Hello, my name is Skylar Gray, and eight years ago, to this PPF, I was an intern here at the Pacific Playwrights Festival, so thanks Kimberly. I am now the Director of New Play Development at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago. So I'm incredibly proud to be here. South Coast Rep is really where I figured out what literary management or dramaturgy was, and also really became an artist here. So it's so nice to be back, so thank you, John and Kimberly, for having me. So I am joined by some incredible people whose work you've seen over the course of the weekend. I'll have them just sort of go down and say who they are and what project they have here in the festival, just to get us started. Kevin RT, you got to roll a sheepdog. I'm Julia Doolittle, and I wrote Love and Contracts, I'm Mamie Freed, and I wrote Truth. I'm Caroline McGraw, I wrote I Get Restless. And I'm Kemp Powers, and I wrote Little Black Shadows, where am I set? You have the home field advantage here, Kemp. So when John and Kimberly asked me to do this, they said, what do you want to talk about? I feel like we've had an interesting year and a half here in the U.S. of A, and so it felt like a very important thing to talk about what it means to be a writer in America today. So that's sort of where our conversation will take us. I think to get started, I just want to focus on the plays in the festival and sort of know where the inspiration came from and how long you've been working on this play. Kevin, you want to kick us off? So this play's been around with me for about three years now, and the first draft was a very different play, and I wrote it at the tail end of this long fellowship I had at the public theater, and it was like right at the end. I brought in this draft, in the draft. So it was a very emotional response to what I had been seeing and sort of processing for myself, where I was at for on many levels. The issue of police violence, I knew I wanted to write something about it, but it felt very scary. I mean, it felt very scary just to be totally honest, it's just a white male to think I could say something that people might want to listen to and that could contribute. It was a really tough thing to navigate, and it took me a long, long time to do it. So sort of crucial to it was discovering my main character, who was really a side character initially, and people kept asking questions about her in the play. She's an African American female police officer, so those questions that came up for her seemed to be the most complex. And so I was like, okay, I think there's a play there, I don't know if I'm the guy to write it. And so then I spent about a year talking to police officers, and I did a lot of interviewing. I did that kind of work for all my writing, sort of pretend to be a journalist and my alternative career is a New Yorker writer. So I interviewed officers as many officers of color as I could, particularly female officers of color, and they were willing to talk. And I think in this moment, particular moment in our country's time, issues within department, racial issues that divide along race and class, and it's all being forced to the surface in new ways. So I think you saw this in the 60s in the Civil Rights Movement. You saw black police unions form for the first time, and you're seeing that again. You're seeing officers more and more willing to speak out and say, actually I'm not cool with this. Okay, so that's a really long answer to where the play came from. And what was the other question? How long have you been writing it? Yeah, I think it's been now about three years, three years with some very, I've thrown out drafts, I've thrown out entire plays. So yeah, yeah, yeah, great. I'll use this one. I started this play, I think two years ago, was when I came up with, when I pitched it to South Coast Rap, because it was a commission. And what was the other part of the question? What inspired it? I was at the party last night, guys, okay? What inspired it was, oh, it's so much less good than that one. So what inspired it was, I'm just going to move this. I am a young straight woman, and that means that I must contractually involve myself in the bonding ritual of complaining about men with my other straight female friends. So once when we were doing the ritual in the coven, one of my friends had just been ghosted by a guy, which is when you're dating someone and they just disappear.  And she was, understandably, very upset. She said to us all, I really wish that it was the way it used to be, that when a man was interested in you and notably slept with you, he had to be serious about you. So I got a pop as a child. There were more rules around all of this stuff, and it was clearer what relationships were. And everyone in the coven was like, ah, yes, absolutely, 1,000%, of course, and I'm sitting there like, but we don't actually want it to be the way it used to be, right?  The gay coven is very similar. I think it's a shame that we haven't combined. We haven't done enjoyment. We could get a bigger venue. Perfect, great. Okay, I'm done. I've been working on shrew for about two years in one way or another. I was interested in it because I've been extremely preoccupied and obsessed with theater for a long time. And theater as theater is a lot of what I'm interested in as a theater writer. And we're at a moment where the canonical plays that made the voice in form of theater are becoming, in my experience, unperformable in a certain way. And largely because of the absence of it in my particular area of obsession, the absence of women in those canonical texts or if they're written, they're written not in their own voices. They're puppets for other viewpoints. And I love those works. I'm interested in those works, but they're creating more pain and pleasure when I see them in certain ways. And I'm really interested in the question of how can we maintain and hold and accept our history? And yet when we present it, feel like we're presenting it now with the point of consciousness with which we kind of need to feel theater now. So we don't walk out feeling bad or just bearing the damages and the omissions as part of a given. So that's where I've been coming from. I'm sure trying to restore its delights and acknowledge its troubles through the text rather than through the theme of the production, which has been to deflect those questions more. So that's what I've been up to. I'm also going to move slightly. So I wrote, I started writing I Get Restless almost two years ago. And it was a confluence of two inspirations. I was talking with my now husband, then boyfriend, about we're talking about getting engaged soon. So I was, you know, in that whole mindset, thinking about what that meant for me personally, what that meant on us sort of for feminism. I don't know, I was getting very heady about it. And then I had also been talking with my best friend about we just started talking about the movie The Vow, which is an amnesia romance movie. And I was just thinking about how when I write, I like to take something that I'm sort of like, there's so many bad versions of that. What's my version of that? How can I sort of put it on its head? And then at the same time, the presidential primary was happening. So I was this intensely personal, very like, just very intense time in my life, and then this very intense time in our country. And I was thinking about how my life had changed and then how the country had changed and was constantly changing and the ways in which when we're in something, we sort of don't feel like when you said it's been a crazy year and a half. I was like a year and a half. Like it just doesn't, it just sort of time just works and it completely can work in these completely different ways. And I wanted to write this very protagonist driven story about a woman who in many ways is having of its, her issues are just like affecting the sort of small group around her and her life and her little life. And then sort of the shadow of change in America is outside of the play. Yeah, Little Black Shadows, we did a reading. It was actually a PPF reading two years ago. So yeah, this is how long you have to wait sometimes to get your production. But worth the wait for me. But yeah, this play, it kind of started with a true story. I kind of fancy myself a pretty informed person when it comes to American history. And I was reading a book and came across the first mention for me of a Little Black Shadow, this idea that in a slave, we have this idea of the field slave and the house slave. And they've become archetypes. But this idea that within the house, often the children in the house would get their own personal child slave called Little Black Shadow. And it just struck me this idea that a young child could be responsible for the well-being of another child as their job. And at night, rather than go outside or be with other slaves, they sleep under their bed or in a mat in the corner. So this kind of really sparked something in me. I started doing a lot of, this is a play. No one commissioned me. I just, it was just something I felt that I needed to write. So I took some time and went down south to Louisiana. I started visiting plantations and visiting the Whitney Plantation outside of New Orleans. I came across the bound copies of the Federal Writers Project, which from 1936 to 1938, the federal government, as part of the New Deal, sent writers all across the South to document in their own words the experiences of the last generation that had been born slaves before they died. So these people were in their 80s or 90s. They were very close to death and they were counted stories they remembered as slaves and understanding based on their ages, most of them these were the recollections of children. And so reading those stories verbatim was really enraging for me, largely because a significant number of the slaves, former slaves, mis-slavery and voice that, they talked about how wonderful their masters were. This is reconstruction, so there's the danger of lynchings and stuff like that. So a lot of them would be recounting horrors, but then at the end of recounting them say, well, but I really had it good because those slaves in that plantation, they were the ones who were treated badly. And it really brought up this, you know, this feeling of like how internalized how bred into us as a people the idea that we have no worth. So in that thought about like who wants to see a play about slavery, no one, white people don't want to see it, black people don't want to see it, but I'm going to write it anyway because it's our history and that's the thing. The reason we can't get anywhere is because we've all got our heads in the sand. So rather than focus on a story about a moment of change or an agent of change to inspire people, I wanted to approach slavery for what it was at the time, which was mundane. It was the rule of law. And based on that, anyone who looked like me, we were property, we had no value. So I want to tell this story where the slaves were happy and felt that they were a lucky to be a part of this family. And I figure in doing that, it would make the audience feel like I felt reading this, reading thousands, 2,300 tales of people, my descendants being brutalized and thanking the people brutalizing them for it. So like I said, it's the play no one wanted, but it's the one that I felt that I needed to write. Well, what's the power in looking at our history to comment on our present? For those of you that are writing or have written plays that revisit the past, like what is what is the power in that and finding or commenting on the world we live in today?  Well, it's funny because I'm actually happy that we had a two-year gap because when by the time we went back to workshop the play and would cast the actors, I mean, through no planning on my part, I realized that this play that I was working on, it was a history play, but it was more commentary on today. So in many ways, people say, well, how do you react to the current administration? For me, this is my police brutality play because I'm showing the foundation.  