Hi everyone, welcome back to our podcast from the Kamasutra to 2020, where we look at your questions, your concerns, even your worries around all things to do with sex and sexuality. So today, I'm delighted to introduce my guest Dr. Simi Sachdev. Simi is not only a really dear personal friend, but she is also the most brilliant consultant psychiatrist. She's actually a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry, so it tells you how brilliant she actually is. Simi deals with, she practices general psychiatry, but at the moment she is dealing with borderline personality disorder patients and Simi, I'd like to welcome you to our podcast today and tell you what a joy it is to have your expertise with us today. Thank you so much Sima. Actually, it's my privilege to be here with you.  I think I'm the one who's privileged. Oh, this is so amazing. So everybody out there should know that we both love each other dearly, as you can tell. And this promises to be an amazing session. So Simi talking about your specialty where you're dealing with borderline personality disorders.  And what it does to their brain waves what does their mind when they feel like that. Do you come across a lot of people with this kind of problem in your work. Yes, I do and I think we'll have to categorize it a little bit. If you don't mind.  And you have the middle ones where they're not married but in a relationship, and they want to have the sexual relationship, but because of cultural taboos. They have restrictions and worries whether they should or they shouldn't do it. And then you have the married ones who might be quite happy with their partners and would want to either experiment a bit more. Or they might go in for an extramarital relationship. So it's a whole gamut of things that they're looking at when we talk about guilt and shame. It really is isn't it and the strange thing is of course it's the common denominator where it won't matter what each group you look at because at every age this has been so fed into our brains that it's bad.  And honestly the people writing into me will write about everything and they'll say things like we like to use bad language during our love making it gets us very excited. Is that a bad thing to do. Are we doing something wrong or somebody will say I have such and such fantasy with my husband we like to do it, but is that sinful is that against God. He even had one girl right to me and I know I laughed about this because I, it was the way that it was worded but it made me also feel really sad because she said to me. So she's quite young she's not yet married and she said, is it okay to be kissing somebody because I don't want to do something wrong because I truly love God.  And this is what surprises me a lot. Maybe I might be speaking a more in context of the Indian religion Indian culture. But if you were to look back into history mythology and you are the expert in that. If you look at any of our temples which show the gods, the female and the male God together, and the postures that they're shown in are so much more expressive than what our society has become now, because of years of cultural suppression in some ways. And that's a really good term actually cultural suppression, because our culture has been suppressed and we are now living through somebody else's cultural viewpoint aren't we. Absolutely. And I think there's also this a lot of misinterpretation of religious texts, and I just don't mean one of the religions I mean all of the religions, they are sort of going more towards sub subjugation of the woman, rather than empowerment of the woman. And that is why I always feel that women are the ones who feel a lot for guilt, when it comes to sexuality as compared to the men, because it is accepted that the men can be. Wander from the marriage, and the woman will be blamed for it because she did not provide what he wanted at home. So it is culturally accepted to do that.  And youngsters believe that oh, if this girl is kissing me she's easily available. Whereas, do I want somebody who's willing to do that, or do I some want somebody who's more homely later on. So there's a, there's a lot of cultural implications religious implications that go with all of these things. Yeah, and it's terrible the double standards are absolutely awful. So, let's start with the older age group first I'll tell you why because I recently was part of a panel for the Anglia Ruskin University, hosted by the British Science Festival, which said, sex never gets basically talking about the fact that the for people as they get older in years, how beneficial it is for them to continue to be sexually active or to continue to enjoy pleasure and desire and intimacy, because it's great for them at so many different levels. But, you know, you were saying that there's a lot of, there's still a lot of problems attached to that there's all this guilt still that comes with it. So yes, so what I've noticed is that, you know, initially when you get married, you are trying to sort of get to know each other fit into a kind of a mold. You're trying to have a life setting up your life together as a couple, then you have children, you're trying to be a couple with children and you're more of a mother and father. And then it's only later on that you are more able to look at intimacy in a different fashion. What you actually find is that couples at times quite struggle, especially when the children are not there anymore to look at each other in that sexual way because you almost have a few years where sex has not been such an important part of life. Suddenly you want to reinvent the whole thing. And at that point you revisit some of the things you might have wanted to as a youngster or as a young couple. And you wonder whether should we think about these things now. And should I tell my partner about this now that this is what I want to be done or this is what I like. And people struggle with it a lot because as as again it's all about how we have been brought up in our culture to not express sexuality sexual gratification as an acceptable means of fulfillment. Particularly by the women, particularly by the women that is right. And I think even men to some extent like, for example, somebody might, a guy might be watching porn for example because he likes it. And he might want to watch porn with his wife, which is absolutely acceptable. But