We have a little bit of a chance to hear each other before it falls into conversation. It's easier to hop onto the long table than we can choose. We have a lot of scenarios, so that's fine. Everybody, it's a fairly afternoon. Come on in. All right. Do you want to say hi to Sarah? She had a great art class at school. And also, where are we maybe? She's in the building somewhere. Yeah. Just, you know, I have a bit of a contact to say that I was looking for a mark back in 2003 when, that's where it was through his offices, or hands-off management that allowed me to sort of hold you off. So it's been ten years. So we're here today, we're here today to discuss a playwright in the lab at this property. I just want to explain a little bit about the format. It's called Long Table. We've been doing these for a while. It's sort of a modified, the original concept was developed by Ernest Lewis Weaver, who was an amazing director and performer. She had Peggy Shaw and Deb Marble who started Split Bridges many years ago on WoW and Discount Street. And the whole idea is to really create those sort of non-pyropartical form of discourse that's much more like a conversation than a dinner party, rather than a really structured panel of experts. The difference between the way Lois says it and the way we adapt it is that I like to seed the table with people to sort of get things going. But there are empty seats at the table, so, you know, if you feel, you know, the only real rule is you have to be at the table at the top. You can't talk from out here. So if you want to jump in, you know, feel free to take a seat at the table. If there's no seats available at the table and you really want to jump in, you're welcome to tap somebody out. They are welcome to decline, you know, and like if anybody has an ECOP or whatever, like, you know, and it's pretty, you know, we just let it go where it goes.  We are also, are we live streaming or we're live streaming and recording this for posterity? So if you don't like it, sorry. Let's sit down and sort of like, oh, I'm sorry, everybody's names and bios are in their programs and given people who are at the table, and they're facing this way so that they know who each other are, they don't know who each other are, but you're welcome to like, you know, but look up there, like, we're not going to do a normal introduction thing.  Hey, everybody, thank you. I have been up to their room. And what have you been up to? I have been up to a lot of times. I sat at the back all of the time. It's a collaborative, rather too awesome. I got diabetes. You do? Yeah. So you have to do the test? No, no, no. Well, yes, you're not the number one, the number two. I'll get it later. Yeah. Was that dark? No. Yeah, I don't think you can talk about that. I don't think it's so interesting. Anybody want to take a picture? Yeah. The reason I wanted to... Well, the part of the reason that we use these things is it's just nice to have fun. People are going to talk to you. You know, usually if you're going after the show or we're at the bar, we don't get to do it, you know, in person during daylight in front of other people. But, you know, one of the things that's really good on my mind a lot as a writer is how hard it is to write. And as sort of like collaborative processing instead of the contact, if you go in a way, the role of the writer has become very...  And then, you know, the traditional theater informs like the playwright happens first. So I thought it would be really interesting to get some people who had experience in these various different ways of working to sort of talk about, like, the evolving role of the playwright, you know, writing itself as a form, how he used to work in collaboration. And I don't know that... I mean, one of the questions that I kind of have is that it feels like, you know, for the, you know, the process is that I actually feel like, you know, the nature of performatting has always been collaborative. And I think these structures are sort of like, you're the director, you're the playwright here, you're the that, you know, maybe it's a little bit more of a construct of the past, you know, of the recent past, you know. And so I just wanted to sort of explore about it and see, like, you know, how people were, you know, how people were doing their work, how they were working on it. If I might say, just because I thought of you too, the fact that you actually occupy all of the above, is my impression, right? And then the wrap, and then the form. Actually, they're performing in the movie. So, okay, you do all three, you write the director. But in our process, but in our process, I'm not on the writer. So we make work, we start a project with ideas and having research to get that, right? And I feel like, I don't know, I have this, I think that that is why I'm hard on the floor, I don't know if you want to collaborate with me, but it's coming out of this, that when work is made, it's your process of conversation, but then the audience, it feels different in the way that I still have things that are really, you know, knocking quite a lot, that when work is made in a collaborative way, the audience feels that there's some of that that feel like is new. And I feel like, especially in today, in our generation where there are so many, a lot of things that theater has to do with that, there's only things that theater does as well, that there are things that the only theater can do, and that work that has that electricity is something that really happens in the theater. So, so that we, when we're made to work, it really starts from, here's something I'm obsessed with, and then we get into the other thing, we get really obsessed with it, and a lot of times, we're steeping ourselves in it, and we often disagree about it, and I actually, and I feel like that's really, I feel like that's connected to why the world deals with us at the end, because we don't come to a conclusion, we don't have to answer everything inside of our work, or we present both sides of things, so that's the audience that went to meet those, at least to feel the need to talk about it afterwards, to keep going, greater that, is what we're trying to do with inspiration. We're not going to figure that out. That drama, too. I mean, it seems like, there's also a, you know, my background is not in the traditional theater world so much for a long time, but I actually talked to, you know, the collaborative process seems to be more people have more input into what ends up on the stage, rather than just to form out a script to whatever regional theater, then they hire director actors, and they hire that, and it seems to be like that process of having people in the room, actors and directors and designers in the room, that sort of forms what ends up on the stage pretty heavily, I know. I feel like the dance theater works like that quite a lot. Yeah, yeah. Yes, I guess the best way to assert some of these editors from our company is to realize that it's repeatedly realizing intact, holy shit, we need a script. We've got to write this down so that I don't know what way it is, what's huge. So the whole thing is this, we have yet to create a paper until, you know, tech. Tech. Well, yeah, absolutely. So who does, like, who doesn't respond if he doesn't? So when you're like, holy shit, we need a script, who then, like, makes the script? Well, because of the way he's with me, like, I'm thinking way back, just a few minutes into my hair tonight, I remember that sort of mild crisis of we need this one paper. So the call queue was a piece called another telepathic thing which was made before a new year was born. But just about, it was, but so you say, what happens when you need to do it? That's almost secretarial at that point because it's really just noting, but what happened with that piece that I can only say very intensely is that we had a great interest in this remarkable story by Mark Lane called Mysterious Stranger. Yeah, more than those. Of course, of course. Talk