Hello everyone. The topic for my today's lecture is Reliability Design Problem. At the end of the session, the students will be able to solve the reliability design problem using dynamic programming. We need to design a system which is composed of several devices that are connected in series. Now, this is the diagram for it. The device is D 1, D 2, D 3 up to D n that are connected in series. So, we have n number of devices. Let us assume that the reliability of the device D i is R i. So, therefore, the reliability of the entire system will be pi R i meaning the product of all such R i's that is the reliability of the devices. Now, reliability of individual devices is generally close to one, but the reliability of the entire system may not be good. For example, if we take n equal to 10 meaning 10 devices and R i equal to 0.99 meaning reliability of the devices 0.99 where we have i ranging from 1 to 10. So, pi R i would be equal to 0.904 that is the reliability of the entire system. Now, multiple copies of the same device type are connected in parallel through the use of switching circuits. This is how we have the devices connected in parallel in each stage and as we can see in every stage multiple copies of the devices are present at that stage. This is for D 1, D 2, D 3 and so on up to D n. The switching circuits determine which devices in any given group are functioning properly. If suppose the stage i contains m i number of copies of device D i, the probability that all the m i copies have a mal function is equal to 1 minus R i raise to m i where this R i would be the reliability of that device D i and m i would be the number of copies of the device D i. So, this is nothing, but the mal function probability. So, therefore, the reliability of that stage i will be equal to 1 minus that probability of mal functioning that is 1 minus into bracket 1 minus R i raise to m i. For example, if the reliability R i is equal to 0.99 and m i equal to 2 meaning 2 copies in that case the stage reliability will be equal to 1 minus into bracket 1 minus R i closing the bracket raise to m i. This will be equal to 1 minus as we know R i is 0.99. So, we substitute that value over here. So, this gives 1 minus into bracket 1 minus 0.99 bracket raise to 2 and it equals to 1 minus 0.01 square which equals to 0.9999. So, this is the stage reliability. The stage reliability in practical may not be equal to 1 minus into bracket 1 minus R i close the bracket raise to m i. Now, this is because of the reason that the switching circuits themselves are not fully reliable. The failures of the copies of the same device may not be fully independent if the failure is due to some design defect. So, the reliability of a stage i is generally given by a function that is phi i of m i where n is greater than 1. So, the reliability of the entire system of stages is equal to product of phi i m i where i goes from 1 to n. So, there is a need of device duplication so as to maximize the reliability. So, that tells us device duplication actually increases the reliability. The maximization needs to be carried out under some constraint of cost. So, let us assume that C i is a cost of each unit of the device D i and C be the maximum allowable cost of the system being designed. So, our maximization problem is maximize phi phi i m i where i goes from 1 to n subject to the constraints summation C i m i where i goes from 1 to n and it should be less than equal to c where m i is always greater than equal to 1 and integer i ranges between 1 to n. And as we know m i greater than equal to 1 indicates that at least one device copy must be present in every stage. Now, S i consists of the tuples of the form f comma x where f stands for reliability and x stands for cost and S i j represents a tuple which are obtainable from S i minus 1 by choosing m i value equal to j that is the number of copies equal to j. So, there is at most one tuple for each different x value that results from a sequence of decisions on m 1 m 2 up to m n meaning the number of copies m 1 m 2 up to m n.  For example, there are two tuples 0.7 comma 30 and 0.65 comma 35. So, 0.7 comma 30 dominates 0.65 comma 35 if and only if the following condition holds true. So, since this condition is holding true 0.7 is greater than 0.65 and 30 is less than 35 due to that the first tuple dominates the second one and the dominated tuples can be discarded from S i. So, now we have the reliability design problem to be solved where n equal to 3, 3 stages the cost value C 1, C 2, C 3 equal to 30, 15, 20 and C the maximum cost available is equal to 105 dollars and the reliability is of the devices indicated as R 1, R 2, R 3 equal to 0.9, 0.8 and 0.5 respectively and U 1, U 2, U 3 equal to 233 that indicate the maximum copies available of devices D 1, D 2 and D 3 respectively. So, now S 0 will be equal to 1 comma 0 the set consisting of the tuple 1 comma 0 indicating reliability equal to 1 and cost involved in now is equal to 0. Now, the tuple that we are going to take into consideration is 0.9 comma 30 that is for the first device. So, S 11 is constructed as multiplying the reliability 0.9 to the reliability of S 0 that is 1. So, it gives value 0.9 and adding 32 the cost value of the tuple in S 0 that is it will be 30 plus 0 equal to 30. Now, this S 11 indicates that only 1 copy of device D 1 is being taken. Similarly, S 12 is then formed using 2 copies of device D 1 and so we take the tuple 0.9 comma 30 as it is and 0.99 comma 60 is the second tuple to be inserted. How is this 0.99 comma 60 forming a part of S 12? It is because of this formula 1 minus 1 minus 0.9 bracket square. So, this is nothing, but the reliability of the system where 0.9 is the reliability of device D 1 and 2 is the number of copies and 60 is nothing, but since we are taking 2 copies of device D 1. So, it is 2 into 30 equal to 60 now S 1 is formed by combining the tuples of S 11 and S 12. So, this is how we get S 1 moving ahead for S 21 we need to now consider the second object where f comma x equal to 0.8 and 15. So, when you take 1 copy of device D 2. So, its reliability is 0.8 and its cost is 15. So, this 0.8 multiplied by 0.9 gives 0.92 and 15 added to 30 gives 45. Similarly, 0.8 multiplied by 0.99 gives 0.792 and 15 added with 60 gives 75. So, this is S 21. Now for calculating tuples in S 22 we need to consider 2 copies of device D 2 and accordingly we get the tuples 0.864 comma 60. Now, the students are expected to think and write the answer to the following question is any tuple eliminated from S 22? Now pause the video and write your answer. Yes, the tuple 0.9504 comma 90 is eliminated. The next question is what is the reason for the tuple getting eliminated from S 22? Now once again pause the video and write your answer. So, the tuple is eliminated since when you see that 0.864 comma 60 is generated from this tuple and the tuple 0.9504 comma 90 is generated from this tuple and this is eliminated because if we consider that tuple the overall maximum cost available is 105 and the cost of the device D 3 is 20 dollars. So, if 20 is added to 90 it gives 110 dollars. So, this 110 since it is greater than 105 we cannot design the third stage. So, therefore, this tuple is eliminated. Now moving ahead for S 23 we now consider 3 copies of device D 2. So, we get the tuple 0.8928 comma 75 and this tuple is formed from the tuple 0.9 comma 30. Moving ahead so S 2 when we need to find S 2 we will combine or we will merge the tuples in S 21, S 22 and S 23 and we get these 3 tuples. So, 0.792 comma 75 is eliminated or purge since its reliability is less than this tuple and its cost is greater. Similarly, S 31 for S 31 now we go to the third stage the cost is 20 of the device DI and reliability is 0.5. So, this 0.36 comma 65, 0.432 comma 80 and 0.4464 comma 95 are generated from the tuples of S 2 by adding one copy of device D 3. Similarly, S 32 we consider 2 copies of device D 3 and generate these tuples and S 33 by considering 3 copies of device D 3 and generating this tuple. So, finally, when we take S 3 we are going to merge the tuples and we are going to get this final result. Now 0.648 comma 100 is the maximum reliability. So, it is generated from S 32. So, therefore, 2 copies of device D 3 and this tuple was generated from this S 2 tuple 0.864 comma 60 and it was coming from S 22. So, therefore, here 2 copies of device D 2 are taken. So, therefore, M 2 equal to 2 and this tuple 0.864 comma 60 was generated from 0.9 comma 30 and this 0.9 comma 30 was coming from S 11. So, it indicates one copy of device D 1. So, M 1 M 2 M 3 are having value 1, 2 and 2. The 3-stage system design has the reliability of 0.648 and the cost of 100 dollars where M 1 equal to 1, M 2 equal to 2 and M 3 equal to 2. This is the reference for the video lecture.


