In this lecture, we review some basic high school math concepts that you'll find that you'll need in our statistics course. Okay, as you can see that symbol there, sigma, that's capital sigma, and we use that to denote some summations. You'll see an Excel too, by the way. So in this example, we summed x1 plus x2 all the way through x7.  Here's how we use the summation symbol in statistics. Note that the sample mean is the sum of all the values, sum of xi, divided by n. Also, we're going to talk about summing squared observations in the course. In the course, we're going to learn about ways to measure variation. One of them is the sample variance, where we're basically getting the deviations around the mean, squaring them, adding them up, and dividing by n minus one. We'll worry about why we're dividing by n minus one and not n once we actually get to the course. So here's just the way we worked out the problem. Remember, the numerator is the deviation from the mean, and square it. So that's one minus three squared, two minus three squared, and so on. When you add all of the squared deviations up, you get 10 for the numerator, and then you divide by n minus one, remember, not by n. We're dividing by four. And so we get a variance of 2.5. When you get to the point where you want to compute the standard deviation, another measure of deviation, you just take the variance and take the square root of that, and that's the standard deviation. Again, more later in the course. Here we'll learn about a weighted average. Suppose you take three exams, but they're not equally weighted. The first exam is worth 20% of the grade. Exam two is worth 30% of the course grade, and the final is worth 50% of the grade. Essentially, your weights are 20, 0.20, 0.30, and 0.50. And now we have one student whose grades were 100, 80, and 90. So how do we compute the average? Okay, we set it up in a table so you can see the grade, the weights, and you can see the weighted average is now an 89. Notice if you use the symbols, it's the sum of the WI, XI. WI represents the weights. And notice the average again is 89. You'll see it's not the same as a simple average. The table was nice and made things kind of simple, but it's not very compact. Using summation notation for the weighted average is actually easier to do. Take a look, you have the weights, you have the grades. Turns out to be 89, exactly the same as what we had before. Here's a question. What formula would we use if we had all the same weights for the grades, if we were weighing them all the same in order to come up with a course average? Next slide, we'll see that. Here we showed that we could use the same formula for a weighted average for the straight average, because if we have three exam grades and they all have the same weight, we're talking about one third, one third, one third. It turns out that that average would be 90, not 89 as we had before when the final exam was worth more. Using one third, one third, one third as the weights is exactly the same as adding up all the grades and dividing by three. And if you can't yet see that it's exactly the same, you should really go back before the course starts and review some of the basic math that you see here. You may have already learned the expected value in another course, and now that you see weighted average using summation notation, I think you can pretty clearly see that expected average is nothing more than a weighted average where the weights are the probabilities. And the expected value is the long run average value of a random variable. In other words, it's the mean of the random variable. It's a weighted average of all the possible values that this random variable can take on, but it's a weighted average. Now, in the next slide, we're going to be looking at an example of a business deal. Let's look at these two business deals. Business opportunity one, you have a 20% chance of making a million, a 30% chance of making 500,000, and a 50% chance of making zero. Well, you might analyze it through expected values. See the way we symbolize expected value, e, the x in parentheses, that's called the expected value of x. And it turns out for this problem, the expected value of x is $350,000. If you were able to do this business deal over and over again, you average out making $350,000. Of course, you do it once, you're not making $350,000, either making a million, $500,000 or zero. But the expected value, which is a long run kind of probability, this is what you'd expect to make. You'd be keeping doing this over and over again, $350,000. Business opportunity two, where there's a 15% chance of making 10 million, a 10% chance of making 5 million, and a 75% chance of making zero, the expected value turns out to be $2 million. When you toss a die, this is going to shock you. What is the expected value? Now, you can get either a one, a two, a three, a four, a five, or a six. It turns out mathematically the expected value is 3.5. Now, as you all know, there's no way you're getting 3.5 if you do it once. But if you keep doing it over and over again, that's what it'll turn out to be on average. That's called the expected value. It's like a long run average.  And here you can see the logic. If you keep doing this over and over again, posting that die, you'll get as many ones as sixes. That averages out to 3.5. As many twos as fives. So that averages out to 3.5. You'll have as many threes as fours. And that averages out to 3.5.


Agile people conference is important because I get to meet a lot of like-minded people who are all leaders in a complex environment, so getting to know how they tackle the complexity and issues is really important. I'm here at Agile people because there's a wonderful conversation going on where we're starting to see the convergence of many things coming together. So there's people here from all over, they're asking wonderful questions, they're open-minded and they tend to run to question marks as opposed to run away from them, so it's very exciting. The topic of the conference is also extremely interesting with system thinking, how to apply it practically and there's so many great people here to meet to talk about this exciting topic so this is the place to be for me today. What I like is the low-key environment where people can really meet and exchange their thoughts, sessions going on at the same time so there's a lot to learn in a very condensed time. Agile people is an important conference because it makes you look at things from a different way, a new perspective, which I find really boosting creativity. Agile people move Agile out of development department and look at organizations a whole including HR, business development, marketing. There is so much need for this booming economy here to really embrace new concepts and the subjects like the one we are discussing today in the conference is really of high relevance and Agile people is bringing this really to the companies. Agile people Sweden is doing some wonderful work and it's extremely important at this point in time because we need to be asking ourselves lots of questions, we need to be looking at things differently and not always from our own perspective. The more different perspectives we have on things the better and that's extremely valuable right now because it helps people become more Agile in their brains and in the way of seeing the world.


This is the animation minute as always to start with jobs even though This is a trailer so cool teaser and I'm showing this because They are hiring animators rock star games has an opening for a lead animator the SBA studio or spa I don't know spots. They're hiring and they got positions like a 2d animator And this tweet says there are a bunch of old positions including gameplay animators another job posting and looking for an awesome Senior game and cinematics animator. Micro's animation is hiring as well. So you go into news There is a Obi-Wan Kenobi teaser trailer negative emotion tears for fears another thread by Edward. I love these every week They're awesome. The Batman was awesome as well as This oh, even though it went full screen here. You can't see it by cropped onto the best part These are great. Definitely check them out I'll love something like this when you have just off just like this and they got an awesome art interpretation like that Come on. This looks absolutely fantastic. Look at that. That's super cool. What a fun game idea This is cool. That is so much M. She got the trailer for having nice death. There's a lot of really nice hand-drawn Art in there. Look at that. That is so cool more Batman stuff. I'll love this I love seeing progression reels here in 2d animation ready ready and Love it. Speaking of 2d. That's great. Look at that cycle the stripes Pencil tests are great. Love them. This is a cool thread with directors posing with their sub motion puppets That's cool to see check out the whole thing. I love this metal cameras has some really cool demos And I love this is a longer PC. This is 27 seconds long. So check out the whole thing is really nicely done You know, I love 2d effects. Look at that. That is so much work So cool. I love sound effects and sound design. Go check this out. Check out the link put on some headphones It's super cute. Yeah Get a love Lego designs. Check those out. Love the color So for those that remember the game mutin months 50% off Amazon right now for the art of book You can see this here very good actually got mine just couple days ago And it is really nicely done highly recommend it. So your pixel arts. That is cool. I love this Says your different attacks depending on which side the player is on Super cool seeing these side-by-side. So you have super cool. Come on It's nice shapes great love them and of course finishing with pixel art That's just too peaceful and that is that animation minute. You can find it every Monday at 10 a.m