about it. Yes, I knew of you. So we were working on trying to render that. It's really the first person sort of the last story, but yes, it's good to get you out there. So we're working on that. Separate from that, I had started to sort of accumulate an archive of illicitly recorded auditions because I was going to an audition for a TV commercial or a TV show or movie, whatever, and I would secretly take it because it was insane. We had a lot of time for that. It was so crazy. When you listen back to it, you can't, it's like a language that doesn't even remotely emulate what we say we're doing now just to make the subject happen. This was yesterday. No, that's being said. It does something, and then it's over. Those two pieces of material were entirely two different pieces that we made. So we started working on them and that is staging them or speaking on them or something, and it turned out that those two pieces of text really started to talk because it's between stories about a kid, one of these children who has to imagine that it's actually what they want. Then it turns out that that's Satan. It shows up in his most popular kid, one of the kids. What does come through in the audition stuff is the gold ring, the image, the thing you want, the sort of something you're dropping. So anyway, those two pieces started to talk to each other, so maybe you started to happen much less all you can say about how you started to play with that and to see what the scene was supposed to be to what parts of the book you started to accumulate one after another and find what you need to carry into the role of that. And to the text. I mean, was it improvised before the performance improvised? Or was it kind of settled into not exactly. There was a little bit of improvisation for the purpose of creating interstitial or stitching materials, but for the most part there were existing texts that would transcribe a lot of those audition tables just transcribing for the and then we had the twain using the first person. So that landed self-discipline per day. That's sort of pre-existent. It's the arrangement. It's the arranging where you become where in your being you get that boost because I feel in my eyes there's a actual idea of what to sense if you follow another person and need you to something. My experience is very broad and then there's a more intuitive sense that just feels like it's the next inevitable thing then after the fact you realize that why? What's this thing about the Satan giving you what you want and auditioned material but going for this phantom that you want. I mean that is true. I didn't know at the beginning what to do about it. Well, there are some things that are some of the reasons and questions for me about the different ways that people deal with the text and the role of the text in the theater specifically because in a way it's just a wrong first on the new brain to life. It exists on the page but for it to be a play it actually has to be incarnated and it seems to be a negotiation and sometimes it's about a sandwich of existing texts but even then it seems like there's also issues around musicality and freedom as much as meaning and this is where I sort of I want to sort of go to David and Harrison a little bit because they did a piece on a book of Planner of Illumines which you know I thought this script was very useful and on the one hand it was very much a play that I wanted to see here on the other hand the language had a sort of reasonality to it and it also seemed that I'm not sure I don't ask a little bit about the process because it does seem like you guys were kind of like both working with the actors because it really was a language that we don't see on plays at the public or mainstream stages very often and so it seemed like the text was very critically crafted and at the same time it also seemed like it was drawn from work with the actors and I know that working with those specific actors would get a good story out of a very large part of that so I thought you guys would come up so the play began with the obsession I saw the White Lights Festival the first theater was at the Lincoln Center and Janet Cardiff the Forty-Fourth Motet was at that festival and I experienced it and went and was changed and thought I would want to do something with this with this piece of music it's 40 men or 40 vocal parts and it's just eight motets this piece begins with one voice and slowly sort of grows to 40 and so I went to David and I saw this thing and I love it and I think that it's the structure and David had been sort of obsessing about a lot of things about religion and spirituality and our friends who were largely black and gay and not working even though they were amazing actors and we were all sort of living and working and breathing in Harlem and thought these things need to come together and the structure of the play sort of mirrors the structure of the Forty-Fourth Motet so it began with a single voice and it grows and grows and it's a raucous dinner party that is sort of the Forty-Fourth Motet written for eight, nine very specific men who are a part of our sort of community I think my person was saying the idea started out of a party with different friends and we were like you guys are so awesome, you should be going to play together and it was like there's no play for you guys so that was a huge important thing for us and then I think in all of the work that we've done for us it's definitely been about the actors that we want to see on stage and what are the opportunities that they are giving and what are the opportunities that they are not giving and what do you see when you look at them and what do I see when I look at them and what do you need to see when you look at them and how can we sort of push those boundaries in the work that we do and you know actually we've worked on looking as we've had over four actors work on with us over the last 40 years and it's written very specifically for I think there are four actors who are very specific to the writing and looking for the other voices but over the course of the play we were saying this sort of conversation and you know we just started reading it the other day and it's so funny to listen to it and to hear all of the moments you can pick out oh that actor who was in the workshop two years ago gave us this line and gave us a story the story is like the kids but now it's the characters and now it's been five other men's story as well and so they're sort of lovely way to mix the script and the story of the script I'll talk to you talk to her I don't think I hate writing by myself so I think knowing what you're writing for is great because then you invite them to come to your living room after you've only written like two pages because you don't want to live with those two pages by yourself and it's also like what I love about Dabi it is we actually live together so we're always reading and it's sort of like and then we read it aloud and so I write all of my plays and I don't but I do because I know who the I know who it's for and they live down the street so when I eat them to come read it they just come over it's great we worked together and we had worked together for a number of years and working together a lot I suppose because we weren't getting to do what we were trying to work with and it really was like we were going back to acting after not for a couple of years right because we had to be working with whatever we did but it's like being a professional actor playing me and rearranging everything in your life so like it's better to be able to be able to play and that I get to write things that you can write with Sarah that I know students who are the performer that I work down and there are things that I've written in our collaboration that I never or I can't and then the process is about working it out the process that I've learned how to sing and box I've been working on it for two years so it's that instigation but also what you were saying