Good evening! There's really not very many games as iconic as Left 4 Dead, especially in regards to its characters. Whether you prefer the lovable goofballs from the second game or the more tactful cast of the original, there's one thing the survivors all have in common, and that's being pretty much unforgettable. Everything from their dialogue and voice acting down to their silhouette design and taste in music was honed to perfection by Valve, and helps allow them to still stand today 15 years later as some of the best and most distinctive video game protagonists ever made. However, if you've spent any good amount of time online reading or looking into this legendary game's past, chances are you've at some point seen images of the game from earlier in its development, sporting a completely different looking cast, and ask yourself, who the hell are these people? Well, it turns out that between its characters, infected weapons, levels, and even game mechanics, Left 4 Dead changed a lot more than most people know. And even despite the two games having remarkably short development cycles, tons of ideas and mechanics were left on the cutting room floor or otherwise drastically changed before the game came out. And though it sits today as one of Valve's most popular and fondly remembered series, most people still really don't know the extent of these two games' turbulent development cycles, or just how differently they were originally going to look and play. So today, I'm gonna dig into the cut content from both of these beloved games and show you all the Left 4 Dead we almost got. Let's start from the very beginning. Counter-Strike. Chances are you already know this if you've seen that back for Blood Cropcat video, but Left 4 Dead started out as basically just a custom game mode that Total Rock Studios came up with while working on Counter-Strike Source for Valve. While we were developing bots for Counter-Strike Source, we discovered that a few of us armed to the teeth with automatic weaponry against 30 knife wielding enemy bots was a lot of fun. After shipping Counter-Strike Source in late 2004, we started experimenting with new game prototypes. That basic kernel of small team of friends against hordes of clawing enemies was something we kept coming back to, and we soon realized that the co-op versus the horde game had a ton of potential. The earliest iterations of Left 4 Dead, at least according to this reply, Left 4 Dead co-creator Chet Fallasek gave me on Twitter, were called Terror, Terror, Terror and Blood Run. I for one am very thankful the game didn't release under either of those god-awful names. Anyway, much like how Counter-Strike pits two player-controlled teams called Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists against one another, the earliest iterations of Left 4 Dead pit a team of humans against another player-controlled team of infected, which I find funny because that technically means that the way the game started out was actually closer to what we know today as versus mode than the co-op PvE campaign mode the series is most iconic for. Anywho, after the project's core gameplay was fleshed out, the name Left 4 Dead was eventually settled on. But there was still plenty that changed about the game after this point. Footage from various press releases and the game showing at E3 2007 offer a clearly different vision of the game. That's mainly because these are from before Valve stepped in. See, the game was fun. Intuitively so. It just worked. But Turtle Rock were having a great deal of trouble finishing the game on their own due to a lack of direction and a low budget. Once the legendary Orange Box with Portal, Half-Life 2 Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 shipped out the door though, a lot more hands than Valve came untied and immediately began gravitating toward Left 4 Dead, leading to its punctual release in the following year of 2008. And by the time the game's sequel rolled around, Turtle Rock's hands had been washed completely clean of the project, save for some work on its DLC campaigns. Anyway, now that we've got that boring nerd context out of the way, why don't we kick things off by having a look at those weird alternate reality survivors that I showed you at the start. Every character in Left 4 Dead originally looked pretty much completely different to the ones we got. The original cast was designed by Turtle Rock using stock photos of random people from the 3DSK website, which is also where the textures on the common infected and the fishermen from Half-Life 2 Lost Coast were sourced from. They were changed because Valve thought they looked too well-prepared for the apocalypse, and that a more casual, everyday design for them would help the game resonate with a wider audience. They also planned to make cinematic animated trailers for the game and didn't think their simple faces were of high enough quality to not look weird on the big screen. So with the help of a casting call for face actors and Moby Frankie, yes, the same Moby Frankie who led the art design on TF2, the cast was overhauled into the one we know today. Let's start out with Zoe, since she probably went through the most changes out of all of the characters. Her original draft looked a lot younger, and early pictures show her not in red, but instead in blue, and even yellow. Her holsters and striped socks were dropped, her likeness switched out for that of Sonja Kinski, and after trying out a few different hairstyles, Valve finally landed on this final design. Zoe is also actually the only survivor who changed voice actors. In the final game, she's voiced by Jen Taylor, but she was originally casted as Alicia Glidewell and was kind of a different character altogether. Funnily enough, almost all of the pain and death sounds you hear in the final game are actually still left over from Alicia's portrayal of Zoe. Moving on to the squad leader and my personal favorite character, Bill is a funny case, because his original iteration is somehow both very different and also very recognizable. He originally had a tactical vest with American flag patches and dog tags, but other than that, he kind of just looks like the same Namvet guy with a beret on. His likeness was replaced with that of Bernard Fouquet, who to me almost looks exactly the same as the original face, except the tad bit younger. Before his design was finalized, Bill was also briefly shown with a striped t-shirt, which is visible in both concept art and in early promotional clips for the game, but other than that, Bill seems to have stayed pretty much the same exact character from his point of inception. The same cannot be said, however, of Lewis, who is probably the least recognizable out of all of the original cast. He's way grimeer and kind of looks like a guy at a Borderlands or something. While the Lewis we know today is a bald, enthusiastic office worker modeled after Sean Bennett, this guy is way more serious looking. He's got a full head of hair and even a beard, as well as a bandage on his forehead, a bandolier, and a brown coat with a yellow vest. Concept art even shows him smoking a cigarette, and it's hard to imagine these two would even get along if you put them in a room together. Now, if you think this design was bland, it's apparently because it was a revision of an even earlier draft of Lewis that was designed to be a religious zealot in accompanying religious garb. This is only ever mentioned in a single little known interview with Michael Booth, and there doesn't seem to be any known concept art or images of a religious Lewis ever released. So the actual original 2005 inception of his character still remains somewhat of an enigma in the beta community. Francis is funny because he was just fatter. He was just fatter, that's it, plus a fuller head of hair and a beard, I guess. His final likeness is that of Taylor Knox, who's apparently a professional surfboarder, but I'd say this original model resembles the bikers I've seen in real life a lot more. He also kind of resembles one of the midnight riders from the second game, funnily enough. Yeah. The original Turtle Rock survivor models were actually posted on the Left 4 Dead 2 workshop in 2013 thanks to a negotiation between Valve and a modern name Splinx, which to my knowledge is one of the very few times Valve has officially released cut content due to community demand, which is kind of cool. I can definitely see why these guys were cycled out for the more picturesque cast that we got, but it's still kind of interesting to imagine how different this game would have turned out had the more grimy and guttural survivors stuck around. Moving on though, next I want to talk a little bit about the infected. Easily the most famous cut infected is the Screamer, who was the predecessor to the boomer.  However, he was basically deemed too confusing for new players, and his Scream wound up being reused for the Hunter's Pounce. You can actually even see them allude to the Screamer in one of the earliest Left 4 Dead trailers, which is kind of interesting. Now, there's a common misconception in the Left 4 Dead community that there was once going to be zombie dogs in the game. This comes from the fact that there are sounds you can find in the game's files labeled zombie dog, but it turns out these were actually just placeholder sounds for the Hunter, who also underwent a lot of changes throughout his development.  He was also at one point able to detach from his pounce at any time, use a leap attack to push players and run away to regenerate health, which obviously made him pretty overpowered and was toned down for a reason. The tank originally had a lighter skin tone and more health points, and we can tell from concept art and various file names that he was originally called the Hulk, which is kind of funny since his voice acting is performed by Fred Tatashore, the same guy who voices the actual Incredible Hulk. You probably know the smoker for sniping you across the map and pulling you in with his tongue, but you might be surprised to learn that he originally also had an attack similar to the Spitter in Left 4 Dead 2, being that he would produce toxic smoke that would drain the health of anyone who walked through it. Wrapping the segment up, the witch had black clothes instead of the greenish beige ones we know her for, and if Stardal was originally able to do collateral damage if the survivors were too This was far too powerful and would sometimes lead to entire teams being wiped, hence the nerf. Other than that, the boomers explosion originally did player damage and his bile was originally red, and the common infected for some reason have unused animations suggesting that they were at one point going to be able to sit down on and get up off benches and chairs throughout the level. I wonder why that was cut. Speaking of level, Left 4 Dead's campaigns changed a fair amount as well, and there were even some that were cut altogether. The most famous one is Dammit, a campaign that was meant to bridge the gap between dead air and blood harvest. It was never finished, but was released to the public by Turtle Rock in 2016, and is playable from start to finish.   It's finale is horrendous man, Jesus. Less well documented though is a cancelled campaign called The River, which connected death toll and dead air. In this campaign, you would get kicked off a boat and explore this cool union tech tower, from there traversing your way across rooftops to finally reach the greenhouse we see at the start of dead air.  