hotel and Ali express products, but anyway This is Morphix and the URL is Morphix dot c o dot I L now the thing about Hebrew and if you're watching this video You probably know this is that in Israel the standard is not to write Hebrew with vowels now the problem Google translates a terrific resource I did a video a few months ago about how Google translate finally got around to adding TTS text-to-speech voice Synthesization in other words you can put in something in English get the Hebrew and then the voice will speak now The reason that was such a big deal is because Google translate to give an example Doesn't give you the vowelization So there's no way to know just from the letters if it's an ah or an oh or an ooh Etc. Now that was where Morphix was always very useful because it's a Dictionary website and if you type in something in English it will give you the word in Hebrew And it's also another good use for Morphix if you're a more advanced learner is that it also does Morphix by the way seems to be they're mainly focused now on Selling teaching English for Israelis So the Hebrew to English lookup is particularly good on this Website so that's just kind of I want to show you guys a couple of things about it Now Morphix is a website and it's also a phone app. I have it on my Android device I also pay Morphix to store words But they're still trying to sell me in all sorts of random. It's like upselling central So anyway, you there is that functionality to save words To a lookup list and this is really useful if you're more sort of intermediate language is you the amount of words That are new to you is going to hopefully be getting smaller over time and with Morphix It does allow you to create different lists So I might have a list for medical words or animals or colors and you can do all that good stuff and Put your words save them on the phone and they'll appear on the desktop and vice versa So that's always a nice little functionality, but let me just show you the basics in this video So if I want to look up a word, let's say ghost. Sorry. I'm in English. I'm in Hebrew. I mean G O A T How do we say goat in Hebrew and we get a's but you may notice as long alongside this lovely picture of a goat A's they're giving us the vowels. So there's no Confusion here about how to pronounce that You also get English TTS there isn't text-to-speech on the other way in Hebrew now Something it's very basic. Sometimes it does give you a few different words For instance or usages, but it's more useful for Hebrew speakers learning English Like it gives you examples of that words in English But it won't it won't go from a's but let's just let's just do it the other way and let's just stick with goat now one Cool thing one thing I actually really do recommend now after eight years in Israel My Hebrew is not only exemplary. It's poor But one thing I did get ahead of the game on is learning to type in Hebrew. I learned to type pretty early But if you're just starting Hebrew and I highly highly recommend that it's something they never Everyone overlooks in Ulpan when I went to Ulpan in 2015 No one was teaching us how to type in Hebrew So I learned myself you just need to learn where the letters are and it's after that you can just do a touch typing program So the point I was I was leading up to here Is that even if you don't yet know how to type in Hebrew? You can click on the keyboard symbol and it will give you a virtual keyboard so you can use that now Just one thing here. You don't actually need this most operating systems have a virtual keyboard functionality So you don't if you are just learning to type in Hebrew now You you can use it throughout other applications not just Morphix just as an FYI So let's just do one in the other direction. I'm going to just use my actual keyboards here rather than the virtual one And let's type a's for goats And we see the translation in English a's goat And it's it gives you some sort of grammatical info here for instance next to is Next to next to a's So, yeah, it's very good system here. So I really think that's the main thing in Morphix Let's just do a couple more examples random words dancing click on Talgum translate here and we get the verb and it's three letter roots here So there is is that so Morphix is definitely one of the useful tools in the toolbox of Hebrew modern Hebrew resources One I would write one that I find very useful as well And I'll do another video about this is Hebrew to Hebrew dictionary So just simply Hebrew look-ups because as you can see from Morphix you do get the Vialization, but you don't get you know what you'd expect in a well-rounded dictionary with kind of Descriptions of different usages for that word Example sentences that sort of thing if I were to run a's through a Hebrew Hebrew Milon Evri Evri, I would get that so that's another useful thing to have as well Now that Google Translate also does text-to-speech. It's less. It's I find myself using it. Yes less But it does have some nice Gamification options like saving your list of words and then you can also do a quizzes So you can save a vocab list and quizzes So there's still a couple of reasons to use it the final one I really want to do a video about which it will get around to eventually is Websites for declining verbs in Hebrew You can put a three-letter verb root and it'll give you the very it'll decline the verb For you, which is also something very very useful to know how to do. I hope this video has been useful If you are learning modern Hebrew This is what Morphix is if you've heard about it from your teacher your friends, etc Morphix.co.al also available as an application and finally You're gonna get a lot of advertisements telling you to do this But it is worth in my opinion spending a bit of money on it in order to increase the amount of saved Vocabulary you can keep in the system because if you're looking to give yourself tests To make sure that you've learned this new vocab. This is definitely a this is definitely a good way to Improve your retention and learning. Thank you guys for watching more videos about Hebrew and various topics coming soon to this YouTube channel