It comes, things happen that come out of nowhere. And I'm like, oh, fancy that the idea that a black person could just out of nowhere be killed. That's really unrealistic. So once again, it's like I didn't plan it to be, but once we got back into the rehearsal room after two years, I realized, oh my God, this isn't a play about then, this is a play about right now, for me. And sometimes, you know, it's a discovery. I'm happy to see that some people made that discovery and sitting through the work. For me, I guess in that way, it's something of a question of art and the allowability of art, you know, because there is no art form that comes from human beings. Well, actually, there are, there's no theater art form that comes from human beings that doesn't have a component of its own time. It's just in the bones of it. So as times change and consciousness change and permissions change and culture changes, those pieces date, and they date severely and without mercy because, and particularly theater is vulnerable because there's no play that has a lifespan of more than five years culturally. Comedy dates instantly. And when you go back to old, when you go back to the 1960s movies, they're appalling. It's sort of like you see, oh my God, did we feel that way? Did we treat each other that way? Was that what people thought of women back then?   Seems like we're losing part of our voice, our past humaneness as well. So the reclamation or the ownership of that form, that form for us, has value and has pleasure, you know, in strange ways. But I don't think we can present those things now without touching who we are now as well. It doesn't feel right. So I think there's a double consciousness that needs to be brought to works, that keeps them alive and present and part of us, just like you can't whitewash history. And you shouldn't. It's with us. And I think that keeping all of those registers of what we were conscious and present is very important to our catharsis in our community as we go forward. You know, I think that theater more than any other medium I've ever encountered has the power to reach forward and back in terms of touching its audience and touching on things that are not only relevant but eternal. I don't know if that's because we're all here in the same room together and that we're all sharing an experience and literally our brains are having similar or lighting up in similar ways, all in the same room. It's just a scientific fact. I don't know, you know, as a writer, I think that when I happen upon the questions that still don't have any answers that we've had for basically the entirety of human history, sort of those bedrock questions, things like why cruelty and why tribalism and then on the other side, why love and why, in this particular case, why romance and why things that I don't think will ever actually have the answer to. And that's what always keeps this work alive for me and makes it eternal and mysterious in a way that, I don't know, makes me feel like there is something beyond us, not in their spirits amongst us way, but maybe there are. So yeah, I guess it's, I sort of let, like, give myself in to that mysteriousness even when I'm writing in the past, although my past is pretty fantastical, so it's less well observed than Kemp's past. So yeah, I guess that's my thought on that. And I sort of talked about this a bit yesterday with Kemp, but in terms of approaching a story, what does comedy and drama mean nowadays? Like, what does it mean to write a drama nowadays or a comedy, or when you have to explain, oh, it's a funny drama with, like, what does that mean today? Like, what is it to write a comedy or to write a drama, and how do you approach the differences? Or are they the same in terms of how you approach them? I think that, and I felt, I felt that when you said you have to kind of say it's a comedy, like I'm like, it's a comedy about a woman who loses her memory and then her life slowly unravels. So just, just a real knee slapper. But I think, I think that for me, I just think that people laugh when they see themselves or when they see a height, like a little bit of a heightened version of themselves. And when it's, when it's just, when they're, when they're something that they think is said, you know, they secretly think or that they, they kind of like think they might think is said back at them. I just think that that's the, those are the funniest things. And that that, that sort of, I don't know, maybe the distinctions between comedy and drama are not as useful as they, I guess they're useful for like, if you're like, this is a, if it's more than, it's more than three hours, it's probably a drama, like, so it's maybe useful. But, but that I think that every play here, that there were, there are moments of where, I mean, in your play, there were moments when I was just like, just laughing so hard. And then, then I, I immediately just could, you know, kind of couldn't breathe. So I think that there, there are moments probably in all of these plays where, where maybe I think the drama, now I'm just going on a ramp, but like, no, I think that sometimes drama, people think that drama means something heavier, but I think that actually if you can make people laugh, it means they're listening. And that's the sort of like most, that's when people are most invested. And I think the weight of, the weight of a story can really kind of make its way into people's bodies. Like I didn't realize until the very first, I, I like to classify things as a drama or a comedy.  You know, and no one writes those. Oh, what have I done? And then I realized I've written two in a row. So it was really kind of a, at first, I was alarmed because I'm like, oh my God, you don't write tragedies nowadays. It's got to be a drama, a drama with lots of comedic elements or, you know, a comedy that gets serious and not a, not a tragic story that has elements of drama and comedy. And it took me a while to get kind of comfortable with what I've done that I didn't realize I'd done until after I saw it in front of an audience.  So it's, you don't really know what you're doing. So at least I don't know what I'm doing sometimes until after I get it in front of the audience. I'm a little old school about this. I'm a little Aristotelian.  And I just classify comedy or drama as comedy, the characters get what they want at the end and in drama they don't. Or a tragedy, actually, is the Aristotelian way to put it. Because I mean, when I was in another play I wrote, which is about college hookup culture, I was like, what a tragedy I've written here because they just don't get what they want at the end. And that makes it a sad ending. I do think that it's weird in the American theater right now. Like somehow we are not, I think that just like you said, the populace is unsettled by happy endings because they feel that they're fake and they just don't, and that is, that's weird. That's, that they're cheap. And so sometimes I feel like writers are pressured to write. We're always told like, write messier, write, like, mess it up. Like, don't let it be happy. Don't let it, and which I mean, of course we should just not listen to anybody.  Nothing but drama because that's real. That's true. That's true. The dramedy of people getting on stage and acting in front of you is the true, is the truest form of theater. And that's, that's a strange pressure. I feel it has come up in the very recent, in the recent decade or something. Well, it's a strange thing to remember that, you know, comedy has its origins in fertility festivals in the sense of divinity, you know, both of which are things that don't happen or occur in the same form anymore. And I think since the dawn of the industrial revolution, the sort of connection of nature, divinity and life force is not something that's front and center in the way, in the paradigm of ourselves. I think essentially we're kind of struggling with the displacement that began, began a long time ago that separated us from our, our natural cycles, you know. And that's, I think, very much a part and parcel of comedy is it's primitive in the best way in that it takes us to our emotional centers, it takes us to our life and love centers. And that's under siege for all of us. Yet we are that and we are born of nature. We return to nature and the nature in us craves the explosions of comedy, its exuberance, its hopefulness, because you can think you live without hope, but in fact we live by hope. And we've got to keep putting it back into our lives in certain ways. And comedy delivers that for us. And yes, we feel it's fake so we don't respect it, but we crave it and we need it. It's where our love centers are. And, and we do need to keep that awake. And the worse the times get, the more I feel we need to laugh. And there's good laughs and there's bad laughs. There's cheap laughs and there's sacred laughs. And we need them all. And it's part of our job and we're never going to confront pain unless we can laugh and love. So that's where I think comedy is crucial. And I think smart comedy makes us not, makes us sort of still respect ourselves in the morning, you know, and we feel enlivened and we feel like more love and we feel bigger towards each other and we feel closer towards each other. So although it gets no respect for any of us when we employ it, I think we need it like we need, you know, bread and wine. And I wouldn't want to be with an audience who didn't respect my comedy, you know. I would stick up for myself like that. And Caroline, you mentioned something about the primaries and approaching a work that you were sort of in the middle of. What is, what is the temptation to respond to the now or the yesterday? Since it's ever changing? Or how do you sort of push that aside and keep doing what you're doing regardless of what is going on around you? Like what is that temptation or how do you funnel it out? I think there is a temptation to, to sort of, to sort of be like I'm responding real time to the thing that happened yesterday to the thing that's going on and to sort of be just almost scarily relevant to just be like this is the play for right now, for this very moment that's happening right now. And for one thing, plays take a long time. Like to write but also like you said, it was two, you know, it's two years since you had this, you were here at PPF with the reading. So, and the way that you talked about like theater stretching forward and backwards, I think that that balance is very important and that there are amazing plays that sort of deal with the kind of like, like the sort of like ticker tape news, but that they're, that I think that what can happen is that a mood or a feeling can permeate something even if you're not literally writing about, you know, what's happening right now. Like we have 24-hour news for that. I think theater can take its time with a question. And what I, what I had, what I'm hoping to do with this play is to have the sort of, like I said, like the sort of shadow outside of the world of the play that sometimes the play world cracks and it comes in. But that what's the way that it's addressing, you know, the kind of like capital these current times is the way the plays that I loved, you know, observe the current times, which is just through the, through people, through just these sort of, I don't like to say small because I think that anything can kind of be epic, but the, that it's addressing it through the personal because it don't, these things matter to our lives, to our daily lives. And they're epic world changing things happening, but they're also happening to, you know, they're happening to us and they're kind of crash landing into our lives and fracturing them in, in these, in a myriad of ways, and our, and extending to our relationships and our memories and our hopes for the future. So that's, that's how I'm trying to deal with it. I'm sorry, what you said just sparked this memory in me of this piece I read, I think in the times, but I can't, I can't remember now, about this woman talking about her, she lost her very young son right the week before the election in 