Welcome everybody to the Martin Seagal Theatre Center and this was the premiere of our clip. I think we wanted to show it first and then you were supposed to come in but still it looked much better with you guys there. So welcome everybody to the Martin Seagal Theatre Center here, the Greater Center CUNY. My name is Juan Canshka and I'm the Executive Director and Director of Programs here with Anja Ugel who also is over there and tonight we have I think a wonderful event and as you know we have Paula Vogel with us here and together with Deborah Kaplan, David Saffram and Janet Werther we I think will have an evening that really will allow us to have a look inside the mechanics and into the motor room under the hood you know of what it means to right place what it stands for about the ideas and the vision for it and I think it is important that we look at theatre but also part of it is to talk about it and to get some understanding so thank you for coming and we need a good place and good theatre but we also need a good audience so this is a wonderful that you took time out of your life to come here and to listen to what artists say and I think this is very important especially in a dialogue with academia we welcome also Marvin Carlson and Moshe Azur and Biat and many many others so thank you for coming. If you have a cell phone just take it out I'll do the same it should be power off especially also for the panelists it should be completely power off so we don't have interferences you have it all off so thank you very much the program shouldn't last longer than 90 minutes maybe a bit shorter we will have some readings film clips a discussion between the panelists and then a Q&A and a little reception afterwards in case there were some questions you couldn't ask again thank you so much for coming and here we go thank you. Start with one behind the scenes clip and then we'll do a bit of a cold reading for you and then we'll have another sort of behind-the-scenes conversational clip to set the stage for our conversation. Lesbians, whores, hypocritical Jews you know it kind of went for it all. We have a story we want to tell you. This play is based on another play called The God of Vengeance that was written in 1907. One of the most beautiful love scenes that certainly that I've ever read but you know Romeo and Juliet in the rain in 1923 this play was produced on Broadway and the entire cast and producers were arrested for sending and throwing jail we continue to follow the story of the makers the people who loved the play the people who fought for the play it's pretty astounding to realize what an extraordinary story the life of one play can tell this epic journey really about Jewish history unexpected love story in a way between the artists who make the play live the play members of the true who on this one evening or this one that may come forward because it's a story they have to tell us. Paula would you like to sort of bring us from the beginning of the play up to where we're gonna be reading sure that clip sort of ends right in mid beat with Lisa Gutkin holding the note the the wonderful violinist who's also our composer. We're gonna just read a little scene that's towards the beginning of the play in decent and what has happened up to this point is that we have a troupe the dead troupe that comes back to life and they do a little dance and they get all of the dust of the ages out of their sleeves and their clothing and they dance back to life Lemmel is a stage manager who introduces us to the troupe and we see the young Sholam Ash and his wife in and actually the play was written in 1906 he's in bed watching his wife read the very first draft of God of vengeance and she predicts that the play will go all over the world that it will be a sensation the very next night when it is read in the eminent IEL parrots' salon his literary salon that met once a week in Warsaw so this is the scene that's taking place that very next evening in 1906 in parrots' salon and shall we introduce who we're reading. So I'll be reading Lemmel. I'll be reading the young Sholam Ash. I'll be reading Nockman I'll be reading stage directions and I get to have a little cameo as a woman and I am reading parrots. Okay title 1906 a salon at the parrots' home title in Yiddish. First of all I want to say what a great honor is to have this opportunity to be to be under Mr. Parrots' roof to be standing here in front of all these writers whose work has been such an inspiration. Ash wipes the sweat from his brow passes out the scripts and Parrots looks at his. The God of Vengeance.  Does anyone mind if Lemmel sits in he's my third cousin from Loach. Well a little shtetl outside of Beludi actually. He's a tailor from Beludi he's never seen a play. Lemmel take a seat take a seat Parrots goes to shake Lemmel's hand Lemmel wipes his hands on his jacket before he will touch Parrots. Sir it's a real honor sir. I'll leave Prater. Nockman quickly thumbs through his script. Boy another play set in a brothel. Why are so many men writing brothels stories? Research. Mr. Parrots would you read Yuckel? You want Mr. Parrots to play the owner of a brothel? I want him to play the protagonist he has the most lines. I will do my humble best. Laser you read Riscola the daughter she's 17 she's pure and very beautiful.  Nockman you read Monk of the prostitute she's in her 20s the beauty of Yuckel stable don't use your chest voice. I'll read stage directions. As the curtain rises we find ourselves in Yuckel's cozy home over the basement where his brothel is located. Here he lives with his virgin daughter and his wife. A blink in time. Title in the midst of act one. Woman I am not going to warn you again. When I took you from my whorehouse I told you keep my home apart from my whores. I better not catch Riscola in Monk's company again. Up there lives my up here lives my virgin daughter worthy of marrying the best of men like the kosher from the Trayf keep the two worlds apart. A blink in time. Title act two. The first rain scene. Monk enters nuzzling Rifkala. Washed in the rain their soaked nightgowns drip water on the floor. Are you shivering Rifkala? Warm yourself. Rub it up against me that feels... Higher voice please. Rest your face against my... Wait wait am I still a woman here? Saying this to another woman? I am not reading this garbage. Nachman tosses down the script. Ash picks up the discarded script and gives it to Lemmel. Read Monk's lines. Starting with rest your face against my breasts. You want me to say the word breasts in this living room? Read!  Rest your face against... Against my breasts. Yes, oh yes and embrace me with your body. I laid bare your breasts and I washed them in the rain.  Do you want to Rifkala? Do you want to? Rifkala. None of us are reading this garbage. All the men toss their scripts on the floor. Well, perhaps we should call it... You have to read both women, Monkka and Rifkala. Please! I have never done one woman much less to Mr. Ash. Okay, you read Rifkala, I'll be Monkka.  Do you want to Rifkala? Do you want to? Yes, yes. Teach me, take me. I want to taste you. I can't breathe. I'll blink in time. Title the last moments of the play. Rifkala, you ran away with Monkka last night. Don't tell me where she took you. Daughter, just tell me.  Look into my eyes, right into my eyes. I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? Are you still? Oh, but it's all right for you to do. I know who you are and what you do. I'll tell you what you know. You know what this Torah cost? It cost all of the whores downstairs on their backs and their knees for a year. And for what? God wants me to fail as a father, as a husband? Well, there's one thing I know how to do. Make money. You are both paying me back on your backs, on your knees. Down into the whorehouse with you and take the holy scroll with you. I don't need it anymore. Yekal hurls down the Torah. End of play. This is theater. Oh, oh, Mr. Ash, it's wonderful. Are you crying? Ash has desecrated the Torah. My character Yekal does. I do not. But it's not a real Torah, right, Mr. Ash? It's a make-believe Torah. Grandmother Rockwell's daughter's son. You are way out of your depths here.  He was a very big favor, cousin. Do you want to, Rivkala? Do you want to? Yes, yes. How can you let Nofman laugh at me? We need to have a civil discourse no matter what the young men in my living room do. All right. My soul is in these pages. Ash, Ash, who is your audience? I want to write for everyone. Yes. You told me we need plays in Giddish, which are universal. Plays that represent our people as valiant, heroic. Why must every Jew on stage be a paragon? You are representing our people as prostitutes and pimps. Some of our people are. You are pulling petrol, pouring petrol on the flames of antisemitism. This is not the time. When? When will be the right time? For God's sake, Ash. Write what you know, young man. How many whorehouses have you worked in? A woman enters carrying a vial of medicine and a glass of water. She crosses across the room to parents. Ah, yes. It's time for my medicine. Thank you, my dear. And did you have a nice reading, Mr. Ash? Yes, ma'am. I loved your last short story. A shtetl, so lyrical. There seems to be much excitement in the house. Excitement is not the best thing for Mr. Parritz's digestion. We, we won't keep him much longer. I think I've had enough excitement too. Excuse me. The door closes behind it. Mr. Parritz, it is because of you that we are creating a Yiddish renaissance. Yiddish is our mother tongue, the language of our myths, our songs, our streets, our gutters, our desire. Yes. At the end of every day I come home from work, kiss my wife, and go into the study. And four nights a week I try to write something for the Jewish people. It may get no further than this living room, but it's for us. I am not happy to produce one slim volume of poetry every two or three years that gets