Hi. Hi. It's five o'clock. Lovely to see you guys. You peoples. Laura and mercy. Okay. I'm not going to tell you what I'm agreeing to do. Um, yes. Okay. So for those of you who. Don't know what we're doing. This is watch me work. Well, thank you. For the meaning of the title is you and it's all about you and your work and your creative process of Susan L. Parks. We're giving a big thank you to the public theater. And a big thank you to howl around because they make this incarnation of law spring work possible. We've been doing it for over 10 years. We started in the lobby of the public theater. And we've been chugging along ever since. is we work together for 20 minutes, and then we spend the rest of the hour talking with you about your work and your creative process. And that's basically what we do. So if you have questions for me about your work and your creative process, please Audrey's gonna tell you how to get in touch. Thanks, SLP, glad to be here. So if you have a question on your inside of the Zoom, all you need to do is click on the raise your hand which is in the reactions tab, likely on the bottom of your screen on a laptop or the top if you're on an iPad or a tablet. And you can also tweet at us at watch me work SLP with the hashtag howlround, H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D, or you can tweet at the public theater or write to our Instagram. And I think that those are the ways, and SLP my phone is in the other room so I'm gonna do our timer on my laptop today. Ooh, just so you know. Oh, you're muted. I'm having a glorious day right here. Yeah, so here we go. Hello. Hey. Hey, so, so. So, oh, we've got a question. Hi. Go for it, Alexis. Alexa, so sorry. Can you unmute? There you go. Is it happening? Okay, sorry. It's happening. It's happening, Alexa. Hi, it is so incredible to meet you. I was actually at Joe's Pub last week. I've been more honored and grateful and just inspired by your work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're so happy to be here. That's, you know, we're bringing the love. I feel it so much. So about me, I'm currently working on my most ambitious script yet. It's my like fourth full length. I'm really excited. It's about discovery, transformation, connecting with yourself. And so it's pretty personal and experimental. I'm excited to bring in different, you know, dance and music like you do and some magical realism and really exciting. And I know that it's going to involve other collaborators. So I'm excited to finish my draft and show it to other people and audiences. But I'm also kind of enjoying having this little world to myself because I'm sure you can relate to and like I want to share it, but I don't want to share it. So I'm kind of curious how you decide when to share your work with other people. And if there are certain questions you ask yourself or things you consider or kind of sending it into the world. Great question, Alexa. Fantastic question. Yeah, it's really good because the thing is, things I ask myself are, maybe not so much as am I ready, right? But is it ready? I get a certain point.   He's ready. He's ready. He needs to be an interactor. They need to be interacting, you know, on that other level, you know, they need to go next level. So is the work ready? Now how you answer that question is how, and then it's about you. Is the work ready? Answer, have I done everything I can? You know what I mean? Or is it kind of like one of those drafts and we've all been there like, oh man, I'm kind of like, I don't feel like doing a rewrite. I don't know, I like that. I need some help to do my job.  So if you've done everything that you need to do, then the work is ready. Yeah. Then you were ready to open the door and even though it might be a little scary on look, the door just opened and in comes the pumpkin pie festival. Hold on just a sec, I have to chastise. My kid walks in the door, he says, I'm not late. You said 415. I feel like, in what universe do you live in? Anyway, so, okay, but you're quiet now. So the question is, have you done everything that you need to do, that you can do? Have you done that draft that might be kind of hard, but you got to do it anyway. And then, and then, and then you were ready. So it's not about external deadlines so much, you know? Well, that producer said they needed it by Tuesday to consider it for their festival or whatever. Who cares? Because you need to do your work. So you need to find out some kind of way to get, what you need to get done, done by a certain deadline. Okay? Yeah, awesome. Yeah, so just, I mean, and I really, I don't let it out the door until I've done the work that I need to do on it. Yeah. And can I ask, and I want to ask you questions, are there people in your inner circle who you'll share those earlier drafts with or do you really not let it out until you've done all the work that you think you can do? Sure, inner circles right here. So last week or the week