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On May 14th, we're going to see general elections being held in Turkey for the post of president and for parliament. Elections which are among the most significant in the world. Turkey is an important power. The positions it takes are crucial for not only West Asia, but for the entire world. And this election is particularly interesting as it has been very close. President Rajab Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in power in various ways since 2003, facing a very strong challenge. It's very unclear as of now what will happen, polls saying, polls giving different kinds of results. But today we wanted to look at not only Erdogan's record, the kind of challenge he's facing in the elections, but also the perspective of left and progressive forces in Turkey as well, who played a long, who have had many struggles, who played a vital role in the country's politics. We're joined by Anil from the Turkish Communist Party from its Central Committee. Thank you so much for speaking to us. So, I wanted to start with the immediate issue that of the general elections. Many people are observers, the media calling it maybe the closest in recent times. And like I said, the polling indicates the leading candidates neck to neck. But maybe could you first take us through why this election is so tight, so to speak, and why has Erdogan become so unpopular? Why is it so close? It's complicated because Erdogan and the alliance of his party facing an interesting dilemma. You can call it a challenge, of course, but I think we can find an answer to your question if you don't dive into this dilemma. Because the election is the closest one today, as you said. But we must know that Erdogan is kind of a personification of this dilemma. So I want to explain a little bit more about this dilemma. On the one hand, Erdogan suffered a series of defeats in the past. I'll get to that moment in a moment. But what I mean by the defeat is in both sense, in world view and in support of Turkish society. In other words, he seemed lost in terms of his legitimacy, actually. We must know that he is a politician of Islamist school, so-called national vision movement in our country. And he trains as a fundamentalist and sworn anti-communist. He commonly regarded as liberal Islamist in the past, or put it differently, a moderate Islamist. But his political school has never changed. He has always been a counter-revolutionist, a fundamentalist, and an enemy of the Turkish republican-licensed cult. So his and his party's main objective was to transform Turkey using their Islamist agenda. They knew that they couldn't do that if they do not change their costume or clothes. Yes, they used liberalism as a weapon. To earn trust of the big bosses of the Turkish capitalism, the monopolies. But the market ideology, liberalism, privatization, corporate world view were always their testament, as it were. So eventually they hit the wall in the past. I think we can determine three major turning points in here, why they hit the wall. First, in Syria. So we stole a huge war, maybe the world war in Syria. But in Syria, they promised so much for their Islamist, Ottomanist, imperial hunger. But they failed at least in the most part. The Eurotomanist project was one of the main cores of the counter-revolutionist agenda of the Euron. And the failure backlash is a legitimacy problem. So this was the first reason. And the second one, Turkish people were stubborn. We pour into the streets in the so-called June days. And it was 2013, 10 years before. And it was one of the most important events in the Turkish history. So political left made its presence on the streets back then. And the most important squares of the cities, for example, Istanbul, Ankara, Adana, Izmir, and Republican, Lysist, anti-imperialist cults were alive on those crowds. In the end, June days cracked the second pillar of the Erdogan's Islamist agenda. So there is one more. And the third one was the latest earthquake disaster. It was a terrible disaster. But yeah, it's probably the most tragic and devastating event in the Turkish history, I should say. Maybe a massacre to put it other words. And it meant a fatal, legitimate crisis in the government. And in the state also. They emptied their conservatism using their own hands. People were awakened. Turkish people, even who support Erdogan before, or his alliance, which consists of nationalists and Islamists, suddenly and gradually realized that they lost all the credits in terms of ethics, faith and even modesty in politics, etc. So Erdogan was naked back then on those days, as he and his party is all about money, profit, rent and show business. So this could have been the Erdogan's real closest moment until this moment. But in fact, he could have been a political corpse, as I can say as it were. But here is the dilemma. So every time he lost his legitimacy, every time he lost his confidence or confidence of his own supporters, the political system come to the aid of him. The two-aligned system, I mean, or in practice two-party system, had him so much. So he somehow find a way and use the system's soft spots to replenish his legitimacy. I mean, he uses politics to cover his failed ideology in a way. It's a phenomenon. And simply because of this mechanism of Turkish politics, this dilemma we are still talking about, as it were one man and or his voting rate or his or this election's uncertainty, this is the dilemma we are facing. And back to the question, because of this absurdity, and for a long time, Erdogan's challenge also becomes our challenge. That's the thing we're facing today, basically. That's a very interesting way you put it, because you talked about the various aspects that have really hit him, but also why he seems to come back every time. But I think this time also for me, people outside, it's been an interesting occasion also and interesting in bad ways as well, because the sheer extent of the economic crisis in Turkey. We've been reading reports of the massive inflation that people are facing, the currency losing value, all this happened last year, of course. We have heard workers take to the streets, protests taking place on the issue of wages. And finally, Erdogan responding, the government responding by increasing wages at the last moment, minimum wages, I believe, at the very last moment. But could you maybe take us to the extent of the economic crisis and also the kind of policies you mentioned, the market policies, the neoliberalism as they say. But could you maybe take us a bit in depth into those policies which have led to this crisis? Yeah, first of all, nothing starts before the election, I must say. If you want to understand economic crisis in Turkey, we definitely look at the beginning of all. I think that's necessary to understand what's going to happen after the election. Beginning with the time crisis, technically speaking, Turkish economy is not facing a real breakdown, in technically speaking. Capitalist machinery, economic order is running well. Both AKP, Erdogan, and the opposition are not going to change any structural policies of the Turkish economy. I mean, Turkish capitalism is benefiting from being close to the Europe. It's ties to the European capital and being a breach over Russia, Asia and Africa. The Turkish industries developed in close relation to the European markets. Think that as an export hub or logistic hub of this region. This goes as planned before, nothing's changed and changing. But Turkish economy is not like German economy, for example. Its ability to absorb shocks, fluctuations, is not comparable to so-called great economies or central imperatives. Also, Turkish economy is in the middle of a bottleneck in terms of financing economy. I mean, managing funds as the main source of economic growth. Because it's not easy to find sustained funds to keep economy growing in Turkey. Basically, Turkish capitalism is facing its limits and want to go beyond those limits. That's a tough question because that's also a question of profitability. For the capitalist side. And this means either you cut the profits or cut the wages. There are two options. Of course, Erdogan government cannot cut the big buses profits. They depend on them. However, Erdogan government also adds some parameters to this problem. All of us call this problem as election economy in here. But actually, it's a deep-rooted problem in Turkish economy. I want to back to the legitimate problem. But Erdogan government, instinctively or reasonably, finds a way out of this problem, I must say. First of all, they wanted to keep economy growing and hold down unemployment. They printed money, they increased wages to keep economy of legitimacy in the so-called boundaries. We have a saying in here. Two things bring the government down. Empty pot and unemployment. So do they manage the economy or this crisis? I must say nothing mysterious here. They just using the time as a leverage point. So they postponed the hard burdens of the economic policy of the years that has passed. In the meantime, they use inflation as a leverage too. Likewise, to increase profits using inflation that makes big buses very happy, actually, very, very happy. Also, this gives them a gift at two points. Actually, the buses only discomfort is that the Erdogan government may not control this so-called economic stick during these years. And opposition's only economic alternative is that they say we can control better. We can use this stick better. I can say it for the trade union side that trade unions fight this policy as it should be because of series of reasons. But workers, laborers, especially some new and lively sections of the working class find new waves of trouble. We saw that the past two years, such as delivery workers find and gained their rights several times during the past years. That was an important spark for the whole class in Turkey and even for the larger crops to fight against government policies. I guess, basically, the answer of your question is like this. Absolutely. Also, now moving to another issue that has often been discussed, which is really about the political structures and institutions in the country. Now, we know that one allegation often leveled against Erdogan and his system is that they really centralized power, completely shifting the way Turkish politics is done, democratic institutions facing a huge amount of threat. At least whatever democratic institutions existed already facing a huge amount of threat. We have had, of course, parliamentarians being jailed, prominent opposition politicians being disqualified or being jailed. So, there's this sense that the Republican system we talked about is under a considerable attack. Could you maybe also take us through what has been the trajectory of that and what is happening in that aspect? Yeah, sure. So, I already mentioned a bit about the political system and the power and dilemma of Erdogan before. So, I want to explain more about the capitalist class in Turkey, because it's in close relation to this class. It's the capitalist class to put a final point on it, a few big family. I can name it, Koç and Sabancı families and some others. And their organization in Turkey, we call it Tursiat, basically the Patrons' club. You can name it. They supported presidential system. They had this dream about Turkey. Only two parties and a president. This was their dream. So, I think you too were familiar with this type of political system. We can see it firstly in England and also in United States. But in some other countries too. This makes a perfect condition to eliminate people's true choices. Their true parties as well as revolutionary parties like ours. And they created this parliamentary wall in terms of vote rates. It's 7 right now in Turkey, but back then it was 10. And dictate other parties, so called small parties, to don't interrupt us and even don't bother to join the elections. So, they first see this need in 60s in Turkey. Between 60s and 70s, Turkish working class people and growing the struggle created their own deputies and made them struggle in the parliament. They were deputies of working class, actually. They were socialists. And capitalist class, capitalists, here these policies, consequences. They used military coup. They changed the system. Finally, they changed the system to the two alliance version of it, like the United States, Republicans and Democrats. And president was the highway of this system, as it were. Because parliament was slow, but president would be faster in order to privatize economy, bend the strikes, pass the contracts and pass the boss friendly acts. So it's true that Erdogan benefited from the system weak point and make himself as a administrator or one man, as it were. Because the world was changing. Turkey