read in your living room. I am not ashamed because I want our stories to be on stage in every language. You cannot translate this hateful play. If you must throw stones, throw them outside the tent. Oye, veist me, this is a play written by a self-loathing Jew. Do you know what a minion is? It's ten Jews in a circle accusing each other of anti-Semitism. Show them you will be torn limb from limb if the public sees this play. Listen to me about your manuscript. Burn it. Mr. Lemmel, may I buy you a drink? I'm taking my stones outside the tent with me. I've always wanted to see Berlin. End of scene. Is there anything else you want to say before we see the other clip? No, why don't we save the discussion for after the clip? Great. What the story presents us with is a Jewish house whose first floor functions as a brothel, while the second floor is home to the brothel owner, his wife, her former prostitute, and the daughter who's being raised as a traditionally virtuous girl. And the girl becomes very friendly with one of the prostitutes. They have a very touching love affairs. It is the lesbian scene that later threw much attention to the play. Oops. We'll talk during it. Is it not? It's not. It's not streaming. The story presents us with the daughter of a girl. And the girl becomes very friendly with one of the prostitutes. They have a very touching love affairs. It is the lesbian scene that later threw much attention to the play. The God Appendance opened on Broadway in 1923. And if it's not going to load well, maybe we should have our discussion. And if it has loaded by the time you'll let us know. Yeah. It's, in a way, just if you get the chance to hear Rebecca Taishman talk about this play, I urge you to do so. She's an extraordinary director right now. I think we'll just continue without it for now. Yeah. But so the play goes on, your play, Indecent, goes on to tell the production history of this play. So before we ask questions specifically about that, do you want to say anything specifically about the God Appendance production history? Yeah. Let me just talk a little bit about that. God Appendance was first produced in Berlin in 1907 in Max Reinhardt's theater. And it featured, starred an actor who, at that point in time, was really one of the best-known actors in the world, Rudolf Schildkraut, who was very famous for his Merchant of Venice. And this, the scene that we just read, actually from all reports. It was in German. It was actually performed in Yiddish in Berlin. The scene that we just read actually reportedly happened in the living room with Parrots, who I don't know if people know about this amazing figure. He really was sort of the father of Yiddish, the Yiddish Renaissance. And he did tell his young protege to burn the God Appendance. He said it's such a, such a perilous time to be showing dirty laundry in public. From that first production in Germany in 1907, it traveled all around the world and was a sensation. Went to Moscow, went to Odessa, went to London, and brand very successfully in different productions on the Lower East Side in Yiddish in New York. So that's sort of the production history until this very amazing character in history, his name is Harry Weinberger. He is a New York lawyer who was the defender of Emma Goldman and a defender of birth control and had become a producer of Eugene O'Neill's The Harry Ape. He got the great idea, why don't we translate the God Appendance that was playing in New York very successfully. They translated it in English. It moved, as we say, uptown to the village from the Lower East Side. It was packed every night and he got the bright idea, let's take this to Broadway. Only this play that really features in the second act a love between these two women, the prostitute and the young daughter.  So he transformed the production into manca as a prostitute, lusting to get a virgin so she could open up her own whorehouse. So there was a lot of turmoil within this company that had been performing it together. Transfers to Broadway, opening night, they're arrested, they couldn't get a single lawyer in town to represent this particular literary vehicle. So Harry Weinberger ends up as his own lawyer, as the production lawyer. And it really was pretty much, I wouldn't say the death now of the play, but the play never got past that kind of infamy of being closed down on Broadway. The indecent, actually, I sort of follow the last troupe in our story that performs this right as World War II was happening. We go all the way through to the 1950s where Sholom Ash is in Connecticut and a young man comes in and asks if he might produce the God of Vengeance. And this is after, of course, the Holocaust. Sholom Ash refuses to allow it to be produced. So that's where our play ends. Truth of the matter is, right now, there had been some really wonderful and interesting productions of God of Vengeance. I believe last year there was a production in Poland, which I think must be extraordinary to see in Yiddish. Joseph Chacon produced this play in the 1980s in Atlanta. Williamstown has had the Donald Margulies adaptation, which I've not read. There have been a couple of productions. And what I'm hoping is that our play in decent acts as a sort of product placement for the original play, which we can talk about now in terms of where were you when you first read the play. I read the play my first year as a graduate student of Marvin Carlson. And I remember standing in the stacks at Cornell just saying, a young newly wed man wrote this love scene between women. I couldn't get over it. And I think that most people who encounter the script have a similar kind of response. This was written in 1906. It's kind of filled with a feminism, a kind of, you can almost sense this kind of boondest attitude in terms of the working class. Very much, if you will, Arthur Miller before Arthur Miller's time in terms of what are we presenting on stage as tragedy? Why aren't we looking at the working class at this underworld? Because that tells us about our world as well. So I believe, Deborah correct me if I'm wrong, but a Yiddish theater here in New York is actually producing it concurrently with the vineyard production. Is that true? Last I heard that was a plan. Oh my gosh. That was going to be in May or June. So overlapping. Overlapping. That's true. I'd love to get those details. And then because you brought up reading it for the first time in Marvin's class earlier in your graduate career. I guess I'm curious why come back to it now. Right. So this is the story behind the story. I was teaching and for years I was running the playwriting program at Brown University. And I was teaching at Brown. This was about 17 years ago when I heard of this young woman director, Rebecca Taishman, for her MFA thesis project, was staging the obscenity trial for the God of Angels. And I never got a chance to go down and see it. I just kept thinking, who is this woman? What a great idea. And then I started tracking Rebecca Taishman's directing because she's worked with many of my, the writers I've worked with, Sarah Rule. She's done just very lovely work in New York and across the country. Lo and behold, five years ago my phone rang at home. And it was Rebecca Taishman and Bill Rausch who is the artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival that had just gotten a grant called the American Revolutionist Grant to commission writers to write about a moment in American history. And Rebecca said, I know this is an impossible ask, but would you be interested in writing the story about the God of Vengeance? And like 10 seconds later I was like, yes. Because she had no idea that I'd read it when I was 23. And the only thing I asked going into it was I said, I don't think the obscenity trial is perhaps the lens that I want to use. Can we co-create it together? And for five years since I said yes, we've had stage readings. We've done readings at the Sundance. We did a workshop. We've done many workshops. I can't believe I'm saying this. I'm on my 41st draft. I read the trial. I read diaries. I've read their papers. Everything that Rebecca could sort of feed into me. And I wanted to have a three-piece klezmer band on stage with composers that really look at the music from 1905 to the 1950s. So we've co-created it. And the remarkable thing is that this is the only time this has happened in my lifetime in the theater. We kept the same company together for three productions. We opened up this past fall in New Haven. We had maybe a week later we were in La Jolla. And now the same company, all of the designers, the composers, the musicians, and the cast were about to open up in a week and a half of the vineyard. So that's been just a gift. So there's something about, I don't know, I feel that the story is in a way a love story to Rebecca Kaishman's family. They're Polish. They got out of Europe. I also feel it's a love story for those who are caretakers of theater and people, artists who have to tell their story. And to me, I'm very moved by this young artist, Rebecca Kaishman, who at age 26 wanted to tell this story about this moment in time, about Jewish identity in the early 20th century. And she never let go of it. So hopefully now on the 40th draft we're going to have a little bit of completion after five years of it. But it's been just an extraordinary process. The choreography, everything. It's been really a dream. I know that speaking of a moment in time and the telling of the production history that you and David have sort of begun a conversation about production history plays. And so I'd love to, David, have you ask your question and continue the conversation. I mean, there are so many things about indecent that I really love and that I find really powerful. And when Paula was sort of talking, I mean, I see it as, among other things, a love story to the theater. And it's also one of the very few plays I can think of that, in