he might not feel comfortable asking his wife to do so. And, you know, people coming together sexually or in an intimate fashion when they're older is so looked down upon. I always remember that film called but hi ho. It's a much older lady gets pregnant absolutely everybody's like oh my God you know that class of people and so on it's just considered such a bad thing so just my knowledge about mythology and mythological words is not very good. But you know, one, once a person gets older it is called one of us. Yes, so one process when you are supposed to give up any. Everything, everything exactly and and and it is expected that by the time you're 6065 you would be at that stage. So you're not supposed to have these feelings which I think is absolutely ridiculous. Not everybody has to follow those feelings that that are there. People can be at different stages in their lives. And what's worse, I think is that as under the, you know, the lady and with the doctor and with the madame who I do this with otherwise. As she was saying a couple of times that as men get older a lot of times their sexual capacity can diminish a little bit. We found from the emails that come to us that a lot of women say, I'm trying to approach my husband he can't do very much so instead of saying, I can't do this but we could try something else. It's easier to put her down and make her feel guilty about even asking for a sexual context or you know some kind of intimacy because then he has to put himself out and say well oh actually I can't do this and my arousal is not that strong anymore. And yes, and that is that is very true. And that tends to happen I think women tend to discover their sexuality much later in life, as compared to men. And I think it's a lot of experimentation. And then there's this whole taboo around masturbation, while men are still it's acceptable for the men to masturbate but it is not acceptable for a woman to masturbate. Because women discover their own bodies and they are what brings them pleasure. They want to express that to their partner but then again there's this whole thing about whether can I or can I not. So, you know, that's where the struggle is and like you rightly said that men might change how they go on as they get older. So in this experience women find their sexuality later and enjoy it a lot more later and men do it a lot earlier. So there is that kind of discrepancy. And then if both the partners are able to talk about it, you can still have sexual intimacy without intercourse. It doesn't have to be about intercourse. I've said this over and over again that it's not about penetration, that there are so many different ways of coming together and being together but this is also another one of those myths that's been fed into our brain that this is what it is. It starts with this, it finishes with this and that's it. So, anything outside of that box becomes something to feel guilty about and be fearful about. And just before we move on to the next age group, what is your advice to me for the slightly older age group of people listening in what is, I mean, and I'm sure that this advice extends to other age groups as well but is there something that you can suggest to help people get past their, their guilt, their fear, their hesitation. I think the most important thing is communication, being able to be very open and honest. And I think that is what we all struggle with, that, you know, if a woman is not feeling in a mood but the man is, and that the woman feels obliged that I have to do it, rather than saying no today I don't feel like it, or vice versa as well. So I think communication is the key, especially in the later age group because your desires might not be at the same level and let's not forget that women have their menopause and men have, we don't have anything called as a male menopause as such, but their libido also gets affected as they grow older. So communication is very, very important that you talk to each other, you are able to communicate to each other what you're feeling, what you want. And I think that solidifies the relationship even further. Yeah, I agree. And I think that I always find that I say to people that, okay, you know, if you feel that it's something that you and your partner you and your husband or you and your wife are doing together can centrally one stop feeling guilty about it. And secondly, if you feel that somebody else might judge you for it. Don't tell somebody on the outside. Yes, absolutely. And intimacy anyways has to be a very personal thing. You never need to discuss it outside of besides the two people that you are. Of course, younger people tend to do it because it gives them a sense of empowerment. They can show off. But when you're in the older category, you don't need that kind of validation. Yes, that was what I was looking for. Yeah, I think that so I definitely agree with you that instead of feeling guilty. Actually, it's something that people should be doing.    So, shall I just interrupt a little bit and sort of split it into guilt and shame. So, guilt comes when you are trying to judge yourself by somebody else's standards or the societal standards, and shame comes in when you have a certain belief, and you are going against that belief as well. Okay, you feel shameful about it. So, it's a very complicated dynamics and then you have guilt and shame together, which is even more complex to deal with. Oh my God, yeah, I never thought of it like that. Yes, so shame is when you're judging yourself by your beliefs or what you think that society has created around you as beliefs. So, if they have said, I mean, like so many people write to us and say, if I've been to the temple in the morning, is it okay to have sex with my wife in the evening. Something somebody has put in your head that if it's a festival or you've been to a prayer meeting that you shouldn't be with your partner in the evening, you're married. It's internal internalized so much by all of us. Like, I mean I still know people in this country who have been born and brought up in India and the children are here. And they still believe that when they are on their periods, they should not go to the temple. They should not touch religious books. And I mean, for me that that's my bug bear but that we will revisit some other time. But it is something that has been internalized by us, all of