before last, and you will test for this child. So my husband was away visiting his parents in Germany and I had to work on the songs, not last week, whenever it was three weeks ago. And I just played him in a living room to the 10-year-old. I figured the 10-year-old likes him, we got that going. So it's just family, you know? Right, yeah. Or friends or you're close, sure. Sure, the plays, you read them to the spouse or the emotional support creature or, yeah, yeah, I mean, we're not talking like, oh, you must not talk to anybody before, you know, it's not that weird. Yeah, thank you so much. Sure, but sure, definitely. And you want to, again, Alexa, because I don't think we've had this conversation before, you want to ask the opinion in that close inner circle and then widen it at all. So you want to ask the opinions of people who care more about you than they care about seeing their ideas in your work. Yeah, yeah. Okay, absolutely. I just want to be mindful of that. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you again. Good seeing you, yeah, sure. Thank you. Thanks, Alexa. All right, let's go to Larry. Go for it, Larry. Good to see you, man. Good to see you. Good to see you again, yeah, hi. So you were just doing that, I don't want a voice. So I'll skip the part, but I've been having a lot of it and I want it. So I appreciate you calling that out. I am still working in Sisyphean fashion on my Sisyphean display. And I think I've said here before that I tried to work it collaboratively and it's sort of devised and all this stuff. And I have just this ridiculous Sisyphean mountain of material. And through working it with other people, I've been kind of gone through phases of collaborating with different people on it. And it just keeps sending me, I guess, the wrong way. And so I had a mentor who just basically forbid me. He says, you're basically hoarding. He says, what do they do on hoarders? They take out the blue tarp. You can only keep what fits on the blue tarp. Very good.  He says, you have enough material.   He says, you have to make this play work with what you have. And so I've just started tearing down this mountain of material to try to just like, all right, what if it's just all there and I have to keep and give away? So I guess I'm just curious if you have any experience with overwriting and particularly, I have a feeling like, maybe this is just not even all for one play. Maybe I'm trying to fit many plays in one play. So yeah, I'm in an extreme place of, I don't wanna, and overwhelmed, overwhelmedness and I need to edit. I need to give up my hoarding and let go of some darlings. So just wonder what comes to mind in your experience. Sure, sure, that's a great question, Larry. It's, no, I mean, first you have to know like, where does it go when you throw it away? You know what I mean? And maybe we imagine it goes into the land the time forgot through the valley of the shadow of death and it dies a lonely death like a worm on a sidewalk after it rains.  I hope it helps, I'm hoping. But where does your work go? You wrote a beautiful monologue or gorgeous, right? I mean, I think we're slow to cut or prune sometimes because you think it's just gonna go like somewhere awful, right? Give me, is that a concern? Yeah, I mean, not a huge concern because I know like the writing doesn't go anywhere. It's on my computer, I can pick it up anytime. Sort of reminds me of, you know, I am, I got this whole idea and this whole cluttering thing that's in the script because I am one and my dad is like a real super, super hoarder.  All you need is the picture of it to remember it, but you don't need it in your house. So there are things like that, you know, where... That's interesting, you didn't tell me that part. So you actually, so it's not just overwriting, it's actual, your father's an actual hoarder, did you just say that or did I do that? Yeah. That's very interesting. Okay, well, this is in the writing world, when you cut, you throw something, you can imagine you're cutting something and you're throwing it on the ground and you're throwing it on fertile ground. So it's not just about having it on your computer, it's better than that actually. You're pruning and you're throwing it on fertile ground that that action allows it to grow, grow somewhere in a good place. It's not just about like, it's all in there in my chest of drawers or in my hope chest or whatever, you know, in my cabinet, you know? It's not like that, it's much better than that. Yeah. And you're throwing it onto some very fertile ground where it can bloom and blossom and grow and have a wonderful life and also be available to you should you want to pick from it and incorporate it into something else or use it as the basis of something else. Okay, so that's where work goes when we cut. So we cut with, we cut joyously.  Of things and, I mean, those of you who saw play for the play gears, you know what I mean? That was a lot of material, you know? We had to prune down to make it digestible. We had whatever 20 hours of material, what more? We had to prune down to Audrey's shaking her head, prune it down to like two hours or three hours or something, you know? So we just know that when we discard something, it's being set up for a nicer incarnation. I think a lot of it, first of all, that is so beautiful and I'm probably going to steal what you just said many times. You don't have to steal it. I'm giving it to you, Lauren. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Even better, even better. But that's just beautifully said and very much a metaphor for what's in the play. The other, I think part of it, I think I'm realizing as you talk is that a lot of, I think the clutter is trying to make sense and trying to be linear. And one of my friends gave me some very good feedback because she was there sort of at the beginning that I was trying to work on this. And she said, when she read the draft, she's like, it looks like you're trying to write a play. I thought you were just doing like some sort of theatrical event on a theme. I thought it was just like, you know, she's like, why are you trying to make so much sense and connect all, why are you trying to connect so much? And so I think there's a lot of connective tissue that I think I need to do, frankly, what I tell my students and trust that it's theater and I can just jump from thing to thing rather than having them, I don't know, explaining why they go together, you know? So that just came to mind. Could be, that sounds like it would be also helpful. Yeah, all right, well, thank you. I just appreciate you getting some new language around it. Thank you, good question. Thanks, Larry. All right, Erica, it's all you. In your car. Hello, I'm so excited. I saw you at Signature Theater where you were playing the piano with your husband and such a good experience. And I always go there to do work because it's quiet and awesome. All right, thank you. But I had questions about, I am venturing into this playwriting sphere. I finished my first pilot a couple of months back. And I'm curious, what advice do you have for newer playwrights, one so that you, because it's just like submitting my work, even the pilots that I'm writing now, submitting them to festivals, it's a lot of rejection, you know, it's hard not to be discouraged. The other part of that is like, what programs are you aware of for like newer playwrights? And then going off with some of the feedback that you've gotten that was talked about earlier, and sending your work out to be reviewed by other people. Do you always copyright your stuff before you send it to anyone in case someone tries? Yeah. Yeah, need some ideas.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All good questions, Erica. So for, I suggest, send your work out, because you got to get in the habit of sending your work out to people you don't know, you know, sometimes, right? And you got to work that muscle. That's a muscle that needs to be worked interaction with strangers who are going to perhaps hire you, perhaps put your work in their festivals. Perhaps not. That's a muscle that we got to work as creative people. Definitely copyright your material. Definitely. It'll give you peace of mind. It'll give you just a feeling of, yes, I am taking myself seriously, you know? You can, I don't know, you know, there are many ways to do it. You send it to the copyright office. You can look that up online, right? But definitely copyright your own material. That's a way to just respect yourself and respect your wonderful things that you're writing. Okay. I would suggest also, in addition to interacting with strangers, sending your work out there and getting your work copy, send it to the copyright office. I would also suggest, hold on, quiet, please, Durham. Lower your voice, sir, thank you. I would suggest that you also develop and continue to develop a close-knit circle of folk, you know, you can join writing groups. And again, you're copyrighting your material before you read it in the writing group, you know what I mean? But you're joining writing groups so that you can have really good interaction with people who are also writers and other creative types. Here's a good writing group. We don't read our work here, but we do sort of support each other. But there are other groups that would, you actually will read from your work. That's super helpful.  They're also writing retreats, you know? You can do like weekend writing retreats with mentors that are taught. And there are oodles and oodles of them. You look at catalogs like Omega, which I don't know where you live, I'm looking at that sunset going, where do you live, America? Where do you live? Oh, hold on. There you go. I'm actually in between Virginia and New York. I'm a photographer too. So this is from a protest. And I do sunfets a lot of sunfets. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. But you can look online and look for cool writing workshops that are like give you a week away with a mentor writer or like Omega and Reinebeck New York if you're, you know, up here, they have great writing teachers just if you want a sort of a short thing. Natalie Goldberg teacher, it was a wonderful writing teacher, teachers online. That's a really wonderful way to get to know people. And I guess the last part of that question was like programs.  