was really that the reason why I'm here is for the community and I feel like the way the way is it is it a perception or is it a cultural requirement is it a cultural individual individual talent a great voice as it goes to the celebration collective effort which I feel is much more true to be transparent about how they work together there may be a routine in actors I think that's one of the questions that I really want to address here is that I feel like the visual world there's a lot being made of social practice and there's this sort of complete lack of understanding that all performance making whether it's theater music it's social practice like it's people working together and in the May Here documentary series I think the last one there's Cherry Jones or somebody said just find people that you like and do something together like that's the key to longevity and success and I feel like every artist that I've ever worked with that's been the key of it is that you find the people that resonate with you and you make stuff and it reflects who you are and and like you were saying like even if the play goes on to exist with other actors somewhere at some other point you will know that that line came from this workshop and that line came from this workshop and when I get into like my hippie hippie better spiritual moments I get to work that well in a way it's sort of this it's reincarnation it's a moving reincarnation of other people we're bringing to life some we're entering to this sort of timeless place where we're bringing other people to life and we're bringing them to ourselves and sharing them with others and the reason why I write in that process is because I feel like you know somebody just used to be to this quote like a writer is someone for whom I'm going to get this wrong but a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than other people and you know I have a writer that in a world where everybody quote-unquote writes it's actually like d-value and different roles you're actually writing and writing with attention to sound and composition and rhythm and meaning and choosing one word over another it's actually quite difficult and so as we move into a world where the physical and the other things are sort of prioritized I wonder about how people use primary practice as text based you know how these two roles and I'd actually like to go into Jackie and Eric because I don't know if you guys had history working together prior to that ago or how the I can't remember the whole entirety of the you know so I do want to because I know if Eric go along in the more institutional yes thank you all very much I feel very old I think you've definitely gone back before to sort of wanted to be a really career so I'm just so I just thought maybe we want to talk a little bit about how that project came about how this resonates it's part of an institution that spirit it's part of the how that is very I am curious I'm curious about the case that feels like works so well to really feel fully mesmerized by the students It's almost as if it's not accepted. But almost as if it's a two page play and all you've done is written like, an objective, there is an objective in this moment, and an objective in that moment. Make that happen. But it is true. Like how are you so awesome? Like I wish that happened. But that's what I felt when I saw it. I was like, she didn't write that. I mean, but like in a good way. Like she didn't, but she did. But she totally didn't. How did she do it? No, she did. Yes, she did it. Because you had to, but she did, you know? Well, I'm not sticking up. Yeah, right. I did it. I'm sorry. I'm not, it was only possible for like me, not really understanding the same, but that was like, I mean, it's something under a lot of changes. And it was a year of understanding. So I think that there was the openness of how I should have done it. Whereas you all have a community pre-built. I'm like, our audition process was in the sense of certainly the sort of production and the way that you would audition and do it in interviews. So instead of like, instead of handing sides off, because there wasn't really, it wasn't really a side. But you could really make a side where somebody wasn't reading six bowls. It was really an interview process. So that we wanted to find individuals whose personal narrative overlapped as fully as possible with the perceived personality of the characters that you write. So that allowed that to sort of like allow it to come. I think that's, in that sense, we were making a community where we were seeking it. Like we were sort of in search of the community and a lot of barriers. I will also say that what I love about Jackie's work, and I think, just to sort of bridge us back to the beginning of the conversation was, like how Jackie's work spoke to me is how perfect the broader scope of her work is that, she's writing play. She's also, I think as a playwright, she's coming at it from this idea of disrupting the artist audience relationship. So that, which is like kind of like, so on some level, the plays are tools for that. So she's always got like, there's a, I had a playwright instructor once said that, like I would walk into a room and I would say, I have perfect energy into a play. And he would say, we'll start there and then start playing that role. And I think what's interesting about how Jackie approaches it and I could be, I'm not speaking too great, but my experience of it is always that, to the greater, to the conversation I think that Deb, you were talking about, which is the sense of, the sense of what the live experience is today. And I will say that the regional institutional theater sort of catching up with a lot of the work that I think has happened. And like, like the big dance is a part of that. You know, the sense of what is that relationship between audience and artists. And what justifies the live experience today, as opposed to sitting in a movie theater and watching something that sort of being different. So I think that writers who were writing 20, 30 years ago, were writing for a very different dynamic, different relationship. And I think what's weird about Jackie's play, and what was sort of the rewarding thing of the experience of it, that it was both the making of it and also the experience of it, was that you were, it was disrupting, it was disrupting traditional relationships. And I think anything that she does is always like, you know, when you talk, like I think when you talk with Jackie, the person you have to identify is, well, what are you trying to screw with? Like, what is it that you're trying to do to us? And I think once being sort of understood that that was, it became much easier to sort of go from that place. I agree with Jackie's, there's one singer who was sort of performing in the GEO life, or something like that. You want sort of one of the best descriptions to me, who's sort of asking to bring it to me. Oh, what do you mean purpose of art here? So I put that in the list, I said, you know, simply, he said, I think you probably said art is traditional art. And I thought, well, and I'm also trying to be a little bit of a connection with the GEO arts now, because it was a true year, that introduction of art, but I personally love that fabric process, is that there isn't that kind of a shit that there isn't that far ahead, it's because it happens to a lot of those students from playwrights that I always talk about, being on the loose with their father, and it's like, you know, it's not, it's getting scary moment. And the father of the game, so it would be like, and ran away. And she said, how did you know to do that? He said, I'm not somewhere, you know, I've been to this school, that was available. And I thought that was such a great thing because as a product of that, I feel, well, you know, I don't know what to do with it, but whatever we come to on the path, I think about the arts, which you kind of like try and have as much, so that when a mountain lion