us to such a large extent, you know, so that's where the shame comes from, and the guilt comes from the fact that what if somebody else comes to know about it. Because it's considered such a dirty thing. So instead of saying yes this would be wonderful. It's considered such a dirty thing that you don't want other people to know and it's so complex like you said it's just, it's like you're in a little world pool this is one thing that would make you feel, it should make you feel amazing. It should drop your stress levels, it should make you feel good about yourself and energized but instead we bury ourselves in the layers of guilt and shame and the complexities around it and make it worse for ourselves. Absolutely. Okay, so moving on to the slightly younger age group, the middle age group. Do they have it any easier. It depends. So, let's look at it in two different ways, because Indian society, if you're focusing more on Indians is changing very rapidly. We are seeing more live in relationships. We are seeing more love marriages that don't end up working out. We are seeing arranged marriages that do work out or don't work out. And if you look at all of these different kinds of dynamics that we have the sexuality of all these dynamics is very different. So in a live in relationship, that is an aspect of sexuality that goes along with the live in relationship. So that these are people, this is more in cosmopolitan cities I would say I could be wrong because I haven't been to India in a long time. So I may be wrong it might be happening in in villages and smaller cities as well. My experience is more about cosmopolitan cities, and people are living in a lot more than they used to, when I was a youngster I would say, and there is two parts to it then. Some people accept living together absolutely alright, whereas there are other people who are completely against it. So you might find that these kind of people would have difficulty even renting a flat in place like because they're not married. So that's one of it. Then let's go on to the love marriage so you find somebody you are attracted to them. Both the parents agree you get married, and it doesn't end up being the dream that you had, especially if you have not had sex before marriage. After marriage you might discover that it isn't what you expected it to be. It could be great, or it might not be that great. What do you do then. And then you have the third part where you have the arranged marriage where you don't know each other at home.  And how difficult is that? I would say for both the partners. I will not say it's only for the woman, but there's an expectation that it has to take place. And I don't know whether you're aware, but in olden days they would look at the bed sheets to see the signs of virginity. I think that a lot of people still do that. I hate to say this, but there is still this myth that they have to check for the blood on the bed sheet. But unfortunately in all of this, like you said the middling range, I find that, I mean from personal experience from just people writing in. This is the group that seems to be going through the biggest amount of problems around guilt and shame and fear. Yes.   Absolutely. And then you have a lot of women feeling very guilty because it's like, oh my God, I really want to go out. I really want to have a little bit of sex. I feel like I really want a little bit of pleasure. But what will people say? Am I doing a bad thing? Am I setting a bad example for my children? We have all of that. So how does one deal with that?  I would like to give a very simplistic reply, but it is never that simple. Because it is not just years of cultural conditioning. It is centuries of cultural conditioning that we have to fight. And I am very open about my views about sexuality and my view is you don't have to have a committed relationship to have sex. It is absolutely fine to have a one night stand. It is absolutely fine. If it works for you, you have a kid, you don't want to be in a committed relationship. You want to have a one night stand, you find somebody attractive in a pub, you have that one night stand and that's absolutely fine. Or you might want to look for a new relationship and you want a commitment in a new relationship, which is also absolutely fine. So what about what works for you as a person?  Because sometimes you want more companionship rather than sexuality. Sometimes you want a mixture of both. And sometimes you just want to have sex, which is all right. But I guess when the moment you say, oh, I just want to have sex, suddenly for some reason, all the flashing lights go up. I think that particularly with women, we tend to talk to our friends more.  I know that as women, we tend to talk to our friends a lot. And I know that if a woman comes along and says to her group of friends about, oh, I really fancy so and so I want to go out, etc. that'll be fine. The moment she says, I really just want a couple of one nightstands just to get back in the game. You can see the judgment going up. And these are the women who are writing in and saying, I feel so guilty. Am I doing something wrong? Am I doing something bad? I think they need to change the group of friends. Or maybe we need to, maybe we need to educate the group of friends. Absolutely, absolutely listening. Yes, that I mean, I don't know why people always club sexuality and love and emotion together. Why can't people accept that they can be two separate things in itself. I think women tend to be more judgmental than anybody else about other women. Unfortunately, that is such a sad truth. It is. And while they might be best of friends, and they would want that person to get married or get into a relationship, but when it comes to talking about a one night stand, they will have double standards. Yeah. But shame comes up for the woman who is in that position, because she's talking about something that she really wants. But the situation is such that she's going to be judged. She's going to be judged not only that. The other issue is that, you know, it takes a lot of guts to say that this is what I want. I don't want anything more than this. And there's an expectation that women should not be wanting only sex. So she's already judging herself for it. So she's already feeling shameful about it. And then she talks to somebody else who makes her feel guilty about it.  