As for the campaigns we did get though, earlier screenshots show a heavier reliance on counter strike assets and more detail in some areas, presumably cut down on for performance reasons. No mercy was initially named Urban Underground, and was overall a bit brighter looking from the footage we have. The original versions of the rooftop finale and the subway look especially different. Very little is known about the earlier iterations of death toll and dead air, though Blood Harvest appears to have originally been a lot more colorful and its finale was also laid out slightly differently. I actually find it kind of sad that the one we got was so dull and washed out in comparison. And finally, we gotta talk about the items and mechanics of this game, because those changed a lot, probably more than anything else we've covered so far. Left 4 Dead's weapons were originally just ports of those from Counter Strike Source, though soundscape files suggest it was also at one point a rocket launcher and a flare gun that the survivors could get their hands on. The Molotov and pipe bomb both looked pretty different in early development, as did the first aid kit, which was more of a hard case than this soft pouch thing it became. They also functioned slightly differently, since the pipe bomb didn't attract enemies and was basically just a grenade, and right clicking a teammate with the med kit would give them it instead of healing them directly. One of the things I find most interesting is that Left 4 Dead at one point had an upgrade system. You could upgrade your guns by giving them laser sights or extended magazines, which I can only assume is what led to the incendiary ammo and laser sight upgrades we got in the sequel. As for player attacks, who were originally going to be able to do what's referred to internally as a stomp attack, which would insta-kill low level infected if you singled them out. And at one point, down players were also able to crawl around on the floor while shooting. This was presumably cut to help balance versus mode, but there's a lot of modded online servers that re-enable it if you want to try it out sometime. Additionally, cut animations exist for cocking your gun after every reload and also inspecting them when you pick them up. I initially thought these were really cool and wondered why they were cut, until I played around with them using a mod and realized they get really distracting and annoying after a while. And finally, there's the HUD, which changed a fair amount as well. Earlier iterations showed more of the survivors, were more centered, and were overall bulkier and more colorful. That about covers the original game's cut content, but before we move on to Left 4 Dead 2, I want to mention that even its branding and art went through many many changes. The hand you see on the cover of the game was originally meant to look like it was chomped off by a zombie, but the ESRB took issue with this, leading to it being changed to look more like it's been burnt or cauterized instead. And while we're talking about it, you might find it funny to know that the hand is actually that of Andrea Wicklund, who's an artist at Valve who you might know from Portal 2 as well as those Half-Life 2 Episode 3 concept art pieces that have been haunting Valve fans for over a decade now. Oh and also in Britain, throwing up two fingers in the way the sequels cover shows is considered a swear. So on their copies of the game, the hand was turned around, which looks really weird. Moving on though, Left 4 Dead 2 began development pretty much right after Left 4 Dead 1's release, as Valve saw immediate potential to flesh the game and its ideas out further and make a bigger, better and more appealing version of their own. There were actually a lot of scrap survivor concepts that were illustrated early on that I find to be kind of fascinating. Take for instance this early lineup, featuring an emo tattooed guy on a tank top, an Asian guy in yellow with a chainsaw who am actually a bit sad didn't make the cut, this southern country girl in cowboy boots, and an early heavier version of Rochelle. There's this archer, which apparently was also a role Coach was supposed to take on at one point, as well as this Asian doctor lady and a female reporter, this Cedar worker who's apparently a big fan of 50 Cent, this emo teenager girl, and this 1950s housewife looking woman. Unfortunately it doesn't seem any of these concepts made it far into production, and the cast we got was decided on pretty early. Though the color of their clothes did evolve a couple times, Rochelle's hair changed a bit and she was originally seen in orange instead of pink, Ellis' shirt was gray and blue instead of yellow, Coach was slightly heavier and wore blue instead of purple, and Nick's suit was just a little bit cleaner looking. You can actually find alternate versions of some of the campaign posters featuring the survivors and their original clothes online, which is kind of neat. Moving on to the undead. There were a lot of ideas for infected and left for dead too that were cut. Though I've seen particularly fascinated with the idea of zombie animals.  There was at one point plants for a meat wall, which is an enormous cannibal zombie that looked to have been four or five times the size of a regular infected and would have presumably been some kind of mini-boss. There was also at one point a cut special infected called the leaker, which you can actually still play as in the final game using console commands though he simply appears as a boomer. With the leaker the idea was a kind of boomer that could take damage and shoot out spouts of goo, and you could plant yourself and explode be this walking bomb.  It's pretty unsatisfying. The idea isn't entirely bad, and some of that we brought over to the spitter.  First it was a naked monstrosity, then it was a granny, then they made it into that car crash proof human meme before finally landing on the one we know today. The charger was also at one point a naked monstrosity that looked like something straight out of dead space. Other alternative renditions looked more muscly, more bubbly, or more ape-like. A lot of the crazier ideas from early in the games planning are said to have been cut because they were too wacky and supernatural for the series. And while it's fun to imagine what these guys would have looked like in action, I can definitely see why they were scrapped. There's a fine line between an infected like the hunter or the witch who are basically just humans with claws, versus a 20 foot tall monster who cries blood and a guy that shoots rats out of his tummy. I don't have too much to say about the levels in Left 4 Dead 2, as they were all developed alongside each other unlike those in the original game. They don't seem to have changed too terribly much, and I couldn't find anything to suggest that there were any cut levels or anything like that. We do know that the finale to Dark Carnival was going to take place on a train at one point though, and there's also this article that claims Val was at one point planning to make a campaign that would tie into the 2012 horror movie The Cabin in the Woods, though the movie's budget issues and delays seem to have led to this crossover being scrapped very early. I did find that there were a lot of cut items in the game though. For example, you were once supposed to be able to use a riot shield and a didgeridoo as melee weapons, and the melee weapons were also originally supposed to break after prolonged use, kind of like the tools in Minecraft do. They briefly experimented with having ammo packs you could carry with you, just like the first aid kit, but it was apparently cut because Valve wanted to incentivize players to cycle out their weapons. The new items we did get went through some changes as well. The adrenaline was originally shown as just a yellow pill bottle, then it became a syringe, then it finally became the shot we got in the end. And the D-Fib also briefly appeared as a reskinned health pack with a lightning bolt on it. As far as I can tell though, that's pretty much it for Left 4 Dead 2 and the series as a whole regarding cut content. There's a few small details regarding levels changing that I left out for the sake of brevity, and there's no way I got everything, but I'd like to think what I've shown still paints a pretty vivid image of the development of Left 4 Dead in its sequel. And if you'd like to know more, I'm sure some good Samaritans will have even more interesting insight if you scroll down to the comments below. I'd love to have done a full segment breaking down the cancelled Left 4 Dead 3 game set in Morocco, but there's not a terrible amount known about it other than what's said in the Final Hours of Half-Life Alyx book and some early concept art that surfaced a few years ago. It's said to have been cancelled because the Source 2 engine wasn't stable enough and that made Half the team want to switch to Unreal instead, leading to a deadlock and the project's complete cancellation, which I just think is a colossal shame. Then again though, it was apparently going to have base building mechanics and be open world and have skill trees, so maybe it would have sucked and been a complete letdown, I guess we'll never know. I'd also love to point you all to some good Left 4 Dead beta mods to check out, but the most competent one, Left 4 Dead Zero, was apparently shut down in 2017 after Valve went silent on them in the fallout of Hunt Down the Freeman, which is a shame because it actually looked to be a very interesting project, yet another thing to thank this shitty fucking game for. There is however a project called Terror Strike that's currently in development and seeks to remake the late 2007 alpha of the original Left 4 Dead, so definitely go check that out sometime if you get the chance, I'll link it in the description. I'll also link some workshop collections for anyone who wants to toy around with some of the beta survivors in Left 4 Dead 2. Before we wrap up, I want to address Valve directly and tell them we, the people of the Valve community, need Left 4 Dead Source 2, so please, please do it, I don't care if it's a new game or if it's a port of Left 4 Dead 2, whatever, just give me it, I need it. Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video or at least learned something, subscribe for more, support me on Patreon if you want to join my super special secret private club, I gotta chill it at least once or twice, and have a good day. Things have been okay for me except that I'm a zombie now, I really wish you'd let us in, guys speak for all of us when I say I understand.


I think sur la réalité, something above it is hovering. It's like a dream where you kind of know where you are. You have seen everything, but it's different. And it feels foreign. It feels alien. And it is almost like we are in a science fiction movie where actually now the reality is stronger than that fiction. We have talked for over four months with theater artists and now we have started to enlarge our scope, our focus. And we have thinkers, curators, producers with us and hamburger will be with us tomorrow. Actually students from New York City on Friday. And today we have with us a great worker in the field of theater in New York City, someone who was truly admired, beloved, I even would say, and respected in the New York City performing arts world in our field and part landscape of that big, big field of theater. It's Jay Wegman, who is the director of the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. And he's the artistic leader since 2016. Before he did fantastic in great order, the Abrams Art Center at Henry Street Settlement. He got an OB award, a Bessie award, many, many others. He was a fellow of John F. Kennedy Center Foundation for the Performing Arts. And of course, it's influential in what he presents. I think his presentations of work at the university in the United States, I think is leading on the scale of the productions when it comes to presenting. And of course, it's also a different mission than at Bard, which is part of the theater program where there's also teaching workshops and writing what, when it really comes to presenting, there are the three great places, Cal Arts, I think Montclair University, but at the moment, they're Skirball NYU seems to be a place that really is openly seeking for answers and help us to ask better questions. As we say with artists who are in the moment, anticipate the future, also Jay has to see what is going on there, what is happening, what will happen. And of course, everything also has come to a hold. This program is about listening. And as we say here, radical listening. So I apologize always for talking so much in the very beginning. Jay, thank you for taking the time to join us. Thank