fact, is about the history of a play. Really, from the time it was written, I mean, 50 years, basically, in the life of the play. And it's the play, really, that's the protagonist here and the company as well. And it was interesting. Last week I happened to go see Shuffle Along, which is also a play about a play, about the making of a play, a play that was for completely different reasons, controversial when it was first performed, Shuffle Along, 1921 on Broadway, God of Engines, 1923, and actually they both have more or less the same structure. It's a kind of rise and fall sort of up to the triumphant opening and then what came after. And in the case of Indecent, it's even a more wrenching what came after than Shuffle Along. But I find this a very interesting coincidence. So Marvin and I were talking today about sort of plays about plays and about stage histories. And we were actually not able to come up with many examples of this particular form. I mean, there are plays that are about plays. For example, Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins and Octroon is very much about the Busicoe Octroon. But it's not a stage history in the same way. And so Paul, I wonder if you could sort of think about and talk about this and your interest in this history. Well, we've been talking about this in the cast a lot in the company, which is already six months later after we presented this in La Jolla. We find ourselves, I think, at a more incendiary time than we did last fall. One of the things that occurred with God of Engines was very much a kind of isolationist, anti-immigrant mentality that was taking over American journalism. Very much Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent were running columns about the exotic influence on Broadway show music, on jazz. This notion of degenerate art form was coming into the discourse with a vengeance in the 20s. So to see the way that we're feeling in a way more endangered as we open up at the vineyard and how the rhetoric about immigration in America has changed within the last six months I think is one of the things we were thinking of. I was reading a lot of the reviews about the play in the American press. I was reading a lot of the Dearborn Independent. It was The Rise of the No-Nothing Party. Father Coughlin was not far behind.  The other thing, and I don't know that I haven't yet, I will now go and seasheep along for sure and it was on my list of things to see but it occurs to me that it's an interesting point in time to use the vehicle of theater in this moment of time of incredible fear and xenophobia because theater was actually the art form that this moved to the right that occurred in 1980. This was the art form that was really singled out in terms of censorship, in terms of art funding cuts, in terms of corporate and foundation taking a step back and us as Americans in a way I feel that theater is the 98-pound weakling that Senator Jesse Helm kicked sand into its face, the face of theater. So I don't know if that's true for Shuffle Along but I do find it's an interesting metaphor to use theater and the play and how that resonated before generations of theater audiences were literally wiped off the face of the earth. And now where are we in terms of our public support for the arts because I just say this, I believe the arts should always bite the hand. The purpose of arts in a democracy is to bite the hand that feeds it and now we're starving the dog. The dog is in grim shape indeed. So I'll just put that out and I don't know how you feel about that or if you want to respond. Well I'm thinking about the way that language and language changes portrayed in this play because that's all a piece of what you're referring to as well with all of the politics about immigration in the play. There's also a certain politics about language that's changing. It's a moving target throughout the play. And on some level I think you could say that the only reason that we know about God of Angels is because it moved to English. If it hadn't moved to English it wouldn't have caused such a commotion because it wouldn't have been airing dirty laundry, this idea of throwing stones outside the tent as being fundamentally different as keeping something inside. So that move to English does two things. It creates a problem for this play that gives it a certain historical infamy, creates a problem for the actors, but it's also an engine of upward mobility for them. And I think indecent highlights that really beautifully with showing a little bit of things that are happening in the 50s and beyond for some of the characters. But I think one of the things that... David, you said the play is the protagonist of this play and I think that's a fair assessment, but there is also... I think the language is also a character in this play as well, that the presence or absence of Yiddish is equally significant as the play itself and we're made aware of the presence or absence of Yiddish and characters moving between that at almost every turn of this play, which is really quite remarkable. And to that end, one of the things that fascinates me about this play is that you've written a play that translates within itself but only using English, right? You write translation in the translation process monolingually and using super titles to tell the audience what's happening. But then also, of course, the actors performing in dialect and I wonder if you could speak a little bit. I can tell you who I stole it from. I think it's okay to steal as long as we say who we're stealing it from. One of the interesting difficulties was to sort of look at... And I don't want to say it's the death of Yiddish because that's not true. Yiddish is not dead but to see the attack on Yiddish to see the attack on Yiddish culture while using English and there was a lovely play that Richard Nelson wrote maybe 30 years ago. I believe it was called Between East and West of Czechoslovakian family. The first act is in Czechoslovakia. The second act, is that right? The refugees in America. They speak perfect English and in the second act they have a Czechoslovakian dialect. I always loved reading that play and thought that's it. That's it. So very particularly for this and it sounds crazy. It's actually one of the most challenging things in terms of producing readings of the play. But once we have native Yiddish speakers in the room with us we have many dialect coaches. You have to sort of pick what part of the pale you're from as you're playing members of the troop. But after a while we actually can follow the shift with the super titles in Yiddish. And my one thing that I wanted was to sort of program all of us as audience members. The last scene is spoken entirely in Yiddish. I believe we know every word. That's what I'm hoping for. That at the end of the play we feel that we are literate in Yiddish. And that's what I'm hoping. We'll see in about two weeks whether or not that's pulled off. But it's also been very moving to have as a company member the musicians have been with us and they're actually staged into the play. Do people know Lisa Duckin of the Plasmatics? She's just extraordinary as a musician and a composer. But in terms of this as well how indeed are we looking at the placement of Yiddish music? How does that music morph in the 20th century in America towards the Broadway idiom, towards the Tin Pan Alley? All of that is to sort of parallel what's happening as we go from Yiddish in the Pale to a kind of English in the play. Anyway, that's the theory behind it. And Debra, you said that it's right this, you have social access right through mastery of language but it's also, I mean there's a real intersectionality woven into this because the lack of fluency, the lack of competency for one of the main characters has, well they're all main characters right, they're all the troupe, but for her it has a negative impact on her ability to perform herself in the world as queer, as a lesbian as well. So it's social mobility up but also has this really intricate intersectionality. Absolutely, absolutely. And I just wanted to say in response to all of this I think the other story that we get that I as a Yiddish theater and Yiddish literature scholar felt was so incredibly poignant is the story of Ash himself, the story of what it's like to be a writer. And I think when I teach about these writers, when we read these writers, it's very easy to forget that the entirety of modern Yiddish literary history happened in a very short span of time and in theatrical history in an even shorter span of time. And so for many of these people, their lives, they witnessed a rise and a fall in between and framed by various historical catastrophes. And I think in Ash's story, we see him as a young man, we see him as a young newlywed writing this play, we see his mentor reject the play, and we see how much that wounds him, and we see him through the course of his life paralleling what happens to his play and how he changes in response to all the things that changed between the 1900s, early 1900s, and 1953 or wherever it is that we land with him. And I thought that story was so very poignant and captures a kind of frustration that many of these writers and actors have later in life, a sense that their stories might not be told or might not be represented properly or that they might be forgotten, which was a very real and present fear for them. And so often that fear came from the inability to communicate in English the way that they could communicate in Yiddish, and we see that with Ash so poignantly. So I really appreciate that element. Right. It's a heart-wrenching story, I think, the Sholamash's story, that he enjoyed such tremendous visibility and success. In the 1920s, he already had 12 volumes of his work. In the 1920s, and this is a man who lived on into the 50s, so the late 50s. Yes, what you're saying about that rise and then a kind of disappearance