was in state of a prolonged chaos and there was no exciting alternative to the Erdogan. But every time he used this system's weak points, we see that he himself gave opportunities to the big bosses as a political ammunition. But also as a gigantic profits of the corporates. And at the end of today, we should say that it is the bosses, the capitalists in Turkey who benefited most this political system as they always wanted to be. Right. That's very interesting because it connects to my next question also because in many parts of the world, you see that the right wing, in this case, the Islamist forces and the capitalists having a very interesting relation. So in that connection, I wanted to ask you about the Islamist project that you mentioned at the beginning in the first question. How has that project progressed? And as in what is the aim of that project, so to speak? You talked about how the AKP and Erdogan are basically considered a moderate Islamist force. But how have they sort of tried to intervene socially to bring about changes to sort of support their political agenda? Yeah, the image was moderate, but the real was different. Basically, AKP at the beginning of the 2000s formed as a project party in Turkey. I used the term project in both means as a Turkey's own difficulties, but also as a regional middleist, Mediterranean, as a part of imperial intervention. So it was a coalition of cliques and powers in AKP. There was Gulenists. It was a regional sect in Turkey. It's a close relation with the CIA. And there was liberals, there was extremists, etc. They are backed by United States and European Union. The AKP's agenda was simple, basically. The first, they needed to transform state practices to change the society in order to implement their agenda. And the region as well, the second one. They were coalition, but their agenda wasn't far from the clear. They wanted to speed up the counter-revolution radically in Turkey. Against the Turkey's founding values, we call it. They wanted to demolish republicanism and racism in Turkey. They also needed to change the foreign policy of Turkey in order to interfere in the neighbor countries and to help American and European imperialism. You know, in Yugoslavia and Syria and Iraq, there are lots of it. And they couldn't do that without changing the images and symbols, even memories in people's head. So their counter-revolution flared up. Education system, healthcare system, every part of the state apparatus transformed and filled with religious sects in Turkey.  They seek to build a society in which exploited majority cannot struggle for their rights, but only comply with it. Of course, it won't be like Afghanistan or other countries. But here we are, Turkish way of it. I can say Turkish way suitable for Turkish capitalism. I mentioned about transformation and what blocked this transformation in Turkey at the beginning, the first question of yours. But I must say that they failed a lot of points on those years. However, they transformed society in a considerable degree. We accept that. It's the main opposition party, CHP, and their alliance is responsible from this mess. Because I stated earlier every time Erdogan and AKP stuck at the wall, hit the wall and receive a warning from the people of Turkey in June days or in Syria. It was the opposition rescued Erdogan, acting like a bilingual mediator. That's the basic. This actually brings me very, it's a good segue to the next question as well, which is really that of course the election has been in the media portrayed as a contest between Erdogan, the AKP, and the CHP. But like you, I think said at various points, there is often, sometimes you feel that there is no real difference on many issues between the two, especially on the issue of economy, whether on the issue of foreign policy there's going to be any difference is a big question. Often they may not be. And so it seems that the opposition's main argument is that they are not Erdogan. Right. So in other, there's not real understanding of what their alternative agenda is. So from the perspective of the Turkish Communist Party, from a left perspective so to speak, what do you, how do you see how Turkey can be sort of, say, let's say taken back or saved in the situation? Yeah, as you said, and I summarized the opposition's point of view, they are the same. They have same economic agenda. I can share our view briefly, our party's alternative. We have three main principle or element of our economic and social agenda. We say we will nationalize or stateize every strategic industry and corporation, including food monopolies, healthcare and education. We say that only plant and statist economy can guarantee people's welfare an event, even their life, as we can see in the massive earthquake in recent months.  There is no merit system in education or healthcare, nor a people's state until racism restored and established.  Lastly, we say we will get out of NATO. So NATO is a terrorist organization, and we are part of NATO. Our soldiers serving abroad as part of NATO operations that will be recalled. American base in our country will be closed. The nuclear weapons in Jirlik, the city of Adana, the southern city in Turkey will be dismantled. There will be no cooperation with those who have accounts in our country's territories. Anti-imperialism and patriotism require this, I must say. Absolutely. And finally, maybe you could just take us through what the TKP's election campaign has been about. How is the party approaching the elections? Yeah, I can summarize briefly. We think that communism has solid roots in this country, Turkey. The past 30 years, but especially the recent years, for example the earthquake, but we see before that, the recent years proved our faults and plans. So this political system, regardless of who is going to win this election, will suffer from chaos.  So we need to gain strength and prove that Turkey, as well as our people, of course, if we can do that, we can do more between two elections because we have one more election for the localities. Because there will be austerity policy in Turkey after the election. There will be political and legitimacy crisis. There will be a need to fight and consolidate against what is coming. So when we look at history, we see that Turkish people gain strength and energy to the struggle, only when they do the job by themselves. In streets, in squares, in factories, in neighborhoods, in schools, in universities. So we planned and created our election campaign according to these principles. Our deputies are the deputies of struggle, the deputies of their factories, their neighborhoods, their schools, their universities. We reach people, try to hold their hands, invite to a real struggle in our campaign. We want people's votes for our principles and our program, and want them to strengthen their ability to fight for. We think if we can do that, we will show and prove more of this. Both in the streets, but also in the parliament. But not by different alien powers, by our own powers and by our own organized power of the people. Thank you so much for talking to us, for giving us, I think, an understanding of Turkish politics that goes beyond just the slogans that come out during the elections and goes into a much more deeper analysis of capitalism itself, his role. Thank you so much for talking to us. And that's all we have time for today. We'll be covering the Turkish election closely, bringing in the results as well. So until then, keep reading and watching People's Dispatch.


Good day, everyone. I am Brenda Munoz, the conference coordinator of LMDA, conference 2021, and I am happy to welcome you all to the Canadian and Mexican Artists Exchange. This panel will be presented in English and Spanish, so remember that we have oral simultaneous interpretation available through the Web Switcher Pro app. You can download that in your phones or gadgets, and one of our amazing volunteers will introduce the token to login to that on the chat box. Hola a todos, mi nombre es Brenda Munoz, coordinadora del congreso LMDA 2021, y me da gusto bienvenidos al panel Intercambio Artístico México Canadá. Este panel será presentado en español e inglés, así que recuerden, por favor, que tenemos acceso a interpretación oral simultánea a través de Web Switcher Pro. Pueden descargar esta app en sus teléfonos o gadgets, y ahora uno de nuestros voluntarios introducerá el token de acceso en el chat. Muchas gracias por acompañarnos. Welcome, Guides. The panel is yours. Thank you so much, Brenda. Thank you for all your hard work on this fantastic conference. Hello, everyone. My name is Catherine Bellacci. She, her, I'm coming to you from the traditional unceded territory of the Squamish and Zeweltooth First Nations, a.k.a. North Vancouver. It's a suburb of Vancouver just north, very aptly named. And I'm the board president of LMDA Canada. I am going to be facilitating today's conversation. Before we dive in, I wanted to provide just a little bit of context. Now, I think all of this started actually a couple of years ago at the Chicago conference when Brenda, who you just saw a moment ago, asked for my advice coming from, you know, LMDA Canada as she was setting up LMDA Mexico, the new kind of entity of LMDA Mexico. And it got me thinking that there's a lot in common between LMDA Canada and LMDA Mexico and their relationship to a larger LMDA. But I had a feeling there was also a lot of, a lot in common between Mexican and Canadian theater artists and dramaturgs in general. So I took this to my colleagues, Danielle and Pedro, who you'll meet in a moment. And we kind of came up with the idea of doing Mexican artist exchange at the Mexico City Conference. I mean, our original idea was in person last year, but of course, for obvious reasons, there were a few pivots. So this year we dreamed up this kind of panel discussion that you'll be seeing today, of course. So how it's going to work is I'm going to give each of our six panelists, our six artists here, about five or so minutes to introduce themselves, their work, any questions they have at the moment, anything they have on their minds. And then I have a few kind of starter conversation questions to get the kind of discussion flowing. But ideally, it's just going to kind of go from there and everyone will kind of be free flowing chatting between them. And then we'll start taking questions from the crowd, as it were, you all. And you can pop your questions, as I understand, you can pop your questions in the, if you're on Webex through Q&A. Or you can also tweet your questions, they'll all be kind of fed to us here and there. And one last thing before we dive in, I just wanted to thank our sponsor today. Today's panel is sponsored by the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition, Caltech. Thank you so much to Caltech on behalf of LMDA Canada and LMDA. We couldn't have done it without you. And so I figured we'll just dive in and I'm just going to go with it the way that your little rectangles are on my screen. And I'll just kind of go in order there. And so that means the closest person to me is Pedro, right below me here. Pedro, would you like to start us off? Now, Pedro, I believe you are coming, you're coming to us from Armstrong. Is that correct, or? Yes, I am coming to you from the interior of British Columbia on the silk and sequelaque lands, also known as Armstrong VC, at the Caravan Farm Theatre in a writing residency currently. So yeah, thank you. Thank you. We're on Elon Musk's Starlink Internet. So if I drop out at any moment, it's because it's satellite internet and it is not the most reliable. So thank you. Yes, so I am Pedro Chamarle. I do make and live on unceded and ancestral stolen lands of the Musqueam Squamish and Slewa-tooth nations, also known globally as Vancouver, but originally from Treaty 8 territory in northern BC with my parents who emigrated from Guatemala. So I am the court artistic director of Rice and Beans Theatre, which has a multi-lingual mandate to also explore form and kind of the stories of where we come from and where we go. So that's kind of really briefly who I am. I'm a playwright. I'm a director and performer as well, and recently I have been working in dual languages along with programming a double speak, which looks at multilingual language in Canadian works, but also in a self-reclamation of language by learning, taking lessons, and writing in Spanish, and then also in English, and incorporating those two halves of myself that I feel I am neither complete of both, but have foots in either circle. Yeah, and the latest product I worked on was actually with one of our fellow panelists, Daniela Densia, where we worked together. And Daniela was my Spanish language dramaturg. As I was writing Spanish into the project, that project was