you. And thank you for that lovely introduction. That was nice to hear. No, no, it's all true. And you know, I mean it. I know I can only imagine on how many Zoom calls you are on every day. Tell us a bit, you know, you are the first or one of the first also we have of an artistic director of a presenting space, a strictly presenting space. How are you experiencing this time? I hate saying it's a new normal because it doesn't feel normal and it's really not new anymore. But what we did was, you know, in March, just like everybody else in New York City, we canceled the remainder of our season and we didn't know what was going to happen for the fall season. So that of course was canceled. And then I was just informed because we're not independent, we do function well within New York University that our spring season most likely would be canceled as well. And this was in light of both what the Metropolitan Opera said, it's also what, you know, Broadway announced. So fingers crossed, we will kind of pick up where we left off in the fall of 2021. It's going to be kind of as a friend of mine says a Frankenstein season, which is a little bit of what's left over and what we wanted to do. And of course, with the changing political landscape, we have to be nimble with that, with what's going on the culture. So it's, even though we're not in the theater working right now, we are certainly all working behind the scenes like we always have. So when did you hear that you won't have a spring season next year? Probably two weeks ago. I still have my fingers crossed. It is an 800 seat house. And we were planning on doing some smaller things with the audience seated on the stage. So perhaps we can still do that and maintain some very good social distancing in the house. But again, it all depends on what the governor, what the mayor says, and of course, what the president of the university says. We won't be doing any of the large things we were anticipating, such as a loop of production. But there are some smaller things that I think we might be able to pull off. So wait on that. In Europe, often it's 20, 30% in France, they even up to 50%, do you think? It is a realistic chance. Well, I'm on this informal network of downtown presenters in New York City. And so we each have our own challenges in terms of the size of our spaces. Skirball is definitely the largest of all these spaces. So we can be the most flexible perhaps, but we don't have any guidelines yet. Nothing has been stated about opening up theaters for performance. I know churches have been able to open up at some level. I have no idea how that's going, but I know that there aren't any theaters in New York City who are actually doing live performance within their venues. Certainly people have gone outside to do things. Also, certainly a lot of people have gone to the Zoom platform or to some type of internet platform, but we're all still treading water. And it does get a little surreal. I mean, thinking that it's October right now, and this is, you know, I mean, who in their wildest imagination thought a year ago that we would be living like this right now? I mean, it boggles my mind. It's incredible. I mean, we are starting our prelude festival today. We've done it for 15 years. It's online only. It would have been unthinkable. It's against everything the festival stands for. If I understand you're right, New York City will look at the theater season opening for next year, September, October, so. Yeah, at least the larger venues. So, yeah. I mean, so we need people like, like uni doing the prelude festival to keep us mindful of what's out there even though we can't be there in person to see what's going on. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is, it is truly a most serious estate of the theater at the moment. And the Marvin Carlson always pointed out that even in the history of theater, a complete shutdown, even so now it opened again in Europe and many other places. But for a while, the entire theater world shutdown has never happened in the history of mankind. So we are living in times that are unprecedented and changing. Jay, for you as a presenter, these days where you're, I assume, in your apartment and looking at your walls, at your books, in the mornings you get up and look at your computer and say, what meals do I get today? And you're not out in a group, not presenting, not talking, not. Is something changing in the software of your hard drive of your brain? Yes. What you're doing? Yes. Skirtball kind of has a two-fold mission. Certainly the presenting international performing arts is our primary thrust. But we also, since we are well within a university, we focus on discourse as well. So early on we decided not really to move the arts presenting part to the web because while some people can do it very well, Skirtball just wasn't in a place to start doing live work online. However, we have become very, very well versed in doing a lot of public talks that we used to do for the university anyway. So I have become very adept at running Zoom webinars. I've taught myself how to do all kinds of premier, Adobe Premiere Pro things on how to put little films together. So for me, I have learned all these skills that I never thought one that I would need and two never do. So, but that's unique to NYU, that's unique to where we are. So, and also NYU has been very kind in supporting all the staff. We have not been subject to furloughs. A lot of our staff members have been reassigned within the university to help with PPE distribution or helping with phone lines, things like that. PPE is... I'm sorry? PPE means... The personal protection equipment, the mask and the thermometers, things like that. And also anyone who works at NYU, before they can go in a building, they have to take weekly COVID test. And so we are... Scribble's a site at the lobby where these tests are being distributed to, I don't know how many people work at NYU, 30, 40,000 people work there. So, I mean, that includes the hospital and everything. Yeah, so we are well-established in doing all that. And then the next week, we are also gonna be, I'm very proud to say, an early voting site. So, we again are one of the few places at NYU that is both interior facing. We look in and we support the university, we support the students with our programming, with our curricular activities, but we also are very public facing. And here we are doing it, just like we normally do, but again, without the artistic part. Yeah, it's fantastic to see our, sometimes also our Segal's Theater in Mittal is used for voting. You have machines in there, you see people assembling and being part of a functioning system of democracy. And of course, we encourage everybody to vote, everybody to get out. Anybody who said politics doesn't matter, everything is so the same. You should, who cares who you vote for? It's not true, it became clear. But Jay, my question is, you also, let's say, part of the machine, part of the presenting, part of bringing great things over, fighting for the real estate and the New York Times to get a review and all of it. Is this full break of a big car, that's maybe even a racing car, what you're driving, you all know, that's now being blocked. Is it a moment where you think of what you do or is it a moment to something, say, we have to do something different or is it a confirmation of how significant it really is because we miss it so much? What is happening? It's all of that. On one hand, it feels like a force sabbatical. I mean, I had no choice but to not do this, but at the same time, we need to be relevant. So that's why we kind of shifted to the discourse, but also knowing that this isn't going to last forever. So what happens when we can go back into the theaters and will people want to go back into the theaters? And we do a lot of international programming. And that was always getting more complicated with the visas. We're getting harder and harder for artists to get them to come into the country. The costs are going up. So it's going to be much more complicated. So on one hand, this enforce sabbatical was kind of nice because a lot of us kind of get on a treadmill and we travel a lot. We're always thinking about what's happening next week in our spaces, but also what's going to happen in two years in our spaces. So it's a lot of a dance that goes in on people who are fortunate enough to have a job like mine, but at the same time it can get to be somewhat like a gerbil in the proverbial wheel. So this has made a lot of us just stop and think about what we're doing and maybe the way that we've inherited these systems, this is the best way to move forward with that. So Skirbil on one hand is looking to do more commission work, but knowing that we are not producing theater, we are presenting house. So that can be a nimble line we cross from time to time. But for the most part, we don't have the capacity to do all the stuff and dealing with the unions and things like that. So, but at the same time, we're conscious about the world and the climate and people traveling by plane to get here. And what ethical responsibility do we as presenters have in both honoring the need to make our world smaller, at least artistically, but also to save the world and not to just bring artists over for a weekend and then send them away. So that means that we have to have better networks within both North America, Canada and the United States on how to bring artists over not just for one or two gigs but maybe to revamp that touring process. It's kind of fallen to the wayside, especially with some of the more avant-garde people that I like to bring and certainly Jed over in Montclair likes to bring. It's often too risky for those type of artists to say go to Omaha. So that I can truly count on one hand really where someone like Milo Rao might be invited in the United States. So part of that is just educating our fellow countrymen about what else is out there and not everything is comfort food in terms of the performance. So I know that the visa also question is a big thing. Now, nobody can really travel because of the COVID restrictions but as an international presenter or most as you said in the way, do you feel that this country is supportive, is encouraging it or do you think it's being made intentionally complicated? I can't say that it's intentional because I don't wanna be that cynical. However, the reality is that it is getting more difficult. The bureaucracy, the expense, it costs a lot of money to bring someone to this country and forget about their artistic views or forget about putting them up in hotels or whatever. It's thousands of dollars just to bring in artists. There are people who are trying to fight that the Dance USA folks and some of those other professional leagues like that are really trying to talk to government leaders to try to affect that. I don't feel like I have that much agency in the matter but I'm glad that other people are. But it's incredibly difficult to bring artists here even from Canada. It doesn't matter where they're coming from. Well, sure it does. I mean, it's harder to bring someone from the Middle East than it is from Canada but nevertheless, Canadian artists can't just skip over the border. They have to go through the same amount of paperwork. So it is very difficult to bring international artists over especially the larger companies because then that cost is just multiplied. But for each visa often you have to pay a fee and an expedition fee. How much, what are we talking about? Well, it's even more now than it was a year ago. So I'm going to throw out a ballpark figure of around 7,000 for a company. But then visas also frequently have to get two visas. One for the artists themselves and then one for the people who come with the company who aren't necessarily practicing artists on the stage but support the team. So we're talking $7,000 to $10,000 at a minimum. So it's incredibly expensive as you see. And then because we're not commercial, we can't pass that. If we passed all of our expenses off to our ticket buyers our tickets would be $400, $500 apiece. Thank God we are subsidized by a lot of members and donors and some foundations and things like that. I frequently say that NYU doesn't support us. I mean, they give us the space but they do not give us programming money. So we have to be very flexible and creative in how we bring these people over and not bankrupt them, us or the audience members who want to see them. So that's just one of the problems facing people in my position.  