of the readership, a disappearance of the magazines and the newspapers. Yeah. I mean, most writers don't outlive their audiences or outlive a sense of their language's relevance in the way that so many of these writers felt that they did. And some of it didn't feel that way, but certainly it posed practical challenges. The number of Yiddish actors and directors who I've written about who ended up literally destitute on the streets at the end of their lives is sort of astounding. People who were incredibly famous in the 20s, one of the greatest composers of the 1920s and 30s was destitute in the 50s in New York and died penniless. So this is a story that's very poignant and very tangled up in all of these questions of upward mobility. There's also a sense of loss. Right. I won't pass to anyone who's got a hat out on the street in the same way after leaving this discussion, realizing that they might be fellow Thespians. I'd love to have us switch gears just a little bit to say that what, oh, about a decade ago, I think David wrote a lovely little article about your canon, your work as male impersonation. Yes. And I'd love to have both of you sort of talk to each other a little bit about where this piece fits in your canon. I have no idea where it fits in the work. I'm hoping it's something I've never done before. I hope that's true of every work, but... Well, I think this is very different from anything else you've ever done. I mean... But it is in a sense, right? It fits in with that sort of thematics of male impersonation. Well, and there's a kind of ventriloquy. I mean, if you think of sort of the way that you're using, I think especially Lemmel and Osh as these figures who are... I mean, I think that they're in a way at the center of this play. And they're the two who are so profoundly displaced and destroyed by that. Right. Lemmel's the stage manager who is the young man in the living room that we just heard who's never heard of play. And he goes on this trip across the world into America with Sholomash, yeah. It's interesting for me. I tend to think probably of the work from the inside. So I think more of how I'm trying to design a process that's different for every play. And for some time now, actually this is in a way my third, I consider it my third history play. It's very, very hard being an off-Broadway, not-for-profit writer, to write a play that has any size cast to it. Most of the places I work can't afford to produce plays this large. So, but it also is something that as a writer wanted to write for a company and write for a troop. And so Civil War Christmas was the first time that I tried to write for a larger canvas, writing with music. I'm actually in a way, because I haven't been able to land in writing a musical. I'm kind of now doing weird little jukebox 19th century jukebox musicals, I think. And then this piece before this, Don Juan, I worked with veterans in Philadelphia for three years. And I wrote a response to Don Oravats, Don Juan comes back from the wars, called Don Juan Comes Back from Iraq and ran a workshop where the veterans wrote their own Don Juan plays and I produced them and they literally came to the room with the actors to sort of talk us through everything from being a trauma nurse on the field in Iraq. I mean just giving extraordinarily generous gifts to the Philadelphia company at the Wilma. With this, I wanted very much to be in the room with my co-creator, my director, with choreographers, with composers, with the entire company and kind of, I mean that's, I think one of the reasons there are so many drafts, because it's very different writing outside a process and then going and finding it. So there are kind of three process plays for me, this is from the inside, of being in the room, larger canvas, larger company, responding to actors. And that's been a huge gift. And it's taken a lot of generosity in doing for not-for-profits to sign up and kind of pass the play along. So I don't know if that, the others in terms of being impersonator, I feel that it's kind of wonderful to stand outside and go okay, Edward Aldean, all right, David Mamet, John Patrick Shanley, whatever when I start with other language. Yeah, and perhaps impersonating again sort of Sholamash. Right. I mean there is a way you're taking that on. Yes. You know one thing, this is a slight change of subject, but I also think about this play very much in terms of you're getting in touch with your Jewish roots. Yes. Since in other works, like the oldest profession, there's a kind of homage to the New Orleans branch of your family. Although that was written with Bertha in blue about Bertha Kalich. That's true. Yes, that's right. So actually I wrote two one-ass. That's right. One for my Southern Catholic family in New Orleans. When people say what are you? I quote Lillian Hellman who always crossed herself and went oy vey because she too had a Jewish father from Manhattan and a Catholic mother in New Orleans. So yeah, I'm very, I think you're absolutely right about that. I think that that's exactly what this is. Yes. Yeah. Which is wonderful to see. It feels wonderful. It's also though why I'm feeling that I'm ascribed within the company. And it is something that I think very rightfully is a sensitive area, which is there have been people who've come up to me and say, do you speak Yiddish? And I say no. Well, I know Yiddish from my grandmother, but not words that I want to repeat. And they'd say, well, have you been Bob Mitzvah? And I'd say no. And then they'd say, OK, well, it's your mother Jewish. And when I say no, people rightfully will tell me what they feel. I'm not Jewish because my father's Jewish. I've had a lot of Catholics tell me I'm not Catholic because my father's Jewish. So it's a no win situation. And one of the things that I'm very aware of with this, and I mean, it is a kind of response that I have. What I have been on the train is one of the questions that I feel my brothers and I have talked about and that there is a legacy here that I want to look at. But I'm also very aware that I'm describing this for this amazing family I've gotten to know. And my co-creator, who is 100%, both sides of the thing was both sides of the family from Poland.  And my wife, my good boondest red diaper baby wife who it turns out my mother-in-law whom I adored and loved very, very much. She left us about, what was that, 2008. She's the writer Dorothy Sterling. She's written 40 children's books. Just an extraordinary woman. She, we just found out was confirmed in Temple Emmanuel which is the temple, the rabbi silverman in the play is the guy who shut down God of vengeance. So I have to say I've really been thrilled that we found my mother-in-law's confirmation from Temple Emmanuel. Yes, but I think in a very interesting way in the process of this, who is in the company, who is Jewish and who is not Jewish, what specific countries do we come from? I'm Russian and German Jewish versus Polish. And it's been an extraordinary process to have a year of discussion with everyone in the room talking about our ancestors. We're in space and time in this play. Have our ancestors be, where are our ancestors? I probably, we're probably cutting it out in this draft. But one of the things we did in La Jolla, there's a scene in which the entire company lines up in Ellis Island. And I asked them to give me the names of their relatives who came in on Ellis Island. And that became their names that we flashed behind them on the wall. Which was just an extraordinary little love note that I think probably goes out of this draft. But yeah, I think you're actually right that that's, that I'm in a period of time and I think probably a lot of families are where the children are being barred and bought in Mitzvah, where, where you're coming from either a secular or a communist family and as the generations change and as we change in this moment in time, what does it mean to feel part of a Jewish community is radically different right now than what it was in the 1950s than what it was ten years ago? That's been a great part of this for me. Can I ask you, do you mind if I, this is, you're, so many of your plays are about mobility, traveling. Yeah. I mean, you do have two plays that take place in automobile after all. That's true. Or much of the play. But this is a different kind of mobility and I wonder, and actually it's funny as I've seen the play and read it, I sort of have a map in my head of, you know, where they're moving and I wonder how important that is for you. Right now I think, I'm just going to put this out there. I'm scared of where we are in this moment of time politically. I'm very, very scared. I'm very, very scared about what's happening in terms of vast populations that cannot get away from genocide and who are entrapped and that we, not just in the United States, but I feel globally we are transitioning ourselves to building walls. So the notion of mobility in terms of this and when and who gets out. Right. At what point in time can you get. Forced exile. Yes. And how it seemed so arbitrary or a part of luck. This isn't just for this play. I have been looking at the questions of immigration mobility and refugees for some time. I recently came back from Shanghai and found out that that was the very last port that was open to refugees. And what the Chinese, yes, to the Jewish refugees, I mean those who got to Shanghai. It was the Yiddish theater in Shanghai. There was Yiddish theater. A population else couldn't get out from Japanese occupation were there sharing food and resources with the Jewish ghetto within Shanghai, which just blows me away. So I've been doing things like I have sets of CDs of German Jewish cabaret singers that have been released in Berlin and you can literally track through the notes who got out and who didn't. And so when you're talking about art and what survives, who remembers what song? What songs do we even