called Made in Canada and Agricultural Operetta, where I interviewed migrant temporary seasonal agricultural workers primarily from Mexico. And so a lot of interviews had to happen in Spanish, which I was capable of, but when Daniela came on, those interviews only got better. And then we took those verbatim interviews and news articles around the seasonal agricultural workers program, and we put them into song and into scenes, which then due to the COVID pandemic, we transformed into a song cycle with our composer, Michelle Cutler, and our Mexican composer actually, as well as we found along our journey, Ray Alegria, and we, if it's available to stream on Spotify. That's about it. There's my little quick intro. Thank you so much, Pedro. Next on my screen, we have Carmen. Take away, Carmen. Yes, thank you for having me. I'm joining you from the unceded land of the Squamish Nation, which is also known as downtown Vancouver. And I come from Chile, also known as Walmapu in Abbeyala, Latin America in the Guna language. I arrived here as a child as an exile fleeing the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and all of my work comes from that lens, from the lens of being an exile as opposed to an immigrant. So an exile is a person who dreams of their return to the homeland. An immigrant is a person who reinvents themselves in the new land. So even now as I speak, you know, I am still an exile, and I think there's not a lot of us writing about that experience in Canadian theater. There's a lot of immigrant stories, not a lot of exile stories. So I came to the theater here in Canada in 1990, which is when I started going to theater school. Of course, I was, you know, the only Latinx person in my theater school. And I'm the first Latina woman to ever have graduated from that school. So my journey through the theater has been a long and treacherous one. I began in theater school to be a very outspoken activist for racialized voices, which we're lacking in the Canadian theater. So I could talk about what I'm doing right now, and I'll do that for about two seconds, because that's very easy to find if you read my bio, for example, right? But I'd rather talk a little bit more about the 90s, which you won't find in my bio. So currently, I'm a core artist at Electric Company Theater based in Vancouver. I'm also an associate, oh, Christ, I forgot the name of the title, artistic associate of new play development, sorry, Bob, I know you're watching, at the Stratford Festival. And I'm writing about four different plays right now, an adaptation of Medea, an adaptation of Moliere's The Learned Ladies, that was for the factory theater in Toronto, and an adaptation of a book called The Many-Headed Hydra for Stratford. A couple of other things, which again, you could just find on my bio, but I want to go back to the 90s. So the work that Biddle was talking about is so exciting to me, and it has a long history. So one of the things that I did in the 90s was I started a group here in Vancouver in 1994 called the Latino Theater Group. And for about eight years, which is how long it lasted, we had about 120 members. And what I had done is I had trained in theater of the oppressed with a local company here called Headlines Theater Company, later called Theater for Living, and with Augusto Boal in Brazil, and in the United States, and with Victoria-based company called Puente Theater, run by a pioneer Latinx theater artist here in Canada called Lina de Guevara, who is now about 88 years old and still very active. So it was through the Latino Theater Group that we presented about 25 short plays all over Vancouver and two full-length plays, all based entirely on the participant's lives and all completely bilingual, right? All in Spanish or English based on who the audience was. And the interesting thing about this group was that it was very purposefully for non-actors and for marginalized youth from Vancouver. So most, I would say pretty much all of them, no that's not true, most, most of the members of the Latino Theater Group were also exiles. That was the demographic in the 90s in Vancouver, the Latinx demographic, were exiled people from Central America and from South America. And of course many, many, many undocumented people who crossed the Rio Grande, the Rio Bravo, it was so great to hear Sabina talk about that in the keynote on foot, you know, and some, and walked to Vancouver and were still undocumented. So that's what the plays were about. I feel like I've gone on too long, so I'll stop there. I just wanted to express how what we've been doing, certainly here in Vancouver, what Bayadol was talking about, has deep roots and I'm always really happy to see new generations like Bayadol, like Daniela, continue with that long tradition. Thank you so much, Carmen. And so next on my screen, we have Didan Lee. Take it away. Thank you, Catherine. Bueno, yo voy a hablar en español. Mi nombre es Didan Weekend. Soy mexicana, vivo en la Ciudad de México. Soy investigadora en artes escénicas, historiadora del arte. Mis intereses sobre todo han estado siempre vinculados al tránsito entre artes. Me interesa de manera específica los estudios intermediales, los estudios performativos. He desarrollado mis investigaciones sobre todo en ese ámbito y de manera especial las manifestaciones relacionadas con el sonido. La escena, la escena creo que tiene siempre una dimensión sonora que es poco atendida o menos atendida de lo que quizá debiera y para mí ha sido muy, muy interesante trabajar sobre todo en esta capacidad de agencia performativa también de los honoros en términos sociales, políticos y culturales. Y bueno, trabajo, trabajo como profesora de tiempo completo en el Colegio de Literatura, Dramática y Teatro de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Uno de mis mayores placeres es la docencia, es el espacio del aula, pero me considero también una espectadora, siempre digo que con picazón cognitiva, es decir, con mucha fe de comprender el fenómeno de la escena. Y me interesan entonces los espacios de mediación, en especial la relación espectador escena. Soy coordinadora del aula del espectador de Teatro Unam desde hace varios años. Coordino un grupo de investigación que es el seminario permanente de estudios de la escena y el performance, en donde se congregan personas de diferentes disciplinas interesadas en investigaciones sobre la escena. Y he trabajado también como dramaturgista en algunos procesos, pero sobre todo me interesas siempre todo lo que tiene que ver con relaciones de investigación. Actualmente, Coordino, junto con Jorge Duvati, el Diplomado Internacional en Creación y Investigación, donde estamos creando redes de investigación también en toda Latinoamérica. Me he tenido sobre todo mucho trabajo en relación con Chile, con Argentina. Mi mirada ha sido quizás más cercana hacia el sub. Por eso también el día de hoy hablo en español. Me siento con una responsabilidad de nombrar también desde el español, desde los matices y la fuerza performativa que tiene la palabra dicha desde la lengua materna. Y, bueno, estoy muy contenta de estar el día de hoy dialogando con todas y con todos ustedes. Muchas gracias, Tadani. So I'll be going back and forth with the wonderful web switcher pro, so I'm sorry if there's a delay there. But thank you very much. Up next on my screen we have Emilio. Emilio, take it away. Thank you so much, Catherine. I'm Emilio Mendes, he, him. I'll be talking in both English and Spanish, which I do hope it's not hectic but dramaturgical. I'm a professor of theater studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico at UNAM. I've also worked as director and translator. I hope that sort of opens some questions further on. And for a decade now I've tried to study and explore with students at UNAM the benefits of dramaturgical practice, not just in terms of how to foster and empower the students at UNAM to generate their own poetics but also how to best discuss the way to elaborate their own artistic policies. I do believe dramaturgical work is essential for the consolidation of the work in the cell of a company. And this in two ways. One, understanding that theater is also a dynamic, it's a fluid term, I want to conceive it like that. Theater is not only a professional theater, theater is also a theater that is made in very diverse communities, which can have not necessarily commercial intentions. I do believe dramaturgical outreach is the key element to how to best put it, to best accommodate what dramaturgy means all over the world into Mexican theatrical cultures. Because in Mexico, many, many theater groups are limited to whether they receive or not subsidy. So I do believe one of the most powerful ways to make the most out of those subsidies is through outreach work. Through outreach, I do believe we make the most out of the subsidy, but even if there's not subsidy in any theater company or theater group, I think that dramaturgismo, el dramaturgismo nos ayuda a ser preguntas fundamentales que me emociona mucho poder estar compartiendo con todas y todos ustedes hoy en reconociendo la genealogía de lo que nos tiene hoy aquí reunidas y reunidos. Me emociono mucho escuchar a Mark Bly, que dio su testimonio de sus primeras aventuras por acá en compañía de la maestra Silvia Pelaes y de la maestra Sabina Berman, pero también me siento muy persuadido a intentar traducir el trabajo de Michael Mark Chimmers y de su pregunta crucial, why display now, which I have attempted to translate into Spanish, para qué y por qué, no sólo por qué, para qué y por qué esta obra aquí y ahora, para esta comunidad. Es en ese espíritu que me siento muy emocionado de poder estar compartiendo con ustedes esta mesa que me emociona mucho. Gracias, Catherine. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you very much, Emilio. So, up next on the screen, we have Daniela. Daniela, take it away. Thanks, Catherine. Hi, everyone. Hola, todos. Mi nombre es Daniela Atiencia. I think I will also go the bilingual route because it's very much part of my identity. Nací y crecí en Colombia. Viví en Colombia hasta que tenía 19 años. Mi mamá es canadiense, mi papá es ecuatoriano. Entonces, crecí en un hogar bilingüe y a los 19 años me fui al Canadá a estudiar teatro y desde entonces pues el teatro ha sido parte de mi vida. I am a freelance director and dramaturg and I am also a deviser, which means I create theater from scratch. If I'm going to talk about myself specifically, I'd like to hone it in on the lens of dramaturgy because it's a topic I'm very, very passionate about and I mostly like to think that dramaturgy exists everywhere and so I'm very much interested in dramaturgy and non-conventional spaces but if we're thinking about the theater, lately I've been applying my dramaturgical skills in language and this has taken a variety of forms. Mostly it's been supporting artists in there are different processes of where they're at with language so for example as Pedro mentioned we had a great collaboration. He already had a dramaturg in English but hired me as a Spanish language dramaturg to focus in on the language specifically of Spanish and we were able to collaborate together on what that meant and what that looked like but I've also collaborated with Paola, my fellow panelist who's here today on work that she's done on translation and looking at her own translation and figuring out how it's fitting into a bilingual play as well. I like to think my work is intersectional because that's how I was raised and I'm very interested in language and translation but also in cultural exchanges like this one and I'm fascinated about how dramaturgical practice is being explored in other countries and I'm also passionate about encouraging my fellow artists to see themselves as dramaturgs. I think Pedro and I have discussed this especially within the Latinx community. I feel like many people are dramaturgs but they don't see themselves as one and I think that they are and I'm interested about opening up that conversation and feeling like they have ownership over the quality and the way that they're observing and making deep analysis about work and I'm very intrigued about how dramaturgies practiced in Mexico specifically for this panel. Anyway I could keep going and I'm sure we can have lovely chats about this but that's a little bit about me. Gracias. Thank you so much Daniela. Last but not least we have Paola. Hola soy Paola Salaya Cervantes, también me voy por el Camino Bilingüe and I'm a Mexican playwright director and translator. I live in Mexico City. I went to school in Canada for a university. I was there for five years and then came back here so I got the chance to meet a lot of wonderful Canadian artists while I was training to be a theater person and then came back to Mexico to meet theater makers in Mexico that I