Remember a Hallmark card when you'll carry enough to send the very best. Valley Forge on the Hallmark Playhouse. Players chosen by one of the world's best known authors. They distinguish novelists, Mr. James Hilton. Ladies and gentlemen, this is James Hilton. Tonight, the night of Washington's birthday, we are proud to present on our Hallmark Playhouse a radio dramatization of Maxwell Anderson's play Valley Forge. Maxwell Anderson, one of America's leading playwrights and the winner of a Pulitzer Award, has a genius for clothing the stirring events of history in poetic drama. And in Valley Forge, he takes as his theme those days of destiny when the future of America hung in the balance. And when everything depended on the heroism of American soldiers and the inspired leadership of their commander in chief, George Washington. Valley Forge is a great play by a great playwright. And I might add, we have a great actor to play the leading role tonight, Van Heflin. And now a word about Hallmark cards from Frank Goss, before we begin the first act of Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge. May we remind you once again that for every occasion important to your friends and loved ones, there are Hallmark cards to carry your thoughts across the miles, across the years or merely across the way. A Hallmark card says what you want to say, just the way you want to say it. And that identifying Hallmark on the back says that you cared enough to send the very best. Now Hallmark playhouse presenting Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge, starring Van Heflin. It's the third winter of the revolution. The British have taken Philadelphia and now up the river from General Howe, the ragged remnants of Washington's army battle the grimace foe of all despair. Inside one of the crude huts which serve as barracks, three soldiers spooned through their evening mess. Congress spooned, that's what it is. It's been straight from the Continental Congress to their Continental Army and well they think of us too. It's eat this or nothing. What this army needs is boots. Last night on sentry duty, the Frostbite got a couple of my toes. I'm going to get me something to eat. Hopeful, ain't it? I'll find it. There's plenty of wild meat back home. Never hidden, but it's a long walk to Virginia. And a deserter gets 75 lashes. If he gets caught, I aim to walk away from here while I got strength to walk. No, Tig, no. Goodbye, boys. Tig, come back here. Man, it's desersionate. Lord, the general himself. I believe I heard the word desersion used. We were just talking, General Washington. I'll take care of myself, Neil. General, sitting here starving down to my hide and buttons isn't my idea of war. What's the harm, sir, letting us that can't be fed go home for the winter? I could shoot me some wild meat and when spring comes I'll be back to fight again. What is your name? Tig, sir. Well, Master Tig, you're quite right from your own angle. But this you should know. If General Howe discovers how many have already deserted how many are sick and out of munitions, you'll come out of Philadelphia and ring our necks one by one. Every able-bodied man that owns a gun and shoes for his feet has to look like ten men if this nation is to come through the winter alive. Are we tired of this war? Do we want to quit? No, no. I'll tell you why I'm here and why it seems to me worthwhile to stick with it while our guns rust out for lack of powder and men die around me for lack of food and medicine. What I fight for is a dream, something that's never been on this earth and never will exist unless we make it and put it there. The right of free-born men to govern themselves in their own way. It's for you to decide, Master Tig. If we lose you, if you've lost interest in this cause of yours, we've lost our war and the men we've left dying on our battlefields died for nothing whatever. For a dream that came too early. General Washington, I'm sorry this happened, sir. I guess I can stand a empty belly a while longer. I'll use some manner of reply to my requests for food. What strange war is this? Well, you and your families eat well. We perish. Well, we bury our dead. Our citizens in Philadelphia entertain the enemy. Love to sell you, Master Lady. Or perhaps a general. A general, huh? It's good advice, my dear. When I was a child, a young man came moving from Virginia way. And we fell in love with him. But my parents said, no, no, this is an Indian fighter. You are rich and they turn out good-looking. Let him go and catch yourself alone. And I let him go and caught myself a Captain of Marines or something of that kind. I never loved him. I wanted what I lost. The Indian fighter? The Indian fighter. The rebel Washington. Ah, now I know the identity your mask conceals. It's known that Washington once wooed a Mary Phillips. And now I would return to him if you would but give me past hope. Never. You are not to cross the lines. And yet I will. I promise. That my name no longer finds favor with the Continental Congress. General Gates wins the victories these days. And General Conway here in my own camp conspires to replace me. It seems my only friend is a foreigner. Marquis de Lafayette. Bad news comes tonight. The French alliance will be made with the colonies. Too bad. This will give Washington great encouragement. At the very moment you've won your war to say it botched. There's still hope. If Washington can be convinced that the French will not help. Now he knows. Not yet. We've taken the ship that brought his letters. If I can but reach him before he learns the truth he might surrender. Yes. How's it to be done? Part by cunning. But more by the innocence of love. Excuse me, Major. I would dance this minuet with a certain lady. This night there was mutiny in the 18th Regiment. This will happen again in spread. Yes, Captain. Marquis de Lafayette and General Barnum, sir. My company must command you. Do you wish to see a general? I wish your advice, my friends. On your answer depends whether I send this letter or end my efforts. Reports before us show that we've neither food nor clothes nor arms for the maintenance of an army nor defense if we're attacked. And the British know it too. And that our Congress is rotten and the generals quarrel. Then think and answer carefully, my question simple. Does this end the adventure? Is the revolution over? Or is it worth trying to hold on into spring when at least there's food to be had? It'll cost lives by hundreds, perhaps by thousands. Hold on till spring? Never. You cannot wait. I know it. Not possibly. Yet, if you knew what dreams and faith rest on you, you would do this impossible. I'm a young noble, rich, spoiled, perhaps not wise. I'm 20 years old. I left a child wife in France for my love. I came because the best life in all this world lives here and what do you have to do? Then what is your advice? This world you have cut from the wilderness is a new world, a brighter world than was ever known on this star we inhabit. Each man is a king and walks like a king. You will find this not easy to throw away. This dream of yours and the name of Washington means much to France. So long as Washington fights, France will send men and money and ships. There still is no alliance. It will come, perhaps any day. Yes, but the question is, can we wait? What's on hand? We might scratch up by equalizing three or four days' provision for every court. Three days. Almost a nothing. But still we have three days and the order's given. Well, we gamble our three days on a change of luck and face what brand of hell's reserved for madmen. This is the man we heard of overseas. Then excuse me, I will go and give the order. Marquis, one moment. There was something you said that moved me strangely. You left a young wife in France. Does she mean so little to you? It is a poor love that belittles whom it loves or would hold him back from what is best and highest. If I wished to come, she would have me come. There was a girl one time when I was 23. I might have loved so. It might have loved me so. That's long ago. It came out otherwise. So, good night. Good night, Commander. General Washington? Yes, Captain. There's a woman here. She says she brings a message from General Howe. A woman? Do I know her? You did once, sir. You called me Mary. They say if one waits long enough, all things come around the circle. George? You came from Howe? A woman's stratatum. Is a woman never to follow her heart and run after him she loves or she run back towards me? Still, you come from Howe. I would have caught it any junkettine that brought me here. If I came on chance, I ask for nothing. But I'm here. We'll find you lodging at the inn. But your message from Howe? His proposal is general amnesty with no surrender on either part. The Congress to receive all its petition for nothing reserved, say the King's sovereignty. When you see him, tell him we intend to fight while we can. We've asked complete independence. Let me finish, sir. We have news today from Paris about the French alliance. This is your losing year. The French refuses. Yes. When blows are struck, they come not singly. But still there is love. What love I have is given. Then there is no hope. There is only hope. We in this camp have nothing more. Captain. Yes, sir. Please escort this lady to the inn and secure her lodgings. Yes, sir. And good night. Good night. Three days. Three years of war and it's come to this. Three more days. We fought for a dream. Or did we but dream we fought. A kindness not expressed is a kindness lost forever. Did you ever stop to think how often one kind word changes the course of our lives? For instance, it was a kind note to a sick girl who had written a book but whom he had never met that started the greatest romance the world has ever known and gave to all the generations that followed poetry that sings of that love. Yes, it was Robert Browning who sent a friendly greeting to Elizabeth Barrett on the publication of her book. But how often we let these gracious golden thoughts slip right through our minds? We all have moments when we'd like to say thank you or give our kind thoughts expression in some manner. Perhaps we are too rushed to write many letters especially these busy days but we can still keep in touch with our loved ones and friends. And the thought alone means so much so often if we give it action. You can, you know, with a hallmark card. You'll find there's a hallmark card to say what you want to say, the way you want to say it. That way your kind thoughts can live forever in someone's heart. And remember that distinguished hallmark on the back adds meaning. It says you cared enough to send the very best. Now back to James Hilton and the second act of Valley Forge starring Van Heflin. Big dawn breaks over the snowbound army at Valley Forge. While Washington waits at headquarters for the arrival of a congressional committee and hope for help, the men in the barracks simply wait.  