know? Only those who could manage to get out of Germany and Poland and could even remember the songs. There's a song in this that I've listened to for five or six years and I still weep. And of course it's interesting because we're playing it as the cottage in this piece. It's in German. It was written in Theresienstadt. Do people here know Wigela Wigela? Written by a woman who was a nurse at the children's hospital in Theresienstadt. One of the most beautiful songs and lullabies she wrote for the children. Someone heard her singing it in line in Auschwitz and that's why the music has survived. So we're literally talking about, and I very much see that music, theater, literature, how do we make sure that that gets beyond those walls, the entrenchment of boundaries? Because these are ephemeral as opposed to writing? That's right. And it's legacy. It's all to me about legacy. So I would say that that map was in my head before I wrote. And it's one of the things that I've been transfixed just to figure out okay now this is in the pale now that's not in the pale then just what that must feel like to have the boundaries change. And I think that's what we're seeing right now. That the boundaries are changing from day to day. And this is in the play in a really actually theatricalized way because you trace cabaret and comedy and all kinds of sort of more social performance. Even the rabbi seems or seemed to me when I saw it at Yale like he has his scene has more in common with the cabaret singer the stand-up comedian right that there's modes of social performance of Jewishness that change across time and across space in the play I wonder if you guys would like to riff on that. Can you talk a little bit about what was happening in the 1920s here in this in terms of the theater in terms of shore I mean and performance what was happening on the Lower East side. Right well I mean the 1920s was what wasn't happening on the Lower East side I think is more the question. There was a huge array of types of performance and by the way I just want to mention also I think one of the things that we often think about what we think of Yiddish theater is sort of light entertainment musical theater entertainment and this play really unseats that notion very beautifully without even needing to call attention to it so I think that's something that it does very nicely and deathly but in New York City in the 1920s you have incredible numbers of people who have recently come to America that was the main audience for Yiddish theater was people who had rather recently arrived not necessarily their children who might have preferred to go uptown but that sort of flood of new arrivals coming in and you know you had people who were working in factories and living in tenements and having incredibly long work days who would go to the theater every night and that was really the culture of it was that you went to the theater every day that you could and people gathered in the theater there were lots and lots of people who spoke of the theater becoming the new synagogue the new shul particularly in the United States but also in Warsaw and also in big cities in Europe in London in Warsaw in Lodz in Krakow in Odessa there were a lot of people who spoke about theaters replacing or replacing or adding to depending on who you were the functions of the synagogue and there was a general sort of vibe in the air that that was something that could happen that theater was the communal space for people who were incredibly migratory and who didn't have a lot of physical space to call their own and generally didn't have theaters to call their own either the U.S. is really the U.S. in the 20s is really one of the first times that you start to see Jewish ownership of theaters that are producing Yiddish plays which changes the dynamics of what you can produce and how stable you can be of course many of these sort of fall apart but there are these brief moments of ownership that start to happen in the U.S. that don't happen in other places. That's great. I turned off my phone and I don't wear a watch but I think it feels like it's about time that we should open it up to the audience. There's a microphone coming. A few quick comments. My mother always told me about my great-grandfather being in the circle of Perets in Warsaw. So he was in the salon. Right. What was your... My great-grandfather to the best of my knowledge of the name was Ibrekes. I have a couple of from Yiddish articles on that and I'm going to go back and look for the name. What did he write? I don't know enough information. All I know is that he was ostracized by the family because he married the maid. That's wonderful. There's more to this. I happen to be a documentary filmmaker in the last six years. I've been filming the ultra-orthodox in Borough Park. Right. And the element of prostitution that we're going to talk about. If you look at the perspective that... Well, let me give you an example. So many of the people I've asked was when was the first time they spoke to somebody of the opposite sex in the ultra-orthodox community? And they usually say in their 20s. They maybe were getting married at that time as well. But the interesting thing is that a lot of them have gone to prostitutes that I have talked to. I remember walking down the street on 8th Avenue and a friend of mine saying, that's where I went to a prostitute upstairs. So I think in that reference there is a culture because they don't have that relationship between men and women that we have here. And the other point is a few weeks ago, Utilema did a concert at Ivo that I went to of music that was written in the concentration camps. Yes. And it was absolutely mind boggling. I should be doing it again. But I thought you might... Yeah, I would love to hear that. Yeah. And so the question I have is, what are we learning? What are you learning about your own culture? It's always a mistake to ask a playwright in the middle of a process that I think. But what am I learning I don't know as much if I'm... Yes, there is something I'm learning that regardless of moments of cynicism or despair that I think we all have in whatever job we do in America. I actually think that theater is not a terrible way to spend one's life. That's sort of what I'm learning. And the process has wiped away the cynicism. That's kind of the upshot for me. That's big. Yeah, that's big. Thank you. Is it asking too much to ask what was the result of the obscenity trial? The result of the obscenity trial by the way, the title indecent comes from the indictment that we do in full on stage an obscene, indecent, immoral, impure drama, exhibition, and play. The cast was found guilty of obscenity. The play and the playwright were not charged. It was seen as the obscene exhibition. And the judge said it signaled an American desire for the people of New York State to have pure drama and to purge the drama of eastern exoticism in matters of sex and the family. Eastern exoticism. That's what he said, eastern exoticism. As a result of that indictment, Harry Weinberger worked pro bono, as he always did, for about two or three years he did get an appeal. It was overturned. But at that point the play was dead. So the upshot is that it was cleared of obscenity three or four years later. Bearing in mind, by the way, and this is sort of really in a way what the play is known for, it was the first kiss between two women on the American stage. Anna Christie had won the Pulitzer for his prostitute Anna Christie two years before, and there were plenty of brothel plays. There were plenty of brothel plays right in Yiddish theater. Absolutely. And there's the lovely knot to that scene that we read, right? Another brothel play where so many men writing plays about brothels. Right. What I think is really fascinating is that the conversation about the play changes when it moves from Yiddish to English. So much of the conversation in Yiddish is about what's happening religiously in this play. The fixation of the critics in Yiddish is about the Torah getting thrown down the stairs. That is the most shocking part. Not the women kissing. It's the treatment of the Torah. And also there's all of this sort of strange sort of erotic language about Rifkel's body as sort of a Torah scroll and making equivalences between her and a Torah that was really disturbing on a religious level to people. So when it's really when it moves into English that the question of this kiss becomes so problematic because in Yiddish there are plays in brothels before and there are plays with there are not this degree but there are plays with lesbian relationships before on stage. Let's just put a lot of things together into the perfect story. Explosive buttercracker, yes. That's also really fascinating because there's, right, this is the history of obscenity and the history of pornography is that these distinctions are made and then overturned and then made and then overturned and in most cases that's what produces the fame of the work. So it's really fascinating that rather than, right, with the NEA4 or the Well of Loneliness or Oscar Wilde or the Marquis de Sade, rather than becoming famous this did in fact shut it down in the play all but disappeared. Yes, that's right. Yeah, this was pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, it killed it. Did I see another hand? Just speak right into it. Is this working? Yes. Okay. If this play had been produced in Yiddish on Second Avenue in what was it, 1923, do you think it would have created the same kind of reaction? It was produced in Yiddish. It was produced from actually I think it was, it wasn't Tom Sheffs, it was David Kessler I think was the first yackle. It was produced from 1910 on at the Bowie Theater.  