They submitted it to, it used to be the Lark where you- The Lark. And then all of their programs got transferred to various theaters around New York City. So sad, I was so sad. But like now- Crystal's given some information in the chat. Crystal's from Adam's family. She says what rattles, well, I was trying to read your, what did you say, Crystal? Rattlestick and Naked Angels. Is that what you were saying, Crystal? She's nodding her head, you see her? Could you unmute, Crystal, please? Got it. Go for it. Crystal, could you give us, yeah. Yeah, they have like different forms. The rattlestick does this thing that I believe Keith Randolph Smith is also a part of. I don't know if they opened it up due to COVID and everything, but I think if they haven't yet, they will. And Naked Angels is a program that a friend of mine, he goes and you can bring, I think five or 10 minutes of your work and have that seen by other people. So it's just like a place to just share work and like share whatever process that you're in, wherever you're at in your process, you can share that. Those are great, great ideas, yeah. Those are two really good places they've been around for a while. And they'll also, Erica, they'll also get you in community, you know what I mean? You'll get you into the community, which is really an essential part of, as you know, your photographer, you know, you're in the visual arts community. You got to jump into the theater and performing arts community too. That makes sense? Yeah, I'm also taking, I'm in the Global Virtuous Conservatory at Atlantic, doing acting thing. But, okay, there you go. But it's just the, I'm very, it's just hard cause like you have the copyright and the copyrighting thing just to make sure people don't just run away with an idea. If you, even if you don't- Just copy, just copy, it's just you go online and send it in to the copyright office. Ain't no big deal, is that it's nothing? Yeah. It's not a big deal, you just do, it's just something you got to do. Like, shoot, I got to, gee, I got to, you know, I don't know what, open my mail. I got to pay my bills. I may as well- It's part of what we do. It's just along the, I got to type. I got to make sure there are no typos in the script. I mean, it is just one, it's just another thing we do. It's not that, it ain't deep. That part of it ain't deep. No. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Good question. Thanks, Erica. All right, we've got about 15 minutes left and we're going to go to, I think this is Erin. Erin, are you there? Hi, you know. Hi. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey everybody. Hello, hello, wow. This is such a wonderful opportunity. Thank you so much. So I am in the throes of writing my second full-length piece. And right now I'm sort of in the mid, I'm kind of like that mid-slump part of writing. And I've been here before and used to finding different ways and different methods of bringing out my characters throughout this sort of mid-range slump of where we go now. I have an idea for the ending and how I want to move my characters to the end. And I've been kind of trucking along, making great progress. Now I'm sort of like, all right, where do they go now? So my question to you is how do you sort of move your characters sort of mid-show to get to your ending? Or is there any sort of method or tactic that you use or inspiration that you sort of gather the sort of the energy to move them or the inspiration to move them to your ending? That's great, man.  Yeah, it's like if you're hanging laundry on a line and the other sheet goes like that a little bit, right? Yeah, it's like a little bit. And it's great, man. You've been there before.  You have tools and tactics to add a few more to your arsenal of tools and tactics. I believe in, especially if you know where you wanna end, right? So I believe in like just running as fast as you can, screaming, that's good. Like, because when you're screaming, what are you doing? I'm letting go of the need to be good. As fast as you can, right? Right, as fast as you can. Like, how many pages you think you gotta go to the end? 10, 30, what? I'd say about maybe 10. Only 10 pages, that's fantastic. So you can like write like, I don't know what, like I don't know, two pages a day maybe? I mean, what do you think? Does that do it? Is that like cool? Yeah, yeah.  My thing about two, maybe one and a half pages a day. Okay, okay. So let's do one page a day, right? Okay, this is the thing. One page a day, how long is it gonna take you? Like, what are you saying? Page is gonna take you how long a day to write? About a half hour. Half hour, great. Okay, so you set your timer, right? What's your favorite part of the day to work? It's morning, morning. Fantastic, okay. So you set your timer, right? Your timer, 30 minutes, right? There you are, right? What do you do? You type? Or you write long hand, what do you do? Computer. Fantastic, okay. Okay, so here you are, right? Okay, 30 minutes. You're gonna write a page. Whoa, okay, 30 minutes. Okay, great. So I'm done for today. I'll show up tomorrow. You're back at it tomorrow, 30 minutes. I mean, of course you're not typing like that. You're typing much more elegantly than that, right? And you just keep hitting it. You can make yourself a calendar. Oh, look, you know what I love? I love paper calendars. I happen to have one right here. See this the month of April, okay? And you can like make yourself a paper calendar or like print one out. That's because somebody already made it for you, right?  After the end of each day or each writing period, where you've written a page, and then by day 10, you can have a party. COVID safe, you know, party. You know what I'm saying, right? Okay, you give yourself a reward. It doesn't have to be, you know, we don't want you to spend money that we don't have. You know, we don't do that. We spend money, buy things, something you can afford and just hit it every day. 