It's Alcock. We figured you deserted. You figured right. And you were the one that tried to stop me yesterday. See, he's eating something. He's eating. Where'd you get that earcon? I was fixing to tell you. I stole a boat and was floating down the river to join up with General Howe. On the way I passed one of those islands in the Delaware. All right, all right. We don't care about that. You should. It was a British island. And corn. Corn everywhere. Maybe 6,000 bushels. 6,000? But the red coat? No, they got a few centuries' garden. If one of them challenged me, he's dead now. And you came back used to tell us? We're friends, ain't we? If we go, it's desertion. And if you stay here, it's starvation. All right. I spread the word. Just tell the boys there's 6,000 bushels of cornpone to be had for the price of a little chute. I'll send for you, Varnum. There's serious trouble. I'm one of our best companies, too. What? You must refer to another matter. It's mass desertion, sir. An entire company of Virginia rivals. They've stolen boats and headed downstream. Sorry to hear that. But there's worse. A spy has been captured. The woman who came last night from Howe? No. No, she came honorably and openly. This was, uh... This spy was captured with a certain letter. Here. May I read it? Yes, Captain. Master Harvey from the Continental Congress. Well, then, Betty Menter. In General Varnum, another time for this letter. Find me General Conway. I wish him here at once. I shall tell it. General Washington. You are most welcome, Mr. Harvey. It's long indeed since I've exchanged ideas with Congress or its committees. And this is the committee of one. My companion took ill on the road. But still a committee. It'll hearten the troops to learn that they are not forgotten. Our troops to hearten, I saw very few. Which brings us directly to the problem. An army cannot be held together on air. The past three months I have begged your Congress to appoint a quartermaster, and still there is none. That is the reason for my coming, sir. General Conway is to be appointed. Conway? He is not to your liking. If it's to be Conway, I'll resign. You run things with a high hand, General Washington. Congress has yet some power over the military.  You've lost it, Brandy Wyman. I've lost, yes. Because first I must write a thousand letters to a thousand fools begging for the men. The arms, the food, the chance to get there late. I see you know each other. Yes. General Conway last night, a pretty spy was taking me. He bore a letter addressed to you. From General Howe. This is interesting. You tell a story well. It contained the terms which would be acceptable to the English crown if the Continental Army were willing to surrender. I know nothing of that. And I, sir, on my word, say that you do and am willing to bring it to trial. You be held for court, Marshal. Mr. Howe, we shall need your word in there. Well, it seems hardly wise to make a scandal. For the good of the service, General Washington. For the good of the service. Look, you, the evidence speaks here at the letter. Mr. Howe, will you speak up for me or must I speak for myself? This is most unfortunate. Mr. Howe knows of this correspondence. Most of Congress. I was commissioned to angle for House terms. Commissioned, you say? We must be practical, General. This war began to protect our trade, and now there is none. Under King George, at least there were some profits to be made. Sir, I should have supposed you'd notify me before negotiations were begun with the enemy. There was thought of it, but you and your army have so much of the hothead in your composition. It was believed unwise to open the subject. Besides, there was always doubt what reply we'd get from the British. And it seemed best not to call off our dogs until we were sure we had no need for it.   General Washington.  All further negotiations with the British are if you want the war ended. And, sir, we shall end it. But in our own fashion and on our own terms. Your aid said it was most urgent. It is. I've written your passport in orders for an escort. What if I prefer to stay? George, what is... They've led me by a ring like a circus bear to frighten the children for them. Behind my back, they made their shabby deals, shilling for shilling men's lives for copper pennies. Dear George. The revolution's sold out. Well, I'll make my own bargain with Hal. Return to His Excellency and tell Him that I shall meet Him at a time and a place of His appointment. He has made that choice already, I must to tell you. Hay Island in the Channel of the Delaware. Near Sundown. Hay Island. Yes, where the British store their fodder where once I'd hoped to raid. So be it. Of all men I have known, I at least like to think of you defeated. Tell General Howe I'll be there. Goodbye, my dear. Goodbye. Generals Washington and Varnum of the Continental Army. The gentlemen. General Washington. They're after that General Howe. Or indeed that ends with the help of a woman. She came at my request, friend, and so might prevail to make you my friend. First let it be understood that if a piece has arrived at, we gain all things for which we fought. Save our independence. That is my offer. England wants you back. And Congress wishes it. So I have no choice. Listen. Gunfire. Don't bother with me, boys. I'm done for. General Washington, I thought this island was under an armistice. Come on, Harry. Generals and Brigadiers. General Washington, these seem to be your men. My apologies, sir. It seems they do not know the meaning of armistice. Armistice? We've been raiding the British Concrete. You three, sir. A whole company of Virginians, sir. They had most of 6,000 bushels of corn back to Ireland. Some killed, some wounded, like Neil here. But the food's ours. Good Lord. And I reported them as deserters. See, General Washington... Tell him he's dying. General Washington, I suggest we proceed. One moment, one moment, please. Sir, we... We're going to win, ain't we? We've got the food now. Glad things have gone too far. I... I was afraid to die, sir, but not now. There'll be free men in a free land and no more kings. I loved you, sir, in our country. But this lad said, dying. And I'll betray you no further. The French alliance has been signed with the colony. I told you. Letters came yesterday. They were captured by the British. They were sent to make a dupe of you. General Howe. Yeah, never trust a woman, sir. At least, not a woman in love. This changes matters. Our war goes on. But you've lost. Your Congress used for peace. Yes. March and submit if they will. But this rag tag which I call my army will fight on. For we're followers of a dream. A dream that men shall bear no burden, save their own choosing. Shall walk upright, not to none and choose their gods than to win. Then there's no point in talking further. Goodbye, gentlemen. This is my last farewell, sir. Little though I may like it, and it's not as high as yours. There's some men who lift the age they inhabit. So all men walk on higher ground in that lifetime. God keep you on. Bring you victory. And so we're left with some years of revolution on our hands. This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it. We have food now for two weeks, and then for two more if we can find it. And two more if we can find it. And now I think we will. We'll return in a moment. You're not only thinking of someone else, you're actually buying for others. You are selecting with someone else in mind. And to that someone else, the card you select represents you. Your thoughtfulness in sending it, your good taste in selecting it. Knowing this, the makers of Hallmark cards make it easy for you to find a Hallmark card that says what you want to say, the way you want to say it. Whether it's a birthday, an anniversary, a wedding, a going away, a get well, or a please write soon, you'll find there's a Hallmark card to fit the occasion and the person you're sending it to. Is it any wonder then that people of good taste have a standard of comparison for greeting cards? When they buy a card, they look for Hallmark on the back. When they receive a card, they automatically turn it over to see if that familiar Hallmark is there. For that identifying Hallmark on the back says, in its own way, you cared enough to send the very best. Here again is James Hilton. You have made one of the tremendous characters of history live again for us, Van Heflin. Thank you for a vivid performance. Well, it's always an honor to appear on Hallmark Playhouse, Jimmy. And tonight's story giving us a new insight into the fine character of George Washington was particularly timely. Yes, it's the type of story we like to find for Hallmark Playhouse, a story about real people whose faith and courage inspired the lives of others. I think that explains why your program always makes one feel somehow that richer for having heard it. And Hallmark cards have that effect too. They express such friendliness and sincerity. I'm always delighted to receive them and I always look forward to Hallmark Playhouse. Jimmy, what have you selected for next week? Next week, Van, we shall bring you a swashbuckling story by one of America's best-loved authors when we present Booth Tarkington's Monsieur Bocair. And for our star, we are delighted to have Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Our Hallmark Playhouse is every Thursday. Our director-producer is Bill Gay. Our music is composed and conducted by Lynn Murray. And tonight's story was adapted by Lenard Sinclair. Until next Thursday then, this is James Sulton saying, Good night. We have been carefully selected to give you expert and friendly service. Remember Hallmark cards when you carry enough to send the very best. Van Heflin can now be seen in Tomahawk, a universal international technical production. The part of Mary Phillips tonight was played by Lorraine Tuttle, then Wright was General Howe, Ted Osborne, General Varnum, and Ted Decorsia, Mr. Harvey. Remember, inflation is everybody's business, and you can help fight it by buying only what you need when you need it, by paying no more than fair prices, asking no special treatment, making no under-the-counter deals, by doing a better job at your work, by not raising prices for what you sell. Remember, inflation hurts everybody, but everybody working together can kill inflation. This is Frank Goss saying good night to you all until next week at the same time when Hallmark Playhouse returns to present Douglas Fairbanks in Booth-Tarkington's Monsieur Bouquetre and the week following Blanche Henry Perrin's Deep Wood starring Rosalind Russell, and the week after that, Laura Engel Wilder's The Long Winter on the Hallmark Playhouse. This is CDS, the Plummy Broadcasting System. This is KMBC, Kansas City, Missouri.