Yes, but we are made to believe that it isn't. Yes, exactly. And I just think, you know, every time we talk about this, it's almost like going around in circles you keep saying, it's okay, it's all right. It's okay to actually have that desire there is no reason why you shouldn't. Yes, it comes back to it every single time, but is it all right. Oh, but so and so will think this over what will I answer back, you know, it's just, it's, but I think we are so culturally conditioned to think about the society to think about what other people think about us as women and possibly some men too.  It does not seem to separate that sex is a natural physiological desire, whereas love emotions are something completely different. And both of them do not always have to match. Sometimes you might find that some people might find that they find a more emotional connection with somebody else rather than their partner, and they might have a perfectly lovely loving sexual relationship with their partner, or vice versa, where they will have a very emotionally satisfying relationship with their partner, but the sexual satisfaction might come from somewhere else. Is it infidelity, emotional infidelity, physical infidelity, what do you call it, you know, there are various terms that we give it that trying to justify what we are feeling. I think we always refer to that as sort of changing the contract, you know, because when you have two people who are together, who feel that if this is how they want to be like the partner that you're with, might be the person that you're emotionally attached to but the sex is better with somebody else and you really want that fulfilling sex. Then, instead of going behind somebody's back, you should really have that as an open conversation. In a lot of the modern marriages I find people are a little bit more open to it, not everybody obviously, a little bit more open to it, but in terms of somebody who is not married, let's say you're single.  And even over there, there is this guilt because, like I said, you know, with one person it may be that you said, I find it acceptable if somebody says, I feel very close to this person with my partner the sex is great but my emotionally I want to go to this person for, for my emotional needs. And that still is acceptable but if it is the other way around. And then people feeling guilty, is it their own thing to do, is it the right thing to do. And you know what, it's not just, I was just thinking of an incident so I was watching you and I both live over here in the UK. I was watching one of the Apollo Theater comedy, stand up comedy shows, and there was this particular UK comedian talking about going out at night and meeting this woman in a pub, in a club, sorry not in a pub. And it's two o'clock at night and then he says in the middle of his routine.   Why isn't she there with her child.  I was thinking my God. It's not just that it's culturally embedded in us, but we reiterate it, we make sure that that identity never changes so that guilt and shame never goes away. We are so judgmental.  I was thinking I was talking more from an Indian perspective, but it exists over here as well. And, and again, I think there's also this sort of a perception I could be wrong. Because if a woman is single and has a child, there's almost a feeling that she will be more available. If you know, in that sense, yeah, yeah, that she will not want to be desperate. Yeah, yeah, which is very unfortunate because being single is not something somebody chooses to be it happens, life happens, it could be dead, it could be divorced, it could be a bad relationship. You walk out of it, it takes a lot of courage to do that. And after that you're being judged for being the single parent as well. Yeah, it's just, it's such a messy like I said you know this is a session I've been wanting to do with you for a long time because it's just so deeply ingrained the guilt and the shame and the fear is so deeply ingrained. And I just feel that the more we talk about it, the more it brings it to people's forefront of their mind, and hopefully it'll start to normalize things. And these conversations are so so important. So now let's move on to the younger lot.  Excitement is there the blood is up come on we've all been young at one point and we know how exciting things can be. And the fact that the guilt and the shame that is put upon everybody. They made to feel that they're doing the wrong thing. How can we help to change that mindset and this is literally I had this young man right to me so this is they were a youngish couple in a living relationship.  She said to him that the next time she wants to try something called a facial finish, which is where she wants the the boyfriend to come on her face directly. And he wrote to me saying, I'm horrified that you know girls are watching porn and coming away with all these wrong ideas and you should try and explain to women that they shouldn't do things like this I would never want to do this because it's so demeaning to her.  And I think that's where the problem is because, again, we did not provide our youngsters with adequate sex education adequate understanding, and the whole idea of consent and respect, which, especially being a mother of boys, I think is very very important that they understand that it's consent and it is respect and that that is what has to be communicated as Indian parents I think we don't talk enough about sexuality. We sort of let it be that they will get the education from their friends they'll get it from school the school is doing sexual education let them handle it that way. And watch porn, which we then complain about and say, Oh, terrible, but yeah, they'll go and see it over there. Yeah, exactly. And I think we are guilty in some ways as parents for not having a very frank conversation. And like, for example, I would ask my husband to have that conversation with my youngster, whether I could just as easily have it, but he will not feel as comfortable talking to me about it. Yeah, I don't know I think we've always had this thing and yet I find. Yeah, it's just really difficult for parents, a lot of parents to do that. Yeah. My concern always is that then they learn things from their friends, which might not be the right thing at all because the friends might be talking in a very disparaging way about another girl in the same group that they are in.  