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day in 10 days you're gonna be done. In 10 days it's gonna be what? What is it gonna be? Whatever day it's gonna be. 10 days from now. Can you put in some time today? I can, no, no, yeah, yeah. Hey, okay, great. Just run, run as fast as you can. Right. No, thanks. And by the time you get to the end, it's gonna be like, yeah, right? I love that. That's like my favorite part writing. There you go. Fade out or end of play. That's that. There you go. There you go. Like this huge weight lifts off. So, I mean, I enjoy the writing process, but yeah, no, that helps. That helps to kind of just focus on just the writing part of it and getting through that because I definitely get to that that sort of close wire slump there. And I'm like, well, why would they say that? Or how am I gonna- Who cares? Who cares? There you are. Try to be a good writer. Oh, you stop? Right. Who cares? Why would they say that?  Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Right. Who cares? Right. You gotta let go of the need to be good and embrace the need to be done. You just gotta get it done. You'll be good later. Well, thank you. That helps. You're welcome. It really works. Thank you so much. I definitely- You're welcome so much. Thanks. Great question, man. That's a really good question though. A lot of us are there, right? Yeah. A little bit. Thanks, Erin. Thank you. Thank you. All right, up next is either, is it Theo or Theo? We're gonna find out. Go for it. Theo. Hi. Hi, Theo. Hi. So, oh God. Okay. I'm probably like the youngest here. I'm currently in high school. We were in high school once, weren't we? Everybody. Yeah. So- Welcome. Well, thank you. I wrote this movie, scripting for my theater class, and I was really struggling with the motivation to write it and stuff, and it's completely finished now, but I'm starting to rewrite the rewrite. And I'm just kind of struggling like on how to make characters kind of piggybacking on what Erin said, but trying to really build on some certain scenes and sort of add suspense. It is a horror movie. Yeah, I just, I've never really done anything like this. Most of my work has been mostly like poetry or more on the, yeah, it's, or essays and stuff. So I'm just kind of confused on like where to start and how to gain that motivation to start writing so I can actually progress into, yeah. Cool, cool. Well, look, if you've done poetry and essays, I mean, congratulations for trying something new because it's not easy even when you're a youngster, such as yourself. And it's a good muscle to keep working at folks, those of us who are no longer in high school, to re-brave enough to try something new is always a good thing. Essays, poetry, are there characters in your essays? Are there your poems? Would you say? Yes, I tend to do that. Okay, okay. So in movies and TV shows and theater stuff, our characters are like, it's all about the character, one could say. Just, that's a thought experiment. Okay, it's all about the character. So I would say get really deep into thinking about what does, what do my characters want? What do my characters want? Like, have you heard of like Hamlet, the play? Yeah, great. Okay, this is something we can talk about. So Hamlet, you'd say, well, you can talk, yeah, the plays about this theme and that theme and all this great stuff, right? But really, yeah, sure. But to really write it in a really visceral way, I always suggest to folks, think about your characters. What do they want? What does Hamlet want? Hamlet comes home, well, he comes home for his mom's wedding or is it his dad's funeral, right?   Excuse me, I'm using that language. But anyway. No, you're good, you're good. But you write, who, who killed dad? And then when I, and what am I gonna do about it? Right? Right? So I realize I have like a sunspot on my forehead. Anyway, so we really get into the characters. There's a, you know, geometry, right? Do you do, have you done geometry yet? Yes, I'm in it now, yeah. Oh, great, okay, well, this is perfect. So in geometry, if I remember correctly, in high school was about 100 years ago for me, there's a, two points make a line. You guys say that, right? In geometry, two points make a line? Yeah. Fantastic, okay. Same as in playwriting. Where your character is now, can you see my finger? And where you want your character to be? These two points, right? Where they are now, where they are by the end of the play, make a line of dialogue, but I'm bummed, okay? So where I am at the beginning of my play and where I wanna go is gonna inform all my lines of dialogue, okay? As in geometry, so in playwriting. That just, I just made it up, but it's true, okay? So you gotta think about what do my characters want and that can really energize your writing. So try that, you know, you can even make a list, like character number one, they want such and such and they're gonna do this and that to get it. Will that help you? Yeah, you did, thank you. And if I didn't, that's okay too, it's free. No, no, it's okay, no, no, you didn't help me. I've been having a really hard time doing this. This is my third rewrite of it, so. Oh, oh good, no, no, no, welcome to the club. We rewrite often. We are, yeah, you know, right? I mean, we are writers, we rewrite. That's the other, like pro tip, get used to it. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks, Theo. All right, we've got about four minutes left and let's go to Crystal. Go for it, Crystal. Hi. I'm good. Who is this? Who is that? My daughter, Sophia. Hi. Hi. Chris, how are you? I think it's an honor. Yeah, I got a sign up. Trying to, it bouncing off the back of my computer. It's crazy, anyway. So, okay, now I'm a little nervous. It's like looking at you like mom. Yeah, be cool, right? Be cool, right?  