But nothing was shut down. So there were several productions. It really was, as I think you're both saying, the translation into English and the notion of, and it's such an interesting word, it was used even then of crossing over. That's what the English word is, we are going to cross over to Broadway. And of course this is a time when there's, you know, you look at the name of some of the featured players who didn't have major roles, Sam Jaffe, Morris Karnofsky. I mean, just all of these performers who would indeed cross over and be considered American actors rather than Yiddish actors. So it's... And a historical addendum about the productions in Yiddish, it doesn't drop out of the repertoire in Europe in the same way that it drops out of the repertoire in the United States. So God of Vendance was a staple in the repertoire of the Vilna troupe and many other troupe and it was performed around the world. Still, what's interesting about the Vilna troupe is they were also performing it in the 1920s. They were touring Western Europe for the first time. This is the company that I work on so I happen to know this history quite well. And so they were performing in London and Paris and Brussels and Amsterdam for audiences who were mostly not Jewish, who mostly did not speak Yiddish. They were performing it in Yiddish with no translation of course, or super titles. And there were no complaints. And so what's interesting about that is you have audiences who didn't know the language, who only knew the visual. We're only really getting the visual and the auditory of this play watching these two women have this erotic scene on stage, it almost doesn't show up in the criticism. It's kind of remarkable. That's what really good acting is about. Yes? But it was more common at that time for women to hold hands and have intimate relationships. Well, I mean, this is an interesting thing as a lay person. When I keep kind of encountering these discussions, a lot of people coming up and saying, well, it didn't exist then. It didn't. And I'm like, oh, yeah. I mean, I wasn't here for that.  It's okay that I steal from him because I'm going to acknowledge him right now. I'm constantly calling up Dave and say, David, meet me for coffee. When was Freud, when did Freud first write about it? And David will come and go, 1905, three essays in sexuality. So, and of course, there was a very famous trial in 1906 in Berlin, which is where the play opens up in the first production, Magnus Hirschfeld starting an Institute of Sexuality. It's an interesting moment, I think, how we, in some senses, are taking our notion of cultural values right now or cultural issues. And in a way, I feel project them back if this makes any sense. Absolutely. The lifestyles in Berlin, where this was done, there was a very famous cabaret performer. Several. Several. Performing in, as a cross-dressing women who were cross-dressing. I mean, so I think it's kind of interesting right now when I encounter audiences that say, oh, well that was too early for that to have been acknowledged or, you know, existing. It's just, yes, I know. God help us if we try to write something about a Greek play right now. People would, but so it's just an interesting moment of how do you put this into a historical cultural context that we can accept in this time of the 2016 election? Because I do think that it's that that's making a kind of dissonance and a defamiliarization occur. Yeah. And it is, I mean, it is in the Ash, right? Like we were saying backstage before, right? He lingers on the breast. He's talking about the breast. They talk about, the two women talk about, you know, which one of them will perform the husband. This question of is she still a virgin is a real question that her father is putting to her. So I think it's, there's very much, not much room for lack of caring. Yes. I saw another hand, yeah. We are recording. Oh, you need it. Okay. I wish I could be more relevant through exactly what you're saying, but I was thinking of this when you were talking. In the 60s, the Second Avenue Theater, the last show there was Yiddish Theater, and it was then bought by Kent Hyman and some people, and they did O'Calcutta. Right. And I was connected to O'Calcutta. But the people who wrote it was either, wow, this is amazing, and it was really junk, but the people that didn't like it, they came at it because look what you're doing to this very important Yiddish Theater of Second Avenue. Now, I don't mean that it was Jewish writers saying that or not. It was, but that was a way to come at it, was destructive to this wonderful Yiddish Theater that now is over with Kent Hyman's production of O'Calcutta. I wasn't in it. I was one of the people working with nudity. I was hired to do that. That was the basis of my writing, this little one act called Bertha in Blue, about a waiter from the Catskills in his 80s who was sent to New York for an exam, and he wanders into the theater where he last saw Bertha Kalish and discovers...  I'm having fun imagining your audience. You'll have people who go to see Paula Vogel's plays, people who go to see everything at the vineyard, people who know about God and vengeance. What are you imagining for the New York audience? Oh, it's just something that we just... Well, we're not imagining a specific response from the New York audience. We're imagining more the gifts we get from this New York audience. Very specifically, the people say, oh, my great-grandfather was a member of parents' salon, or that people start to come forward to say, my great-grandmother and my grandmother acted, or that people will come forward to say, I knew Sholem Ash's children. I knew... So it's more that... And we just recently discovered that the Vineyard Theater is literally built on top of the bricks of the Urban Place Theater, where, for a time, Maurice Schwartz. We're actually trying to find the original bricks so that we could put them on the stage with us as soon as they're born. So I can't imagine a richer gift for us that if they're performing it, every New Haven was wonderful, and La Jolla was wonderful, but the sense of who will come through the door and teach us is extraordinary. You'll have to talk back? Oh, yes. I'm over in the lobby, just waiting. Waiting for people to teach us, yeah. I want to come back to the issue of language, and it is very interesting when a play gets translated into another language, particularly when it gets translated into English, and given the legal circumstances of the United States with regard to obscenity laws and the same thing in England, that suddenly a play gains a certain kind of currency that it didn't have in the original language. And I'm reminding also, remembering also the obscenity trials against James Joyce. Right. It was a hot issue, and there it was an even re... Well, it was also kind of a translation, but the public perception also, and for that reason I find this experiment of what you're doing quite interesting. What happens to a play when the same troop actually suddenly is confronted with a different legal and social culture and prejudices. Yes. That's a very interesting tension. Yes. One of the things that, just as a little footnote on that question, is that Sholam Ash has been living here since, oh, I want to say, in the teens, and lived here off and on. He moved back and forth. He went to Nice. He was really all over the world. But he was determined, because his readership, the readership was in America. More than any other center, it was New York that had the readership. So he determined to live here in Staten Island, and he was taking steps, in a way, to come to grips with American identity as someone who did not speak English, who did not read English, and he was also trying to learn how to drive. And I remember reading in his diary, he would say, if I take driving lessons, the English lessons suffer. And whenever I'd learned English, the driving just goes to pop. Somehow, there's synapses in his brain for both of those. So the real question is, in terms of the control of the meaning, what happens when a writer does not know the language into which that is translated? That is also, of course, always, I think, the question that happens for playwrights. Who is controlling the meaning of the production? The playwright is not. The playwright is usually the first person to leave the room. And I always say to writers, as I start to work with them, if you want to be in control, you shouldn't be writing theater. There is no control. Write novels, write poems, write where there's a one-to-one relationship between the word on the page and your intention, and even that is a slippery slope. So if we can imagine now, someone who was writing in Staten Island, completely in Yiddish, does not speak English, does not read English, apparently did not read the production cuts of Harry Weinberger, who was fluent in English and did this, were in a very interesting situation. They couldn't possibly condemn a world-reclaimed, a world-known author. And so they really did have to just indict the production and leave the script alone. After the war, by the way, wasn't it 1946 that a production stopped in London after the war? I think it's a result of obviously the Holocaust, but also this precedent of the American jury system. There's someone who's been waiting very patiently in the center. The idea of censorship is so scary. It just terrifies me.  Well, it's probably not as funny as I think it is. But anyway, in the 1950s, there were a bunch of poets that were under Stalin and they were murdered because of what they wrote and because they weren't progressing the party line. And my husband was a composer, he's passed on now, but he was a composer and he and five other composers took the words of the poets that were murdered and turned them into pieces, musical pieces. My husband wrote his piece, it was called No Beginning, No End, and it was on a poem by Shimon Parris. And I'm sitting here and I'm thinking the same name. I don't know if there's a connection or that there may be, but it's just the whole idea that we're still dealing with people who want to constrict us in the arts is just so scary. Does everyone think that? I mean, it's just unbelievable.  