2016, he was 28, he had a brain aneurysm and he died in his apartment and this horrible personal tragedy for her family completely eclipsed and they were Democrats and Hillary supporters, they completely, they completely eclipsed their political tragedy. She wrote in this piece that the whole thing, that the whole country falling apart to her felt like theater while she was living this personal tragedy of trying to bury her, her 28 year old son. And that they, she and her husband and her remaining child sort of literally ran, ran away, you know, they went and they, they lived somewhere else for a while because they just couldn't, they couldn't take being around their friends for a while, they couldn't take being in that house. And when they came back, she said, I suddenly realized everyone is so much angrier than I remember them. People and not just, not angry on the TV, like personally angry, she would, she, she got into huge fights in parking lots over really small things, like you parked, you parked over the line and someone like broke her mirror and she said that she felt, she feels lost, like she missed a beat of this thing we're all playing out. And just like you said, it's weird that when we live in a country where both like personal and citizen and therefore we're living our own personal tragedies with, with national tragedies, with national triumphs, with personal triumphs and it is, it's, it's overwhelming and I think one of those eternal, eternal questions that I run up against all the time, which is like, oh my, like, oh my God, am I, I'm in this sea of, of shared emotion and I'm within, and my, my own personal emotion is also overwhelming me. So I just, that's something that to one person can feel so visceral and real to the person maybe sitting right next to them who just lost their child can't even register. And so when we talk about like, I have to respond to this right now because everyone needs this, everyone needs this, like you said, tick or take news, play, story, I go, oh, but I don't know, maybe, maybe there's someone who's living a different experience of this than I am and that seems weirdly more unsettling and real. Um, they pick up a lot. Well, I kind of wrote it, you know, tick or take play, I guess. You got, like, look at the synopsis you might go, this is, no, you didn't, it's eternal. Yeah, but we're not talking about, no, you wrote an eternal question. Okay, you're not talking about me because I'm listening. Um, so, so I feel like what a play can do right now that like media isn't doing that is really hard to do is bring in opposing viewpoints and not in a didactic way in a very like human real way. So that was really and for me, sort of, you know, the ghost behind my shoulder is Arthur Miller in this respect that like you think about him writing about his time where he went because he could have went a lot of places was to, you know, the enemy big E, the sort of going at the other side, his opponents, his political opponents, his, you know, and humanizing them and exploring that and and what that path leads you to. And for me in terms of like how I might understand the now for myself and bring different people together and um in complicated ways and like complicated nuanced ways that that's just what not what we're getting more and more in the assault of sort of the barrage of facts and information. Um, I think that's what makes plays special right now. And I almost feel like to be very grandiose about it. There's a there's kind of a civic role right now. There's like a place for a play to do that in an important thing is it's not just for elite liberal audiences, because that's not the point.  But I definitely do. But I also want to play that can be done in the Midwest in a smaller town. And that conversation happens there too. And the people who come to that play don't feel patronized to or excluded. It's a big ask. But I think like Arthur Miller was able to do it. And like I think that's because he he goes to sort of the tragic truth of the moment embodied in the character. And what is that thing that that we are all might be blind to that we're not seeing about right now. And reaching for it, reaching for it. You might not know what that is, but that's it's the pursuit of like, what is that guy thinking that guy I really don't like and and that opinion that pisses me off and trying to understand it. Also your place totally eternal. And I wanted to say this, because you live in New York, right? There's this there's this exhibit at the Whitney right now that's Civil Rights Art from the 60s and 70s. And it's disturbing how it's all basically the exact same stuff we have now, including there's this thing you should see there. I forget who the sculptor is. But it is a giant room of trophies. It is a police commendation trophy for every officer who committed police brutality in the 1960s. And it says exactly what he did. A trophy, a trophy. Yeah, literally, he just grabbed trophies and he would re sculpt them for it. He walked into that room and you're like, and it's like Mike drops. So you should just yeah, I will. Thank you. Well, yeah, it's it's it's funny because I don't know. I don't feel like the world is falling apart right now. I just don't. To me, it's like we've been a lot of us.  And the world I feel like this, this is a test. It's a test for me. And I think we have a lot of people who are on a custom being tested. And hopefully people arrive to the task of that, because that's part of life. All we are is a collection of our experiences and the tests and how they shape us. But I feel liberated and free right now freer as an artist than I ever did before.  It's gotten us right here. So now will you be honest and write the story you really want to tell. So I think as as artists, we now have an incredible opportunity to just do that thing we give lip service to. But we all know a significant number of people are lying, which is I'm just writing what's in my heart. And you know, and some of us are, but I mean, it's we can really do that now, I think, because I feel like what do we have to lose? And for me, I find it's a it's an incredibly liberating, liberating time as a writer. And there and and I don't know, I'm just I'm I'm a glass half full kind of guy. So I'm kind of like trying to put lipstick on this pig.  For me, it's a it's a it's a catharsis though. You know what I mean? Like I get I was so enraged and then you get to the end of this thing. And I went from like rage to sadness to hope and inspiration. Because I'm like, okay.  I'm like, I'm the son of a man who was functionally illiterate. I am my dad left school in fifth grade. And he like he he got piece from West Virginia. He was like beaten savagely as a young man by by clan members. Like it's it's my story too. And to go from a father who's functionally illiterate to a son who can work at Forbes magazine and get CEOs fired.   I'm like, Mr. Hope. Wait, but I love what you said. You're like, now we can all write what's in our hearts. How do you find out what's in your heart? Because I'm, I'm what's in my I don't know. Sometimes I'm old. That's why.  And at a certain point, you just kind of go like, all right, I'm just I'm a work in progress.  This is called mentorship. Cam, can you just side, but let's just we'll talk later. When what you were talking about with like the liberation of the stories, do you find an urgency to tell certain stories right now or put certain voices or bodies on stage at this time in America? I mean, I always feel an urgency. I'm not going to I always feel an urgency to have black stories on stage. I'm going to be tribal for a minute. And and so that's something that I'm always the first play I wrote was six black male actors. And my one demand for the play was that I wanted a black male director to direct it as well. And when some people came back and said, Well, why is that necessary? I said, because most of these guys have never experienced this before. And they deserve a chance as artists to kind of feel like they're in a safe space for once in their lives. And they're like, Well, anyone can direct this.  So if you can demand that a woman can direct that to help create a safe space and environment to explore the story about womanhood, I feel like I should be able to create a safe space and an environment as a writer, where men can explore their black manhood, since everyone else seems to be an expert on our black manhood, except us. And I want to be able to let these guys tell their own story. Once this published and licensed, and I dropped dead, then anyone can do any kind of version of it they want, you know, you can, but as long as I have a say, that was my one one stipulation with the play. And I'm, that meant a lot of theaters didn't want to do it. Or in some cases, well, we can't find a black director, in which case that got them off their ass and got them to go into a Rolodex and find somebody. And we, and we have an obligation, I think, to represent ourselves. And when we see other people not being represented to kind of step up in that regard, I mean, Kimberly can tell you that when we did this reading, what was my demand?  And Kimberly went and found people and I'm, that's how I met Mayadrolis. May didn't know me. I didn't know May. I just, I, you don't, ignorance is bliss. So I am a former journalist. I had zero training in theater. I'm just the guy who likes plays and writes them. So I didn't know what I should or shouldn't ask for. So I have a tendency to make a lot of requests and demands that I think other writers don't because they feel like there's the, and so I just, I will ask out, because I do have an agenda, but my agenda is believe it or not, not the play itself. It's what's happening behind the scenes on the play because so much of what makes the play work or not work for me is the artistic staff that's executing it. I think the most important decision that a playwright can make, the biggest power we have is the power to choose our director. That's the biggest. And I've told so many playwrights that had them throw it back in my face and say, well, oh, but if this theater won't do it unless I use this director, and I was like, I'm just telling you what I feel. I think you wouldn't be seeing any of these plays if I didn't really kind of stick to my guns on the director. So I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants on this, but it seems to be working, but I'm just, I'm being honest. I mean, I do have a bit of an agenda. I think representation for every group has to stick up for their group to make sure that they're represented. I don't think there's any shame in that. That's not taking away from any other group in my mind to kind of, there should be more, there was a cover of Vanity Fair that like one of those Oscar covers. And I remember it was a few years ago, there were like three black actors on the cover, and everyone was great. And I, and you've got to kind of stop in those moments from celebrating and say, how come there are no Latino or Asian actors on the cover too? What Ken Watanabe doesn't deserve to be on the cover of Vanity Fair? You know, he had these number of movies. So we can do that. And we also have to kind of take some opportunity to push for some other groups. I mean, again, last half full kind of guy, see him optimist.  Anyone else? No, I feel similarly to camp that I think there is there's a ton more focus in the American theater right now on on being more inclusive with our stories.  