hadn't met before before my university experience. I'd never really met theater people at all so I first met Canadian theater artists and then came to Mexico to collaborate here and one project that I've recently been working on is a play that I wrote co-wrote with a friend of mine Ana González Vello which was born in Spanish. It's interesting that we mentioned La Lengua Materna just now because this play was born in Spanish. We wrote it in Spanish and then almost immediately had to translate it into English because we had the chance to take it to New York to a festival so we took it there and we had one show and then we kind of submitted it for a couple of prizes. It won the Latino National Player Award in Arizona the Arizona Theatre Company and then a Tom Hendry's from Playwrights Guild of Canada but all of these kind of awards and readers of the play were all English speakers and had come into contact with the play in English and recently about a month ago we opened the show en Español y lo tradujimos al Español en el año pasado pero no había tenido oportunidad de que se encontrara con su público, el público que la la intención que entrar en contacto con la obra y me llamó la atención lo emocional que fue eso y lo diferente que se sintió presentarlo finalmente en el idioma que en el que había nacido y aparte para el público es una obra muy mexicana habla de un superhéroe de su hija y de el heroismo en tanto a lo entendemos creo en México con la política que tenemos con nuestra historia y entonces fue increíblemente aterrador mucho más aterrador porque nos sentíamos un poco más responsables de el mensaje creo y eso no me lo esperaba aquí que allá entonces creo que en esta como intercambio o estas esta plática de sobre idiomas y sobre cruzar fronteras para mí fue cruzar una frontera no sólo de lenguaje sino emocional ahora de escuchar la obra en español por primera vez para el público al que iba este so I was really it was surprising that's why I'm talking about it today because I'm still surprised by the feeling and and the weirdness of it and the fact that I never expected to to affect me that way and so that's basically what I've been working on lately I worked with dramaturgies for a long time in Vancouver and then kind of stopped when I came to Mexico and only recently have I contacted one to start work with him on a new plane I'm really excited because it's a part of me that kind of left behind and I shouldn't have and so this is really exciting being invited to speak here just at the point where I'm about to start working with a dramaturg a young Mexican dramaturg who's amazing and maybe I'll get a chance to talk about him later but thank you so much for having me thank you so much wow I'm I'm just amazed at this panel this is such a fantastic group of people I so many places where we can just kind of dive in and where do we start um you know what I'm going to start with a very general question um which might be boring and vague but maybe it'll open the door to more specific things I'm not sure um so a few of you have spoken about specific projects um that like involved cultural exchange like Paola what you were just speaking about and Carmen what you were mentioning as well um I want to hear more about these about these projects and so the question that I have is like what is a project that you've been particularly proud of or that was particularly challenging that involved cultural exchange and I actually I kind of wanted to take that to Pedro and Daniela specifically because I personally am very curious about Made in Canada and how um the kind of English and Spanish language dramaturgs worked together or or not or how that was approached if you're open to it maybe we could start there sure thank you Catherine thank you that's a great question for that project specifically because um that play was uh how developed with many partners um I had a resident I was at the Banff Playwrights Lab as a playwright and the PTC Playwrights Theatre Center was a company collaboration and so with that company collaboration um their dramaturg Kathleen Flaherty worked with me on that piece for a number of years and so when when Daniela when I approached Daniela um about working on that piece because I needed the care for right um not by my choice of having been born in Canada um I just I needed a greater care and respect for that that language that I needed that needed to be in there and so then I approached Daniela and then that was her question is like how is it going to uh Daniela? Yeah um there was you know as Petra said already a dramaturg uh associated with the project and um if there's anything that I that I love about theatre and doing my work is um and dramaturgy is like how when I get to be specific about something so um actually this this was ideal because uh you know as as dramaturgs sometimes we have to focus on like the larger scale and the bigger picture uh but in this instance I was actually able to just hone in on um the the the language the Spanish uh how it was serving the play what it was doing and um Kathleen also felt supported because then she could relax and let me um focus on the on the aspects of of the play that was in Spanish um but it I would say it was it was mostly a collaboration with Pedro you know we would just sit for hours and discuss about one word you know he he's coming at it from you know his his Guatemalan Spanish and I've got my Colombian Spanish and so it was also so uh uh uh una conversación cultural entre nuestros países nuestros idiomas nuestras expresiones y tratar de decidir también um si usamos un una español mas neutral o si tratamos de pensar en los personajes porque uh la mayoría eran de de américa central entonces um si se desarrollaron unas conversaciones I was just listening to the end of that. That's fascinating. I just wanted to follow up quickly since Danielle, you were just speaking. There's an incoming question for you, if you like, in the chat here, it says, Danielle, can you speak to the non-conventional spaces where you see dramaturgy? I was going to hone in on that, too. That's fascinating to me. Can of worms.  I just think that my brain is, I think, wired dramaturgically. I am highly analytical. I'm always analyzing and observing. Because theater is my world, I think that I apply naturally my dramaturgical lens to every aspect of a show. That starts with how are audience members entering the lobby? What kind of experience are they having at that point? The dramaturgy behind the marketing, but also having dramaturgical conversations with lighting designers and sound designers and everyone behind the scenes. So not just applying dramaturgy to the play and the script, but applying a dramaturgical lens to all the other aspects of theater. With people who are not in the theater world, they can be engineers or architects. I think that you can apply a lens of dramaturgism to other spaces that are not in the theater, and also be able to talk about what I do, because it's not easy to explain it sometimes. So I also like to be able to speak with other people who are not in the theater world and be able to apply this way of analyzing things and life in areas outside of my world. Danielle, that reminds me of when we were working in a box office together. We talked about the dramaturgy of patron services, which is a whole other can of worms, like you said. That's fascinating. We could have a whole panel on that if you wanted. That's exactly what I mean. Now, D'danui, the questions are starting to roll into the Q&A, so I'm just going to dive on those. I do see one for you, and I did a quick Google translation, and I'm pretty sure it's asking about if you could speak to your dramaturge co-work with the dimension of sound in theater. Is that correct? Yeah. Take your way, D'danui. Yes. Thank you, Catherine. Well, maybe before I answer the question, I'd like to answer a little bit about the question you asked about which project it was about, which was supposed to be a challenge in trans-Fronterizo. I'd like to mention, as a special challenge for me, I was the director, coordinator, and curator of the last meeting of the MISFERIC Institute of Antipolitical Performance, which took place in Mexico City in 2019. And probably around 700 academic artists and activists from 23 different countries were a major challenge in many ways. In many ways because the majority of the meeting took place in the university city, in Launan, and understanding this institutional translation of what can be done, what can be done in a space, the connotations that each of the spaces has as a management, working with the whole team of the MISFERIC Institute, and also with collaborators and collaborators from so many countries. It was for me a huge wealth, and I bring it to a close, and I think it's a great opportunity for me to share with you a little bit of what Daniela was talking about. I think there are, like, touristic acts, like the management, where the research is put to the service of this understanding of a whole, which doesn't have to do with production, but with a sensitivity to interpret and understand the different cultural universes to put them into dialogue. For me, being a healer of the MISFERIC Institute and organizing, which I have been managing for two years, meant letting me go through other schemes, allowing me to think from other places, to investigate a lot, and a little bit of a meeting, a setting in the scene too. And, well, about drama-tourism in relation to sound, it's curious because I started the relationship with the scene, especially as an investigator. My thesis of Doctorado is a thesis about the promise and the broken promise in different phenomena of Don Giovanni de Mozart, linked to Don Giovanni and the opera, and then I had the opportunity to work as a drama-tourist in a setting, well, not from the first creation, of the opera Titus, with a team of Chilean collaborators, with Guillermo Eisner, Chilean composer and Carla Romero as director. Well, I think that the first time I was able to put in practice, beyond academic research, this was precisely in Titus. And, well, I consider that there is a lot of the scene that is said from, for example, making the adaptation of the text, that there was a lot of research to be there, that we did collaboratively, the adaptation of Shakespeare's text to the opera, well, from the beginning it has to come out a lot of the word that is going to be said with the music. But specifically, the theme, for example, of the vineyard, that normally after it is, they cut the tongue and it is soft, in almost any representation of this bloodthirsty tragedy of Shakespeare, that is what appears. As we were interested, and the team was interested in talking about this Titus, not from the perspective of Titus, but from the perspective of the vineyard, it was very important in the research process to find the possibility that this vineyard would not be soft, but that it could not pronounce words, but continue to be lamented. This, from the context, in addition to violence of feminicides that we live in Mexico. So, well, that is an example of, for me, what articulates a intermediate image from the investigation to take to the scene, from what it means to say to a team, in addition to collaborators, wonderful, right? I gave material, we talked a lot about the text, etc., but I mean, they were solutions to which we were reaching in a shared research process and that it has a lot to do directly with the subject of sound. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for that. And thank you for kind of tying it back to my other question as well. That sounds like a fascinating process and to work with those images and how it relates to your research and how it relates to sound like that's, wow, that's fantastic. I'm sorry, my dog is next to me. She cries out, yes, Carmen, yes. Oh, good. Now you can hear me, yes? Yes. Yes. Yes. Just jumping on the whole question of dramaturgy, I mean, one thing that I know that we're discussing in Canada, and I'm curious as to whether this discussion is also going on in Mexico, is also the question of cultural and political dramaturgy, right? So, for example, right now at, I'm sure I'm allowed to say all this, Bob. No, maybe I'm not. No, I think I am. Okay. Anyway, Stratford is about your premiere, a play, I don't think it's the world premiere. So, scratch that. It's about to produce a play called Serving Elizabeth by this fantastic Afro-Canadian playwright, Marcia Johnson. And the play takes place mostly in Kenya. And so one of the dramaturgs that's going to be in the room for this production is the fabulous Mekonze Muzioki, who is my fellow artistic associate of new play development. A, because he's a brilliant dramaturg, and B, because he's Kenyan. So, he is able to bring this, you know, the cultural dramaturgy into the room, right? And for me, I always also look at my particular projects through a political dramaturgy, dramaturgical lens. So, for example, my last play that was up is called Anywhere but Here and Pedro and Daniela worked on it very hard. Thank you so much for working on that play. It was a world premiere by Electric Company. And the political dramaturgy of the play was We Are Here. So, it was about exiles and refugees, mostly taking place at the U.S.