appears on the path, you know what to do with it. Because I feel like we're always, we're always like, the question that we're always asking is, how do we wake them up? Or how do we wake people up? I mean, not just the audience, but ourselves, fundamentally in the end, right? And that there's an assumption that we can wake ourselves up, that in that moment of awakeness or awareness, that that will be somehow transmitted, right? Or shared, or some kind of electricity that you're talking about. Right, like you have a new experience, right? That like, thinking about, right, that notion of distortion is about, like, we're all in this experience. That's fundamentally different from the, you know, the approach of working in television. Right, I mean, I think that you feel like, part of what draws me to be working this way is the wishful thinking of building events, rather than writing them. I was in this idea of shaping up habits, and I was thinking about, like, we talk a lot about who's sitting down and how the people who are sitting down and how they're called power, that how people don't, that they're not even aware of. So we really try to understand, so like, that's why we started just working as a pair, because, like, how to triangulate the conversation between the one stage that we're sitting down and the designer and the type of guy, how do we make sure that that conversation is being on stage, like, how do we do just a very, very basic, like, I don't know, how, right, like, shaping up things? That makes this a great question, because, you know, I think the way, it's interesting, you know, but, you know, the way that the work is made, you know, and I think there was a time when there was something called experimental, but the idea, I think, was that, it was that the work was experimental, it wasn't much about how what ended up on the stage, but rather it was experiencing and making the work.  I also think that, you know, when we see a lot of work, there's also like, there's now, like, a formula of the way people make experiments or, quote, unquote, realize work in the room, so a lot of it makes that literally insane. And so, and when you talk about power dynamics in the room, and how do we actually disrupt have it in the ways of making, how does that affect the way what ends up on the stage and affect what happens for the audience? And that's something, and I keep on that writing because I feel like that's, you know, when I look at like the Mack Wildens and, you know, feeling meticulous text-based writers who really have, I mean, there's many more like Mack, I think just, you know, I think that there's something there. And actually, like, those people, you know, I mean, it's just interesting, really meticulous text-based writers don't necessarily always penetrate in the same way that someone who's good at writing play plays does, or the way that an ensemble that's really making exciting experiences does, or I don't know, I'm kind of interested to know. Wait, do you see that again? That distinction between, just that distinction is, because I, I guess, I don't know how much the Mack's worth, so I saw him. I guess Mack is less dependent on story.  Right, right, and he's not terribly concerned about, I don't know what he is or isn't concerned with, but stories doesn't do his primary concern, nor his naturalistic language, and, and, and, and to me, as both a audio member, a former major and a current writer, you know, I find that endlessly fascinating, and, and the ability and the craft and the skill required to actually, like I think Richard Maxwell, for instance, actually does an extraordinary job of making it real in a totally unreal way. So, should I correct? And the, I think, just because I really wanted to, you know, really to make it actually, and then to get the Richard Maxwell publication one, to pick one that's the rich thing for me on, you were saying meticulous text-based writers who, like Matt, who's not interested in story and not interested in something else. I forget what, natural, quote unquote, naturalistic language. Naturalistic, how can they actually, and then just complete sentences? I guess I lost the chair. I lost the chair. I guess I lost the chair. I guess I lost the chair. I guess I lost the chair. To make things like, like, there's all these assumptions about what naturalism about realism is, or what language actually sounds like, and, and this, and, and to either make things that don't actually, actually sound like actually real, or that don't sound like actually real, but, like, give you the ability to really curve. Are you talking about hearing something, like the difference between the language and the crafted versus the scaling that language is, uh... Spontaneous. Or it's either spontaneous, or, um, for me, it's just a difference between, like, oh, the word is the thing, versus, oh, the word is the service of the event. I feel like that's a tangible thing that I feel, right? So it's not, it's not about marriage, but the thing about, like, the performance of that, like, I feel like there's a way that taxes community, like Daniel Kinson's tax, is, the word is the thing. And everything else can support that, and he, and it's just a, it's a way of writing, which is very, his is very, I don't know, writerly is the only word I can come up with. Yeah.  It's like, oh, the word's the word, the word's the word. That's exactly what I'm trying to dig into, and I'll just, and then I'll put that up, because I actually, like, when I look at Shakespeare, right, like, you know, Shakespeare, mostly when you just get out of the way, just stand there and just say it, and you'll be fine. Um, because, but at the same time, we know that, like, the way he actually made the work, you know, like, there was no assembled script, like, he gave everybody their parts, he wrote for very specific people, like, he wrote considering, like, you know, that old saw about, like, you know, the fancy words to the rich people, the lesbiansy words to the poor people, like, we know that in his crafting of the text, there was a lot going on, it wasn't the isolated genius. So, I don't know that much. I mean, from the same, like, structure, between the old stories, it was also like, stories that everybody knew already, like, it was also, it was also relying on, like, Romeo and Juliet is retelling the thing that everybody knew, so people aren't only trying to find out how it's going to end, they're going to share it, how should it end? I can't speak to this Shakespeare part of it, but I feel like the rich and the math, the way that their work, when it works, works, the writing has a great deal to do with the director, and in case the rich, rich use directs, where for years, maybe it's about to stop, I think Sarah Benson's in a director, Rich Maxwell, but a director of all his own. And with math, there's wide, to me, wide range from terrible failure to terrific success that has to do with how this stuff is directed, that makes the language do what it needs to do. And to me, in my experience, I've done a fair amount of work, or any secret, in this, I'm sure there's a million ways to make it work, like, what's the name of Romeo and Juliet? Did all those original, Jim Simpson directs it? I'll learn just, oh, Sam, you know, all those early pieces, but my favorite is the calendar practice. In other words, I will talk, like, when you did it in San Diego, which is, you know, this hugely fragmented version of that story, you know, I sat a long, long time back asking the moment questions about there, and secretly, I feel that if the director involves himself with those variants of it, didn't act when we play as hands on it, you can create a kind of secret, grounded, that makes this thing live, and nobody'll know nobody'll ever see our antiquity and say, wow, you really told the story. But, I know exactly where we were in the solid piece of antiquity, every moment. And so, the performers knew it when they needed to do it, I suppose. They needed