No offense if that's your life. That's my story. Oh, that's your story. It's not about you, Kevin. It's just like we've seen it, you know, we've seen it and and and that doesn't and and the more people there are so many kinds of people in the world should write that down. They're they're streaming it. And that means that what we need to do is is expand our image as writers expand our imagination and knowledge of other people who aren't exactly like us, learn, learn and then put them in our stories. If our stories are calling for them and ask ourselves to call to put them in our stories, you know, that's not just, you know, race, gender identity, disability is important too. And I think that is going to give us a new crop of stories that are really wonderful and and will and and I think audiences are going to like love seeing seeing something new, but that's been amongst us forever, you know. So the funny trick about things about writing took me a really long time to learn this is that audiences don't it's funny. They don't really want to see our stories. They want to see their stories is the thing. And theater is not a precious bubble that gets handed from talent to talent on the long chain of being. Theater is an eruption that comes from the society from the culture from the people expression. And I think you nailed something really important with there's a power structure that enables theater and there's a populace that wants to see theater and those things don't move in lockstep. So there's the institutional things that produce art, this particular art form, but then they're always a little bit behind what's changing and what's happening. And so the taking of power often is just there reaches a kind of a tipping point when the theater is no longer speaking to the people that it comes out of and that's when you see these changes and we're in a big moment of that now where things are shifting and there's like a kind of a little earthquake or a big earthquake going on because the stories themselves are serving kind of the institutions that have perpetuated them. And I include academia in that also that the art school playground that produces writers is not the only way that art happens. It happens in much more unruly ways. It's always a forbidden and marginalized form when anything new happens. It happens in basements initially and works its way on the street level somehow with great pain to the creators. And the director issue is very alive for us all in that way because theater is so vulnerable to collaboration. It's not like the writer writes a play and the play goes out and takes wings. It's like you've got to launch a campaign then to get it realized. And that's like the hardest part of playwriting is finding that that shared consciousness and that care and that passion and it can't just be your passion. It's got to be the family around you that understands it. And then I think most crucially the people in your audience that start coming because that's really what we live for. That's we're all about that which is why most writers die of grief and sadness and eternal development loops. But not here at South Coast. Thank you. So unlike Kemp I guess I'm a little more of a the glass is half empty kind of guy with the way I've structured these questions with like but in terms of what inspires you about writing today like what is exciting about the world around you with what you're seeing on stage or what you envision will happen in the coming years. Like why is this such an exciting time to be writing in America or just to be in theater on that. I mean I think one thing I'm I'm I really really love about what's happening now. It's also really complicated is is what inclusion means moving forward and what the conversation about race representation looks like. And I think I don't see that here's where I'm a glass half full guy. I mean I feel like it's exciting to me. And even in the moments where I feel and it's not really me so much as colleagues you know like and honestly like I'll have occasionally a white writer colleague sort of come up and go like they're kind of shitting their pants a little bit and they're scared that somehow they're not going to get produced or something and those honest conversations like hearing that and to me that's exciting and those difficult conversations moving forward I'm not scared of those I think it's it's necessary and I guess for me my work in the theater and like why I still write plays is to sort of do exactly kind of what you guys were saying like find allies find collaborators I mean I didn't write this play alone I wrote it with my partner I wrote it with a whole bunch of people and I think that's why I write that's why I write plays and I think it's easier to do that for me more than ever find collaborators willing to jump in and make something together. I mean they're like a ton of cute boys in the theater right now and somehow they're all with each other. No I mean I wish I had a great answer to this question because I've just it's just in my blood to write now and I'm alive now so I I mean and there are a bunch there are a ton of exciting new plays but I feel like they're like that's been true all the time you know I'm I'm when I see a revival of something from the 90s or the 80s that I love I'm like I'm like oh it was happening then now it's happening now to me history um so I wish I wish I had a better question because that's cute boys um but that's sort of my go-to. I mean I guess since um based on how this is going this will probably be like the last panel I ever do I might as well just keep kind of go out with a with a bang and stay on point um I gotta I have to say um 10 15 years ago if you were going to a Lord theater and you you talked about seeing a black play there's a 70 chance it was going to be an August Wilson play and I love August Wilson America Shakespeare but the fact that now we're not even just limited to black history month to a February slot and and I'm and I'm meeting black playwrights all the time who I know their work before I've met them it's kind of stunning um I met a playwright um Chisa Hutchinson who who's at the summit and I know who all these people are and just three or four years ago if you would have said I'm an Asian playwright I would have heard that I thought like David Henry Wong or young Jean Lee and now you have Quiguen you have Lauren Yee you have Julia Cho I mean I I I am seeing and again this political climate can make everyone kind of circle the wagons and say like now we need to be cautious or we can just keep on pushing doubly hard because I am I'm seeing an incredible amount of progress for for women and all different kinds of ethnic groups because again 10 15 years ago that's why I saw the whole August Wilson cycle because it was the only thing they program and and now you have Dominique Mara so who's you know first play was produced in like 2012 being one of the most produced playwrights in America and Katori Hall I mean if I start on black playwrights it's um it's incredible you know and so yeah I that's that's exciting the the hell out of me because when you you see that it doesn't turn into like this crabs in the barrel thing where it's like the only one I mean I've jokingly said now let's see someone program two or three of us in one season you know now you have a lot of choice now maybe be a little bit less afraid to to let a season you know have a little bit more inclusion and parity but but it's like baby steps but but I see I mean I shouldn't be here you know I'm a guy who wrote a play that ran next door to a fried chicken joint that went to the west end so like crazy like that's never would have happened 10 years ago so so the it's a pinprick of light but I I think there is an opening here and and that's been the thing that's excited me the most I've been excited that I feel like we are hopefully getting it's happening and it feels like it's happening at maybe at an accelerated rate that women's stories are are starting to be it's not like the male protagonist the story with a male protagonist that's the universal story and the story with female protagonist that's the women's story that that that I feel like women on stage and all the amazing female playwrights and writers that I'm that I'm sort of like just can't get enough of are the stories are feeling like they're attaining a universality in the culture and it's they're still so so far to go but it has been I mean even you know outside of theater just like writers that I'm excited by and and tv and film that I'm excited by where it just it does feel like there's been an explosion of of hi hi hi hi we're here we're here we feel we feel things is deeply and we are the we are the protagonist in our stories and it's it's just been I I feel like I'm just like what's the next thing I can read what I feel like I'm devouring not just not just theater and film like just books and and and web series and just everything at this this rate because I feel like I kind of can't keep up and I'm so excited that I can't keep up like it's just amazing I'm like is this what it's like to be a man everything is like kind of like about like everything's about you like everything is like is like everybody is like able to kind of you're able to because you know and not that there aren't there I mean I grew up with just Babyster's Club and of Green Gables like I've had many many role models in literature but but just the the feeling that like I could always see myself in boys and men in stories and I I feel like it's happening that men can see themselves in the women in the women and in the female protagonists in this amazing cultural way and I'm just like I'm just thrilled about it and I'm also just like I have so much to I just like have so much to take in and it's really that's really exciting I actually think that that is a beautiful way to end but thank you all so much thank you all so much and enjoy Madri's reading like I was just like yeah I was so smart and amazing I just think you're awesome and just like


I had originally suggested we do some kind of talk or panel with involving everyone and sharing experiences, but it's kind of difficult on a stage like this, so I'm just going to present my slides, which I had prepared anyway, and I'll invite you all to our village afterwards for a discussion, whoever wants to talk about details of certain repairs or exchanging any ideas for repair coffees and stuff like that. Also, during the talk, if you've got any questions, please interrupt me at the spot and ask and I'll try to clarify. So welcome to Repair for Future, I'm Andreas or Fraxinus or RepairFox, I'm an electrical engineer from Germany, I'm developing software in my day job and I founded a repair cafe in the hometown of Schaffenburg of mine. I'm a member of a makerspace, Schaffenburg EV, there's also a company called Schaffenburg in the Netherlands and they make office furniture, but we're not affiliated. Also we're not sponsored, sadly. I'm giving tips and a live TV show in Germany's RAD, every once in a while, and I founded another repair cafe in my home village just a few months ago. So somebody once said, in a way, everybody is a hacker, everyone has their tricks to deal with technology in everyday life. And that person was Paul Holland, it's German. Yeah, so what he basically says, it is hacking to deal with technology and problems in your everyday life. So everybody has heard the word life hack, that's pretty much the gist of it I think. And that's why I do these talks at hacker conferences and camps like this, because I think there's just such a closeness in mindsets that we should really work together. Like this. Yeah, let's see, there's another slide. And of course, I brought some motivation, this is a photo from today. My friend woke up this morning laying on the ground because his air bad was leaking and all the air leaked out, so we had to fix it. Of course I had patches and PVC glue, and we could repair it. Yesterday, our crepe maker in the village broke. The switch broke. It is a spare part that would cost like two euros or 50 cents, but the regular consumer would have to throw the thing away, it's out of warranty. It has special screws that you can't open without a special tool set. What should you do? Usually it would be throwing it away. We just shorted the switch and we can use it again. So who hasn't heard what a repair cafe is? Okay, I will explain. So a repair cafe is a kind of meeting where volunteers like me go and help people seeking help trying to repair something and can do it themselves and show them to help themselves. So it is a kind of repairing together socially and it is of course meant for helping people who may be unable to afford replacing or something. And of course