that we've been having ever since the beginning of the pandemic every Thursday. It started off with drama school trying to figure out what are we gonna do? How are we going to respond to this time? How are we going digital? Should we, all of that existential stuff happen? Practical conversations happen. And after which, can we just, if you're not speaking, if we can ask you to mute please? Thanks. Yeah. After which, we got to a place where we actually, Amy took over the conversations and basically, talked about our responsiveness in this moment. And then later on, Wenya and Amgeni joined. And by this point, we realized in general that we were talking about a world that is perpetually in a state of disruption, an ongoing disruptive state. And how do we respond to it? What do we do as theater makers, as theater teachers? What does theater do? So the scope and the territory that the conversations covered got wider and wider. And when Wenya and Amgeni and Amy and I got together to do season two, we really thought about some of the themes that came out of season one. And the key ones came out, which was a planetarity because we're all of one planet. This was especially inspired by a talk with Felipe Cervera from the first season. I think it was a second or third talk we did. And all these talks are available on our website, Drama School Mumbai under the section Conversations. And then plurality, as you see, you're witnessing it and there was a call for it as opposed to globalization, which was more sort of homogenizing. Plurality seemed to be a conversation around us being able to live with difference, live with change, live with in a state of mutual tolerance. Not even tolerance. Tolerance means I have to put up with you. Pluralism is beyond that. And possibility, which is of course why I'm here and I'm truly here because of the possibility. And I got mistaken for a bit because when I first talked to Ellen or thought of Ellen and Jay had coming in, I thought about the fact that they at the city company, they've been doing work with the Suzuki company from Togo and with viewpoints training and then they had this whole merge. They have both a history of cross-cultural practice and I was on that whole intercultural jag to sort of figure out, well, where does plurality lie? Where does universality lie? How do we work with the differences and how do we work with the similarities or how do we reach across the differences to find the universal truths? So that was really my initial impulse to reach out to Jay and Ellen who Falbani will put their profiles in. I mean, their profiles are illustrious to say the least, but really what they do speak of is a great breath of knowledge and experience of which is what we're tapping into today. And we're really happy to have both of you here. So thank you for being here. But Ellen said something because we've always had these lovely exchanges on email and she basically said, it is clear to us as theater makers that theater has a great repository of tools with which to keep the world healthy. And I just loved it. And I just thought, well, that is actually what we're trying to figure out. And one of the ongoing conversations that we're having is now how do we take this time and this pandemic moment to realize what else theater can be for society? How can we contribute to the good, to the building, to the making, to the creating, to leaving things better than we found it as theater makers, as pedagogues, as all of whom are gathered here. And so I really thought that's where we should start this conversation. So I will leave it with Ellen and then Jay Ed to maybe spend five or 10 minutes each, maybe 10 minutes each as opening statements. I'll leave it to you how you guys want to run it. But a little bit of introduction, but really moving fluidly into thoughts so we can actually start the conversation. And the other thing that whilst they're doing that or even before that, one of the things we're asking all of you in the ongoing conversations is, I have a question that maybe you can respond to in the chat window is a simple question. What of your practice or what of your intention going forward is changing because of what you have been picking up during these conversations? It would be really nice to know or hear from you if any of this huge discursive dialogue that we're having here is actually somewhere affecting and creating some kind of change in practice. That would be an interesting first step. So let that happen, but here we are. Ellen, Jay Ed, welcome. Thank you so much.  I'm zooming in from upstate New York. I left our apartment in Manhattan about a year and a half ago. I still go back down, but in the course of this time, the city company, we let our studio go in the city. We began to shed all of the trappings that come with being a theater company for 30 years. We began to give things away from our storage to people who might be able to use furniture and goods from that, from 30 years of a repertoire stored away, not doing us any good. And it was a great time of mourning when that happened. I am very lucky, Jay Ed and I have a place out of the city about three hours north. And this is a great privilege. I recognize that and all of the parts of my world that have allowed me to have this place. We refurbished this old dilapidated barn and this became for me where I met the world. It was the last thing I thought years ago when we started to fix this place up that this is where I would meet as many people from around the world as anywhere. I also am on the staff for about, oh God, 20 years now. I've been on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Drama in New York. So I also go back down. I was one of two faculty members at Juilliard that agreed to go back into Lincoln Center, which looked a little bit like a spaceship. It was completely covered in plastic and roped off. I'm sure you'll recognize the environment. What that was one of high energy and certainly stress from the students, but always a place of great joy. It had turned into a very strange sci-fi setting. But I went back in for a variety of reasons for the nature of what I do. And I was allowed full run of the theaters to distance. And I began the work, but the bulk of also what I did with the city company was online. I've had a world where I live in the horizontal and I live in the vertical. And for the duration of my life as a transmitter, this is what I've tried to communicate to a young artist for making purposes, which is to recognize things for what they are in the horizontal and see it as potential and material with which to make one's work. And I also have spent over 40 years working with Suzuki Tadashi, the artistic director and founder of the Suzuki Company of Toga, which is located in the wild mountains, the southern, essentially the southern Alps on the western coast of Japan up in a small village in the Toyama Prefecture where they have lived and worked. You perhaps might know a little history about the Scott Company, but that's a very curious vertical world for a Western middle class woman to have landed in. And I have toured with them. I'm about to head into another tour coming in November. We are touring Indonesia. I am the only Western actor in their company. And it's very strange. People always think I'm the tour guide when we land at the airport. So that's a very, very vertical world. If you know anything about the Suzuki training in terms of setting the body, the spirit, the mind against a set of criteria and recognizing then where one falls within that criteria. It's not to make anyone look the same as the other as in Corde Ballet. It's more to recognize the individuality in each person as they face the criteria and bring forward what's already there within the young artist, within the old artist and bring it out into for expressive purpose. It often is maligned and misunderstood. And I think that's why Mr. Suzuki has asked me to be an ambassador for that work around the world for so many years because people are so disappointed when I get off the airplane because they're expecting up some kind of monk or some kind of priestess, I think. And it's just, again, just a white American middle-class woman, essentially. And the work speaks for itself. What I have found during this period, I think I'm perhaps like you and I won't speak for my partner in crime here, J.Ed. And we have worked together in the city company for about 30 years is, and I didn't know it early on, how could we know it, that the work I'm able to communicate and I'm in the middle of a month-long intensive that's usually on the campus of a small upstate New York college here for, again, 30 years. We've brought 60 people, 60 artists of all disciplines together for one month, trained and made original material in the afternoon, attended symposiums, conversations, and lived together. That was all stripped away. We're online and it's a little bit like, I haven't been this happy in a year and a half. I, the first, I couldn't believe how the knots in this rope of my life were able to be handed through the screen, handed through the generosity of the artists gathered from all over the world, and they were able to grab these knots and I didn't pull them. They are pulling themselves along and the knots are the metrics, the knots are the point of view, the knots are the entry point into a way of thinking, into a way of receiving perception and appropriate response to the world, the horizontal and then the metrics of that vertical, measuring the self against these really hard criteria where I can't make an adjustment on them. I'm not in the room with them in terms of three-dimensionality of their world, but what they're doing to come forward, their embodiment of the ideas in their bedrooms, in their kitchens, in their basements is so moving to me and I think there's something transpiring that is very reaffirming for me. I'm not suggesting that anything I'm doing other than transmitting and being witness and perhaps that's what we're able to provide right now. It is, as we've all learned, a place of great access. We can do better, we can just do better. Zoom is challenging for the non-hearing community. There is close captioning now, learning to work better this way and creating as we have continued to create as a place of great coming together but also allowing these affinity groups of people who self-identify and need to connect with one another so that they can come together in the studio and be together with their own altogether alone, which is a critical practice in the world right now. We are living here in the US in a continued roiling time of racial reckoning with our past and a complete political upheaval. That is the part of this equation. I don't know how to respond to yet both as an artist and as someone who walks into a room with people from all over the world, young and older and I'm being quite frank with you. I know I have a body. I know I have a voice and I know how to breathe to get the voice out into the world like a seventh limb. You know, we work a lot. The idea of head, tail, arm, arm, leg, leg and generating all that movement from the center of gravity and the voice being that seventh limb. And that's what I'm working on right now in the studio with the artists that are gathered which is still about 60 artists. So it's just the administrating of it and making sure everyone gets in the right studio has been not something I've solved. I have far smarter people around me helping get all the color coding and you click it and you're in the right studio. But this idea of the necessity of the body and the whole body of getting people up into their spaces and creating a theater, creating a disciplined, focused, energized space around them allowing them a transformative experience which is the point of any artistic preparation and taking them through that has been, I've been astonished by the ability for the artists to come and meet. Maybe even more than halfway. I was thinking the other day, teaching through this medium has been, for me, so revelatory in terms of, and I'm sure you're finding it too, you have to be, you really have to boil things down to what it is you think, to what it is you feel, to what it is you know, be it right or wrong, you have to speak so clearly and boil off all of that. And boil off all of the anecdotal things. And the silence on the other side is palpable until you learn to press against it and welcome it because you can feel the thinking, you can feel the breathing and carry on. And we're now into the phase where we're making a great deal of work. And the tools are all there. The frame is another piece of material. The frame is another way of seeing and exploding the way we can work together and experiment, a time of great experimentation. So I can speak specifically about these two trainings that I teach, but overall, I do wanna speak from a place of positivity and goodness and that's coming from the people that I'm meeting and I'm so deeply grateful to them and this chance to tell you that message. I hope, I really hope with all my heart you're experiencing the same and I'm anxious to hear from you as well. I think that's a great start. Jayed, thank you, Ellen. Good morning, everyone. Afternoon or evening, where you might be. As always, it's difficult to follow my articulate and talented partner.  