something, so that's, I don't know, that's just the thought about it. We were talking about the box line before. Sorry, man. Oh, that might get it back to what you said, and then you forgot, oh, no, what you said, you said that that woman's text, that that kind of, they say that the text would penetrate the audience. So, I have a question about the audience. If something doesn't penetrate the market, presumably it doesn't penetrate the audience in particular way, and then spread through the critic's modelism. And so, I'm interested, you know, in this collaborative, experiential, or cause the audience to walk out, or many people walk out during the audition. And I think that's a great point. But, it's to how it's going to be understood by the audience, how it's going to be received, how the theater's going to be. We have this, the goal is to ask people to be able to deal with difficult, challenging questions that we're struggling with, and to engage with that, right? And that, to me, I haven't done my work with the audience, it's like, oh, if the response is, is why they did it, then I don't, I don't know. I mean, I, for me, part of, part of business to a person on the base, you know, is that part of the reason, like, that I feel like I'm a person on the lead audience, I'm going to ask them to come to the start, $1 or $2, and especially, like, where's the pay, and not the fees, or something like that. That, but then we have a pact, and the pact is that. I think that's interesting, and I think, you know, it's a real evolution or change from who I think of as the genesis, certainly of an apartment, I mean, Jackson. I mean, people are welcome to eat it. Like, I'm not trying to make some of the pieces, everybody, but I don't want to make something that is confusing in a way. Yeah, which is great.  But if I could tell one Jackson event, it's really quick, but I just happened to hear, we, I think we'd illustrate that here, or those of us, because I'm, whether I would admit it or not, I'm terrified about it, and how it does in that sense. Jackson had a thing where he said, you know, he would arrange the events, you know, it was supposed to start midnight, and he really started to fire at six in the morning.  I mean, I think it's the form writing of the way Jackson did what he did at the time, the effective form writing. But then, yes, so he said to this poor kid who's like this guy at the door, you know, as he came in, he said, no, he must say to the person when they come in, the show is free, but you have to pay for it, he said. So then, the first person came in and this kid says, the show is free, but you have to pay for it, so. And Jackson took that. He said, no, don't do it like that, you don't like this, finish it! They come in, they wear a June midnight at five a.m. and the show was on some time, some people thought, when they'll serve, slowly scream in his way through an entire instant of the day, once he gets to meet me. That's different. I also really, I meant to go to the place about this goal of like, that whatever people are coming to see is actually happening. Yeah. It's not a reproduction of the story. Oh, there's a connection to what we're doing. From there, I totally agree with Linda that being, in the present, in the sense of everything in the room is really here, in the room and we're not contending of it. There's all kinds of things he bestowed upon us, Jack Smith and all those, but that's where we do, in fact, I was, I'm going to hint to be fair, that's where I admire it, but I don't, maybe it's just a failure of nerve, whatever it is, I'm not there. Well, I think that like, there's things that have different places of respect for them at different times, and I think, you know, achieving that kind of effect that you're just trying to be talking about, Jack Smith would be really hard now, I think, given all that's happened, and given the world that people live in, like it's hard to sort of really disorient people. I mean, I'm not sure, like I haven't screwed a few of the assertions, one that you didn't want to say, like I've found it very rarely that anybody's walked out of their shows, and I, of course, don't walk out of their shows. I think that's the point we evolved from, you know, the last day, children, I don't know, it's just that they were walking out of it, so the last thing that came up with it was like, serious, it's like, parade going throughout, it was when Rich Maxwell did, it's Henry IV at the Baymark, and you should come to the regional theater. Yeah. I don't know, but I think one of the things that's interesting is that part of it is that this idea of, this idea of disrupting form, is reaching out now in the institutional realm, and that that's kind of like, you've got young artists that are entering into that, you've got young writers, any time you want to produce a young writer, we're dealing with people whose thought process and narrative process is really different from the classes, even the modern ones, there's just sort of like, and so part of the question about collaboration, about all these questions, right, fundamentally, for me at least in part, are about how do we tell stories in a contemporary, like that's a weird word I know, but like how do we tell stories today, and how do we tell these stories, like the stories that these young, that these young, that these young, yes, I know, sorry. But these writers who are sort of, I mean, it's sort of, I think part of it is, you were saying earlier about like art versus theater, right? It's an interesting thing to me because I feel like the question about creating work independent of an audience versus creating a work in, and at least with the awareness that there is a collaboration with an audience, for me it's always been one of the lines, like there's a line to be drawn, right, between what is the form that many of us engage in, right, so much of what we're trying to do is about, it's about trying to really like to engage, right, to actually be in dialogue with their being communion, and they're like all these words, right, it's about that versus this other thing which is about creating an experience that is so not about time. Well I think that is this divide line, I mean, I'm judging from the last performance of all, you know, visual art is actively unconcerned, yet it just don't care about the audience and any people who make the interface have to do, and think a lot about the entire weather here. And I think that like my experience has been, and it said we have people at the table here who have drastically different ways of working and the work that they come, you know, like, you know, looking kind of on this really presented as a play, but it had all these other, it was a very rich play that was going on, you know, everybody has different sort of things, I think that what's interesting is that everyone also has very intentional ways of working, and so I think that this is when I, it sounds to me like a little bit of a part about is that like people are coming at it from a different way and having different expectations and when those expectations move from one set of institutional frameworks where the assumptions exist and to another, like that becomes the challenge, but I mean, and I think that this is, I guess this is why I wouldn't ask question, because I feel like as the, like you were saying like you guys, you know, met in an institutional model, and I don't know, I mean, George Burr said that, you know, key to acting is sincerity, and if you can fake that, you gotta make it. And I feel like that's the key, but a lot of stuff is like this sort of like, I don't know, I don't know. It's sort of like a, I don't know, like the ability to reliably recreate the feeling that something is happening for the first time, every time it's actually happening is really hard. And it's one thing to create a thing where you're just leaving everything to chance and letting things actually happen, but often that feels as fake as any, you know, melodrama. And what I, and the reason I get the conversation about sort of the role of the writer in collaborative processes, how does the writer work with the directors? And I think you just talked about their process with the director, how does the writer work with the actors and the directors and all the people together to create a structure that allows to that to happen? Just so that when you talked about how sometimes leaving things to chance or randomness creates a similar environment to a Sebastian play, how it seems to be, it's amazing that there's, that across the board from the most sort of pseudo-rapical to the most traditional, you can do the same sort of mild nausea that one is in the stomach of your audience. If you're doing Woodman, Charming Brown, or a scene where everything's downtown, I have to say, sick food. You're absolutely the one.  