it's also there to stop people from just throwing it away if it's easy to repair and replacing it with a new bought item. To save resources and keep it out of landfill. And just some 40, 50 kilometers west from here in Amsterdam was the first organized repair cafe in 2009 where she pretty much formalized this as an event. So people have always helped each other in neighborhoods and helped each other repair stuff. But the way our society works today is that people aren't so close with their neighborhoods anymore and stuff like that. So it wasn't easy finding somebody who's not a professional to repair things. And even for professional repairs it's hard. Usually people get told no we can fix that toaster that doesn't make any sense. The time it takes us to open it is more than a new toaster would cost. So what we do at a repair cafe is a lot of times is tending to those products that aren't really worth much anymore anyway and people would just throw them out without really thinking much about it. Of course sometimes it's a flat TV that is just out of warranty and maybe costs a thousand euros and it's just a tiny little diode for 50 cents that blew. We've seen that before too. So anyway it was Martin Postma from Amsterdam who formalized this and founded the Stichting Repair Cafe in 2010 and they have this starter set which works kind of like a franchise with a squiggly logo which has changed by now. It's not quite a squiggly anymore. Not much prettier either though and it's very successful. So there are hundreds of repair cafes around the world if not thousands. Hundreds in Germany alone and big cities have multiple ones. Some work all days of the week it's become a real movement. So there are other, how should I call it, it's not really organizations, more like a collective organization. So in Germany has the Netzwerk Reparatur Initiativen, actually all German speaking countries, Austria, Switzerland too. And there are 950 members listed out of which they probably aren't all active anymore. Maybe some of them were a one-time thing or so but it's a couple of hundred and it's really amazing and the United Kingdom has the restart project which is London based and they are really professionalizing. They even have fixed factories now, what they call it, where people can go with their devices and they really have professionals that do this as a full-time job. Like you would expect or would have expected back in the good days from your TV sales person next door and of course internationally and strongly in the United States there is iFixit founded by Kyle Wiens and they have a big online community with many repair manuals and they're also strongly lobbying for the right to repair movement in the United States. And of course there's also iFixit in the European Union based in Germany. So how does typical day at a repair event look like? This is our logo from Schaffenburg. We tried incorporating all the different things that we do like sewing and electronics, woodwork, bicycles, mechanical stuff, whatnot into them and the motto is we can fix it together pretty much. So we have these little slips of paper that people write their names in and what they brought. So a toaster and what the defect is, it doesn't heat anymore or it doesn't stay down. We try to ask them at the entrance what the exact problem is because otherwise people will just write it doesn't work. And it helps the repair people if they have a slight idea of what's going on. And of course on the other side there's the house rules which boiled down to say if it breaks for good while trying to fix it then it's bad luck, things like that. And then our repair helpers take the slips of paper off of the blackboard and then ask the people to come to their desk and then they start fixing it together. The repair helpers bring their own toolboxes, the stuff that they're used to, what they can work with well, like their own multimeters and whatever screwdrivers or not soldering irons, sewing machines, glue, stuff like that. And then usually there's food, like the name repair café already implies. Of course by the way there aren't all called repair café, the Stichting repair café expects them to be named repair café but you could just as well call it repair initiative or café kaputt or something like that. There are so many creative names for them. We start with coffee and cake as well and sometimes we also cook. It depends on where we do our event. We always change locations after each event and sometimes the people there prepare, like in this case it is some Turkish food. We've usually got some bicycle repairs going on and fixing clothes or dolls or toys all different things. People bring the funniest stuff. Last time somebody brought a pool cleaning robot, something that crawls over a floor of a pool. And then we all have set up our little tables with, like here really is fixing some blender or I don't know what and there's somebody fixing something else and yeah people sit together with the repair helper and they watch and if they can they'll hold something or unscrew it themselves and sometimes people will even do it all by themselves that they just need a little hint every once in a while. This is the city major at the first event and that is me eight years ago or something fixing the kitchen machine of his wife. Okay and yeah sometimes like CD players or hi-fi devices, especially like tube devices are really time consuming to repair and have to be a lot of measurements done and we need a lot of spare parts and then that goes out of scope and time range of what we can do in a repair cafe. And then sometimes people like take them home privately and continue it there in officially. Yeah so maybe you remember luckily it's all over now but there was a pandemic and it kind of hit the repair cafes as well. There was a lockdown in Germany I think here in the Netherlands as well at some point and we couldn't do anything anymore. We were very unprepared for it and so many appointments were just cancelled but for example Repair Cafe Aschaffenburg started already a month or something into the pandemic into experimenting with remote services. So we would offer a jitzy instance where people could lock in during the time that was scheduled for Repair Cafe. We always do that once a month at a Saturday and we had leaflets printed. So the appointments were already known and instead of just cancelling them all together instead we did it online on our jitzy instance. I'll show a little bit in the next slide how that could work. And then after the lockdown we did the events offline with additional hygiene measures like disinfection and social distancing and a limited amount of guests that had to pre-book. This is just a list of different Repair Cafes doing online events just like we did and something that is noteworthy especially at these kind of conferences is that most of them used open solutions for the video conferencing like a lot of them used big blue button or jitzy and just a few of them used proprietary stuff like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Some of them were even provided by Makerspaces. Yeah so how can online repairing work? This was during our first online repair session and there's a guest and she was trying to fix the video projector and we helped her disassemble the case which is always very hard even if you have it on your table in front of you and if you have to if you have to remotely tell a layman or a lay person how to open something like that up then it's really difficult. You can see it's an electronic device so it has mains voltage in it of course we unplugged it all and it was basically just diagnostics but we could tell that this one power regulator had blown and she was even able like you can you can see here is a part of it. After like trying to get it open for an hour and a half or something she saw that this part had blown and we were able to order the spare part and then during a later time when she came into the repair cafe we could solder it and switch it and repair it that way. This would have been usually something where a person would have to come to the repair cafe twice because of course we can't have all special parts on stock. Yeah with a video resolution especially with WebRTC the inscriptions on the parts are of course not readable so some of the repair initiatives they started using out-of-band high-res photography for those kind of diagnostics instead but what is cool is that you can open a repair manual and then show her where the clips are and things like that or if a person has a computer problems you can help them like with a team viewer or something. Yeah then after these experiments of the separate initiatives there was a bundled approach by the network Reparatur Initiative for basically all of Germany were helpers from the different initiatives could log in and then help guests and that was a week in February 2021 where we did that for every every evening and afterwards we did it once per month and in the beginning we had quite some guests like in March there were 40 guests and over 20 helpers and 10 repairs all together some people just wanted to to check in and see how it could work but that steadily went down the hill so in the end there were only repairs but no guests trying to get anything fixed so we turned it into more something like a monthly meet-up of the repair community because this network repair initiatives also did like meet-ups in the different regions of Germany and like a federal for the whole country once a year and that couldn't take place either which was very sad because repairs really need to repair like I know it for myself if we can't repair something then we get yeah so we we were always waiting for guests I would could have good so why do we even have to do this the problem is that in Europe alone this is a number from two years ago I think or last year when when was that with that giant ship being stuck in the in that canal it was last year yeah so imagine 60 of those giant things filled all the way with waste with electric waste is is what Europe alone produces every year this is it's unimaginable it's 20 kilos per person per year and we want to basically be an impulse and and give give people yeah a way of changing their their thinking and the way they consume especially electronics but also clothes and textiles and we're trying to kind of kick off a political process too so there is already the European equity design directive which for example has brought us leds as light bulb replacements or vacuum cleaners that have a limited wattage stuff like that so some of those things are very very good and there is also since last year an amendment to the equity design directive that is supposed to improve a right to repair so in the first step this applied to just a few products or product ranges like coolers washing machines dishwashers and displays so televisions meaning and it requires them to be repairable without special tools or at least the cases should be openable without special tools and that spare parts need to be supplied for a few years so it's I think it's seven years for the displays and 10 years for the for the appliances and repairing and service manuals need to be supplied now so this is already in effect as of last year yes the question was spare parts how does it work out in practice so in practice the rule is they need to be supplied within or provided within 15 days for professional repairers and there is no rule for the price of them either yeah unluckily and also there is no rule that keeps manufacturers from from bundling spare parts into giant modules like the rule doesn't tell them only to supply or provide the bearing of a washing machine drum it can be the whole drum including a bearing that can't be changed so this is not perfect yet is this what your question was about yeah thank you very good question um so what's going on this year in 2022 is that our European Parliament has voted for right to repair on April 7th and that means that the European Commission has to or should come up with a with an amendment to the directive in this fall 2022 and so the