So I think we make a pretty pluralistic image as we walk off the plane. I'm gonna talk a little bit about myself as a background to get to the topic material, which is quite fascinating and I'm a so articulate about that. I've been very lucky in my life. I never did theater until not even university because I didn't go to university at first. I went to a college. I went to a community college, which if you know anything about the educational system in the U.S., are two years locally-based, low-funded, mostly working class and lower students. I got interested in the theater class by accident and so for me, art and theater are a gateway to education in the world. I would never have gone to university even though I did go to a small university in South Texas where the majority of the students were Latino, Chicano, like myself. But art and theater were my gateway to the university and so it's very interesting that from starting community college, I am now a professor, head of graduate acting and another title I can't yet officially tell you for a couple of weeks, but I am now a professor at one of the leading research universities in the world, coming from a lower working class environment in South Texas where the border is fluid. My family has been in Texas for over six generations but the border didn't really exist for us. Half of my family spends half of the year in Mexico, half in Texas. As migrant seasonal working conditions happen when the economy is good in the U.S., our relatives are welcome, the economy is bad or there is a president elected who has a difference of opinion, immigrants are bad, border is tried to be erected and immigrants are pushed out. So I am bicultural, I am bilingual, I grew up speaking only Spanish until I started school and now I'm again a professor at UCLA. So for me, this is a really great question because this idea of remote access and plurality is fascinating and something I've been dealing with for almost all of us for the last year and a half. I've been teaching here instead of in Los Angeles at UCLA, I've been teaching here in upstate New York since last March, I think it is March 2020, I've been teaching only remotely here and it's been difficult, it's been very difficult for the students, it's also been difficult for the faculty and the staff. It'll probably be more difficult next year because our students are gonna be coming back on campus for the most part if the spirits hold out and they're gonna be hungry and demanding rightfully so, things that were denied them for a year, pardon. And it's gonna be difficult for us to try to make that accessible to them due to the limitations of the economy. And while I hope that soon the pandemic is if not over at least lessened to the point where we can all be in the room together, I think we can all safely say that most likely the economic repercussions are gonna last a lot longer and that's gonna make it very difficult. So we're trying to learn that UCLA as we're learning with the city company, what are their benefits to remote accessible teaching and if so, what might they be? So I've been very lucky since I started my career, I started as a writer and then quickly morphed to a performer because writing is lonely and singular and when you're in the cast of a show that you've written, you have people around you, there's a community, it's a little more exciting. So for, I was primarily a performer, I've primarily spent most of my working life as a member of Ensemble Theatres, spending the beginning part of my career mostly in Chicano Theater, which is a very politically based community based form of theater that began as adjuprop and then morphed into a more polished, multi varied way of looking at the problems of identity and social aspects in the Latino Chicano community. So I've been mostly working as an Ensemble member. 30 years ago I was quite lucky to meet Ellen Lauren and Anne Bogart who was one of the co-artistic founders along with Mr. Suzuki Tadashi of the city company started working with them both in the William Inge play, you can get much more American regional theater than William Inge's picnic, but we started working on that play. I found an accessibility and an interest to the type of work which I've always done, which is bodily based, physically based. And so I've by accident luck fell into working with Ellen and Anne was asked to join the company and I've been working with him for over 30 years. For over 30 years, I've been very interested in the following. One is trying to find a type of theater practice and theater training that is objective as opposed to subjective. I find in the U.S. a great deal of actor training is very subjective. It's what the teacher like. It's what the guru thinks. It's their own particular style. The Suzuki method is extremely, extremely objective. There are certain physical tasks you attend to. This is something that I've borrowed as most of my lines are from Ellen. We don't know a lot about how Greek theater was performed, but we do know that they had the same body that we do. So that is our link in our connection to Greek performers is we have the same body. So there's an objectivity to the Suzuki company training that I found very thrilling. That married with the ensemble collaborative nature of the viewpoints for me became a very holistic way of working. They're very different these trainings, but I think they're symbiotic and they support each other. And what I found immediately and continues to thrill me both as a performer and as an educator, and I never thought I would say that, but yes, I am now an educator. I am now a tenured professor at one of the greatest research universities in the world is that it's very empowering in the U.S., in my opinion. In my opinion, in the U.S., a lot of performance and performers have lost a sense of virtuosity and of training towards virtuosity. There is virtuosity, but for example, most actors in the U.S., not all, but most actors are interested in television and film, even though the training is still somewhat theater-centric. And so most of the virtuosity, in my opinion, in film and television is virtuosity of the camera, virtuosity of the cinematography, virtuosity of the sound designer, virtuosity of the director. And the actor is an interesting package that is made to look even more so. The Suzuki method and the viewpoints give back some of the power to the actor to make stronger artistic statements and choices. And that to me is very thrilling. As a person of color, as a multi-hyphenate actor, I started, as I said, primarily as a writer. I've been mostly a performer for the last 40 years. And in the last 12 years or so, I've become, again, mostly a writer, director, and professor. These tools for me that I offer to our students, and again, I keep mentioning UCLA, and I'll talk a little bit more about the city company, because UCLA is the University of California in the city of Los Angeles. So it is a university in a pluralistic community of California in a hyper pluralistic community of Los Angeles. So for me, these tools are a way of empowering younger artists to tell their own stories. My job is not to tell artists the stories they should tell, but to try to give them the tools to tell their stories. And that is my primary interest nowadays. As a member of the city company, we have found, as Ellen was talking a little bit about how our company is changing, how we've had the leg of our studio, we've found, and it's interesting because I would say maybe this started to happen before the events of the last two years in the US, which has empowered the US to necessarily look with a long overdue, open-eyed gaze at the structure of power and hierarchy, not only in the country, but specifically also in art making and theater and filmmaking practices. Our company was starting to examine that as well, going into the future, knowing that our company might be changing, what do we do with these tools that we believe in? So we started actively, and it was not easy, actively looking at a way to share our vocabulary, to share our training with a larger, pluralistic community. So Ellen and I have been teaching all over the world for the last at least 20 years. Ellen probably longer as a member of the Suzuki company. But for the last 20 years as members of the city company, we've been performing, but even more training and teaching all over the world, mostly at the beginning to a more Eurocentric community. But we've started more outreach to every continent in the world, except yet to the African continent. We've done some work in Asia, mostly in East Asia, a little bit in South Asia. We've worked all over Latin America, but we still do not have access to the African continent yet. Why is that important to me? Because I think these tools are wonderful as a way to empower artists to tell their own stories. It's not to tell people in any continent what stories they should tell, or even how they should tell them, but to give them the tools to re-embrace a sense of virtuosity and to tell their own stories. What have we learned from Zoom? For the last year and a half, I've been forced to teach from Zoom. And like a lot of us, I went kicking and screaming into this little box. It was very difficult. It was also very interesting in my classes at UCLA. You could see immediately a sense of class and of economic position. I would see some classes because it was primarily a movement classes where I would say, let's start examining the space that we're in. How can we break outside the tyranny of this box, of this frame? Turn your camera around. Show us where you're working. And some students would turn the camera around and you'd see a beautiful, huge glass wall with a beautiful, huge manicured lawn and beyond outside. And then there'd be some people in class where once or twice during class, you would see a mother or grandmother walking by literally with a basket of laundry. Or if someone would unmute to speak in class, you would hear children speaking in the background. I have a student who just wrote me a beautifully moving final paper for a viewpoints class that I taught and she was talking about kinesthetic response, responding to an outside influence. She said that very often her kinesthetic work, even though we did not know it, those of us watching her on Zoom, was to the noise of the children that her mother babysits as a living in her small house. So there is this sense in Zoom, which is a kind of a dichotomy of the remote accessibility, making it accessible to people everywhere. There is that potential, and yet there is also the financial drawbacks. Some people are on a computer. Some people are on a small telephone and