And that's where the lack of respect comes in then. And I think that there's no way of creating the narrative by not actually having this conversation. Although I have to say that the sex said that they teach in schools is fairly useless because they basically point out the different parts of the body and they say, this is what goes into this. Yes, and I just think that there's so much more to sex I mean, I think that there should be classes on emotions and absolutely I completely agree with you because as a teenager. You're dealing with your physical changes that you go through, but you start having crushes, or you start having emotions at 1415 16 years you have crushes, and you don't know how to handle it. Nobody knows how to handle it. You don't want to tell your parents about it. You're not able to tell the person that you have a crush about it. And when things don't work out, you feel miserable desperate. And if you indulge in that for whatever reason you feel guilty and you feel ashamed that, oh my God, why did I do it. It's just like a Yes, yeah, yeah. So I find that this is one of the leading causes it seems to be one of the leading causes of mental health.  We think about it we all feel guilty about we all think about it we, we all feel it, we all want to do it, and then the guilt creeps in, and then you start feeling shit about yourself. And especially as a youngster, you tend to feel it a lot more, because you've got facial hair you've got pimples, you've got, you know, generally for a girl. She might not have breasts, or she might have two big breasts, and you know the whole thing about how I look is so important. And when there is rejection at that point, it just makes it even more significant. Because suddenly it is not just what you were thinking, but somebody has just said what you were thinking is right. About all your, your so called bad points, yeah. Yeah, so you have low self esteem as you're growing up. Every teenager goes through that identity crisis, and then somebody doesn't support you. So that reaffirms that I'm not good enough. Yeah. And this is something that you carry on for the rest of your life. Absolutely.  Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that is why it's very important to talk about emotions, not just sexual education, but about emotional education that, you know, I think schools are not doing enough of that. And we are not writing enough about it. Media is not doing enough about it to normalize the fact that you can feel attracted as a youngster to somebody else. It's normal. It is normal to not be accepted, and it is normal to be accepted as well. I mean, of course they are television series will show some aspects of these kind of things, but not everybody watches those series. No. And I think they're very far removed from reality most of the time. Yeah. So there is always, I mean, TV shows are all about perfectness in that sense, or imperfectly perfect in some sense. And there's always, there's always like a resolution by the end of that half hour episode. Exactly. So it really isn't very real. And life doesn't have that resolution most of the times. But I liked what you said that, you know, that the emotional education has to include not only the fact that you'll have infatuations and crushes, and that it's okay to not be accepted. It's very normal that that desire will not be reciprocated. And I think if we could make people understand that it won't stop the hurt, but it'll stop the long term trauma. And I think we all have to accept.  I have to accept. We've had our crushes in our days. And we got over them, and we went on with life and everything else. But a couple of you have left very deep scars still. So let's not go into that. But what I'm saying is we don't, even after that, we don't want our children to go through that. Whereas that is a fact of life. Every child will experience it. But we still want to put cotton wool around them and make sure they never feel like that. But it's not going to happen. So the only thing you can do is be present for them. So that you can hold their hand when they're going through that kind of motion. I find a lot of young girls who write to me say, Oh, you know, I really like so and so, but I don't ever dare tell my mom, my mom will kill me if she finds out. Or, you know, my brother found out that I was in a relationship and now he's calling me names and I'm thinking, my God, it's the most natural thing in the world to feel like that. So just be there for your child. They will otherwise turn to somebody else on the outside, which could be a lot more detrimental. And absolutely, it can create a lot of borderline personality disorders. Yes, absolutely. And that is why I mean I would always tell every parent that as your child grows older, they will become more and more reclusive. But still, you have to still be the one going into the bedroom, saying the good nights, giving them a hug and a cuddle, asking about their school day, it might be they'll say everything is okay. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, it was fine. You know, that's what teenagers do. You still have to go in there and reiterate that you are there, that if there's anything that comes their way that they are scared about that they don't feel they can handle, you are going to step in, and you will help them with it. So you will not change it for them, you will help them deal with it. You empower them. You empower them. You don't do it for them. You empower them to do it themselves. Just to know that you have someone that you can turn to it's a huge, huge thing. I mean the fact that you know people write to me who is like a disembodied voice where they can't go to their own parents for the same thing. I think it's really sad, but the amount of guilt and the amount of shame and the amount of fear that people feel for feeling arousal, forget about doing anything just for feeling the arousal. It is so sad to think how many people out there are going through the exact same thing, and they have no one to turn to, and they're still being made to feel that what they're doing is wrong. So I think if you look at it, you know, like as teenagers, especially if you look at boys, they would have morning ejaculations, which is a very normal thing. They don't know it's normal. They will feel guilty about it. They might feel aroused looking at a girl, and then that will come with a guilt. Oh my God, what am I doing? So it has to be normalized. These things are normal. Yeah. So tell me something, Simi, as we sign off, is there some kind of advice that you'd like to leave everybody with around how to shed the shame or the guilt? So one little practical piece of advice that you could give everyone. Talk, talk, communicate.  