idea is that there should be incentive for repairs that could be for example text reductions or some kind of um vouchers like Austria already has this in place when you when you go there and you get your washing machine fixed and it costs 200 for labor and spare parts 200 euro then the Austrian government will pay 50 of that back so you only have to pay 100 this is really cool does the German state of Thuringia has that too now but only a limited budget I think yeah and of course the service manuals and software updates have to be provided for a certain period for a broader range of products and yeah and the the rest is is it's not very very concrete but devices should be more robust and easier to repair and where parts should be easy to replace this is it's always a question of definition but it's it's a start so another good thing is that consumer information about repairability should be improved and warranties extended best thing would be in in my mind you buy a washing machine that is projected for a 10 year lifetime and then you have a warranty for 10 years that would be the best thing then people can choose do I want the 300 euro machine that has a two-year lifetime or do I want the 1000 euro machine that has a 10-year life man the if you do the math then it's easy which one is the the better choice okay another thing is that is technically already illegal but it would be really illegal then the practice is leading to worse or worse and repair abilities that planned obsolescence should be banned yeah so if I put a little fuse in that breaks after two years or after the warranty is over then it would definitely be illegal yeah it hasn't exactly been proven in before a court I think that some manufacturers manufacturers put these kinds of things into devices but we all know that they exist like just think about printers which stopped working after the the little excess ink sponge is full when they think it's full yeah and another thing that should come is the digital product pass with QR codes that contains extra information about like energy consumption and repairability things like that I need a sip of water so friends already has a repairability index since last year for a couple of products and this number shows pretty much how difficult a product is to repair the bad thing is that the manufacturer manufacturers calculate the score by themselves and there are a few categories like the yeah manuals and stuff like that that can increase the score even though they aren't really easy to repair for example iFixit has the 36 easy steps that you have to do to switch a battery on a galaxy s21 and it still scores 8.2 which is absolutely ridiculous yeah in the united states it is illegal that companies all right it's not illegal to put them on but they are not a void you all know these warranty void stickers on devices since 1975 courts have ruled that yeah they don't mean anything technically and also it's very interesting that the american rights to repair movement got traction because of a very conservative groups of product group of products it's tractors by john deere yeah they put drm and stuff into their machines that would keep farmers from repairing their equipment on field imagine the tractor breaks they have to do they have to bring in the crops and yeah you can put it in the shop they have to fix it on spot that wasn't possible anymore and that was a real uproar and attraction to the right to repair movement last year president biden assigned an executive order empowering right to repair and there have been a couple of state legislations this year this is the last one being the fair repair act of new york in june germany has the round table for repairs which does lobbying and we i'm a member of that too and we managed to even get a right to repair into the coalition contract of the governing parties of this legislation period in germany and like i've already mentioned to ringer and austria subsidize repairs and just last week india has announced that they also want to introduce a right to repair law so what can we do please repair stuff for yourself youtube has a very good sometimes sometimes not so good videos of how to repair how to open things that happen again and again like what do i have to do if i need to switch the thermal paste of my notebook del x x y z or something like that um check that out i fix it has very many repair manuals very specific step by step with high res photography what do i have to do if i want to replace the display of my this and that phone um if you don't have the tools at home or if you aren't capable of doing it yourself come visit a repair cafe they'll show you how it works if it's possible or if you're already adept at repairing stuff please volunteer as a helper in a repair cafe or when you're a member of a maker space why don't you offer some consultation hours in your maker space where people can come with their devices or volunteer um at a at a repair event yeah and last but not least if you live in a rural area that doesn't have any repair cafe yet you can always open one there are there's the stichting repair cafe for the netherlands there are they are also active all over europe and they have their starters said um it is worth it it uh a british study so british studies show everything imagine what they have a study on it but this one shows that repairing actually has an impact on co2 reduction and uh it's yeah it's about one to ten kilo per kilo of device repaired um yeah what we personally can do as well is think twice before buying stuff especially gadgets especially iot crap which may just as well stop working next year when the manufacturer decides to turn off the cloud things like that do we really need it um yeah cherish and service and maintenance uh loop your uh loop your bicycle chain and stuff like that decalcify your coffee machine clean your vacuum cleaner filters that will extend their lifetime it's important and um use a warranty to the end if something is broken uh within the warranty time even if it's just the stupid led light bulb then get it replaced yeah it's that is it's something that yeah yeah sometimes they even have an extended warranty of like five years or something but it's uh it's a tedious process people uh or the manufacturers try to keep them yeah keep them from from uh using that and um of course another good thing is teach kids how to solder and do making classes soldering is a very important repair technique it is good if they know how to do it upcycling um if a tv main board is broken you can still use the backlight for a really cool shadow free desk light for example there are a bunch of initiatives um there is a fix fest which is an international repair conference in um brussels in september or end of september beginning of october that first weekend and there's also bits and boimer conference in berlin uh unluckily they're both at the same weekend my dream uh first one i already said uh if a product supposed to last 10 years please put it put a sticker on and then actually extend the warranty to that time and uh what we need is a really a uh europe-wide return system for functional or easily repairable goods um belgium has that with the kringwinkel uh you don't throw stuff away that you don't need anymore you give it to a central instance and then it's being given out again for a really low price are repaired um by by by some welfare jobs and um we have that in germany now for for people who have fled ukraine uh and they're um taking old laptops and computers and giving them away again to the refugees after installing a free open source um operating system on them yeah then of course some incentives for repairs would be nice as i've mentioned and also please always keep in mind regard the ecological impact of every purchase and social impact some people have to assemble these things and those people don't live good lives some people have to dig out tons of uh stuff from the earth to make uh enough uh cobalt for for a for a phone or for a car or whatnot please always consider that and not only the production also this the disposal is bad for our planet yeah eventually we'll become a degrowth society if we want it or not it is it would be better if we did it voluntarily and be prepared for it discussion we barely have any time for it maybe there are some questions if not you're invited to unterland village on olsenfield at 6 30 i would say in half an hour or so that would be great yeah 23rd person to show up gets a free smartphone repair kit from me hey did you hear that you guys you're lucky the one first of all before we start off thank you this was excellent may have a big applause for this cheers thanks i know that there's still 10 minutes for questions i pushed him a bit sorry about that sorry i hope i didn't rush through 2000 so there were some interesting questions and and maybe yeah yeah let and let's get to the microphone because i i think we have a few more yeah thanks for the very interesting discussion uh and talk um i think what i wanted to say is regarding uh warranties i think a lot of people aren't aware that the european law states that you have two years at least but it's at least so if it's a washing machine it the law is a bit vague unfortunately but i think it states something as as much warranty as you should be the lifespan should be yeah as the life as you as you could meaningfully expect the product to last which is vague which really helps the manufacturers to yeah get out of warranty claims yeah if we had if we really had a compulsory label where the manufacturer has to write the projected lifetime of a product on on the packing then people would be able to to choose and and really claim that right yes yeah that warranty yeah but that's not in the proposals yet it is all right yeah okay um yeah it isn't in the proposal that the lifetime has to be written on and the warranty has to be according that is not like that yeah unluckily okay but we're trying to push it that way keep pushing keep pushing that would be great a second question if i don't see anything anyone queuing up yet so yeah i attended a few repair cafes around the holland and i noticed the atmosphere was sometimes quite of the participants i mean more kind of like they brought their product dumped it and sometimes even went out they weren't really invested or really paying attention yeah do you have any tips maybe for uh how to to get the right kind of engagement let's say so we've seen that too the people were like misunderstanding the concept of a repair cafe as like a professional repair shop free repair professionally even free repair shop and uh we always made clear that um we're here on our free time and then we want people to understand and to help and at least watch if they don't have to to manually help um but um i think it's uh probably about communication like writing an article about what you do in your local newspaper with photos and stuff like that that always helps and we rarely get that so maybe once or twice a year yeah that's better good to hear thank you there's a few people lining up so let's bring it on hey um i often find myself in discussions with like companies that i buy products from and they claim to be very you know lifetime products and then something breaks and then they're like okay we'll send you like a new one and i'm like no i don't want a new one i want you to repair and a lot of times i also sort of offer them clues for like how they could like send repair kits to all of the people who have this broken and i don't know these are companies like for example Reigns you know the rain jacket from Denmark or Gregory from like Backpacks or Stenvy and it's always like very i never get to like a good solution um i just kind of want to create awareness for them to repair the stuff and so i guess none of the laws apply here but do you have maybe any tips of like how to communicate i think it's also mostly i communicate with a person who's not actually able to and i don't get to anyone who can influence that yeah so yeah that law is not in place yet but it's it's also supposed to be forbidden to throw