Which is like when you think of John K. in 4.33, that's such a rigorously considered and rigorously de-aligned structure that actually induces the audience into experiencing just what it is, performance and very consecutive judgment that there's no artistic intervention or any other kind of intervention before finding a period of time that's framed in the perfect way. Or a rigor of destruction makes the randomness something you can actually experience, whereas a less rigorously devised structure for enemies, enemies is just enough to perform what you do. But I think about 4.33 in a sense of life. If people walk into that space or saw it on YouTube for now, I wonder if people will last five seconds before moving on to the next thing. I mean, how much of it has to do with expectation of 4.33 being 4.33? And how much of it has to do with like, I don't know, I'm just here to see a John Cage piece and then admit it into it, it's like, what have I committed into and what is this experience? Makes me think about expectation of walking to a space. I mean, I think, which is, I think, what institution they come into play a little bit because the institution tends to be the one who are asked, I work at an institution in Brooklyn, so there's all this contextualization, right? Like your art job is to contextualize the work for the audience, you know, through marketing, through community engagement, through engaging with the artists, just like, what is this piece? How, I don't know what you're doing, what you're explaining, what you're doing, so I can better communicate that to the audience. And for me, it's interesting to see what is that dynamic of, because institutions love order, I think, I think we're a big structural, you know, where like, if we can have a systemic way of doing things, we can have a systemic, you know, sustainable, we get, you know, funding sources, it's like we are sort of like, we hope we're very proud of ourselves for creating stability, like we have resources, but then, you know, artists can be like, I want to disrupt, I want to challenge, I want to ask questions, I want to like, you know, lose things around, and then I think that creates this like, tension of context. Absolutely, yeah, I mean, I think that's what Paul, in some ways, an extensible Paul is trying to be like, how do you create sustainable structures that are also, I mean, architecture is a great contextualizer, you know, when you walk into a stage, like, and how does the artist get to work with that intentionally, like, I'm going to make a, you know, play with a fourth wall and a well constructed thing, like, how would these do it on purpose, not as a default, you know, and how, and so there's, this issue is like, how does an institution think about how to have self-critical analysis of its own function and its own contextualization that it fact-toked was out, how does the artist think about that, as they did in their house or writer and deviser and all sorts of things about those things intentionally, and I'm going to go back to use the word rigor, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'll go back to that, because I feel like, like, you know, that entity was at CSC, I think. You guys, yeah, among other things. Yeah, it was, yeah, but part of the text was commissioned by the man, yeah, I mean, it was really, you know, amazing, and I think that word penetrated, it's interesting because it's like, I find this with, like, I don't know that I can tell you what it was about, like, I'm not on a line-by-line basis, but I know that the experience of the language was, and the performance, the whole thing, like, was deeply moving, and I think that there's something about, like, is that, I feel like, I want to, I want to de-link the idea of penetrating the market from penetrating the law, you know, something. Can I, I can't think of physics that don't really go down, so if there's somebody who knows about physics who can call me about what I'm about to say in the institute, there's a line that I see that I can ask, but the thing is, like, molecules, all molecules basically the same, like, the water, iron, dust, table, right, that's the idea. It's structured, molecules, it's a density of molecules, more dense than molecules, it's a tighter than the physical gravitation of the world, like, it seems to me, from that moment, I think that the rigor of whatever was a dense molecular nucleus, and the structure, and that what happens is the interplay of the director and the interpreter, the actor, has a magnetic resonance, two molecules inside that density create a structure, and you do that over here, and then that reforms the density of the structure, so there's a magnetic field. We're all making things that are somewhat alive and moving, and I think for me, kind of this physics, it's like, in an institution, what is the core of the nucleus and its intentionality and its meaning or whatever? We also talk about structure as, oh, we're gonna build a box like that, and I really think about, what's the core, what's the thing, and then how strong is that, and is it a pulse-saving nucleus if that makes sense, if it makes sense to me? But to me, the whole thing about what you're doing when you're trying, is that you're never finding out what the structure is, and it's a changing, now you have a structure, and eventually, it comes into some kind of form, but my whole thing is like, really identifying, I guess, when I wrote the drama term there, it's a drama term, probably, which I don't use to write, and but it's like, what is that, what's that core, what's that nucleus of what you're doing, then how dense it is, and how the pulse-saving is, and what's the nature of the experience, what's the organization, I was talking about this, what's the organization of what all the different electrons, all the things that are built in the cosmos, all the planets that control around the same sexual and ecstatic sun, have different orbits, have different things, have different blood, and they're basically packed spaces, and then I would show up and send a bracelet to the court for the college, where he talks about suspension of disbelief on my form this season, so I prefer expansion of religion by the self, but the thing that Colorado says about suspension of belief is that it gives people to move towards faith, or acceptance of salvation, or whatever, is that at the end of the orbit, there needs to be something that you connect to a magnetic resonance, something that you want to call it, that you connect to personally, under the cast of the universe of a shared term, how are we arranging the molecules, which we're all shared, to make those things. And I think what it means, in a practical term, is that it takes a lot of time, right as you're going back to some of the about the institution of religion and protection, and sort of the thing that I feel like we're all in the process of figuring it out, is the effort that I think is a kind of collaborative process, where I think there's 40 actors in this period of two years in order to develop a certain kind of intuition that goes away, like that takes a lot of time, then for more people than it does the model of folks that are in a shared, shared, you know, the fact that that is like that model, and part of what we mean to feel like about it, is that the number of, like, allergens that are usually accepted, right, by the community, is like, oh, it takes four weeks for us to write, right, it'll be done. We love our science, especially because even if it's written in a pretty solid journal, they're out of date, and it's solid again, right, it actually takes a lot more time in some period of the model than it was in the original dimension of the song, right, but what working collaboratively means for the parent is that it actually takes two years on and off the universal version of the multiple career that can be collaborative in a lot of stuff, right?  