Obviously so cool, yeah, totally. Okay, go ahead. Okay, so in a couple of weeks or a few weeks, I play the father Chronicles, is gonna be seen at the J-Cal in Jamaica, Queens. Congratulations. Thank you. The first, about a half an hour of it is gonna be presented. And I have not been in the rehearsal room at all. And I kind of preferred that. As I was asked to trim it down a little bit more and I'm like, oh, wow, like I haven't had to touch this. I've just kind of given it and been okay with that because it came straight from inside. And as I'm like trimming and working on it, I was like, I have to watch this as a writer, but also as a person who wrote this and from the place where it came from. And it's also being shown a few days from the second anniversary of my father's death. And so I'm kind of like, I'm kind of not sure how to proceed with going to like the tech, which will be the first time I'll see it done by the actors. And it's the first time that I hear that portion of the play heard out loud, which happens to be the father daughters, not the father sons. And it's like, I almost don't feel like ready to hear it cause like just everything kind of came, and it really, I don't know if she hadn't asked me to trim down some things or like touch it. I probably maybe would have been fine, but now it's like when I looked at the work and was like, oh wow, like I still have to work on this. Like it's any other piece, but like all of those things came to mind where it's like, wow, it's gonna fall on the week. It's gonna fall on that Monday. It's gonna, and all of these swarming thoughts came and I just kind of felt like, how do I approach this as like a professional when it's the most personal thing I've ever written. And I just don't, I don't know how else in this process how to approach it as a writer. I hope I'm making a little bit of sense. A little, no, I agree. I would say that don't approach it as a professional. Approach it as an amateur with love, you know, that's what amateur means, right? Amateurs do it for the love, professionals do it for the money. So approach it like an amateur, approach it with love, I'm sorry, I'm holding my hand. I'm having a lot of bounce back from the sun. That's okay. It's during the, it's close, it's premiering close to your dad's death, your dad's talking to you.   You know, just be grateful, even if the play, even if the content of the play is, you know, fraught and angry and whatever the content of the play is, it doesn't matter, you know. It doesn't matter, it's lining up so you can be aware of what's going on. And it's good. It's only good. Go and bring loved ones that you can help, will help you process the moment or the moments, you know. Now, if you want, bring some sage or put some a clove of garlic in your pocket just in case there's some people who are less than kind. You know what I mean? Yeah. Carrie, you know, hold something that is dear to you or your daughter's name is Sophia. Yeah. You know, is it appropriate for Sophia to go? She's 16. Why? I'm just asking, I don't know. No, no. I'm just asking, you know what I'm saying? No, she's, yeah. I was like, look at her, look at her. I'm at the high school up ahead now. Hi. Hi. All right, look at Jesus, Lord have mercy.   It's not about them, you know. Yeah. Might be hard for you. Bring some snacks. Okay. Snacks, very important. Snacks. Yeah. Treat yourself like a trailer. Show up like an amateur. Got it. I got it. Yeah, got it. That's what, we're, look at us here. We're not doing this for money up here. I mean, we would not be able to do that, watch me work if it weren't for, you know, the generosity of the public theater and howl around, but we ain't doing this for money. We're showing up like amateurs. Huh. Yeah. I like that a lot. I'm just making this sit up girl, but you know, it's true.  You're getting your work, you're getting your work produced, right? Because we know you all these years, you've been working and working and working and just keep getting stuff done and keep getting stuff made and keep making work.  Hey, good for you though. Good for you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. We love you guys. What a nice lovely turnout today. Thank you. What is this? The week before Easter, is it? So, you know, we're all here showing up. We are all here. 603. 603. I have one little thought. It's interesting.  I mean, we have to move mountains and sometimes roll. And Larry was saying roll a stone up a mountain and you know, all this kind of stuff. And there's so many ways to move mountains or to, sometimes you can walk around it, sometimes you can enlist your community to help you move it or dig underneath it. I realized the other day that you, in the tradition of one of our religions, you can go up on the hill and you can die on a hill. And that's not bad. So, if you ever have given everything you can to something, you know, your best work, you've done your best. You've been as kind and loving as you can be. You've worked as hard as you can be. You've done everything right. And it still doesn't work out. You feel like I died on that hill. You're not in bad company. There's a whole tradition of people who die on the hill. And then what do you do next?  So that's one religious tradition, but it's, you don't have to adhere to that religious tradition for it to work for you because it is a myth. It's also a myth. It's a story. It's a yarn. Okay. So it just occurred to me the other day. Yay. Love you guys. Love you guys. Love this gathering of beautiful people. You're the best SLP. Yeah, now you're the best. We'll see you next week. Okay. Love you. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thanks.