Talk frankly. I think we don't talk enough in our culture. Yeah, I think that a lot of the guilt that we take on is actually in our head. If they did talk to somebody, maybe the other person won't even be judging them in quite the same way. And it might be normalized. Yeah, because somebody else will say, oh, even I had thought the same thing. I mean, if I were to say, oh, I find everything Russian really hot.  And then it's all normal. It's fine to all go at him, isn't it? I don't love it, but just an example, okay. I mean, I could go for George Clooney as well, but that's another matter altogether. But it's, it's, I'm just giving an example that it's okay to fantasize about or sort of look at celebrities and think, oh, they're so hot. Whereas, when you bring it down to a normative level, it suddenly doesn't seem right. When you bring it down to real life, suddenly it's like, no, no, no, this is all bad. But if it's a celebrity on a screen, it's okay. Yeah. So, yeah, great advice. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. You never know when the other person suddenly responds and says, that's perfectly normal. And suddenly your guilt would dissipate. I think that's really great advice. I do hope that everybody listening out there will take this home with them, and they will actually try it. And I really, really hope that after having listened to Dr. Semi such, Dave, that it is something that you will take on board and help yourself with because even if you can help yourself 5% to reduce that guilt and shame within you, you will have reduced at least 50% of your stress levels. It's quite incredible the way that that particular formula works. Absolutely. Semi, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for asking me to join. So, everybody out there, I hope that you've enjoyed listening. I hope you found it useful. And if you have, do please comment, like, subscribe. I am on info.seema.anand at gmail.com, send your questions in as always. And Semi is on, in case you need to get in touch with her for either consultation or for advice, she is on doc Semi, which is spelled D O C S I M M I at gmail.com but don't worry if you don't because it'll be in the description below. Take care of yourselves. There's still the threat of COVID out there stay safe, stay very careful, and we will see you over here again next week. Bye bye.


Alexis, thank you. And this is part of the Siegel Center Book Talk series. You can download actually for free chapters of all the books from Ann Catanyou and Bogard. We had Teresa Smalek and many others will be coming. So I think it's a little free international university and broadcasting conversations and talking about it also brings out something of significance next to the text. But please also do think about getting the book. We cannot cover everything and there might be something in there like a homeopathic pill that's just of interest or of importance to you. So go to your local bookstore and get the work. So here we go. Alexis, how long did you work on the book? Oh my goodness. I started in 2014 and I was working on it even last summer because I was doing some changes to the epilogue. So, you know, six, seven years at least. Seven year project, yeah. Which is a Chinese cycle, right? With eight, seven years. Things happen in life, in art, also Emily often. You have many years to create, to create your work. For everyone who doesn't fully know, Alexis Green, I'm gonna read it from her bio. Not all of it, but she's an author, arts journalist and a teacher. And she just completed the book we will talk about today, Emily Mann Rebel Artist of the American Theater and applause book, brought it out. And we thank them to get the chapter that we could put it up online. And she has written on many women in research, the life and work of women in theater. And one of them was the Lucille Lortel, the Queen of Broadway, women who write plays, interviews with American dramatists, and political plays by American women and Pride Rock, The Lion King, which you collaborated with Julie Tamar and many others in the New York Times, Daily News and American Theater Magazine. And I'm proud to say you hold a PhD from the Graduate Center. So it's a little homecoming and reconnecting and happy to see that this works. And I said that also in the other talks, I feel very strongly as to many that to also focus on the life and work of theaters, artists, but also of institutions, theaters, places, next to theory. And I think that's what the Graduate Center also is so great about. That history does matter in the greats like the late Daniel Gerald Marvin Carlson and now of our faculty really does care about that. And so in a way, we also think this is part of it. So Alexis, there's a lot out there, there are a lot of many directors, there's a lot in American theater to look at and to write about, why do you think Emily Mann's work is so important that you spend seven years on it? Well, first of all, before I even answer that very important question, I want to thank you for bringing us and bringing me to this today. This is terrific. It's the first talk, right? Of the book, the first book talk because everything was closed last year when it came out. The first talk, yes. The pandemic definitely intervened. Why was it so important to write about Emily Mann? I had written a biography of Lucille Lortel, the Queen of Off-Broadway as you noted and that was really focusing on the Off-Broadway, the evolution of the Off-Broadway movement. And I wanted to write another biography of a person, of a woman, as well as about that woman's artistry in the theater. And I admired Emily Mann's plays, I admired her directing, I admired her leadership of the McCarty Theater Center. And, you know, she was outstanding and she is outstanding in so many ways. And she and I had communicated a great deal over the years. She had been on panels that I had organized and I had interviewed her for articles. And one day I got on LinkedIn, I said, Emily, what would