So that, that this, our relationship, like we've had, we've been really lucky to have a really good manner, and part of that relationship within teaching people, or basically like them teaching others available and plus, it seems like sort of like model of different ways to use the resource that there are, you know, just to make sure we know about how we can do this. But also, I think that it's like, it scares people off. It's like, oh, it's not too cold, it's not too tender, it's like, it's cold, and when you walk in and you're doing it, you just find the process of making it complete a disaster that you're just focusing in the way all of this is going to work. It's just something that, in a more traditional process, there are those violence homes, right? Right, or maybe with a drama tour, or maybe it would not, like, throw it at people. I don't know, I was just talking to see if you're gonna, like, I just don't know if I saw the rematch, I think a lot of them, right, in conversation, or anything, that's just one thing that, you know, when we're laying the center, we're going to Austin to see the draft of the show, or things like that, they didn't know they were coming in, it just happened to me today, when they had just broken it, they had just smashed it, smashed it. And it's like, it's all work out, we work out just fine. But then, actually, just, you know, it's not about this, if you're not, it's not actually more about, oh yeah, that part of the process, like that smashing is a collective smashing. I think we're in public. And it's very public, and yeah, and in real terms, it's expensive. Okay, actually, right, like that being, like in real terms, like, it's like, we're, you know, we're doing a premiere of a show, and we're getting paid a lot less than we paid, or someone hired us to be the show, but we're gonna show their costs a lot of money, because we're tied to work in rehearsal rooms, with our set and our costs, with our sound and our video, for multiple one, two, three, three, over the last few years. So it's actually, basically, the texture is different. And that in terms of figuring out how to get a plan wide audience to the start, and how to work in situations like, I'm really excited to start having this conversation about how, without, without, you know, getting this kind of impression. But it feels like, on one level, that like, what Paul was trying to do about Jackson, was almost like a performance of disruption, for a public performance of disruption for audiences, but what you're actually talking about is like structural disruption in the institution, just like, actually, we don't want to, we cannot make work in this way. And it's also pretty counter-cultural in the sense that you're asserting that the human creative process of working collaboratively to make things and resources and money, and it's not built in your power. And I think, like, you know, one of the things that other writers, writers are talking about is that, you know, the autonomy that they get in the collaborative process or the agency that they get, they might not get in a traditional process or whatever. It sounds like you guys have a really good relationship with a director of playwright, which is always the case in this case. So I'm just sort of curious about both in your sense of sort of like, you guys can just point to it on your own with the movement of theater companies, right? Like, I've been part of it live. Yeah, we've cut up a bunch of programs to help theater festival and hard-reply, and so we've got a lot of issues in there for people. Evelyn, I'm trying to get that to happen. I'm trying to make it happen for the media, because that was what we all had. Yeah, and that was sort of who we reached out to. But I think a major part of it was also, you know, wanting to create an event uptown that was cultural and important for this community to gather around.  And then come together with other people who are interested in talking. So that raises an extreme to go back to. Karen, Karen, yeah. Because my next degree, yeah, she's a great, yeah, a little bit of RIC, whatever, whatever it is. You know, but what does that stand for anything? Pretty hard to be, but you know, because when we talk about the context and space and institutions and architecture, it's like, well, you know, a lot of it, like here's a building that's very clearly a place for some people to come.  There aren't necessarily parallel spaces in fact, you know, I mean, possibly there are more of them. They're all under duress. And so, and you guys are doing something here. I think, you know, for some buyers, I think it's just really good work to make that space available to people that are living there. So I don't know, it becomes interesting where you find resources. Like how does the collaborative process, how does being a, I'm coming back there because I just feel like that writing is a structural thing. How does that finding resources where you are to create the way you want to create like an effect? Or as part of the institution, is that something you consider when you start to work on a project?  Like when you, there's a certain point when you get to the terms of budgets and the terms of like the size of the project and the resources that there is, there is a model that kind of hangs over the air and there's this sort of like, you do it in three and a half weeks. You type it in in three days, you preview it and you want to be open to the show and it runs the list as it runs. I believe that it's the institutional responsibility that that's why it's not the artist's responsibility. The artist can and that should be a right. I mean, they should on some level. It's not fundamentally their responsibility because they're creating their work and there are going to be institutions that are better suited for their work than other institutions. So an institution that is not suited for their work that uses the programming and doesn't subsequently support it by contextualizing it, is failing the artist and failing the work, right? So I think to that extent, that also applies to the way we make, right? The way the work is made is a similar thing. So an institution that tries to put a model on top of an artist that is at odds with the way that work was created is also on some level the failure of the institution for the artist. So, you know, so I think there's a whole new thing. So the big thing right now is that there are certain institutions like LCT3 and like the public that are trying to find ways to support like this idea of device work. And understand that that's a long vision sort of thing.   