It is still up to you for fundraising often and then complications to get a visa and you have to prove it. You need letters from colleagues to say this is an important company. There's a scam that you also have to get actors equity to sign off and then you have to pay actors. I mean, really it does scam might be a little too harsh of a word, but it's kind of a paid to play type of thing. And it's... And so we see perhaps less than our students or theater goes less than even in decades before because it became so expensive and then tickets became so expensive. And we see a backlash was our students sometimes say I cannot afford BAM tickets. I couldn't afford Lincoln Center Theater festival tickets. It's all subsidized euro stuff. So I'm not going to even write about it. I'm not going to engage an artistic on a way or on a way of a research or critic. So it's a great contribution that you make that NYU makes and the school makes bringing over truly significant artists things you have shown there would not have gotten here and they are some of the most exciting and the most remarkable work we have seen in New York City. And I think Carol Martin also that NYU she wrote and TDR she said that COVID is creating a new way of producing whether one of the best radical differences that will be after TAC as we say here the time after Corona will be there will be a different way of producing because of things like you learn. Now, do you feel that's true? Will there be changes in the way you produce co-produce? Certainly, I'm not aware of her article but I will jump on the internet and find it after we hang up. So I'd like to see what her perspective is but definitely things are going to change. Things are totally going to change. Anything from the number of audience members who can come in and maybe within five years we can get back to a hundred percent capacity but also, you know... You think audiences will not come back? I'm eager to go sit in an audience again. However, I hear people saying they're scared to go sit in an audience. So I'm hoping that a vaccine is going to be a silver bullet and we can all act like this never happened but that's just naive. That's never going to happen that way. So Carol is definitely right. I don't know to what extent but artists are concerned with their own safety, rightfully so. Coming back in, are the people on the stage or in the venue with you? Are they okay? So it's a web. It's a network and it's a matrix and one thread is going to influence another. So definitely, I mean, I've already talked about the international artists, how hard it is to get them here anyway. What will our government say about bringing people in from other countries? There's so many levels to this. It gets to be like a Rubik's Cube and it's hard to make all the colors the same side. Incredible. Not only you say it will be till next fall, actually around the time now until Cedar will pick up. You think it might take up to five years to get to all kinds of people comfortable? Yeah. But you know, Frank, people aren't even going back to the movie theaters. So, I mean, you can't in New York City but if you read what's happening in the rest of the country, movie theaters are going to go bankrupt. I read a week or so ago because I can't remember when because time really has no meaning anymore but AMC I think was going to shut down a fair number of their movie theaters. So, you know, and that's movie theaters. The largest British, I say movie chain, declared bankruptcy in AMC and lots of them are of course close to it. If this goes on till next summer, definitely it will be a big change that we now finally we see the industry like with Disney's live streams that films will go directly to the living rooms and that idea of the assembly of seeing something together in a space also with the movies might be a luxury and there will be many, much, much fewer possibilities. We will see it is just incredible the changes that we perhaps are too close with our eyes to really see or understand will be much more clear in the two, three, 10 years from now and I agree with you that it is a time of a radical change and we have to be part of it to create also something new out of it or something different that perhaps takes back or brings us back, you know, to the very beginning. So many people, so many artists we have talked to over 100 now said, you know, we have to go back to where we started from the rituals, the small spaces, community-oriented work. Well, I'm still pondering this article in the back of my head and, you know, there's all kinds of other issues going on. It's just that Corona has forced us to stop and think about them. So there is the climate. There is what's happening to with matters of race both here in the United States and the world and, you know, it's sometimes when you don't have this opportunity to pause, this is probably one of the silver linings of Corona is it is forcing us to pause and not be knee-jerk in our reactions to these things but to actually take this time and think about, well, what does it mean to be a college presenter in New York City and how do you reflect what's going on politically, socially, economically in the United States but then also what do you do to help save the climate? Do you just stop bringing artists in? Jerome Bell a while ago said that he was not going to travel anymore by airplane. So that's admirable but, you know, what impact is that gonna have on his practice? He will only be able to move probably within the European Union. So who knows? But so, yes, moving forward, things are going to be different. They have to be different and Corona is giving us a bubble in which to rethink how we might move forward. And I wanna say might because we really won't know how to move forward till we're moving forward again. You said we are not engaging in the kind of Zoom theater performance world at the moment, why? I think early on, everybody jumped on that bandwagon and the bandwidth was just too wide. And also, I will say that I saw some very good things but also I just saw some things that looked incredibly thrown together. So I didn't want, if Skirball is going to present something artistically to the world, there has to be a level of production that I'm not embarrassed of. So we are talking to an artist who we had commissioned to do something in February and I've given him the freedom to move it to the internet if he wants to. My only caveat was I don't want it to look like a Zoom meeting. I, you know, there has to be and that doesn't mean it has to look like it's on Netflix either. If he does something that will respond to the medium of the internet in a clever way, there's a company named Dead Center based in Ireland and for the Dublin Theater Festival they actually did an incredibly clever piece that was very well suited to the internet. I think it is online. I don't remember the name of it but if you go to Dead Center on their website, Bill, I would recommend people see this as a very interesting, very intelligent way of doing performance for the internet but Skirball isn't there right now. We present and early on it was great that, so Skirball happens to be one of the theaters in New York City that also presents the National Theater Live broadcast. And so, and I don't even know if they're still doing it but the National Theater Live was doing a lot of streaming. So of course we were advertising that as something we could say we were participating in when we really weren't, we were just passing the news along. So we just weren't in a space and there wasn't anything that we were actually going to do that could have been shifted to the internet but now there are people who are doing it very cleverly. There's New York Theater Workshop, some of the things that the public but we're not quite there yet. And because just unlike the New York Theater Workshop or the public theater, we aren't a producing theater. We are presenter. So it's a little more difficult for us. Yeah, I think I never fully thought that through that you are a presenter and actually your only way would be to present what someone already have it done but they have it on their website, they have done it and they don't need you and your great, beautiful stage. And that is quite something. Do you think that presenters will have in the future a new wing like lots of European theater have ballet, opera, drama, the small whatever, 90, 90 theater. Will there be the digital zoom theater wing for every theater? Will that be something that people will? I don't know if it'll be zoom theater but we certainly can't go back to a zoom free world. And again, one of the positive things about the coronavirus was we zoom allows you and I to talk like this. And one thing that Scribble did too, again, one of the benefits of being embedded in the university is we started an academic class that the undergraduate students get credit for. We call it the NYU Scribble masterclasses. We've invited six artists from around the world to lead six individual masterclasses for NYU students and that's every other week. And so the intervening weeks are lectures or seminars led by NYU faculty. Now we couldn't have done this without zoom. We had Thomas Ostermeyer one week tomorrow. We're having Tim Etchells. There's no way we could have brought them in to do a two hour masterclass. So that is one of the benefits of zoom. That is us looking at our constraints and thinking, well, what can we do within these constraints? How can we be creative? So that has been fairly successful. We are making those masterclasses available to the public through our website. And we might continue to do that once we're back in the realm of the normal, whatever that means. But also we do a lot of things that surround our events and one of our staff members, Jay De Leon, started a book club where the books each week were tied into the production at some level. And we've shifted that to the web, well to the zoom through our website. And sometimes we get 300 people. We were lucky to get 10 to 15 in the lobby before production. So again, that's a shocker to us. And it's a huge benefit because we're getting our name out there more. People obviously have a need to connect even though we're all just sitting every day talking only to our computers. But I can't imagine not engaging the internet like we have been. It's been a very good tool. And I can't imagine that just fading away when we can go back into theaters. That is it. These master artists who you bring in that in a way fulfill also the mission of this Kerbal to engage students, to give context, to see the dramaturgical tool to help us think things through and see that theater is an art form and that there's context and that it actually provides next to entertainment also a serious in a way philosophical statement on us. The dramaturgical part is really, really important to me. And thanks for bringing that up. I wanna say that I was really, really, really fortunate to grow up where I did. I grew up in Minneapolis back in the 80s when Lee Vu Chulay was running the Guthrie. And I didn't know what a dramaturg was and their programs were incredible. There'd be these essays in them and there'd be these costume design sketches and everything. And 40 years later, you go to Europe and that's just everybody does that in their theater but I had never seen that before and I haven't seen it in the United States very often. Lincoln Center will put together those magazines and so that's a good thing. But and that dramaturgical material that the Guthrie has made available through that their programs was such a part of the production for me. So it's been important for me and for Skirball to continue, I guess, Lee Vu Chulay's legacy in terms of throwing out all these other things that reflect their production at some level or support them