So, I went into the gaffers office and I said, Howard, I'm just going to say, as in the village, I said, do you want anything? He said, yeah, get us a sausage roll or something, lad.   I'm thinking, what do I do here? You know what I mean? I thought I don't want to be buying one of them. You know what I mean? So, I sort of froze really, you know, because I didn't know what to say. Dwi'n dechrau i Greeneidion, dwi'n gynnal rhywbeth, yr ydych chi'n gilydd i ni, dwi'n gilydd i ni, digwydd rhai, yna i unrhyw i ddim yn ddarfedd. Rwy'n meddwl ei weithio eich syniad. Rwy'n meddwl ei roi'r amddangos, eich gallai'n ddod o'ch cyflog, rwy'n edrych drwy gallbl yn fawr i'n gilydd. Byddai'n eich wneud i gyfly ambition, rydw i'n cyflog ar gyflog yr hospital, Ond oedd gwaith ychwaneg hwn o hynny, aeth wedi bod hynny, ac mae hynny'n amser hwnnw, mae hynny'n amser hwnnw.


To come here to Sawas and study African art, East Asian art, Indian art, Islamic art, Chinese art, Buddhist art, the art of Japan and Korea, contemporary art and visual studies. Kandarine art, Tibetan art. African American art, I mean these are things that just aren't covered in most institutions, in most typical art history departments. Sawas is certainly a special place. Come to Sawas to study has been my life dream. It's just incredible and intellectually it's incredibly stimulating. You will hear about, learn about issues that you never would have even considered before coming here. Already in my times when I studied at Sawas, those opportunities were there. Now these opportunities perhaps have multiplied. The undergraduate course at Sawas is very open. You have the core courses in your first year, which give you a grounding in the art and archaeology of Asia, Africa, the Middle East. And then after that point you can pretty much make it your own. We also offer students the opportunity to take advantage of everything that is around them in London, so the museum environment here is spectacular. The Brunei Gallery is a fantastic asset for us. It's one of the best known art galleries in central London. Just up the road there we have the British Museum, so sometimes as a class we would go and look at the collections there. The postgraduate diploma in Asian art combines the theoretical with the practical in terms of approaching art. They are able most unusually to go and handle the objects of the British Museum. Many of them also go on to do not only the art world like the auction houses but also work in the museums all over the world. And it's opportunities at Sawas Gears that makes it so special. So it is the one place in the world where we offer a kind of historical depth and a regional breadth. There are very few institutions in the world where you can study, let's say, Ottoman art and take classes in Ottoman Turkish. You are encouraged to participate in the class, you're encouraged to discuss points and it's really nice that you get this kind of dialectic approach to teaching. Because we have the kind of creme de la creme of teaching stuff, they will know the people to put you in contact with. You are actually speaking to the people whose papers you're reading. So we offer a community, I think we offer a really strong community of students and of scholars. They get very close to their fellow students and those bonds are very strong. Those relationships have lasted with me now for 15 years. It seems like a one place that get all those people together so in terms of knowledge you also create a lot of networks. Everybody bringing to that their own linguistic backgrounds, their own cultural backgrounds, their own academic backgrounds, their own desires, their own aspirations. And it's changed our perception of the arts, the visual arts, the oral arts, the sound arts, the tangible and intangible cultures. In a way that it's quite amazing. It's a really good way of trying to get a grasp of human nature as much as anything. Then that of course raises questions about the world as a whole and cultures as a whole is just one part of a much bigger story that is often not told and that Samas tells very, very well. I couldn't see myself anywhere else. You have to come here with an open mind and open heart. It is an experience of a place where all the world is on your doorstep and you never know what's going to happen next to us.