-Mexico border. So, almost all the characters in it were Latinx, and almost all of them, well, all of them were exiles and refugees. I needed to be sure, dramaturgically, that the theme of it was We Are Here Because You Are There. And that is an actual line in the play, right? We, us Latinx refugees and exiles, are here in North America because you, North America, are there, right? So, I needed to make sure, along with my dramaturg, Heidi Taylor, who's incredible and she's the artistic director of Playwrights Theatre Center, that that political dramaturgy was threaded throughout the entire play, that we never dropped that lens, that anti-imperialist lens, right? But I wanted to make sure that the play was not an immigrant story, right? The immigrant story of North America that you see on stages being, thank you, thank you, thank you for letting us in.  I'm so lucky to be here. Thank you, thank you, thank you.  So it was very important for me that that political dramaturgy, as well as the cultural dramaturgy, right, was very present during the process of writing and during the rehearsal, along with the director, making sure every beat of the play, nope, right here, we're dropping that, that lens, that anti-imperialist lens, how do we put it back in? How do we make sure that nobody in the audience, and it still happened, right, that nobody in the audience sits there going, oh, these characters are so lucky to be in North America, as opposed to the audience members going, oh, these characters are here because we are there. Shit, okay, let me think about that. I've gone on too long, but I just wanted to bring that into the conversation, and wondering if that's, if those kinds of conversations, if those types of conversations I'd like to offer any of our Mexican panelists to, to revise our other similar approaches to dramaturgy and to your work, yeah? If I jump, may I jump in just very quickly? Because what excites me about hearing Carmen's perspective is what excites me, and sort of, I also regret to acknowledge this, but in many sectors in Mexico, in my opinion, we have to fight the politics of theater-making in order to include cultural and drama, and political dramaturgy. It's the voice of God's Father, God's Son, God's Holy Spirit, it's the infinite post of wisdom, we are a deeply Catholic country, and this logic of who directs a work has the knowledge and the absolute power in many areas of production is something that has cost decades to fight, decades to adjust, decades to bring into question even, even questioning that practice has taken a lot of time. However, I think that through precisely a program like the UNAM, in which I have the privilege of being a colleague of Didangui, there has been a transition in which more and more permeates what I hear with the emotion of Daniela, Pedro, and Carmen. This is a collaboration, and indeed even the stage director is another collaborator. It's not the holy trinity of theater. It shouldn't still be regarded as that. So for me that's the first step. I do believe that the Indian is mythified both by stagecraft and regrettably still by statecraft. But I also very much appreciate that last year, in 2020, it was the first time that in this country there was a question in the national sense that allowed Afro-descendants to self-identify as Afro-descendants. And in Mexico there is also a mythification of the term mestizo, because mestizaje has been, since the 19th century at least, a very comfortable policy that has tended to marginalize and even invisibilize Afro-descendants in Mexico. Didangui, I have a colleague in the university, the professor Muriel Ricard, who in collaboration with, I'm forgetting the name of the director, excuse me, he says, I'm fighting towards the hierarchy, but they have indeed collaborated very, very closely, both as a performer and as, well, this has been a continuum. They devised this story. And I'm sorry for the spoiler, but Angelique is a black performer allegedly, allegedly touring, she's an allegedly French black performer touring Mexico, facing discrimination all over the place. And through a very interesting and compelling musical dramaturgy, both the performer and the director asked, well, do we want to tell the tale from the revictimization of Afro-descendants in Mexico, or do we want to bring this into question while still having fun?  Through Boleros, La Sandunga, La Llorona, Chansons by Edith Piaf, they started to tell this story about a black foreigner in Mexico. And I hope they forgive me, because this is the point, how they address the political dramaturgy of it. In the end, the audience learns that she's not foreign. She's from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, and she has to pass as a French woman in order to, yes, be exoticized, so to speak, but to have a voice. Because for centuries now in Mexico, it's kind of okay if you have a darker skin color, but you must be foreign. So the Carmen question really sort of excites me, because this is the questions we should be making here. First, sort of revise the political hierarchy of theater making in many, many places, in many, many companies, in many, many industries in Mexico, the theater industry as a whole, but also how we should be asking this sort of question. So I hope I sort of follow up on that. That makes me think of exactly why we decided to have this conversation, because it seems like there are very similar questions, and like you said, restructuring of hierarchies happening here in Canada, or that needs to happen here in Canada, and maybe there's some resistance, you know. Oh, this is fascinating. Thank you very much for that. Now, I saw that you had a hand up at one point, Dan, when did you want to respond to that as well? If not, that's okay. There's another question in the chat that we can go to. No, no, no, I took it. Okay, okay. I thought I saw a hand up. All good. So this question is from Marta, and I think it kind of ties back to what we were just saying, and I'd like to kind of flip it to both sides, because it's a question for the Canadian panelists. The question is, what is the perception of Mexican theater in Canada, and for Carmen specifically, like, how has it changed over time? But I'd almost want to flip that to say, like, what's the perception of Canadian theater in Mexico as well, if there is any? So I'd like to throw it up to whoever would like to respond to that. Okay, I guess I'll just jump in. I think that there is, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, colleagues, but I think there is no perception of Mexican theater in Canada. I think it's completely non-existent. You know, I hate to say it, but I think there's zero perception of what Mexican theater is in Canada. I think that there's misconceptions as well, like, about certainly the global south and Latin America in particular, right, just because that's what we're talking about right now, that there is no theater there. It's like, what? There's theater there? What does it look like? What is it?   There's mainstream theater, there's underground theater, there's device theater, there's theater of the oppressed, there is etc. etc. There's like a shock that that even exists. You know, you know, when I talk about corrientes, which is like the broad way of, of Buenos Aires, right? And I've described corrientes to Canadian colleagues that it's like the broad way of Buenos Aires where you see broad way type shows. A lot of them are shocked that that even exists, right? I hate to say it, but that that's that's the reality. And the struggle for us Latinx artists here in Canada, as I know you know, Marta, has been for us to actually get work in the Canadian theater, right? Because I would bet, not money, because you know, I can't get it to you right now, but I would bet whatever, that in Mexico, when people think of Canadian theater, they don't think of people like me and Daniela and Pedro. You guys probably think about white people, right? When you in Mexico think about Canadian theater, you're probably thinking about white plays and white people. You are probably not thinking Daniela, you're not thinking that, right? And so there's a problem there, right? There's there's a big border there. And I think the border is political and historical, you know, Latin America, as we know, is not a race. It's an ethnicity. However, it is a racialized continent, right? When we view it from the north, right? It is a racialized continent because of a long history of imperialism that continues to this day, right? So because of all everything that I'm just saying, the struggle for us Latinx artists here in Canada, I'm sorry to say has not been to go, Hey, everybody in Canada, let's look at Mexico and see what theater they're doing. No, our struggle has been much more day to day like, shit, how do I get apart? How do I get work? How do I get my lens, you know, my Latinx lens on stage? How do I get Latinx stories on stage about Latinx people who are in Canada, right? How do we reach our Latinx audiences in Canada, right? Knowing that much of the Latinx population in Canada is poor. Much of it is undocumented. How do we get to them? So we're not so concerned about how do we get Mexican plays, you know, translated into English and then put them up here, right? That has not been our concern. It's been more about how do we, we Latinx people in Canada confront erasure and systemic racism in the Canadian theater, you know. So that's, that's what I have to say about that. If I could add also, I think to think of Canadian Latinx artists, it's this country is so large and our percentage of demographic, let alone the percentage of Latinx artists in theater is so small that it's the connection that we're craving because we have historically related from each other, just you are in the country with we're finding members, there's the one lone Mexican artist in Saskatoon, right? And so if you, there's a lone, you don't have that power and so creating these organizations, we're trying to raise awareness simply to the fact that we are here, stop ignoring us. And so, and hopefully one day we can achieve a momentum, then that momentum can create the bridges to the south and to have that stronger exchange, hopefully for me, I don't know, I don't want to speak for everyone. Yes, did Ami? a la misma dimensión en la que se tendría la escena estadounidense, sin embargo creo que hablando de una forma un poco más local, si me gustaría comentar que el Festival Internacional de Teatro Universitario, que tiene desarrollándose ya desde hace varios años en el marco del Launam, ha tenido ya varias veces intercambios con Canadá, y a mí me ha tocado ver ahí Teatro Canadiense, tanto por intercambio, digamos, con escuelas mexicanas, pero también me tocó hace un par de años, o tres, estaba buscando el dato ahora, pero no lo recuerdo, que se abría justamente este Festival con una obra Canadiense, Les Sangres, que fue interesante porque además estaba justo en aquel momento Hansius-Lehman, impartiendo un curso antes, bueno, yo tuve la oportunidad de ver junto con Lehman aquella obra que se autodenominaba como posdramática y que generó una grandísima incomodidad dentro de la audiencia del Teatro aquel día, fue para mí muy interesante el fenómeno, porque era un grupo de estudiantes de preparatoria canadiense con una especie de reformulación de varias cartas del Marqués de Sade, era una obra muy interesante, pero que efectivamente estaba poco relacionada, o sea, poco enterada, del contexto de la audiencia con la que iba a dialogar aquella noche, estábamos teniendo justo en esas semanas, además habían aparecido una serie de crímenes de feminicidios tremendos, entonces la audiencia lo percibió como una agresión enorme, ¿no?, porque era como pueden venir a hablar aquí, digamos, como desde un lugar, de un erotismo exacerbado que era lo que sucedía ahí, como exacerbando la violencia, no es que fuera realmente así, pero fue un encuentro interesante, digamos, en términos culturales, fue rico que al día siguiente en el curso que teníamos con Lehman fueron específicos a hablar sobre la obra, fue riquísimo escucharles porque, claro, sus motivaciones, todo el universo que ellos tenía, de hecho, tenía todo un pronunciamiento político en ese sentido también iético respecto al cuerpo, sin embargo, esa traducción no se alcanzó a ver y a sentir en el público