perfectly by showing the design process for the scenery. So all of that is really, really important to me. And but also you don't need that if you simply wanna go watch the production, great. So again, it is additional material that could enhance the viewers or the audience member's experience of what they're seeing. So what are you seeing as a presenter of the idea of the VR world? Some people say the VR field missed the Corona time. Zoom took over. Meanwhile, it should have been or could have been everybody gets a headset and they are now down to 200 or 300 amazing content is out there but it hasn't taken on. What do you think about the VR and presenting and theater artists perform or do you have plans? Do you see things? No, I'm a Luddite. I mean, I've obviously not totally since we're Zooming but I've only had one experience with VR and maybe it's also my age but I went again to see something somewhere in Europe and it was a workshop but they were using VR and I found it very clunky and very impressive but to what end? I mean, I could be sitting here in my living room with VR on and I guess that's your point but I think part of live performance is that it's live. A hundred years from now, maybe VR whatever we can't even imagine will be the norm and no one will be talking to anyone in person but personally I can't, I can be persuaded otherwise because frequently I do change my mind but at this point in time I can't imagine shifting to VR at least at Skirball unless it had something, unless it was an integral part of a production that was part of the entire concept. So how's that for an answer? That's interesting that it is not there and maybe also it's not working maybe also it's just also to you but I feel personally also it's stunning that it is not more in present in some way. From this thing you say you saw some things that you felt were good or inspiring you mentioned your theater workshop or the public, the family plays but what else did you see? Where you say that was interesting if you could share that with your curator's eye where you see that is something perhaps where that kind of internet zooms theater or site pre-op, you could say it's site specific it's just the website at the moment. So what did you see? That's clever, website specific. It was this dead center thing it was, I should be googling here but something called like how to be a machine and when we went to go buy our tickets because they wouldn't give you a ticket until you had gone through this procedure you go to the website, a film kind of comes up and says hello please look at the screen and they're gonna take a picture of your face and then said, great, do you like this picture? If so, we'll move forward. So they gave you that choice and then the next one was they wanted to capture you laughing and then the next one was they wanted to capture you with your eyes closed or looking like you were asleep or something and I don't wanna give away the whole thing but all of that was woven into this 40 minute presentation and it was very cleverly done. It could, they could, I mean, Skirbolg technically could stream it from Dublin. It was specifically set in Dublin and I'd rather do it having Skirbolg be the venue in which this happens but right now that's not a possibility given the restrictions of international travel and whatnot as I've been talking about but that piece I thought was great and it doesn't surprise me because Dead Center is an incredibly creative theater company and this is just another one of their very good productions. So, but I also have to say I'm not eager to jump on the internet to watch things. I guess it's because I'm working, as I say, just talking to my computer all day. Last thing I wanna do is eight o'clock at night turn on yet another performance or something. I'd rather sit on my couch and watch Netflix. Yeah, yeah, it's true. There's a fatigue and also the duration that we look at as you say perhaps it will be 12 months from now where we come up. So there's a limit to what we can consume and what we can engage with and perhaps it's getting less like an overdoses of online or live streamed possibilities and it makes us long, as you say, for the life, for the real. I mean, we mentioned before and I was here it was interesting. Heiner Müller said, you know what people think what makes theater so great is that's a live audience who share, you know at the moment they're all alive. He says, but the thing is, you know actually the possibility or the potential of the audience member might die is the real importance. You know, that's maybe the last thing. Someone goes to a theater last time they see humans on a stage acting out a story, you know this is now so real in the moment for our things, Jay. How did you get into curating that art form? And I see it as an, as you as an artist as someone who collages and that idea of voice of an enlarged definition of art. It's certainly you are. And why do you do that? Why did you decide to present things? 2020 vision is great in hindsight. I have to say I would truly not have seen myself doing what I'm doing now. I'm very grateful for it and looking back it makes sense how I got here, but I moved to New York in 1990 to actually go to seminary. I was, as I said, I was from Minneapolis and I had gone through this whole three-year process just to be able to do that. I think it's a great opportunity for me to be able to do that. And I had gone through this whole three-year process just to get to seminary Episcopal Anglican. And there was an Episcopal seminary in New York City. So I thought, well, three years in New York, great. And then I thought I'd probably go back to Minneapolis and be the college chaplain or something. But once I got here, I actually had an internship. St. Anne's warehouse used to be at a church called St. Anne and the Holy Trinity. So I got an internship there, working with both the church and with the arts program. And then from there, I got another internship at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine working with the arts program there, which at the time was very vivacious. It was something was happening every weekend. And once I graduated, I was fortunate to get into this great program at Yale and I was hired at the cathedral. I stayed there for 10 years and I had some great bosses there who encouraged me to think of wild programming that... What did you do for those 10 years? Oh, a lot of different things. I was in charge of both the visual arts program. So, you know, the Episcopal church at one time, it's pretty wild. And so we showed, I brought in Andre Serrano, the guy who had done Piss Christ. He was very notorious for that. He also had a series of photographs that had been taken in a morgue. So they looked like images out of the Renaissance. So there would be a picture of a hand or whatever. So we put those up during Lent, which is the time of reflection and denial. And so we... And also it's a matter of when you kind of focus on your own death, getting ready for the Easter season. So we brought that in. William Wegman, the guy who dresses up his dogs. No relation to me. But we did a whole fun series where we dress the dogs up like, not like priests, but like they would dress up in choir robes and things like that. And because the cathedral did this huge blessing of the animals every year. So we did that to align that. We did a lot of things around... Every year Gay Pride, we would do Stonewall celebrations and, you know, the cathedral's huge. So we frequently end those celebrations with the big Apple Corps marching band, marching from the altar through the cathedral out the front doors. So it was a great playground. And the New York Philharmonic performs there every Memorial Day. So there were these huge events, but there were also small events. So it was just fun. And then, you know, I also went to church on Sunday and gave sermons every once in a while, things like that, but it wasn't... It's not why I was there. I was there to actually weave the arts back into the cathedral. And what's interesting is that my whole artistic career has always been working with the arts, but not in institutions that are primarily art institutions. So I worked in the arts in the cathedral. I worked in the arts in a social service agency. So Abrams Art Center is embedded in Henry Street Settlement. And now I'm working at the arts at a public university. Well, I'm sorry, not public private, but with public programming. Yeah. So I kind of fell into this niche of working within larger universities or institutions or social service agencies working in the arts and trying to weave the arts back into a larger mission. So when I say I would not have seen myself doing that at NYU, because I remember walking by where Skirball is right now. It's the Kimmel Center. It used to be the Loeb Center. I remember going to punk rock concerts there in the 90s. And whoever sees what they're going to be doing in 30 years. But, you know, so they tore down the Loeb Center, built the Kimmel Center, and now I'm working there at Skirball. So that that's the through line I see, but I also was always drawn to interesting takes on classics, hence the Guthrie or interesting just interesting ways to do things other than commercial theater. So I have to admit I did love going to Broadway when I first moved here. Again, at the seminar was literally 15 blocks away from Times Square. So it was very easy to go get cheap tickets at TKTS. And what I liked about Broadway, I guess, was the theatricality of it. So I've still drawn to very theatrical things. Doesn't mean it has to be big and bold and loud, but I do like to make interesting takes or entrees into artworks. So that's kind of what people see at Skirball. Whereas at Abrams, that focus is really more on raising up local artists. When I got to Abrams, that place was very, very quiet during the day. It was basically an after school program. And there were three theaters there that were rented out to make some room for the settlement. And the place was dead. So, you know, knowing that it was a social service agency, which helps people and I thought, well, the poorest people I know are artists, because if they get money, they spend it on rehearsal space rather than, you know, health insurance or anything like that. So we started making the spaces available because they weren't being used anyway. And also eventually getting money to commission these artists to do things actually in the theaters and also helping them with some of their basic human needs. You know, artists are very, a lot of them are very poor, but are too proud to go on food stamps. Or, you know, there were, we had clinics and things at Henry Street. So that was that focus. Just because Scribble is so large. We still are commissioning things. We've commissioned, as I said, this artist to do something in February, but we've commissioned Rich Maxwell to do a new work. We're, we're, we're commissioning one or two things a year. But I'm rambling, I think that I answer your question. Very, very interesting. Yeah. I think you're going to be a journey from kind of a spiritual institution to a social service neighborhood institution and now to a university. So do you, do you see that in a way? The, the Scribble is also a cathedral. Is it a spiritual side in it? Totally. Inside. Yeah. I mean, I don't talk this way normally, but yeah, I think artists are the priest of the, of the contemporary society. Going to the theater or to a dance or to a performance is a very transcendent experience for a lot of people or not. But frequently I used to say that some of my best religious experiences were in theaters that had nothing to do with specifically religious context. So yeah, I would like to think of it as a cathedral. Also because cathedrals do much more than just their religious services. So as I said earlier, Scribble is going to be an early voting site. Scribble has book clubs. Scribble invites people in to give, you know, lectures or conversations on difficult subjects. So yeah. A secular cathedral in the best sense. And I think it has always been a part of the arts and perhaps especially in America where the commercials theater in New York is so dominating in a way perhaps it's a site that has been forgotten or has not been paid enough attention. I still wonder all these Broadway theaters that made the industry is billions, four or five.  