away like new stock or just slightly defective and repairable stuff um but the problem is that that products aren't designed to be repairable anymore like a lot of times you can't even open a case of a product without destroying it or shoes or backpacks like you mentioned they are all glued together they can't be soon or anything and if they fail then they then sometimes they do fail for good and then they need to be replaced because even the manufacturer can't fix it but in these cases i actually fix it myself i mean the rain jacket but i want i want them to do it and i want them to also do it for other people i mean they were totally fixable actually i mean maybe they would have been could have been designed better but but they may not even have the facilities anymore thank you yeah thank you and indeed i think i i i see the problem that you wanted to repair it and and yeah you get a new one most people are happy about it yeah but yes but it's not the right thing yeah it doesn't make sense hi there thank you very much i was i was vague i was vaguely familiar with some of these movements initiatives in europe very pleased to learn more about it fascinating excellent stuff now from what i've seen it seems to me like the place that would be the most i don't know if i can say advanced but that has the strongest culture of repair like that and unfortunately not necessarily out of such noble motivations but more out of necessity is cuba it seems to me like cuba is the fix its country yeah i was wondering if there's been any formal or informal some kind of a exchange with the cuban repairers or if uh yeah thank you not that i'm aware of that's an excellent question and let me bring this up if you look on a map for repair initiatives then imagine the iron curtain they almost stop there so east of like germany poland is all already very sparse people there don't need to repair cafes because they can still do it they can still do it themselves and they do like i was in in romania a couple of years ago in a very very remote town of sulina their next hardware shop was two hours by ship there aren't even any roads there people need to be able to fix them their stuff on their own with and improvise and they do yes exactly they don't need repair cafes and cuba is probably the same way thank you for the suggestion thank you thanks a lot thank you and our last question for today hi i i don't really have a question i just have a suggestion um i know in switzerland there's a big initiative now trying to copy their repair vouchers they're very inspired and i've been pushing the local counselors to activate that so they're working actively on it and also they're trying to attach a reuse center to their recycling centers so if you can all contact your local counselors and push for that and say you want a reuse center for all your equipment because if you're also running a repair cafe i'm sure you know there's two on rails trying to get the spare parts often you can take it out of another machine that has a different part broken so that would also be nice to just collect all these things and spare parts absolutely excellent suggestion thank you very much please do that okay so that's it for tonight i would like you to thank you once more for this beautiful story again i love it in this in this that we are we're doing high tech and low tech at the same time and it doesn't really matter we just do hacks yeah exactly people


You look I'm camouflage you don't even know I'm here. Oh No, it's me Imposter I don't know why should I go who is it interns also an imposter? Okay? Okay, so Q Q is key Be sabotage. Okay, so I've literally I've now got to be like I've got to play the the long game here I don't even know where I'm going though. I've got that to play on that. I have no idea where I am Where I'm going so I'm all good. I don't even know where I'm going. I'm just kind of exploring. This is quite cool. Oh You can't go in okay fair enough So can I sabotage things so I make them go to a place is that it?  Let's go all the way over that navigation. Oh, so you're waiting oh Whoo fix lights It's going to okay. I've got I've got to like play it for myself. I have no idea What's in here Who did it all right, where were you? Who killed it?  Do you have anything to say? Yeah, beaver What do you have to say for yourself? This is my second game. Well, that's that's fine You could just tell us what you were doing where you came from before walking into electric How did it feel to kill I was going for lights to turn them off again? them I Think it's an important time to ask intern what happened Huh, all right, does he have a bike no? Oh Who's this guy? It's intern. He's the intern all right So you'll be you went into electrical to fix lights you said yeah, I was coming from navigation So the problem with that statement is You walked into electrical after I had already fixed lights and you walked in with the FX team because I passed you and You guys are coming from storage it looks really bad for you wait See, I don't know if Cade's out playing him right now or beaver's It's I'm sorry beaver. I'm voting out. I skipped and I'm keeping Submission on Kate The real beaver we're gonna miss him. How could you well, I'm dead. So that's good Baby, oh My god, I'd like to be fair. I was nothing I could do Literally nothing I could do that As soon as he walked back he got me he must have seen he must have seen like me go back or he was like I'll check on that Wait, so I can just sabotage all these doors sweet fresh you fresh you saw what I saw, right? Intern intern. Yep.   Like what should I do? Do I get an alibi? Okay. Good luck. I was like I was panicking. I was like Me No, I want to warm up a little bit. So we got a bot. We've got a friggin bot who's okay So who do I want to stay with I'll stay with Df no, okay? Cade's really good. Cade knows what he's doing with Cade intern. Please. Oh, no. Oh, no Quick Dead in admin on the right side of the admin desk doing the thing I can confirm blitz is good. He did weapons. I saw the animation guys. I'm the I'm the imposter So who's vouching for blitz right now In curses is vouching for blitz right now. He watched me shoot the asteroids. We are pew pew.  There is two imposters, right? Did anyone see who ran down from the beginning? Right right because I was walking run right. I'm just gonna play dope beginning every game if I have tasks in engineering or Electrical I do them first every time Because the most dangerous room. Yes. Yeah So nobody saw anybody yeah We can go watch Dre. Yeah Are we watching Dre then? Yeah, I have one for a garbage run.  So we're gonna watch Dre Okay, let's watch Dre. We're gonna pretend like we're going with them. Where is Dre? Where did Dre go Merit? Okay? Okay, so we just It's intern. It's intern. Okay. I'm Cade is he's the one that like He knows what he's doing. Oh My god, my heart's going crazy. Okay, Drey's doing a task. I Do task I do task. I don't know if this is just like a deep thing right? I was like a pretend. I'm doing it. I don't know where people are though. That's a thing So when it wants to kill somebody. Oh, oh, we're always up there. Yeah, it was up there. Okay, fair enough Everybody's here We go thing Keras Just want to make sure that he's not following me. Oh, there's Drey. Oh, it's all in this all up to this intern Really? Oh, that's in Keras. I think these these guys are going Wait, where's where's map? What do I want to go to? I want to go to communications No admin go to admin go to admin pretend we're doing a thing pretend we're doing thing I think I'm gonna survive this without like killing anybody is that oh doors locked Up this way. Oh, oh, no, that's locked to There's intern intern's gonna go this way.  Oh, it's gonna kill him You can't follow me like that, bro Garbage at the beginning although in Yeah But yes, I can confirm Drey did Okay, also, let me just talk because I'm the one who found the body I'm in is it the admin room the one on the body? It's Cade. Cade's the one who's like, I know what people are doing I walk out. There's a dead body two feet from him Can you tell us a story mr. Beef? me I mean you can't fight much here. I'm innocent. I'm confirmed. Yeah, I'm running about Over bodies though can plead ignorance that is an option. Yeah, I mean I believe it He's new but I don't believe it enough not to vote him. Oh, okay, so we're voting for Drey I mean feel great. I am confirmed. I've done garbage. Okay, and I watched Df do the reactor So he's good on that. Yeah, I was looking on On cams. I didn't see anybody's we wait. How can you tell what about reactor confirms there?  I was like who did you see move into I can't lie I I saw murdered just groups of people the whole time except for beaver. He was by himself But you didn't see he did she watch I've been running around trying to find people though Yeah, I mean I saw him several times. Yeah, who doesn't believe beaver is a bad guy Go ahead and speak up right now. Go ahead do it go ahead do it. You won't he could have just missed it That's all I'm saying that but I was two feet from it. I mean he's new. Maybe he doesn't know how to report though Yeah, he would have said he didn't know how to do it I do think that it's a vote worthy here for him.   No, get up my baby. Oh look at them. They're all together They're all like hmm. Hmm They're all sting together. So they're like, okay, somebody gets killed Well, yeah, they're looking for intern. That's what they're doing. Let's have a touch that one You're all locked in. Is there nothing else I can sabotage. Do I only get like a certain amount of sabotages? Oh God, oh, yeah Green body and cafeteria right at the doorway. Okay, and the rest of us They were closing doors on us it was one of us in that group Yeah Yeah, it was a coincidence and the fact that an attack one alone tells me that maybe it was him No, no, hold on hold on it's not Baron because we saw Baron do it Right now we're trying to move together to do the last task But it was somebody in that group of people If we already voted out beaver It's you isn't it? Rooms and we were locked in both. Yeah, it's definitely somebody in the group Listen There's a dead body. Where is the dead body? It was by intact when he went the opposite way alone. They turn once and with us right in that room You know, he wasn't he was alone. So it's either intact or intern. It's not me I'm gonna I'll vote for intern because it definitely wasn't androids. We're changing the subject.  Okay, let's just vote off Was there a dead body and who died? What are you talking about? Oh my god! All right, we made a mistake. I'm sorry.  I think it's intern. Is there anything confirming that it's not Drey at the same time? We need to be careful. It's fair. Which is why I feel like it's intern exactly that But I also acknowledge that doors were closing around us like crazy. Yeah, but so you could be one of us I feel like I want to split them up if they don't vote off linton. Wow.  Yeah, you can report you can report your own murders Yeah, I saw it. Oh, I don't like how these two are watching me. Oh, no.  I don't like it. I don't like it.   Hi guys.  I'm sorry Oh, okay, here we go again. Uh, what tasks do I have? Oh, I have storage. I don't have trash. Damn. How do how do I do this one? Oh, ah, there's the button You son of a Help you know how you said you haven't been an imposter yet Would you like would you like to tell us a story? Go on walker moment.  It doesn't make sense.  Keep your eyes on blitz. Let's vote dray off Come witness my innocence It's brilliant. Did we do it? I just I walk out of medical I see dray running and there's this just body flopping over behind him I know Oh The barons by himself Nobody's nobody's there is baron in here There we go. I'll get him. How do I how do I use? Guys, let's just restart. He needs the content. Oh man beaver's gonna have a good game I was like, no, I told him I went through the vent. Damn it. Sorry beaver Dude, this whole three hours. I haven't been imposter once except for when I killed icing's I'm so sorry


Okay, a bit of Christmas holiday advice.   With you guys, happy Christmas.