But I think we have that special why are students interested in this sort of working in the first place. And on some level, because they understand that this is actually where, at least on some level, the future of this cultural relationship to performing arts and live arts lives, right? So that, like they wouldn't be taking this risk. If they didn't, on some level, say where the really interesting work is happening, at least in part, right, is in this place. And so if we want to be a part of it, if we want to not get it, we want to not become the kind of like, you know, giant battleship that's sort of hanging out in the background, right? We want to not be that. We want to actually be part of the taste makers. We want to be part of the people that are actually in the conversation. Then we need to invest. And that's kind of, that's a part, that's almost an impossible argument to make in the regional theater or whatever that is. Because we don't decide on a lot of these work. There are examples. There are many examples of institutional theaters that have been able to create an interesting dialogue with their boards, with their patrons, with their communities to make them, to craft them, right, for people that are doing that. They're like, part of what's exciting about their work is they're just letting it all hang out. And there's no kind of like, there's no hiding away in a room someplace, right? And then releasing it on the world when it's all finished. There's actually a kind of process. And then that's great. And I think part of the institution where it's starting to work is I think it's when they make the process part of the performance. Right, we, with this last part, have a lot of opportunities to engage audience. Which I feel like is like, saying what you say, like audience, I mean audience-agent, what is last. But that we really have found a huge benefit to our process with this show that we're working in particular with having audiences come and talk about it because the issues, it's about, that's the violence, the violence, the culture, and then the violence, there's just a lot of, just want to know what people think about it. So, and so the different places we've gone, we've really been able, it's not just for, it's great that it's authentic audience engagement, right, we're not being created, it's not, you know, and I feel like audience will feel that when they come in to see something in the process, there's a talk back that's not authentic. So I think that's part of it. But yeah, this is exciting because we're always looking for ways to articulate why we would be useful at an institution, like what can we bring to the community and I think that's a great, that, I think we should talk more about, because you said you made more for a community and then more of the music, the score community, like, whatever, you're probably right. But, the way that you're talking about it sounds like there's a fairly organic process without kind of like great periods in institutional, you know, it's like, and it seems, it's getting started organically, it's just like folks, right, like friends, folks, and then like, other people came around. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, from the beginning, you know, partnered with the Lesley Lowman Museum down on Worcester Street, you know, and the presentations have a week and a day or so of this gay and lesbian art gallery, and then over the, you know, the development of the process of three years and over the bigger process, it was a lot about realizing that the audience that we were looking for specifically in Harlem, there isn't like a list that are looking to say, get that list, you know what I mean, but you think a lot of what I've experienced in working at some sort of rare institutions on the Biodiversity Color, it is sort of like, let's have one night, community night, and invite them all, and they'll come in by tickets, you know, and for us, we sort of knew that that this service exists, that the audience is there, but you know, if you meet them, you have to go to the court, and we literally looked over the course of like that last year when we knew this is the day, I mean, we went to every single event that we could find in Harlem, that is LGBT focused or not, and like literally during the rehearsal process, it was like, anything out of our cast, you know what I'm saying, like you guys do a career, you do a career, do a career, and it was part of that, you know, engaging with the audience, not solely like, comes to my show, comes to my show, comes to my show, but like, who are you? What do you want to see? You know, what are you interested in? And like, meeting people where they are, and then building those relationships. Which is beautiful, because then when the show is over, people are still talking about it, because they don't know you. So like now when you go to some restaurants in the neighborhood, who are also partners, because that's just a part of the play, and now they're sending their kids, like the people who are bringing their restaurants to the show, it's now sort of like, now we're also on the same page, which is lovely. And I think now there's that full relationship that was established with them that wasn't, you know, for us, yes, it was about meeting people to listen to the show, but it wasn't solely like, come see this one play, it was like, build a relationship with an audience who now is interested in like, what else is happening uptown, and you know, it's sort of, for us to be in their lives, and for a lot of artists in the program, it serves all of us now. This is actually very important, which you were saying, you feel like this is like, the artists themselves, like part of the creative process of trying to engage in the community is contextualizing your work, is actually making your work not, as opposed to, for example, I, as an individual, as a playwright, had more of a relationship with an institution. I mean, at the present moment, I write plays, we make plays, and there's no institutional affiliation for the work that I'm creating, so that sort of, we're just gonna sit around, we need to sit around, but we're not gonna do that. So we're gonna bring the play to people that need to see it, and we're gonna figure out how to do that until potentially there's a larger interest or a larger willingness to take over, as we're graced, and we're graced on the work, but until there is more of an institutional presence in our lives, I think how we're gonna, and I'm gonna like it now, there's nothing really wrong with making the play that way, it's expensive, and sometimes probably in art, but like, it's just like, whoa, sorry! No, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. So it was hugely important to start in art, and that was like, no one else was gonna have it, especially just because of the way it was developed. It wasn't gonna go anywhere else. That's where it has to be, anything to build this audience around it, and now we definitely had people from institutions come and see the work who were like, oh, this is great, and here's the feedback. And we continue to develop it, you know, and running to sort of interesting avenues of, you know, this and stuff, you know. And, and continue to develop it, I think that definitely it's like how, you know, the dream, I would say is definitely to have it seen elsewhere. These things do play. It's a sort of important story that you don't really see on the stage and the community that builds this on the stage. And so that's absolutely, but I think what we know now also is that everyone in Harlem is like, so when is it, wherever can I go next? You know what I mean? And that feels really great is that it's like, we have, you know what I mean? I think it would be important even within an institution for us to continue that community building. I don't think that part of the process of building the piece should end. And I think wherever it plans, I would want that to be a part, to be a continued part of the process. So I don't think it should just be like, yeah, let it go. I mean, I think that reaching out is a part of the DNA of the piece. Exactly. It's a part of it. And I think that needs to continue to grow and swell wherever the piece goes. And on that note, I'm going to say, well, first of all, thank you all so much everybody for making this happen. Thank you for your time. Keep the conversation going. We'll hope to continue it elsewhere. And I think we learned a lot about the complex ecosystem of creativity. Thank you all very much.


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