It's fascinating because the scene that we read deals with censorship in a certain way, right? Parris, who has so much cultural capital, is saying, don't do this, burn it. But he doesn't have the power of the state. And yet when you get to the English translation, it's the power of the state shutting it down and it's a really different relationship to censorship and I think that this is why, Paula, you keep bringing up this election. Well, and this may be not... I don't mean to in any way indict people who work extremely hard in theater. We all administrators, people who keep theaters running. But when we cut government support, what it means is that people become very concerned to not offend individual donors, not to offend the New York Times. There is a benign censorship that has been running our theaters for the last 30 years. So one of my frustrations, and there are now steps, is that I have a list of plays that I think are absolutely brilliant. Written by young women, young writers of color, young men that will not get done. Should be done. They should be done. It's too risky to do that. There's now a list called The Kilroy's, which lists the best plays by women that no one will do. Hundreds of plays. I can't wait. The new list is coming out. I rush to it, and I read every woman I can. Let me put it this way. There's a way that we can shine the light on plays, and there's a way that we can make sure that some plays are not seen. And there are plays in this city that I think are brilliant, that run for three weeks in 90-seat theaters, that very much address in the way that Sholem Osh addressed what it was like to live in the pale and how women were being treated at this moment in time with such vividness. And usually it's younger writers who have not yet pulled their punches. I have a long list of plays. I pass them around. When I was 27 years old, I was reading for three theater companies. There were plays there, written by African... I discovered a play written by an African-American that so indicted the racism in American theater and the racism in America. I went running all over New York as a 27-year-old script reader, begging my bosses to read it. And they'd read it, and it'd go, it's sensational. Someone's going to do it. This writer, wonderful writer, play was called Colonel of Sanity. Every now and then I'll run into him. He's in LA now, writing for TV. And I say, was Colonel of Sanity ever produced? I rewrote it many times to please the artistic directors and whatever notes. It's never been produced. So I'm just using this as an example. It's not that in 2016 we're suddenly in a time of imperiled censorship. It's that we are the frogs in the pot. We gradually turn up the heat so we don't know that we're being boiled. This has been a very gradual shift. For me, I always think about it as 1980 and the NEA-4 in that moment in time when the Republican Congress did this. But it feels to me, I hate to use the word incremental, but it has been incremental. So of all of the things that I want to do in terms of when it comes to New York, I want to thank the people at the Vineyard Theater and the people who are volunteering to keep this tiny place open that is doing this work. And I want to thank people for taking the time to continue to go to off-Broadway not-for-profit theater. It so matters to all of us who are performing this. And let's just all pray and turn out that this is the most extreme swing of the pendulum we'll see in this moment of time and that in November we'll all be talking about what kind of musical comedy do you want to write because we're through this time. And struck by this phrase, you just used the benign censorship. I was thinking when we were reading this scene of how many ways there are to understand this moment, between Shala Mosh and Yolana Peretz about this manuscript. And I think that, I mean, they had a very long relationship and I think that Ashim anyways was like a son to him. I read that in their letters.  It's junk. We don't want to read it, right? It's a different kind of perspective. So it's interesting because there's something so, we can empathize with that. We can understand how somebody could say that under those circumstances. It's almost caring, right? And yet here we have this incredible play that could so easily have been burnt. I just wanted to add a few remarks. Considering that in 1876 Goldfaden started and he, with his droop from Yasi, he went to Galazzi and he tried to find a girl to play in his place. They found a girl and the mother said, I'm not going to give you until she gets married. So they married her to somebody in the troupe. This is not the story. But I want to say that in discussing this phenomenon in Israel in 1955, we talked about the idea that in 40 years from this situation where a woman could not play, could not be allowed to play, to have the kind of relationship in 1920s, it was a real explosion, a revolution in the Yiddish theater. So considering this, it's very interesting to see how the theater evolved. All the sexuality was pent up in the Jewish people for 2,000 years. Thank you very much. We can also add theatrical energy as well because as you mentioned in 1876 is when the first professional Yiddish theater comes into being and suddenly a year later there's an incredible number of these theaters. But there is a pent up theatrical energy as well. There's no space for performance and then suddenly there's this explosion. Absolutely. It's time for us to transition to the reception so I want to just ask if you have any last words for us today. Just what an incredible delight and honor it's been to be here and have this conversation. I will say one last thing which is that it's highly theatrical. We didn't really talk about the theatrics of this play but indecent is a highly physical and theatrical play and I encourage you all to go see it. Thank you.


Thank you. That was lovely. And Luca, from Marcos Books, is going to read for us. Thank you so much. A selection from Ulysses by James Joyce. I just made a whole book. Ulysses was published in 1922. The entire book takes place over the course of about 17 hours on June 16th, 1904, and into the early morning hours of June 17th. The passage I want to read for you is from about 2 p.m. as you can maybe hear. The hero, Leopold Bloom, has been out about all day, but a few things to do to go to the funeral if somebody didn't really know all that well. Swinging by the newspaper office, trying to sell an advertisement or two. That's what he does, he's canvasser. At this point in time, it's about 2 o'clock, he's feeling a little bit hungry, he drops into David Burns' pub in the middle of Dublin, which actually still exists.  He could go home, of course, and he might have to go home to get something to eat, but he knows that at 4 o'clock this afternoon, another man in Ulysses, Boylan, is going to come to his house and sleep with his wife. And there's nothing that he can do about it except, sort of accept it, right?  But all the while, this is on his mind, and in this passage, as he's sitting down and having his lunch to drink his wine to eat his sandwich, the taste of the wine, the taste of the sandwich, they remind him of the day when he proposed to his wife. Many years ago, he's about 38 now, they have a 17-year-old daughter, so he's thinking back almost two decades, you know, to a day when he made love to his wife, you know, outside on Hothill, outside Dublin, and asked her to marry him. All the while knowing, of course, what's going to happen in a couple of hours. A warm human plumpness settled down in his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces, all him sailed, with hungered flesh obscurity, emutely craved to adorn. Stuck on pain, two flies buzzed, stuck. Glowing wine on his palate, lingered, swallowed. Crushing the wine-pressed grapes of burgundy, the sun's heat it is, seems to a secret touch, telling me memory touched his sense, moistened, remembered, hidden under, wild ferns on health, below us, bay, sleeping sky, no sound, the sky, the bay, purple, by the lion's head, like yellow-green towards Sutton, fields of undersea, the lion's faint, brown in grass, buried cities, pillowed on my coat she had, her hair, earwigs in the heather's scrub, pillowed on my coat, my hand under her nape, he'll toss me all for wonder.