Hello everyone, I welcome you all for this today's session on design of transition curves and routes. I am Mr. Ashok Kumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Vulture and the Institute of Technology, Solapur. Learning outcomes, at the end of the session, students will be able to design the length of transition curve. In the previous class, we have learnt about the transition curve, the requirement of transition curve, objective of transition curves and ideal shape of a transition curve. We know that to design the length of transition curve, it has to fulfill the three conditions. The first condition is rate of change of centrifugal acceleration to be developed gradually. We know that the centrifugal acceleration to be gradually introduced in the transition curve uniformly, hence the length of transition curve should be sufficient to introduce the centrifugal acceleration. Second condition is we are introducing the super elevation gradually from a normal camber to the designed super elevation, hence the length of the transition curve should accommodate this design super elevation from normal camber to the design super elevation. And IRC has given some empirical equations, we have to calculate the length using these empirical equations and compare all these three conditions and adopt the length of transition higher of the all three. Let us go by one this one by one to find out the length of transition curve. First one is rate of change of centrifugal acceleration, we know that the this V square upon R that is centrifugal acceleration is 0 at this straight point or that tangent and it starts it is infinity at that point and it starts decreasing, the radius is starts decreasing and centrifugal acceleration starts gaining some value that is increasing. So, centrifugal acceleration is increasing gradually and radius decreasing gradually. So, now this V square upon R we have to introduce in the transition uniformly and gradually. Now for that we have to design the length of transition. So, at the end of the transition the radius R has the minimum value Rm and hence the centrifugal acceleration is distributed over length of Ls that is Ls is the length of the transition curve. Of that if the t is a time taken to travel this Ls, so t is given by Ls upon V that is speed equal to distance upon time. So, time equal to Ls upon V where V is in meter per second. This maximum centrifugal acceleration that is V square upon R is introduced in time t through the Ls and hence the this change of centrifugal acceleration C is given by V square upon RT where C is the centrifugal acceleration and put this t value as Ls upon V. So, that comes to Vq upon Ls into R. So, length of transition Ls to meet the condition of centrifugal acceleration that is Ls equal to Vq upon Cr where V is in meter per second. So, as is suggested to find this C value that is centrifugal acceleration given by 80 upon 75 plus V where V is in kmph. Now this value comes in meter per second cube and the value of the C is suggested the minimum of 0.5 and maximum of 0.8. So, 0.5 to 0.8 we have to design the the C value. Here the previous equation is in meter per second to convert that into kmph we need to multiply 1000 and divided by 16 to 60 to convert into seconds into hours. So, the final equation for in V in kmph is Ls equal to 0.0215 Vq upon Cr where C is the centrifugal acceleration 0.5 to 0.8 meter per second cube and R is the radius in meter and Ls is the length of transition in meter. With the previous class understanding I hope you are able to select the correct answer over here. Now you pass the video and give me the correct answer for these two questions. First one is the radius of transition curve decreases and becomes maximum at the beginning of a circular curve is it true or false or in the dash curve the radius is inversely proportional to the length and rate of change of centrifugal acceleration is uniform throughout the curve which curve it is fulfills that whether lemniscate spiral or cubic parabola. I hope you are able to select the correct answer the correct answers are first one is false because the transition curves decreases the radius decreases at the transition curve at the state point and maximum at the beginning of the circular curve it is not maximum it is minimum hence the correct answer is false. In spiral has that the transition properties where radius is inversely proportional to the length and rate of centrifugal acceleration is uniform throughout the curve. So, that is spiral fulfills the ideal shape of the transition curve. Going to the second condition that is rate of introduction of super elevation again here we are introducing this super elevation in the transition from normal chamber to the design value by rotating in a two ways in a through with respect to the centerline and with respect to the inner edge. Here in open country we know that we need to provide some higher super elevation higher super elevation we cannot raise it suddenly we have to raise it uniformly and the sudden rate is not more than 1 in 150. So, we will not go beyond 1 in 150 this e 7 percent from 2.5 percent to 7 percent we have to raise it at a rate of 1 in 150. Now, the length of transition curve is this n is the rate of change of super elevation that is the raising rate is 1 in n. So, n multiply by the total raising. So, suppose if you are rotating with respect to the center line the total raising at outer edge is e by 2 and at the same time it is lowered by e by 2. So, the e by 2 multiplied by the rate of raising that becomes the transition length that is ls equal to e upon 2 that is e upon 2 at the outer edge multiplied by the rate of raising that is n value. If I put the e value what is the e how to calculate the total e e equal to b into e e is the rate of super elevation and b is the width of the pavement. If you are adding extra widening add extra widening to calculate the total b. So, here you can see here the total is from here to here it is b and adding. So, w plus w total width is w and w e is the extra widening. So, adding together w plus w e becomes a total b that is capital b. So, b into rate of super elevation gives the capital e that is total raising with respect to the inner edge or total raising with respect to the center line. Now, when you are rotating with respect to the inner edge. So, e multiplied by n that is rate of raising. So, again e is equal to b into e. So, where b is w plus w e and e is the super elevation. Now, let us understand what is this the rate of raising that is n value here the n we can able to decrease in a built up area we can able to decrease the length of transition curve providing 1 in 100 and in hilly area because of the space constraint we can still we can decrease the rate of raising 1 in 60. So, there where the length of transition curve will be minimum in the built up area as well as in the hilly area. Let us understand little bit more about the value of n. From here you can see here at the state point r is infinity we know that the state that is the radius is infinity and let us assume that we are providing a chamber of 2.5 percent. From 2.5 percent to we have to increase it for 7 percent here from here to here it is a transition curve from here to here it is a circular curve again here it is a transition curve. Now, we are not able to suddenly increase this 2.5 to 7 percent it is very undesirable and it is not safe we have to increase this 2.5 percent gradually. So, 2.5 will become 3 4 4.5 5 and 5.5 6 and 7 percent. Now, at what rate we have to increase here that is the value of n. So, for every 150 meter 1 meter is a vertical like that you calculate at a particular intervals what is the raising of outer edge with respect to the center line. Now, x 1 1 unit is raised x 2 length again another 1 unit is raised for x 3 another 1 unit is raised like that the slowly gradually we have to raise the outer edge. From here we we get one more clarification from this image also here you can see here the outer edge is slowly gradually raised. So, here it is 2 percent and 2 percent. Now, here the point is little bit from here to here that is some distance they calculated 1 in 150 are having the n value calculate the what is the amount of raising to be done on the outer edge from here little bit more and here more and here the start of the circular curve you can see here the rate of raising they are maintained that is 1 in 150 are the designed n value. So, this I was telling you the n value we have to adopt it and slowly we have to increase the outer edge at a rate of 1 in 150 by empirical formula as per the ISA standard depending upon the terrain condition the plane and rolling terrain it is given by 2.7 v square upon r where v is in Kmph for mountainous and steep terrain it is given by v square upon r where v in Kmph. Now, adopt this we have to compare all these three rate of change centrifugal acceleration length of transition curve and length of transition curve depending upon the introduction of super elevation and by empirical formula. So, adopt the LS that is length of transition curve higher among all these three. So, that is the final length we have to calculate it comparing all these three conditions. This is the readymade table given by ISA 38, 1988 where we can directly get the transition curve length here in this one there is a speed is given 180, 40 and all speeds. Now, radius is also given on this side.  So, depending upon the terrain condition speed and radius you can directly choose the radius of the curve. Here you can see here suppose for example, I will be going for 100 Kmph and the radius is something like 350. So, for 350 and for 100 Kmph you can see the 130 meter is the transition curve. So, 130 meter before the starting of the circular curve again at the end of this circular curve. So, two transition curve we have to provide before and after. These are the references I have used for representing this presentation. Thank you.