that makes a difference. So for me, as we continue to go forward, I wanted to see how I can continue and we're trying to do this at UCLA of making equipment available to students that they can use or borrow so that they can have a little more of a, if not equal, a little less unequal level technical ability because then of course we know that we're also limited by the amount of broadband that someone has in their house. So how do we deal with that? But yet, at the same time, it does make it possible for students who are not able to come to the university, whether because of public transportation in their city or they don't have a car, or people who live in the countryside are able to take classes. So those are both the positive aspects as well as some of the difficulties, as well as the nature of how we have to change what we're teaching. I find that myself in Zoom, I teach about two thirds of the material in the amount of time that I have that I would normally would and it takes me twice as much effort, energy and preparation. I find I have to be careful not to get too excited as my partner might text me and speak too quickly. I need to try to calm my chi down and be a little more articulate and yet at the same time, I need to reach through the box to the students and bring them with me. I will say respectfully, not disagreeing even though Ella and I do have great lively conversations. So I'm not disagreeing, I'll say a yes and in terms of- I'm unmuting now, okay. In terms of hearing impaired, we currently have a hearing impaired participant in our summer intensive and one of the interesting things is the closed captioning allows us to make it accessible to her without her or our company having to employ a translator, which is an economic issue. If we had someone who was signing for her or if she had someone, that would be great but that's an economic issue. The closed caption might not be the best option. It might mistranslate some things but it makes economic availability and I think the closed captioning is also good if I am teaching at some place where they speak English but my dialect, the speed of my articulation or my regionalisms as a Texan from the southern part of the US, more accessible. They can look at the transcript afterwards and my attempt to be charming, my euphemisms might be a little less accessible. They can look at that later and have a way of reaffirming what I was hopefully trying to say. Does that make sense ladies and gentlemen? So I think that there are some positives to this including not only with the hearing impaired but also with students who might not understand what I am trying desperately to articulate to them and the ability to share the sense of empowerment. I think for me that's the most important thing. I'll end with this for now. Thank you. I'm gonna say one last thing. I'll say this one last thing. Very often in my classes at UCLA I ask the students, have you, am I the first Chicano or professor of color you've had and this is at the University of California in Los Angeles and it's always striking to me how many people say yes or how few people say Dave had a professor of color or specifically in Los Angeles, a Latino Chicano professor before. So I think even just that, as many educators as we can put in front of them that reflect the reality of the student taking the class, to me that's huge and instrumental. And I also think that remote accessibility is a large part of that. That's all I will say for now. Sorry if I rattled on. Thank you, Ellen, for starting us off so well and thank you everyone for listening. Thank you for both of, thank you for that. I think those are both of you have left us with lots of possible launch points and places to sort of take this conversation. And I don't even know where to begin. There is also some very interesting questions already in the chat window that Ellen has provoked about frames and frame being material, which we'll get to in a second. I'm gonna hold, put a pause on that, but guys, feel free. We're gonna raise hands and go off mic and just turn this into a conversation amongst the whole room. It's think of it not as a panel discussion with two people on stage, but us all sitting around in a circle having a cup of coffee together. But Ellen, I'm just gonna provoke actually both of you because there is this thought that you talked about Chicano theater, how it was politically agit proper and then went on to a more refined sort of search for identity, JN, and how art and theater were your gateway to the beginning of your story to education, et cetera. And Ellen says that I have this voice. I have this body. I have these limbs. I have all of this. But in the middle of this, when we talked about how can theater heal the world, you also said pointedly, Ellen, that we're in a state of political disruption which I don't know what to make of right now. I don't know how to respond to it. And it's almost like, if I'm gonna say, I've walked onto the planet with a first aid kit but I don't know what the injuries are that we're tending to, something like that. So that's one thing. So I'm just gonna put that on the back burner for now because it's more of a kumbaya type of question. But I do, but also building on something that Ngani and we have been talking about is this sense of radical intimacy. And Jayad, you kind of described it towards the end of what your experience of Zoom teaching has been. But Ellen, you so eloquently talked about it in terms of knots as well and how they reach forward to pull the knots. But, and I've been wondering about is that good enough for us to... I think we've had a lot of conversations about whether this digital space is a substitute for the in-presence space, et cetera. So I'm not sure if we should go there. It's not, I agree. I don't think anyone in the Zoom thinks it is. But the accessibility thing, being such a huge thing and this idea of giving people the tools with which to find their own voice, et cetera, is that, if that's the place of healing, then that's where the starting point is where by giving people these creative tools. So that's where I'm thinking and that's my sort of thought on this. But I'm also, I think I'll, let's go to Jayad's question and Ngani's question around the frame. Sorry, not Jayad. Ngani's question about the frame and Ngani's question about the frame. So, Kamili and Ngani, if you, Kamili first, Ngani next, if you can just start off with your notions about the frame and then we can, we can take the conversation from there and then we'll go to Amy's next question. Yes. Oh yeah, I'll just keep it really simple. Yeah, I was curious about when you talked about the frame and, excuse me, when you, is there anything that Zoom can do? I wonder if any of these technologies can do, if anything these artists, us artists, the trainers can do to kind of help Zoom help us. Just curious.  This, it sounds pretty simplistic and nice to meet you, Kamili.  Yeah, I went to Temple as an undergrad too, so. Brother, sister. But, you know, the idea of an entrance, the idea of an exit, which exists in this medium as much as it exists in the studio or on a stage, is corrupted with this idea, you know, you can see a student, they're like trying to get their camera off or in. Right now, we're working on the theme this summer. We usually, sorry, I'll back up a little bit, the city company, when we do our intensives, we throw into the pot the next upcoming production and of all freaking things, we're going to be doing a production of Christmas Carol, so then we boiled that down because that's just so, you know, Eurocentric to the idea of ghost stories. And so they're creating compositional material online for us, they're beginning to show them of telling ghost stories and they're spectacular, what they're doing. They're mind blowing what these people aren't doing and they're very analog, you know, it's just really good storytelling, depth of field, but the one thing that they're having trouble with is making those entrances and exits because you can't black out, you can't, you've got to come forward or in an open improvisation in viewpoints, you know, you can't enter and exit very well and that's, I think that would be really, really helpful. In terms of the rest of the frame, I don't, what are you finding in your studios? Are you finding that students are experimenting with moving frame or our virtual backgrounds? I find virtual backgrounds to just be so creepy. I don't know how anybody else feels, but you know, don't be doing that. It doesn't look good and half of you disappears or comes in and yeah, it's so janky in terms of that and I know a lot of students had fun with it early on, you know, with the planets behind them or a floating bowl of cereal or something, but once we kind of got through that and God, thank you that we could play around, now it's the use of it and it's still three-dimensional space or the nine quadrants of space. For me, it's temporal and spatial is how to use the frame and I'm not sure any kind of technology, but I really mean that Camille. I'm not sure because I'm not, I frankly have done very, very little work on a frame as an actor, it's really been. The reason I was asking too is just because I'm worried that Zoom will then come up with some brand new thing that I'll literally park right in the middle of all of us and say, now we can use it and it'll be completely for us theater folks, unmagical, unrealizable and it'll just be like backgrounds, right? Where we just kind of get out of here, you know. I'm right with you, I agree and you know somebody's, I mean, half of Zoom is so interesting because it's really, I mean, it's pretty amazing that I woke up this morning and we're all meeting, we know that, but it's really made for corporate situations and what we have done, I feel and not necessarily, I mean, we as I'm reaching through to you is just try to keep it real. So I worry that any kind of additional bells and whistles that Zoom might come up with is gonna mess it up. Right now, it's just a place to meet and this is maybe what I mean by the repository. We just have to keep getting together and slamming ourselves up against one another philosophically, right, spiritually, emotionally and even physically and I don't mean obviously contact, but we all know that the physical transcends and I think we have as theater artists made a Herculean effort through this year and a half to keep the body awake and alive and so yeah, I would resist it as well. I think it would just be like a bad, going through that period of bad set design that we suffered through and then realized we didn't need all of that. Yeah, may I jump in for a second Ellen? Again, I'm going to respectfully disagree with my partner in this case. I think there's two issues. Yes, there are technical issues that we hope Zoom will make better. That's going to happen. For me, there's two things to think about and this is such a great question, Camille, thank you. Is that one, there was one thing I would ask Zoom to do because they're making so much damn money off of the whole world is make the accessibility free to more people. They're making enough money off of corporations. This limit of how long you can stay with smaller groups, there are community college or community groups that could benefit by more broad accessibility. Also, of course, technical issues such as finding a way to have better visibility via telephone or people with lower broadband because not everybody has that. But aside from that, I'm going to say this and this might be a little, no, I don't want to say radical, it might be a bone of contention. I really do think we have to embrace what it is. We have to say, this is what it is and really our students, younger people, they were doing this before the pandemic and before Zoom. Our students are on TikTok. Before they were on TikTok, they were on Instagram. Before they're on Instagram, they're making YouTube. So we have to accept that. We have to say though, how can they do this better and how can that lead them into wanting to work in person because they're watching TV and they're going to the movies a lot more than they're going to the theater. But how can we use those things to bring them to the theater? How can we? So at UCLA, it's a multidisciplinary program. It's all about content creation. So we have a class at UCLA where students learn how to, and I'm always behind the curve on terminology, on how to use new social media platforms to make their work. How many students are starting, and now the students in the class are doing TikToks, which are way too small, but how do they start to do small things on YouTube that then someone sees and picks up? How did Lena Dunham start? Donald Glover is a genius. How do we take the limit? Because as theater artists, I think the great thing that theater artists have more than anybody is that we're really great with obstacles. If it's a theater that doesn't have a walk around, you've got to build it into the show. You walk through the audience or someone who runs across the stage. So we're really great at making limitations obstacles. And obstacles are what gives us conflict and conflict in theater is art. So we have to somehow find the limitations of this medium and use it to our advantage. So I don't want to let go of studio classes. I can't wait to get back, but for example, I teach a class in Chicago theater and I found that breakout rooms were interesting in this aspect that it enabled me to quickly go, okay, we're breaking up into groups of five. Here's a topic. You can discuss it.  