and now that you're in Kenya I want to put you on the spot have you listened to the Kenyan sound who are your favorite Kenyan artists oh yeah I've listened to a couple of a couple of the sound I'm not good with the names cause you know but I really like Saudi so we were supposed to work sometimes from years ago but like time and you know work and all that but I really love Saudi so that music is amazing. Another one the second one? I think it's your Saudi so for now to be honest like those are my favorite groups right now yeah. Alright so make sure you tag Saudi Soul on this comment section so that they see right? We're gonna make it happen for you. Tell them it's time to work now. What's up everybody welcome to SPM Buzz my name is Liz Jackson and today we have an international star right here on SPM Buzz and I'll let him introduce himself. What's up what's up everybody this is Philz. What's good people my name is Philz all the way from Lagos Nigeria representing we're live in Kenya just you know having fun and catching vibes. Welcome to Kenya we say Assante. Assante. Is this your first time in Kenya? No I've been I've been in Kenya a few years ago but yeah it's good to be back. Welcome to Kenya I hope you've tried some food some Kenyan food. No not yet so I just came in today so yeah yeah I'm looking forward to trying Kenyan food for sure. Okay make sure you try Uggali I'll tell your manager. Uggali what's that? Uggali is made from wheat flour. Also like use your hands like also I can okay. Welcome to Kenya we would want to know where did Philip or Philz start? Man Philz started from church from like music started from church you know had the background of you know teaching myself the keys and the drums in church and you know taking the choir on as well and teaching the choir and being a choir for like beer years and yeah that's where it started it all started from and then fast forward to when I was 16 I made my first heat track with Olamide called first of all and from there it was just back-to-back bangers and back-to-back hits. Now that you've mentioned Olamide when did you first meet him? We met in Kodetunes under Aydika Basa there's a studio called Kodetunes in Lagos and a record label called Kodetunes as well so I was an intern for Aydika Basa and Olamide was one of the promising acts that you know Aydika Basa was looking at signing so he was always in the studio and I was always in the studio and you know would always you know link up after everybody's done in the studio and work and just vibe and that's how we yeah. We knew you to be a very good producer right and what made you choose producing and not singing or rapping you know people say as long as you can talk you can sing. I actually chose singing the reason why I started producing was so I could make beats to the songs I was singing actually but the production sort of you know took off first and I got recognized for my beats so you know I focused on that for a while but now we are here so yeah. We had a list of top 100 songs and majority of them were Nigerian. What do you think Nigeria is doing different? I think it's just where the light is at at this moment I think it's because I believe it's all one black music I don't think there's and there's a Nigerian sound that oh there is a Nigerian sound and there is a Kenyan sound and there's like sounds from other parts of Africa but I think it's all one big spirit and one big culture just expressing itself in different sonics that's how I see it but yeah like yeah Afrobeat is what Afrobeat is right now and it's been a long time coming now it's just time to shed light to the rest of Africa and the rest of the world. And you earlier mentioned that you started from church and you know how did your parents take in you producing what is supportive? Not at first but when the checks started rolling in. Every yeah man yeah I love my parents man forever yeah I just understood that you know they just wanted what their definition of bests was for me and that was in my definition and I had to make them understand that yeah but it was a it was a pretty rough you know tug-of-war but yeah yeah. You produced majority of Olamide songs in the album I forgot the name. How was that for you? It was it was beautiful man because I'm sorry yeah man because because then I think I was 19 or 18 when I made the album and yeah it was just it was just amazing to have that opportunity to be able to craft a full project like I've always wanted to do that and I'm sure Olamide for like trusting me with his sound and his craft and his career and yeah like yeah like it was it was amazing like because me when I when I make music I like to be very involved and I like to you know I just you know like artists that understand my involvement and understand how intrusive I can be with the creative process and just you be very involved so yeah yeah man. And you started off when you were very young what is that one thing that has kept you grounded throughout the year? I never stopped learning that's one like down to five minutes ago I was still learning something and also understand that in my little bubble I might be a hero but in the grand scheme of things I'm really insignificant so that's that gives me very grounded and just makes me like live life basically yeah.  That's a very big question like you have to be more specific we're talking about the government man shout out to the government man they can't do better but shout out to them still. Yeah man like well we're just running our thing man like the music scene is very self-sufficient it's very self-driven it's very passion driven it's very hustle driven and story driven and yeah man like it's separate from the government man like I'm not gonna lie about that but yeah we're doing our thing and we're killing now let's talk about the song I call it Buju how was that it literally blew up could you take us through the process of making it what was going on where the idea yes finesse yeah I was in the studio man with Michael the producer and we're just vibing and like you know I said put down the melodies left seats for like a while actually and then came back to it after after a few days I put the lyrics and yeah like our finesse just came into my mind and I just you know made sense it just came together it was like a walk of art it just came together in my head and in my mind and you know I just dropped it and fun fact I posted the video the same day I recorded the song so immediately I finished the song I just picked up my phone and posted the video and that just happened like February a few months ago and yeah the rest is history all right and I would want to know how long does it take you to make up it or just like work on a full song it depends though it really depends like I've made songs in 40 minutes I've made songs in two hours I've made songs in five weeks I've made songs in two days first of all for example we made it in under one hour like 40 minutes yeah yeah like it depends on the flow and the vibe and the music yeah let's go to the international scene yeah which is that one artist that you would really really want to produce a song for them produce a song for yeah as a long list of them I mean you could take three yeah I'll say Drake Kanye West who is the third person artist and now that you're in Kenya I want to put you on the spot have you listened to the Kenyan sound who are your favorite Kenyan artists oh yeah I've listened to a couple of a couple of the sound I'm not good with the names because you know but I really like I love myself so we were supposed to work some time some years ago but like time and you know work and all that but I really thought so that music is amazing another one the second one I think it's your soul for now to be honest like that's those are my favorite groups right now all right so make sure you tag so this all on this comment section so that they see right we're gonna make it happen for you tell them it's time to work it's time to work and now that we've talked about the international scene I would want to know would you want to try out other genres of music like I'm a piano and make beats for them or you are just into Afro beat oh no I mean to music period like Afro beat is a sound but that's both is a spirit as well like I carry the spirit of Afro beat around forever and that like transcends into other general music like even over the years growing up as a producer I've made different genres you know from R&B to hip-hop to to I'm a piano to jazz to funk to 80s synthwave because I'm very you know expressive with my son I don't like boxes so yeah so yeah I'm a piano yeah I made a couple of my piano tracks I made hi but they could only go down the video I was what last year yeah that's a smash still yeah I have a song with costa teach coming up soon yeah I've been working on a couple a couple and I've been invent inventing a couple of genres as well that you guys are gonna hear yeah it's crazy all right interesting you've won a couple of awards right which is that one award that shocked you the most none oh wow so you expected it no I didn't that's why it doesn't shock me but I'm not shout out to all the you know I watch shows out there yeah shout out to all the watch shows out there shout out for the recognition but like I'm not doing it for the awards you get me like I'm doing it for me it's my story I'm telling yeah that's why like I'm grateful for them but you know I'm not shocked by them yeah okay I think that answered my next question which was how significant are those awards to you oh yeah I'm really grateful for them like it just shows that you're doing something right it doesn't it doesn't put anybody down in any way or it doesn't mean that the other person that did not win the award is not doing something right but I'm just grateful for them yeah that's that's what it is and have you worked with other producers just try and share ideas outside Nigeria outside Nigeria yeah I have actually worked a couple of producers in South Africa in Ghana in London in America yeah yeah like I always love collaborating and just just making things work it's all about the music for me like whatever make the music the music yeah I would want you to talk to someone out there who is watching you and they want to be an artist or they want to be a producer what would you tell them that's a very very fast wide answer just encourage someone I would say everything outside us no matter what happens inside so go inside that's what I would say whatever that means to anybody take it just go inside go inside yourself learn about yourself know yourself everything outside will sort itself out and I have people thought of having a masterclass or teaching people how to produce you know I want to enroll yeah I have actually but time time you're busy man I've I've been on the road for six months now it's crazy time yeah but one of these days you know when I have enough time I have all the resources I want to have for for that yeah I would start because I really want to do it all right thank you so much for talking to us so I think we're expecting a collab with Saudi Soul yeah I'm gonna keep shouting yeah talk to them you're not up to them all right thank you so much we do appreciate all as Santa he got it guys he got it please do please do all right guys that was feels make sure you follow him on his socials check his work and subscribe to SBM buzz