They are not. And so they are missing one of the pillars, you know, of theater that has, and it's neglected. Yeah. I just feel awful for all those actors or stage crew or all those people who I mean, I'm sure they're on some type of. Assistance right now. I mean, they spent their whole career is getting to New York. To get it on Broadway and now there's nothing for them to do. I mean, that's true of anybody, but it's specifically a Broadway. But that's happening to the downtown scene. As I said, Frank, you know, no one's venue is open. There are places like the chocolate factory that are cleverly using their facilities to maybe film a dance movie or something. But that's not open to the public. So, you know, people are trying to be creative about how they're responding to one, then continuing need to create and to continuing need to receive and trying to dance somewhere between the two. And frequently, as I've said previously for me, it's Netflix, you know, or Amazon Prime or whatever. But you know, I, I've watched way more TV, the last seven months. And I think I ever have in the previous 17 years. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think it is part of a reality. And, and, and for many of the actors, he's really, truly great actors on Broadway. It's more about the producers. I think the people in charge who run the theaters, which also mirrors the system, you know, the shoe, but it's privately owned. It's designed to make money. There's shows at most. Make most money, run the longest 1000, 2000 shows in often in European theaters, up to 25 or 50 performances. They get tired of it. They say, we want to do something new, you know. So it's a completely different idea. But it is, it is, it is hard for, for the artist to adjust. Well, you know, England helped the United States would never do this. You know, helped subsidize theaters, not so much performances, but at least started feeding money into these theaters during the early stages of the pandemic. The National Endowment for the Arts probably threw some money out that they were allowed to within that legislation, but that would never happen in the United States. Billion euros, I think they put at museums, theaters, arts, institutions. And I think the society has the responsibility to take care of its artists. It never does anyway in the U.S. And it's, it's pickable enough. But at the moment it is devastating. And what will happen if till December or till next June, as you say, predict, I think you absolutely right. There's no doubt about it. It's musicians often performed in bars and restaurants, but now you cannot even have a drink. If you don't sit down as an, as a guest in a restaurant and order meal, you cannot listen to music. And so they don't make enough money to hire musicians, you know, because the bars and restaurants, they money on drinks. Artists cannot work in restaurants. It's disastrous. Yeah. Yes. And I do want to give a shout out to some very creative foundations out there who, you know, have let people take their, some of the money that had been assigned to specific projects and let the music in general operating or, you know, there's some really fabulous foundations out there. Um, and I do think, uh, you know, the department of cultural affairs, uh, they're hampered because it's public tax money. Uh, uh, but Scribble actually, uh, no university, uh, in the New York city areas eligible for department of cultural affairs. So, um, you know, it doesn't affect us at all. Thank God. But, um, it's who knows what's going to happen next year with all the tax revenues, you know, being cut, which feeds into what the DCA or NISCA in New York State Arts Council can feed back in. So, you know, going back to, oh, isn't it better in Europe? Well, yeah, for some things that definitely is, especially if you want to work in the arts. And we do think access to education, access to healthcare and access to the arts are human rights, basic human rights, you know, and access, you know, to participate in a democratic system. And, um, and all of it, all of it seems to be endangered at the moment. It's shocking. And I think art will have to take a stand. And, um, you know, we don't really know how to do it and how to react also to a figure like Trump that is unprecedented. And perhaps America has no memory of such, such a tone, such a discourse he brings up meanwhile, many countries in the world. So we have heard that before and we know, you know, that this will change, but I think the arts also now will have to, to stand up and, and, and, um, and do a part and remind us all of that, you know, spiritual seven also for democratic process that it's part of, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, it's part of, um, uh, and Floria Malsakar talked about the idea that this theater has to represent the multiplicity of the agonism. He said we now have to create arenas, areas where you show competitions of ideas where we say no side really will win, but let's talk about it and, uh, and let's listen to each other and, uh, fight things out and see who, how you can look at different things. idea that one side will win is antagonistic, it will end in civil war, it will not really work, it has to be a place of discussion. And theater has a central role in it to work through personal problems, family problems of a city, but also of a state, questions of, you know, the person and the individual and the state of the politics and ethics and morals. And while theater is a great place to do that. And but the question is how can we find it? How can we use it? And how can we reinvent it if the entire foundations of it in the U.S. are so and so endangered? What, what do you look forward to? What, what do you have plans? Do you have a I mean, me personally, or for Skirbo, or? Per spouse, maybe. What is, yeah. Well, I have no plans, personally, other than just seeing, you know, what happens here. I used to travel so much. And it was a, it was a great blessing and a curse. But, you know, just the thought that we can't even go to Montreal is kind of just mind boggling to me. But the, the plans that I have that I'm excited for the plans for Skirbo, we, we actually had a very thriving season planned. We, we didn't announce it. Because we normally announced our season in May and there was no reason to announce a non-existent season. But we have some really great things lined up. And I'm still hoping against hope that we can pick up and move some of those things into next year. And that also means the funding. It also means finding new funding because, you know, people frequently think NYU, Skirbo has deep pockets because we're in NYU. And that's, as I've said several times, it's not true. So it's always a matter of doing some creative outreach to see if some friends will give us money. But we have, I don't want to curse it and jinx it. So I'm not going to say anything, but, you know, look next May for, for maybe really exciting announcement. But I also want to say something else because you were just talking about even musicians and cafes and things like that. I know you have Annie Hamburger on tomorrow. And Annie, even before COVID though, was doing really interesting things. Well, Annie's all about size specific, well, not totally, but, you know, and was working with these artists and has been able, I think, somehow to bring them along into this COVID environment. So I'm excited to see what she talks about tomorrow, because Annie is somebody who's really thinks on the ground. Yeah. And we look up to her. She created Dancing in the Street. She did the Riza Abdul early work, you know, the Meatpacking District, a left theater for a while, but now is back and maybe she has some answers from stuff she already did and to see how we can do. And I think she also wants to create a group of, you know, perhaps young curators or curators who get together and find ways of presenting. Yeah, Jay, you really thank you. We're coming closer to the end of the talk. What do you look at? What Netflix series do you look at? What books do you read? What music do you listen to? Is there want to share some of that? Oh, I'd be embarrassed to admit it. But after she died recently, I went on a whole nostalgic Helen Reddy Jag. I was like, it was just like, you know, I was a child in the 70s, and I was just like, I find myself incredibly nostalgic lately. So I don't know, every day is different from the last, and you use the word collage earlier, it is one of my favorite words, but my days become collages. I just things overlap. There's the zoom, there's the NYU stuff there's dealing with the my staff who I haven't seen in person for seven months. And then there's what I do with everything else. So the books I read, but Oh, I will say there's a great book called Shuggie Bain. I want to give a shout out book that I just stumbled on. It's great. I think it's for the Booker and for the National Circus Circle prize. So great fiction set in Scotland.  I remember when we talked in the phone months while you say, I don't even know what day it is. I knew what today was because I knew I had to talk to you at noon. But yeah, especially if it's a Saturday or Sunday is like what day is it? So yeah, I mean, you would feel that way too. Yeah, it is incredible, you know, how time seems to be shifting our spaces get smaller, we are inside and the way we collect, connect globally. And but it doesn't seem to really even to be really even when we end our conversation, we will fold down the laptops and yep, with ourselves real long. Well, actually, no, I believe an open because I have a 115 zoom call. We have to be, we have to, we have to be on time. Yeah, so I hope the plan we talked about that you're one of the first ones we also called, you know, that idea of a 2022 to create in the summer, a New York International Festival of the Arts to call all presenting organizations, you know, to participate in the streets in the parks, but also in the venues, some of it curated hopefully reserved. And we will see if this will work out and maybe some of the things you talked about our artists talked about the new ways of producing new approaches will will be represented in that and that we might be able to to pull that off who knows but I think it's something that, you know, keeps me alive. So really thank you for for for being part of it. And since you are have a little background as a, you know, as a spiritual leader and you work in the arts and you said I one of the works at Abrams which you did so fantastically with community you created this network of people that interviewed that came up. What do you say to young artists or to artists at the moment? Do you have something? What do you say what you can say? What is of significance? What do we have to focus about? What would they be thinking about? I would just want to say hang in there. It's easy for me to say that I'm not going to be kicked out of my apartment or I not, you know, I don't have to go to the food bank or any of that as of now. Thank God. But I just say hang in there. Also, you know, my grandmother told me once we were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but she said, you know, don't worry about where the money is coming from. Money usually shows up somewhere. So I, you know, at this level, most artists, at least the artists that I love and worked with for 10 years very closely, we're always wondering where where's the money coming from not only just to pay their artists or the spaces or anything, but just to live. So I guess trust the universe that it might be rocky and bumpy, but usually you come out on the other side better. How's that? It's a little little married sunshine, but I do believe it. We trust you, you know, this is your advice, and we take that very serious, you know, what we're talking about. And this is a significant statement. And yeah, nothing lasts forever, not the good, also not the bad. This will be over one day, and we have to hang in there and use the time. It's, of course, stretching, you know, and it's warped. And we cannot believe that it's already since March, and that it might be till next summer or the fall.  