So I'm proposing next year to teach the class hybrid. So one day a week, we're in the studio altogether sharing the space. And then one day a week, we are going to be remote because that way instead of me going, okay, we're not going to break out into small rooms and we lose half the class time going to another space and coming back, I can quickly do that. So I don't want it, does this make sense Camille? I don't want to lose the sense of being in the room together with them, but I've got to accept that it did make some things more accessible. It also means some of our students who cannot afford to come to class because they have to work on their lunch hour, take a class from their phone. So I don't like Zoom, I really don't. I don't like being in a box, but I'm trying to figure out a way of accepting the limitations and using them to our advantage to tell better stories and to help our students. Thank you. Okay. I mean, just to remind you of what Ellen talked about. I mean, Ellen talked about so beautifully at the beginning about the horizontal axis being recognizing things for what they are and starting there. And then looking and discovering what the vertical possibilities are in this space, which is this whole conversation sounds like that. Amy, I think that's a really great question and it also plugs into something that we were talking about, about systems of training that are very rigid versus fluid. And do you want to just sort of put words to that? Amy? Yeah, sure. I spent so long composing my message. That's fantastic. But I need to hear you say it. So yeah, no, it's really interesting because I've had long interviews with Norman and Ellie and Camille about the neutral mask in the lineage of the Jacopo and Suzanne Bing and Jacopo Cook, the noble or neutral mask. And when I hear you talking, Ellen, about the encounter between individual and the rigorous form that really strikes a chord. That sounds a lot like what the neutral mask is. Essentially, it's a kind of discipline that can bring out something in a performer. It doesn't really have to be justified in any other way. It could be a tea ceremony or it could be motorcycle maintenance or it could be at any task that is rigorous. However, it does seem that in theater training, certain aesthetics get prioritized. Simplicities, symmetries, certain states of energy. I mean, these are kind of, they're given a kind of reverence where other trainings wouldn't be considered to give people a valuable performative state where in fact, it's just might be a different aesthetic. So I'm just, obviously forms cast shadows. And I'm just curious about how you and Jay think about the shadow that's cast by the aesthetic of a rigorous training. That's extraordinary.  So forgive me, I perhaps can't come up to the eloquent question and brain you have. I was an athlete as a young person. I was an equestrian. I was on the junior Olympic team, obviously very highly trained. Training was my life. The rigor of the Olympic committee is as it is. And I was drawn to the Suzuki training. Just as she animal to animal, I just liked it. It just was, for me, it was fun. And then something in the back of my mind knew that it was also the alchemy of it was working to, and I finally felt, oh, I'm home. I'm home, I'm not, I finally have found a place where my energies and my habits and my skills and my taste and who I am began to find a place where all of those things were moving towards expressive purpose. And then I worried for a while, oh, am I learning a style? Am I learning, are these shadows taking me into an appropriation culturally of a place in myself? And that was really quickly put aside because I also met Ann and Bogart and we began to experiment with the collision between, and first let me clarify the Suzuki training is by no means like any great training, by no means to dictate a style. It's really foundational. You can do multimedia, puppetry, videography, anything.  But meeting Ann and beginning then to cross and work with the viewpoints and research that work as we continue to do because it's a slippery slope, as we know. But we found the chocolate and the peanut butter, so to speak, where they intersected, that sweet spot is what on any given day in terms of communicating to an artist in my own practice you're looking for and that doesn't cast shadows. That opens up the box and lets the light in. That isn't about any, how can I explain it? That's not about any kind of look or feeling or recognizing the work that's coming out of this. I would say if anything, in my experience at least, there's no such thing as view-pointing. It's not a verb. It's simply perception that there's no such thing as performing in a Suzuki style, perhaps if you're working for Mr. Suzuki. And so the shadows of it maybe are spiritually in the sense of allowing an artist to open up their aperture about what their own personal criteria is when they look at work, when they make work, when they work with others. It's about sharing language that I can have a student in New York immediately meet somebody from Jakarta and because they both shared a two-week workshop, they can speak together and make work. I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I really think that the idea of a shadow is the thing that we're trying to figure out how to keep from it catching us. Other than the idea of the whatever is left over from being marinated inside of a training, whatever sticks for each individual, whatever allows their potentiality to come out, their centering in the world, their sense of self, their sense of, oh, we're gonna go into the studio and we're gonna try to make a model society and maybe about a family that's all at each other, others' throats, but that's our task, as we would say. A model society, and again, when I say the theater is the repository for these things, it's to create that, a way to be together, that's better, over and over and over and over. Yeah, and personal taste, is that a shadow, is that a shadow wrong, maybe I'm misinterpreting, that shadow dictates something that smacks of a style that somebody's not freed from. And I really, really feel that that's what we're trying to resist and get away from, certainly, I would hope. Well, may I respond? Yes? Thank you, Amy, for the question. Ellen is so eloquent about philosophy. I'm going to, what I think I heard in your question, from you and your colleagues, is something she and I have talked about. I'll be a little maybe more specific to what I think I understood of your question. And it's a word that, you mentioned the word rigor and I think that's a huge issue to deal with. I know Ellen and I, and to a certain extent, in our company, we're talking a little bit about this idea. There are always isms in this country. The new ism is ableism, is a rigor of our work exclusionary. And I think it's a really interesting question. I think you have to ask yourself, what is it that you're trying to do and why are you doing it, who are you doing it for? I think it's a great question. For myself, she meant Ellen mentioned her being an athlete. Not everybody is destined to play basketball in the NBA. Not everybody is meant to dance ballet with ABT or sing opera at the med or play rock guitar at Madison Square Garden. But I think everybody can play basketball in the backyard or down at the playground, as I did when I was a kid. Everybody can sing around the campfire or sing at family gatherings in Spanish with the guitar. I think that's all great. But what is it that you're trying to do and why? So for me, as a teacher, there is a certain thing I'm aspiring to. I'm aspiring to give people voices. If someone takes the training that I offer them and they're able to have the time, the interest and the ability to translate that into opening up to a community that they think needs it, I think that is wonderful. I don't feel that that's exclusionary on my part. I am offering it at a particular level, which you could say is a sense of enablism. The part of my job is also to teach people to use this work and that using the work might mean that they make work or using the work might mean they're gonna use it to try to make it even more accessible that I'm trying to do to another community. So I think that it's important that I tell this to my students all the time, you don't ever have to do the Suzuki training when you finish school or when you finish training with the city company. You might never ever wanna do the Suzuki training again and why would you? It's difficult and physically taxing and it's painful in a way sometimes because we use muscles we're not used to. However, I would ask you to think about finding a discipline you can devote your life to, whether it's writing down your thoughts every day, whether it's doing quiet, thoughtful meditation, whatever it is as an artist find a discipline you can devote yourself to. And I think you can do that for everybody. I'll be very honest, I made a mistake because as theater artists, aren't we lucky? I think the thing about theater artists is we continue to learn. Every time you work on a play, you have to learn about that play so you learn a whole new culture, you learn a whole new world, you learn a new way of speaking, which is the way that playwright speaks. So as theater artists, we continue to evolve until we die and then someone posts our picture in the memorial. So I think we can do that as theater artists. What I've learned is about five, six years ago, recruiting for the MFA acting program at UCLA, a person came in in a wheelchair and they were really talented, but I was worried. How do I make the training accessible to them? How do I join them? Because it's about recruiting a cohort that's gonna work intensely as an ensemble for three years. How do I include this person and not make the next three years about taking care of that person? I'm still grappling with that. If I had the chance to recruit that person now, I would probably take the risk. Five years ago, I didn't feel I was up to taking the risk. I worried about the financial aspects of it. I worried about the accessibility of the training spaces and I worried about it unbalancing it because a lot of the casting of the cohort is how we balance the cohort out. So there is that learning and so I am still grappling with how to make it, how to include more people, but at the same time, I wanna do that without losing the sense of rigor. I might need to adapt the sense of rigor, but there has to be a sense of rigor because I'm teaching, it's a professional training school and I don't think there's anything wrong with a community training at a community center, at a community college where I started. I don't think it's either or. So I just think we have to be very clear about who we're trying to reach and why are we trying to reach them? But it is a continuing conversation, it is. And I still think about that young man. Thank you. Kunal, you had a question? Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Quick thing, quick thing. It were coming on to 10 past the hour, so at 15 past, sorry, well, 45 past the hour for most people, 15 past the hour for us in India. That's when we sort of closed down the formal part of the room, but also I feel like this conversation is just on the cusp of getting really started. So there is a 45 minute after-party water cooler conversation. Jay and Ellen have given us two hours of their time, so that should do it. So just without further ado, I know that we've got Kunal, Omgeni, and then we're probably going to go to the unrecorded session of the conversation where everyone can, this really can genuinely be unmoderated and everyone can step in. So Kunal, go ahead. Yeah. I had a wonderful opportunity to be in a classroom of viewpoints with Dr. Jay Paul Skelton. He has been with the city company for a long time and he creates this really wonderful atmosphere in the classroom where the tools of the viewpoints are not the end, not the goal, but they provide a vocabulary for exploration and discovery. So in the atmosphere, the students almost become like a scientist exploring their own creativity through the vocabulary. So how do we make this atmosphere over Zoom? Well, the viewpoints are just a lens to look at what is there and to discover one's own response to the world around you. And so there are these identifying words that break and this is the work innovated by Mary Overley, who passed away last, summer. Certainly, Mary stands on other shoulders of giants, passed through to Anne and city company as we've continued our research. So I just wanna be clear and make sure Mary. Mary's name is said and my colleague Anne Bogart and all my colleagues in the city company. And we have had the great privilege to be in studios with thousands of artists and simply putting labels to the temporal and spatial issues of architecture and repetition, et cetera, et cetera. I won't teach you a class. We could do that, that'd be fun. But what it allows is, and you can do this, we're doing it. Nah, I'll do it in about two and a half hours. Is if you help someone simply change their perception and let things come to them and they're receiving the news of a difference, they're receiving the world around them and then their own perception of themselves and the possibilities of response come into play. And so what you're really watching is the flowering of the individual and there is no good, no bad, no right, no wrong. There are degrees of profundity, perhaps, as Mr. Suzuki would say, but the viewpoints is really truly a purely horizontal world where the improvisations, where the research, and you said this beautiful word, that's what it is. You're getting a student in a position of putting on their lab coat and going into their own room, going into their own life, their own emotional state, their own sense of what story is and researching it and finding out to their own delight what's actually already there. Not putting on any kind of style or theater game. It's much more sophisticated than that and a deeply concentrated space where the individual is fully allowed to be and there are so few forums, there are so few places for that in the world to come with beginner's mind and really practice and find one's own sense of humor and taste and do that in collaboration when I say all alone together. I mean you're in collaboration with everybody else going through that same thing and then coming together and processing what you've been through as a human being and I don't think, and I'm really trying not to blow smoke up anybody, I don't think I've ever been in a session at the end where people didn't feel reified, didn't feel renewed, didn't feel like they could go on and pay that forward in some ways, make the theater better as a community, as a city-state, as a citizen of theater, to take on the responsibilities of it which is to be fully present, kind, sharp, listen, see, receive, perceive. So when you have that along with a body that's trained to breathe better and hold still and anchor and plug into Mother Earth to notice, to be able to project energy, to concentrate, to deal with the invisible world and things that are usually unconscious, brought to the consciousness, when you have these two things working in tandem, you are watching a human being along with their own cultural background which are so necessary in the room. You really are watching a full fruition of somebody as they come through. So for me, I'm so glad you've had this experience. Come play. I'd love to work together, do it. Because we can. We can walk in the room right now and make something or be together and do our research together and then have a coffee and be friends. So thank you for the question. It's the last few minutes. So I'm gonna leave it with Omgeni's question or Omgeni's remarks and then Omgeni, do you think you can close us out into the after party as well? Sure, maybe. Hello, thank you so much for all of that really kind of rich thinking. I'm kind of obsessively stuck on this idea of the frame and it was going to be a question but I think I've come to the realization about my own kind of pedagogic, critical ethical investments when I make choices on how to teach and especially with this challenge, right? And I've been wondering more and more whether it's not this tension between the kind of laminated surface that these kinds of devices and scenarios produce so we kind of miss the details that sit just outside of the frame, right? Zoom when you enter into this kind of environment or any other kind of digital environment, I think has a way of quite forcibly bracketing out everything outside of it. And I think in those moments, you might forget that we're all sitting in very specific contexts. So the tension between that, that kind of bracketing, erasing, laminated effect that these kinds of devices, surfaces, interfaces have and the labor of recognizing that frame as a frame. And I think I work in ways to try and help students not just on Zoom, but in the everyday kind of in real life practice of performance to recognize that everything we're doing is a practice of framing. We are bracketing out an experiential space, a conceptual space where we're agreeing to hold things still for a moment in order to engage with an idea with a perspective of whatever it might be. But I'm always trying, I think, to get them to recognize the multiple kinds and unequal forms of labor that it takes to produce that frame and stabilize that frame. So that even when we're coming into this laminated space, if there's a way to help us recognize all that is beyond the edges of this frame, then I can't enter into this discussion without recognizing the individual humanity of the people with whom I'm engaging. Because I'm always thinking about the context and the different kinds of, I guess, routes that they've respectively taken to arrive here in the first place. And I think it connects to what Jay was saying when I started learning about maybe just the practice of taking the camera and looking around the room as well, just to help us recognize that this is a device that replaces us, but in this kind of a non-space. And maybe what we're trying to find is we're recognizing that practice of being in place by this device. Yeah, it's a good lesson, isn't it? Because even as you're pointing at, when a young artist or young participant or I don't know the language that you prefer to use, some people are getting rid of the word student, I know. But when they walk in a studio, it's the same. The frame is around them. We often already have put a frame of around somebody and you're just so beautifully said, opening up that frame of how did they get here? And yes, Anne, and what's really there? Who are you? Who are you? What if Virginia Woolf says it is so difficult to describe any human being? And just keeping that in mind for, and not making any judgments about how that person learns. Everyone learns at a different rate of speed. I'm a very slow learner. I'm a little dyslexic and I pick up choreography. I pick up movement sequences and rules very slowly. You know, and I realized I wasn't looking at a young person through my very own lens. I had framed them. They're young, they're here, they wanna learn, they're gonna slam up against all this stuff. And I really had to have a talking with myself. And it really has been through Zoom and this thing you're pointing at that I recognized how I've been doing that in my studio and all those assumptions, because studios are frames, they're just boxes. You know, they're the same thing. Thank you for that. Thank you. You're an amazing teacher. They're lucky to have you there. Oh, I hope so. They may argue differently. That's what we all think about as students. I believe me. And as a passing out kind of thought, the other thing that I'm trying to grab within relation to that is I kind of always talk about using what's within reach because that tells us a lot again about the perspective from which we each individually come. So I use the limitation of a strained in projects specifically to force students to work with what's in need here on them. Yeah, I'm sure you can have all the bells and whistles but I'm more interested in what's on the table in front of you. Yeah, you know, there's, it's that idea. I'm sorry to interrupt. It's just that sparked that image of the story of less, less, less, less, less. It's something Anne said not long ago in a rehearsal and it was in reference to us having to rehearse through Zoom, which we started to do and we were all like, how the hell do you do this?  She said, we're tapping. That's all we're doing right now. We're just tapping and we're trying to hear one another and make an alphabet and thus a language from these taps just from one tap the next and figuring it out together. It was so moving to us. She has a way of doing it, organizing it. But thank you, Pongani. I'm going to, yeah, I'm totally agreeing with what Kameli is saying in the chat window. I'm going to close out and say thank you, Ellen, Jay Edd, Kamali for being here, making time for this. I think on behalf of all of us, we're really happy. This has added a lot of rich material to the ongoing quest. Of course, I know you guys are supremely busy, but just keep an eye out. And if you can come and keep joining the conversation and asking your questions to others in the room, it will be wonderful. Next week, it's Ongeni's up with Ongeni. Who do you have in the chair? Oh, Amy's up. Sorry, Amy, who do you have in the chair? My guests are Eric, a team of Cal Shakes in California, and Kirtana Kumar of the Infinite Souls Theater Farm in Karnataka. Yeah, and Kirtana is an amazing human being. And she's just written an amazing blog which we should actually post up here for you guys to share about what a crazy year she's had. But the drama school is going, drama school, Mumbai is going to reconvene in human person in a COVID bubble at her farm in August. And we are currently terrified because we are still mid-second wave. And some people saying this is an act of insanity. I say it's an act of theater. So I'll leave it at that. We are now, so just this talk is available. All the talks beforehand are available. If you guys want to be on an ongoing conversation, there is a telegram group that nobody really talks on, but it's there, and you can join it and have chats there. But beyond that, really, just hang out. Be off mic. Imagine we're at the water cooler. And Falguni is putting some interest.