you think about my writing biography of you? And she, Emily, do you remember this? I don't remember it was LinkedIn, oh my. Yeah, but you wrote back, yes. And I remember, yes. And we were all. I was very moved that Alexis wanted to do it. I had no idea that it would take so many years out of her life and in some ways mine because we met so frequently. And I trusted her completely and gave her access to my home and my home records and papers. And I trusted, I just trusted her. Anybody who knows your work, you know? Yes, I trusted her completely and that trust for beautiful fruit, I think. Yeah, and anybody who knows your work knows that it is kind of part of your invention, your profession that you interviewed people, yourself, even a character or your own, or then ultimately the interviewer on stage. And so you got interviewed about the interviews you did or interviews you worked on. And I thought it was quite a fascinating project. And Alexis, what surprised you when you did the research? What surprised me? Well, that's a wonderful question for a biographer. I wonder if it could be a little more specific. What surprised me about Emily or surprised me about the work? One of the discoveries. Yeah, let me maybe for our audience who don't know I read the biography which we have and which we know Emily is a Tony nominated director and playwright, Tony award-winning artistic director in her 30 years as an artistic director and resident playwright at the MacArthur in Princeton, New Jersey. She wrote 15 new plays and adaptations directed over 50 productions, produced 180 plays and musicals and really supported and collaborated with the significant emerging and also established and also some legendary playwrights.  She did many adaptations which she worked actually also with Evel van Hove, I think for the Bergman, the scenes of her marriage which was at New York Theatre Workshop and she created her own work which she also is of course so very much known for. Execution of Justice, Still Life, Anula which was I think her first autobiography of a survivor, Greensboro, Miss Sugar, Miss Packard, Hoodwind and many, many other works and now she's working on the adaptation of the pianist, the film we know a little bit from the Polanski adaptation but there's so much more to discover and she will and she won so many awards so what we all dream of, the Peabody Award, the Guggenheim, Tony, Drama Desk, Six Obies, Outer Critics Award, Margot Jones Award, the Visionary Leadership Award from TCG, the Lillian Gordon-Davidson Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre and she is a member and has been interested to the American Theatre Hall of Fame and this is often, you know what we read and it's all true but you had a closer look and you found things so what did you discover what's beyond the biography we heard? Beyond the biography, well, I discovered some personal details of Emily's life that I had not known about and that I don't think many people knew about except possibly those within her intimate circle and maybe not even some of them and also, you know, one of a biographer's joys is to come across an original document that nobody else knows exists or has uncovered at least and there I was at the University of Chicago looking through her father, Arthur Mann's papers and I came across this audio tape that was labeled Amy and I emailed Emily back on the East Coast and I said, Emily, I found this, you know, what is it? And she wrote back immediately practically and said, that's my play and she had, it indeed was an audio tape of the first play Emily ever wrote when she was at Raglan and she had made a recording for her father and it's a beautiful audio tape in that you also hear Emily who was a considerable actor as well giving a very emotional reading of this play and I don't think you didn't know it was there as I recall, you didn't know it existed, there was no script anywhere, there was this audio tape and so that was one of the wonderful discoveries that I made while writing this book. Yeah, and our previous talk for our listeners, we had a talk focused on Emily Mann, who is the great Carol Martin, you know, we talked about the importance of Emily's father as the historian who was guiding our talk to encourage her, wouldn't give her the first interview she liked, she went to dramatize, he said, he is a tape recorder, go out and make something of your own and incredible great advice in the big sense also what he did and Emily actually did that. I was stunned by this biography, how closely it was related to the American history, the Civil War's movement, the unrest in Chicago, the Weatherman, the Vietnam War, how closely it was connected to the family, also discussions and also big differences with her father who was so close, I think to the civil rights movement, marched in one of the Selmar marches. Yesterday's also an icon of the American history yesterday's also an iconic photo of him holding up a cardboard, you know, that history does matter. And but what struck me most was the fight Emily had to put up and she is a fighter and was a fighter there to get to where she then ultimately arrived at the MacArthur, the complications for a woman in theater to get hurt, to get her work produced, to develop and find a space. Yes, I mean, perhaps this is a question for Emily to address, I mean, certainly one of the threads that I was following, if you will, is that, and this is really why it's to some extent, she is a, to a great extent, she is a rebel because she was always rebelling against the, what seemed to be the preordained structure of the professional American theater back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, and you know, and even now we are still encountering it. Absolutely. That it was the rarity for a play by a woman to be produced on one of America's main stages, let alone Broadway, it was a rarity for a woman to be directing there, it was a rarity for a woman to be leading, you know, a main theater in this country. Yeah. And Emily, I don't, do you wanna? Well, I was just gonna say is one of the things that you captured so beautifully, Alexis, is you captured both my personal commitment and my life on a personal level and how that actually is what propelled me through and through those incredible barriers put up for women. And I do think that one of the beauties of the book is that Alexis mirrors