And we have to we have to acknowledge it and see what we can change and what we can't to have that vision. So we will see. But Jay, really, thank you for for taking the time and give us the insight, you know, how you experience this as a person, but also in your work, you know, as a presenter who cannot present, you know, who has a space, but the space is closed. There's resources, but you cannot allocate them. So it's just incredible time. So really, thank you, thanks for the audience for listening. As Jay said, tomorrow we have the great Anne Hamburger, who will share with us a bit of her journey, but also what she's thinking is of importance. And I know she's also a bit angry about many things that are happening now. So I look forward to hear what she thinks should be doing and what actually she is doing. I think she's preparing the festival in November or December. Then we will have on Saturday and Friday is a discussion with students. I felt we haven't heard from students, you know, we have so many masters and great thinkers and artists. But, you know, now it's also a time to listen to to our two voices from people who are the future, who will be changing this world and we part of it. So I'll look forward to that next week with David and Miranda, our prelude curators. We have a selection of artists from the prelude festival. Also get a little insight, what are New York artists thinking about the ones who do sing? What is on their mind? What are they struggling with? What are they producing? What would they like to produce? So that's why I think it is actually interesting what David and Miranda put together, you know, as a little sample of what's on artist mind. Also we gave, you know, stipends and some honorariums to make something possible, very little as we as much as we really can do when we stretch. But I think we have to support the arts. We have to support artists. We have to be there. So it will be interesting. So I hope everybody might also listen in. And thanks to HowlRound for hosting us and Vijay and Ciara and Andy from the Seedles Center. And again, Jay, thank you and really all our respect for what you do for the New York theater, how open you are, the international work you present and we know how complicated that is. And that you really listen to everybody include ideas and you are creating a community center also there. And that's in New York needs you and we terribly miss it. So all the best and see you soon. Bye bye. You're the best. Bye.


Welcome to theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto, California for RSA conference keynote coverage and conference coverage. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're breaking down the keynote of RSA day one kickoff. We hear Mark Nenek Hoven, who's the Distinguished Cloud Stretch at Lacework. Mark, former CUBE alumni and expert and security has been on many times before. Mark, great to see you. Thanks for coming on and helping me break down RSA conference 2021 virtual this year. Thanks for joining. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me, John. You know, one of the things Mark about these security conferences is that interesting. RSA was the last conference. We actually did interviews physically face to face and then the pandemic went down and it was a huge shutdown. So we're still virtual coming back to real life. So we're in their virtual this year. So kind of a turn of events, but that was kind of the theme this year in the keynote is changing the game on security. The script has been flipped connectivity everywhere, security from day one being reinvented. Some people holding on to the old way. Some people trying to get on the future wave. Clearly you got the laggards and you got the innovators all trying to kind of find their position. This has been obvious in this keynote. What's your take? Yeah, and that was exactly it. They used that situation of being that last physical security conference somewhat to their advantage to weave this theme of resiliency. And it's a message that we heard throughout the keynote. It's a message we're going to hear throughout the week. There's a number of talks that are tying back to this. And it really hits at the core of what security aims to do. And I think aims is really the right word for it because we're not quite there yet. But it's about making sure that our technology is flexible, that it expands and adapts to the situations because as we all know this year, basically upended everything we assumed about how our businesses were running, how our communities and society was running. And we've all had to adapt. And that's what we saw at the keynote today was they acknowledged that and then woven into the message to drive that home for security professionals. Yeah, and to me, one of the most notable backdrops to the entire thing was the fact that the RSA continues to operate from the sellout when Dell sold them for two billion dollars to a consortium private equity company, Symphony Technology Group. So there they're operating now on their own. They're out in the wild. As you said, cybersecurity threats are ever increasing. The surface area has changed with cloud native. Basically RSA is a 3,000 person startup basically now. So they got secure ID, the old token business. We all, if anyone's had had those IDs, know it's pretty solid. But now they got to kind of put this event back together. And Mobile World Congress is right around the corner. They're going to try to actually have a physical event. So you have this pandemic problem of trying to get the word out and it's weird. It's kind of, I found it, it's hard to get your hands around all the news. It is. And it's, you know, we're definitely missing that element. You know, we've seen that throughout the year of people have tried to adapt these events into a virtual format. We're missing those elements of those sort of happenstance run-ins. I know we've run into each other at a number of events just sort of in the hall. You get to catch up. But you know, as part of those interactions, they're not just social, but you also get a little more insight into the conference. Hey, you know, did you catch this great talk or are you going to go catch this thing later? And we're definitely missing that. And I don't think anyone's really nailed this virtual format yet. It's very difficult to wrap your head around. Like you said, I saw a tweet online from one InfoSec analyst today who pointed out, you know, there were 17 talks happening at the same time, which, you know, in a physical thing, you'd pick one and go to it in a virtual, there's that temptation to kind of click across the channels. So even if you know what's going on, it's hard to focus in these events. Yeah, one conference that's got a really good, I think virtual platform is DockerCon. They have 48 panels, a lot of great stuff there. So that's one I'm more watching closely. It's coming up on May 27, check that one out. Let's get into this. Let's get into the analysis. I really want to get your thoughts on this because, you know, I thought the keynote was very upbeat. Clearly the realities are presenting you.  So let's start with what you thought of Rohit's keynote and then we'll jump into what Chuck Robbins was saying. Sure, yeah. And I thought Rohit, you know, at first I questioned because he brought up and he said, I'm going to talk about tigers, airplanes and sewing machines. And, you know, as a speaker myself, I said, okay, this is either really going to work out well or it's not going to work out at all. Unfortunately, you know, Rohit is a professional, he's a great speaker, and it worked out. And so he tied these three examples. So it was Tiger King for Netflix at World War II, analyzing airplane damage, and a great organization in India that had pivoted from sewing into creating masks and other supplies for the pandemic. He wove those three examples through with resiliency and showed adaptation. And I thought it was really, really well done, first of all, but as a cloud guy, I was really excited as well that that first example was Netflix and he was referencing Chaos Monkey, which is a chaos engineering tool, which I don't think a lot of security people are exposed to. So we use it very often in cloud building where essentially this tool will purposely blow up things in your environment. So it will down services, it will cut your communications off because the idea is you need to figure out how to react to these things before they happen for real. And so getting keynote time for a tool like that, a very modern cloud tool, I thought was absolutely fantastic, even if that's not so well known or not a secret in the cloud world anymore, it's very commonly understood, but getting a security audience exposure to that was great. And so, you know, Roe hits a pro and it was a good kickoff. And yeah, very upbeat, a lot of high energy, which was great for virtual keynote because sometimes that's what's really missing is that energy. And we like Roe too, he's got charisma. He also has a hand in the pulse. I think the chaos monkey point you're making is a great call out because it's been around the DevOps community, but what that really shows, I think, and puts the exclamation point around this industry right now is that DevSecOps is here and it's never going away and cloud native and certainly the pandemic has shown that cloud scale, speed, data, and now distributed computing with the edge, 5G has been mentioned as you said, this is a real deal. This is DevOps. This is infrastructure as code and security is being reinvented in it. This is a killer theme and it's kind of a wake-up call. What's your reaction to that and what's your take? Yeah, it absolutely is a wake-up call and it actually blended really well into Roe hit second point, which was around using data. And I think, you know, having these messages put out to what is the security conference for the year always is really important because the rest of the business has moved forward and security teams have been a little hesitant there. We're a little behind the times compared to the rest of the business who are taking advantage of these cloud services, taking advantage of data being everywhere. So for security professionals to realize like, hey, there are tools that can make us better at our jobs and help us keep pace with the business is absolutely critical because like you said, as much as I always cringe when I hear the term DevSecOps, it's important because security needs to be there. The reason I cringe is because I think security should be built into everything but the challenge we have is that security teams are still, a lot of us are still stuck in the past to sort of put our arms around something and you know, if it's in that box, I'm good with it. And that just doesn't work in the cloud. We have better tools, we have better data and that was really Roe hit's key message was those tools and that data can help you be resilient can help your organization be resilient and whether that's the situation like a pandemic or a major cyber attack, you need to be flexible you need to be able to bounce back. You know, when we actually have infrastructure as code and no one ever talks about DevOps or DevSecOps, you know, it's over, it's in the right place. But I want to get your thoughts and see if you heard anything about automation because one of the things that you bring up about not liking the word DevSecOps is really around having this new team formation, how people are organizing their developers and their operations teams. And it really is becoming programmable and that's kind of the word, but automation scales it. So that's been a big theme this year. What are you hearing? What did you hear in the keynote? Any signs of reality around automation, machine learning? You mentioned data. Did they dig into automation? Automation was on the periphery. So a lot of what they're talking about only works with automation. So, you know, the Netflix shout out for Chaos Monkey absolutely is an automated tool. To take advantage of