mexicano, ¿no?, pero fue muy rico poderlo dialogar ahí, fue muy rico también poder reconstruir que realmente no tenía nada de dramático, ¿no?, etcétera. Creo que a mí me sirve eso para hablar respecto a qué sucede en el momento en el que más allá de ideas generales. Yo sí creo mucho siempre hablar desde el conocimiento situado, no, desde la territorialidad, pero también sobre todo desde las micropolíticas que se dan en la escena, es decir, no podemos hablar, seguir hablando de esta cuestión tan universal, sino de un montaje específico, un público específico, un momento específico y para mí pienso en intercambio Canadá, México, y recuerdo aquella noche, aquella noche y todo lo importante que fue también para este grupo de jóvenes canadienses escuchar lo que su obra podía detonar también, cómo podía ser leída de otro lugar, ellos además con una gran apertura para escuchar, entonces fue rico, fue un intercambio creo que muy productivo y creo que eso ocurre cuando, cuando, cuando nos reunimos a sentir y a pensar el teatro. Wow, that would be, well like you said, that would be quite an experience for a group of like high school students to see their work kind of like reflected back to them like, wow, that, thank you for sharing that, that was very interesting. There's another question just that popped into the chat here. And it's, are there any works that any of the panelists have worked on that notably bridge the gap or beginning the work of range the gap of bringing Mexicana or other Latin it's work to Canada. And I always wanted to direct that to Paul Lux, I wonder if that relates to the project that you were speaking about before that you're that you've started working with a Mexican dramaturg and when you're kind of going back and forth between Vancouver and Mexico. If you're willing to speak to them. Yeah, sure. The play I was talking about before is a different play. The play that we staged first in Canada, it was kind of like this back and forth crazy thing is the orbweaver and there was actually a question about that so I can probably talk about that as well. This play I wrote while my last year of University and University of British Columbia. I wrote it and then with a couple of friends from University, we just like staged a really experimental weird version of it that completely changed afterwards. And then it was really interesting. One of the people involved in the project was a really good friend Matthew Willis who was acting as dramaturg. At the time it was funny because I was dramaturging his play and he was doing mine and so we would spend like entire days like eight hour long days just talking back and forth about theatre and our plays. And then I came back to Mexico to live so this was like my last few months in Canada and I was developing the play further and I had the help of Kathleen Flowerty from Playwrights Theatre Centre. It was only like one or two like email like an exchange and what happened was that she asked four or five really difficult questions and I spent like six months crying over them and freaking out and they were so helpful, so helpful to, it just made me realize just how much I needed that help. It's really interesting what Emilio was saying before about kind of challenging this idea of like this director figure person that I had absorbed my whole life. Like you think of a director and it's this guy and he knows everything and so trying to fill those shoes has been incredibly scary and just not helpful and my journey through theatre has been deconstructing that idea that as a director and playwright I have to be the one person who knows everything because it's really hard and it's not true. So with this play what I found was first in Matthew and then Kathleen was kind of like a company that would be with me developing the play and being responsible somehow for the play and I was not the sole creator of the thing. Then we, here in Mexico was working with my producer Jimenez Alpil who's an amazing theatre producer and she acted as a kind of non, she wasn't aware of it at the time but she was acting as a dramaturg as well, asking questions about the play and then kind of asking me to to apply for the Vancouver fringe. We applied for it and then the play which was born in English and was then performed by Mexican artists, Mexican actors was flown back to Vancouver with the team, a design team that was all Mexican with Jimenez who's also Mexican and the only I think the only Canadians involved were Matthew and and the UBC Players Club who were producers for the show as well, this university club helping us produce and it was really interesting to see how that experience further developed the way we couldn't taking it across the border we couldn't really it's a play about people killing peoples we couldn't really take a lot of the props through immigration and the airport because that would have been really hard. We ended up making a lot of the set pieces from junk that we found on back lanes and the actor who got there earlier went, Matthew took her on this like tour through the Vancouver back lanes trying to grab suitcases and stuff and what was interesting there was that we found the place aesthetic basically through not being able to do it the way we wanted it to and that that happening we realized that the play was a play was meant to be made through junk and through the things that we stole and borrowed from the firm so that was really interesting and just how the play ended up developing and then we brought her back to Mexico and in that case she had a theater and in 2018 she presented herself in the El Enico theater and it was wonderful to see how something that had been pieces of box of cardboard and also having the money to be able to produce as we wanted but informed by the previous difficulties and that process I think as my initial idea of what a director is or a director is, it destroys a lot in these like processes that I have found that you do it in parts, it will never be perfect at first, this idea that you have the correct answer immediately does not exist and then these difficult processes in which there are many people collaborating in which you bring this idea back, that is to tell the story of the editor Björg Weaver is a long story because it just has that as all these lines that cross within her and to understand the work that I wrote when I had 23 right now that I have 30 and understand what I felt about the English idiom when I wrote it right now that the truth is that I wrote in Spanish and I no longer write in English almost this and understand that trip at the time of translating it to us tells us that her final audience was also Mexican, more than anyone else, although at the time I wrote for the Canadians, I can't take away from what I am, no, so discovering that her audience was finally always very interesting in Mexico and if it has been a process that I continue to understand, the one that I do not have, that's why Emilio called me a lot, the tension of this lens figure that knows everything and rather I think that these processes of dramaturgism of that it is incredibly difficult and that many people are putting their ears and that it does not arise from a single event, but apart from the inform of the different their different trips in the work there is a moment of a trip, the characters travel to a world of fairy tales, to the reality of Mexico City and when it is presented in Vancouver to the reality of Vancouver and I think that that trip was very informed through the trips that we made physically by getting on the plane, I think that there would not have been a trip if we had not needed that trip from Vancouver to Mexico, so it simply seems interesting how the understanding of how the works, going through phases of that type, grow in an impressive way and also destroy the idea that I as a creator I have to be able to get it complete as it is when it is not true and there are so many people involved and also I think it is quite therapeutic for a creator to know that, that is like my experience as to understand also therapeutically as a creator that it is not necessary, it is like a single voice, but voices and then that was the process of your believer and it's one of the things that I'm proudest off because we were okay with it not being okay until it finally was. Thank you, that to me is such a great example of how like literally crossing borders, the theme of this conference, influences your work as an artist, like your identity as an artist and like your artistic process, like that to me is fascinating and now I'm realizing we only have about two minutes left, I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to like summarize our discussion, I feel like we've really just scratched the surface, I'm hearing a lot of like similarities between like what's happening up north, like up here and what's happening in Mexico, like the common things I'm hearing is like how people define dramaturgy to find themselves of dramaturgs and almost need a little convincing in that regard or need to be convinced that they work dramaturgically or are a dramaturg and my work as president of LMD Canada I'm always trying to convince people to join and they say oh but I'm not a dramaturg I'm like well you don't know it but you are and we all kind of work dramaturgically to an extent right and can benefit from this like network of people which is essentially why we wanted to bring this panel together, so in our last minute or two here I wanted to thank you all and I wanted to offer if anyone had any like parting words or anything they would like to leave everyone with or gosh if we need to do like a part two of this conversation maybe next year or something or if anyone has anything to share or any last questions or anything please please take the floor Isabel Emilio did you have one last thing very quickly just as a follow-up of what Dan we said and Carmen for a certain generation of theater makers in Mexico in the late 90s and early 21st century actually Quebecois theater was the sort of inescapable thing Michelle Marushar, Larry Tremblay, Carol Fraschage, Genevieve Villiers, and John Miton were the playwrights that were being translated and staged here in Mexico and as Paola just said for a generation of theater makers here that was part of who they became or who they want to became and I think at this moment it would be thrilling to have Carmen's Daniela Pedro's work being translated perhaps by Paola and staged here because as Carmen you really really moved me to think yes we were doing plays like Quebecois playwrights and although I might be mistaken all of them white so the thing has to be it has to be kept moving and I do this very panel is a very promising path to keep the conversation going thank you wow thank you if oh man if if something came out of this like translations exchanged like that means a big check a big success thank you so much everyone oh Brenda's popped in I'll leave it to you Brenda hello thank you Catherine didn't mean to interrupt but what a fantastic panel we just witnessed for an incredible panel this will inevitably happen Catherine for supuesto I just want to let the attendees know that now we're having a break for lunch and if you want to join your regions for that lunch we're very pleased to have you I will see you all soon thank you very much


comparing Singapore and Hong Kong. There are a number of obvious similarities between Singapore and Hong Kong. In terms of physical size, they are quite different. Although the total area of Hong Kong is about four times the size that of Singapore, the amount of land that is actually usable is more or less the same. Both cities were born as British colonies in the first half of the 19th century and are mainly populated by migrants from southern China. However, while Hong Kong's population of around 7.4 million is overwhelmingly Chinese, around 93%. Singapore's population of around 5.6 million is made up of 75% Chinese, 13% Malay, and 9% Indian. In both cities, there are slightly more women than men. Both cities witnessed very rapid economic development in the 1960s and 1970s and are now important international financial centers. However, there are a number of differences between the two cities. Hong Kong's population density, 6,300 persons per square kilometer, is lower than Singapore's 7,700 per square kilometer. Some people argue that Singapore is quieter, cleaner, and greener than Hong Kong. One reason for this is that Singapore's roads are less congested than Hong Kong's. Whereas the Singapore government has taken measures to restrict the number of private cars allowed on the roads and encourage citizens to use public transport, Hong Kong has done little to discourage car ownership and has simply continued to build more roads to carry the ever-increasing number of vehicles.