this data, you absolutely need to be automated. But the keynote mainly focused on sort of the connectivity and the differences in how we view an organization over the last year versus moving forward. And I think that was actually a bit of a miss because as you rightfully point out, John, you need automation. The thing that baffles me as a builder, as a security guy is that cyber criminals have been automated for years. That's how they scale. That's how they make their money, yet we still primarily defend manually. And I don't know if you've ever tried to beat, you know, the robots and everything or really complicated video game. We don't tend to win well when we're fighting automation. So security absolutely needs to step up. The good news is looking at the agenda for the week, taking in some talks today. While it was a bit of a miss in the keynote, there is a good theme of automation throughout some of the deeper dive sessions. So it is a topic that people are aware of and moving forward. But again, I always want to see us move faster. Was there a reason Chuck Robbins headlines or is that simply because they're a big, you know, 800 pound gorilla in the networking space? You know, why Cisco? Are they relevant in security? Is that signaling that networking is more important? I'll see 5G at the edge. But is Cisco the player? I know obviously Cisco has a massive business and they are a huge player in the security industry. But I think they're also representative of, you know, and this was definitely Chuck's message. They were representative of this idea that security needs to be built in at every layer. So even though, you know, I live primarily in the cloud technologies dealing with organizations that are built in the cloud, there is, you know, the reality of that we are all connected through a multitude of networks. And we've seen that with work from home, which is a huge theme this year at the conference and the improvements in mobility with 5G and other connectivity areas like Edge and Wi-Fi 6. So having a big network player and security player like Cisco in the keynote, I think is important just because their message was not just about inclusion and diversity for skills, which was a theme we saw repeated in the keynote, actually, but it was about building security and then from the start to the finish throughout. And I think that's a really important message. We can't just pick one place and say, this is where we're going to build security. It needs to be built throughout all of our systems. If you were a CISO listening today, what was your take on that? Were you impressed? Were you blown away? Did you fall out of your chair? Or was it just right down the middle?  And I mean, I know that's the big downside of virtual is that your step counter is way down compared to where it should be for these conferences. But there was nothing revolutionary in the opening parts of the keynote. It was just sort of beating the drum that has been talked about, has been simmering in the background from sort of the more progressive side of security. So if you've been focusing on primarily traditional techniques and the on-premise world, then perhaps this was a little, a bit of an eye-opener and something where you go, wow, there's something else out here and we can move things forward. For people who are more cloud native or more into that automation space, that data space, this is really just sort of a head nod and going, yep, I agree with this, this makes sense. This is where we all should be at this point. But as we know, there's a very long tail in security and in security organizations. So to have that message repeated from a large stage like the keynote, I think was very important. Well, we're going to be, the cube will be on site and virtual with our virtual platform for Amazon web services reinforced coming up in Houston. So that's going to be interesting to see. And you compare contrast like an AWS reinforce which is kind of there. I think they had the first conference two years ago. So it's kind of a new conference. And then you've got the old kind of RSA conference. The question I have for you, is it just a position of almost two conferences, right? You got the cloud native AWS which is really about shared responsibility, et cetera, et cetera, a lot more action happening there. And you got this conference here seem from the old school legacy players. So I want to get your thoughts on that. And I want to get your take on just the cryptographers panel because, as I'm not saying this is a state of the art that the old guys saying, get off my lawn, crypto. We're the crypto purists. They were trashing NFTs, which as you know, it's all the rage. So, and Ron Rivis who wrote, who co-created RSA public technology which is in everything these days. Is this a sign of just get off my lawn or is it a sign of the times trashing the NFTs? What's your take? Yeah, well, so let's tackle the NFTs then we'll do the contrast between the two conferences. But I thought the NFT, you know, Ron and Addy both had really interesting ways of explaining what an NFT was because that's most the discussion around the NFT is exactly what are we buying or what are we investing in? And so I think it was Addy who said, you know, it was basically you have a tulip then you could have a picture of a tulip and then you could have something explaining the picture of the tulip and that's what an NFT is. So I think, you know, but at the same time, he recognized the value potential for artists. So I think there was some definitely, you know, get off my lawn, but also sort of the cryptographer panel is always sort of very pragmatic, very evidence-based as shown today when they actually were talking about a paper by Schnorr who debates whether RSA or he has new math that he thinks can debunk RSA or at least break the algorithm. And so they had a very logical and intelligent discussion about that. But the cryptographers panel in contrast to the rest of the keynote, it's not about the hype, it's not about what's going on in the industry. It's really is truly a cryptographers panel talking about the math, talking about the fundamental underpinnings of our security things. As a big nerd, I'm a huge fan, but a lot of people watch that and just kind of go, okay, now's a great time to grab a snack, maybe move those legs a little bit, but if you're interested in the more technical, deeper dive side, it's definitely worth taking in. Yeah, super fascinating. And I think, you know, it's funny, they said it's not even a picture of a tulip, it's a pointer to a picture of a tulip, which is technically... That was it, yeah. It's interesting how, again, this is all fun.  It's very interesting how you got a decentralization wave coming, yet a lot of people want to hang on to the centralized view. Okay, this is an architectural conflict. Is there a balance in your mind as a techie? We look at security, certainly as the perimeter's gone, that's not even debate anymore, but as we have much more of a distributed computing environment, is there a need for some centrality and or is it going to be all decentralized in your opinion? Yeah, and that's actually a really interesting question. It's a great setup to connect both these points of sort of the cryptographers panel and that contrast between newer conferences and RSA. Because the cryptographers panel brought up the fact that you can't have resilient systems unless you're going for a distributed systems, unless you're spreading things out because otherwise you're creating a central point of failure, even if it's at hyperscale, which is not resilient by definition. So that was a very interesting and very valid point. I think the reality is it's a combination of the two, is that we want resilient systems that are distributed, that scale up independently of other factors. So if you're sitting in the cloud, you're going multi-region or maybe even multi-cloud, you want this distributed area, just for that as Werner from AWS calls it, the reduced blast radius. So if something breaks, not everything does. But then the challenge from a security and from an operational point of view is you need that central visibility. And I think this is where automation, where machine learning and really viewing security as a data problem comes into play. If you have the systems distributed, but you can provide visibility centrally, which is something we can achieve with modern cloud technologies, you kind of hit that sweet spot. You've got resilient underpinnings in your systems, but you as a team can actually understand what's going on, because that was yet another point from Carmella and from Ross on the cryptographers panel when it comes to AI and machine learning. We're at the point where we don't really understand a lot of what's going on in the algorithm. We kind of understand the output and the input. So again, it tied back to that resiliency. So I think that key is distributed systems are great, but you need that central visibility and you only get there through viewing things as a data problem, a heavy automation and modern tooling. Great, great insight, Mark. Great, great call out there, great point tied in there. Let me ask you a question on your take on the keynote and the conference in general's first day gets going. Do you see this evolving from the classic enterprise kind of buyer, supplier relationship to much more of a CISO driven or CXO driven? I need to start building about my teams. I got to start hiring developers. Not so much an operation side. I mean, I'll see info seconds. These industries are not going away. People are still buying tools and stacking up the tool shed, but there's been a big trend towards platforms and shifting left from a developer CI CD pipeline standpoint, which speaks to scale on the cloud native side and that distributed side. So is this conference hitting that marker? You still think there are more hardware and service systems people? What's the, what's the makeup? I think we're definitely starting to see a shift. So a great example of that is the CSA, the cloud security alliance always runs a day one or day zero summit at RSA. And this year it was a CISO executive summit. And whereas in previous years, it's been practitioners. So that is a good sign. I think that's a positive sign to start to look at a long ignored area of security, which is how do we train the next generation of security professionals? We've always taken this traditional view and we've, you know, people go through the standard. You get your CISSP, you hold on to it forever. You know, you do your time on the firewall. You go through the standard thing, but I think we really need to adjust and look for people with that automation capability with development, with better business skills and definitely better communication skills because really as we integrate, as we leave our sort of protected little cave of security, we need to be better business people and better team players. Well, Mark, I really appreciate you coming on.  Thank you for coming on and sharing your thoughts on the RSA conference and breaking down the keynote analysis the RSA conference. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Well, while we got you here, take a minute to plug what you're doing at Lacework, what you're excited about. What's going on over there. Sure, I appreciate that. So I just joined Lacework. I'm a weekend. So I'm drinking from the fire hose of knowledge and what I've found so far, fantastic platform, fantastic teams. It's got me revved up and excited again because we're approaching security from the data point of view. We're really, we're born in the cloud, built for the cloud, and we're trying to help teams really gather context. And the thing that appealed to me about that was that it's not just targeting the security team. It's targeting builders. It's targeting the business. It's giving them that visibility into what's going on so that they can make informed decisions. For me, that's really what security is all about. Well, I appreciate you coming on. Thanks so much for sharing. Thank you. Okay, CUBE coverage of RSA conference here with Lacework. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.