that guy gives us our conditions and then three different levels and then whatever move we want to do we recognize that pressure. It might be forward pressure and I change the level then side pressure and I grant it. Right? He might give me forward pressure and I'm like oh forward pressure I'm going to do a knee slide and then I get to a knee slide and it chops me and it's like oh side pressure I got to grant it. So these are all just plug and play. We can forward pressure oh don't have forward pressure anymore and now we're going side pressure. We're only focusing on that side chop pressure right now. Raise your hand if you've never chopped anybody in a match before. You've never chopped their arm. Right? Everybody chops in a match. That's why Granby's are beautiful. If it was like 30% of the country chops in a match maybe Granby's wouldn't be that big of a deal. Everybody chops in a match. So now this is what we're going to do. Are you landing? So they're going to he's going to get in referees position. Right? Now we're working on a little bit of speed. How many knees do I have to one side? Two. Both of them. I'm not in referees position. I'm right here and I'm just cooking this hip. All I'm trying to do is help him get fast so he's going to winch your wiper, feel the hold. Feel the hold. His shoulder's going to drop. I'm going to keep my hip close to his hip. All right? And as he pushes off I'm just going to pull. I just want to get him faster and getting across his shoulders. All right? Come back up. And I'm going to do that a couple times. Let me tight grip the hip. He's going to feel the hold. Right when he gets there I'm just going to pull his hip, get it to his butt. I want him to feel fast there. So I'm helping him. I'm giving him some training wills. Notice my hip's close to his hip. I want you to wipe the hold. Pull his hip. Couple of grand. We're going to do a couple of those. Like I said. After you hit about five of those each, what kind of pressure did I say we grand you with? Side. What kind of pressure did I say we grand you with? Side. Side pressure. So that's going to be a chop. So he's going to be referees position. I'm going to hook his hip. All right? This isn't going to be normal referees position for us on top. Then I'm going to hook his hip and I'm going to make sure my hip's touching his hip.   So he's going to be set. I'm going to chop his arm which is going to help him throw his arm through the hole and he's going to grab him. Just like that. Come back set. I'm going to hook his hip. I'm going to chop his arm. I'm going to keep my hip glued to his and I'm going to chop. Just getting him used to feeling side pressure. Getting a hole filled. Rolling across his shoulders. Getting to his butt. My hip's glued. I don't want to look around the room and see guys doing it. I don't want to look around the room and see guys doing this. Okay? Thank you. Am I helping him at all? No. I'm not helping him at all. All right? I'm staying glued to his hips. I want to be tight. I want him to feel this position. All right? I chop. What if I follow the range? What kind of pressure does he have now? See how those pressures can change real quick in a wrestling match? If you know what you're recognizing then you're an animal on bottom. It's when we get on bottom and this is like oh don't go to your back. That's not a good game plan. Anybody need to see that again? Hip hook. Chop and pull. One more time. All right? I'm glued to his hip. I'm hooking his hip bone. I'm chopping his arm. Pulling his hip. Helping him get to his butt. Control that position when you get there. Go!


This story starts very early on a Monday morning and I mean very early. And you should have some sweet ribs. I want sugar please. Oh, you should, there are any stores. Did you say unit five? Yeah. We've arrived, I think anyway. Five hours. We're in Harlow near Essex by the way. Still no clues why we're here. Well, we hadn't arrived. We were, we've gone round the wrong place, but we've now arrived. Right, so I think it's time for an explanation. Why am I spending the next three days on an industrial estate in Harlow near Essex? I've got to take you back first of all several weeks where I told you about a new partnership we'd agreed with Seed Golf. And basically the conversations led to them wanting the support and help us to produce content similar to that of the Scotland series we did last year. So obviously we're extremely grateful to Seed. And the idea was to, well, build what is going to be a bit of a tour bus, I think you'd call it, mobile office. And that is what's brought us to the sort of first phase of that project was to bring us down here to the cut and copy print company. And I'll explain how Jed and his team are helping make this kind of, I suppose from my perspective, it might be a bit of an exaggeration, but almost a bit of a dream come true, I think. Time to start day two. I'm clearly the office junior in this role. I've got your favourite couple tonight. Great, thank you. See you there. I don't know, see you at that. Right, so we've come towards the end of day two down here in Essex, and it's been really productive. And we've been grateful, the fact that we've been able to use this kind of boardroom table that the cut and copy have allowed us to use a lot of editing been done and catching up. And meanwhile, down below, the van is progressing incredibly well. It's sort of like our BDI looking over it throughout this whole process. But it's, it looks amazing at the minute. I've got our new moves. I've dropped the Star Wars fan off the window. Have we seen that? I didn't expect to be leading against Hay Bales in Essex. I thought it was all about the sugarhook down here, but it's quite a bit different than I expected. And we're staying for the next three days in an Airbnb in what is a really pretty part of the country, to be honest with you. But no golf unfortunately for the next three days. So the first phase of our project was we got the van and we needed to change the way it looked. There's lots of things in terms of what is going to happen to this van over the next few months. But the first phase was I wanted to get this whole thing, change the look of it, get it printed. And I must admit, we struggled in getting someone to get involved with this locally, hence why I've come sort of four and a half hours away from home. And a chance email from Jed, who is a member of our Average Golfers Club, and we found out that he was the man to save the day. And over the next three days, and you will see very shortly the progression we make from our silver van into something quite unique in the name of the Average Golfer. And I really have seen sort of the progression. This is day three, it's not finished yet, but I can assure you what we're all about to see very shortly. It looks incredible. I'm so, so pleased with the way it's looking. And Jed and his team are doing an amazing job. But after that is the important bit, what I've got to tell you, and that's how the van is then going to be converted into a mobile office space. It's going to be a podcast area. We're going to be taking the van all over the country. We start next week up in Scotland. There's ideas about where you can come and meet us at these different locations, how seed are going to get involved in different types of promotions when we're out and about as well. So like I said, first of all, I can't thank seed enough in supporting this. And what it allows us to do in the content we're able to produce going forward, I'm really excited and looking forward to. As you know, I love the travel content. Part of what the appeal to golfing me in general is kind of discovering these new courses, discovering new parts of the country that I've never been to before. And we're going to do so much more of that this year. I just can't wait to get stuck in. In terms of the conversion, the final bit I'm going to tell you is the internal of the van is going to be converted, like I said, into this office space. And we're going to document that whole process. So the last question, the thing I want to know from you before I go, there's a fairly short video, is whether or not you would like to see that documented on this channel as perhaps a once a week, maybe a Sunday upload, because obviously it's not golf related. So I'd appreciate some feedback down below. Do you want to see that? Or is the potential we just start kind of a separate channel maybe, and people who want to watch that can go and subscribe and we keep that elsewhere. So your feedback would be greatly appreciated. So I'm going to leave it here. I'm going to give you a little bit of a start to finish video to finish on our Silver Van. Ended up looking like this.