what I was going through on a personal level with what was going on in the political. And as Gloria Steinem always says, the personal is the political or the political is personal. And in our household, that's the way it was. At our dinner table, it was almost like a seminar every night and it was really my father grilling us on what we believed in, what was going on in the world and how we reacted to that and what we thought about it and what we were going to do about it. So my work is just a continuation, really, that seminar table. Yeah, really. I would like to just quote a few of the sentences or what Alexis, a founder and then Emily told her, I think in many, many interviews, someone called Hamlin, a mentor, said to her, women cannot have a directing career only in children's theater. And you were a young theater student. Yes. So she was told, she was at a university which you had to pay for, I guess. I guess by your professor, by your mentor. This was Harvard University, yes. At Harvard, yes, I didn't want to say it, but women cannot have a directing career only children's theater.  Brewston is so terrible to women, we know that. Everybody knew that. You decided to go to Minneapolis, to the Guthrie's theater because there was this interesting combination of mentorship and studying, you know, that model was kind of a way from the big name, actually also how sad that you didn't go to Yale, which also as something is the greatest theater mafia in the American theater, but you made it anyway. I'm glad I didn't go to Yale. Yeah, we can talk about it later. Sure. One of your, also again, teachers, advisors, Eugene Lyon, pushed you against the wall when you had kind of a breakdown or you were crying, you had an emotional reaction to something which we all do have and you were pushed against the wall and said, no woman director can cry.   I mean, this again, in an educational institution. I mean, we forget that when we read such biographies as before, your director Michael Langham, who you said was known for making actress cry, especially women in rehearsals. Kind of you said this, I learned from it that my approach will be definitely the opposite. You encourage, you work with actors, but your role model would inflict psychological, cruel moments in artistic processes and especially on women. If it was him, I don't know, as he said, he'd barely talked to me, even in Minneapolis and often he was drunk, you know? And you talked about one director of the children's theater where you said, yeah, everybody knew he was a pedophile and abused the boys in the place. It's important to put all that into context, Frank. Because in fact- But let me say, they wouldn't write you. Even you did your own play, which was so brilliant. You wouldn't get the great evaluation at the right at the opening. And just two more things, which is some, even when you were in Princeton, we talked about it earlier in 1989, which is not so far away. One of the clubs where you were about to speak, you said you have to go through the back door. Only the married women of the club members are allowed to go in the front or where you were supposed to skip the big talk. Like, out of its shell, couldn't go on the hotel entrances, where she was singing in the main attraction. You did anyway. And the quote also from your book, Alexis, that Princeton at the time was beyond or behind the enemy lines, that it was not kind of what we think of a liberal arts institution at place or a town that even there, as in all the places you went, you encountered racism, anti-Semitism and violence and also, of course, against women. And so it is, for me, I have to say, I was a bit, I was surprised. Alexis doesn't seem to be so surprised. And no, I don't think Alexis was surprised. We came up together really. And she went through what I went through in so many ways. So at the end of the day, there's another reason why I could trust her and tell her not only what most people already knew about what barriers I had to face and go past, but I felt I could trust her enough to reveal even more of the personal issues that I had to overcome. But you said something, you were starting to say something important, Emily, about putting it in context. In perspective. Yes. I mean, first of all, when you look in the seven days, and when I was at the University of Minnesota, which is where I was for my fellowship, and then apprenticing at the Guthrie Theater, which was part of the fellowship, there had never been a woman directing on the stage at the Guthrie Theater. Oh, I'm sorry, there had been one. There had been one. And it had been a decade and a half since the place was founded. I was the first woman to get the fellowship in directing. The idea was both from Europe and in America is that women couldn't direct professionally. And in fact, the only ones who were doing so at the time, and thank goodness I knew the history, were the founders. And the women who started the American Theater not-for-profit movement were all women, and I don't think that's coincidental. And the reason I didn't want to go to Yale is because Lynn Meadow felt the sexism was just absolutely toxic, had to leave, and knew the only way she would work is if she founded her own theater, and she did, which was the Manhattan Theater Club. So these were my models. I looked at Zelda, bitch, Handler. I looked at Margot Jones. I looked at Zelda. I mean, I looked at Lynn. And there were three generations before me, or two and a half. And I realized after reading Halle Flanagan's book as well, that you could do major work in the American Theater if you were a woman, but you had to be in control because you weren't going to be given anything. And so I was somewhat surprised when I was younger coming through university when George Hamlin said to me, women can't direct professionally. You should think about children's theater. I was lucky because I grew up in a household that believed that I could do whatever I wanted to do if I was good enough and if I worked hard enough. And that women could break through. And then both my parents were early feminists. So I watched some of the other women in my class give up. But I didn't give up. I wouldn't give up. I loved it. It was my life. It was my passion. It was my calling, if you will. And I wasn't going to give up. So I kept going, kept going, kind of still looking back, and I was like, yeah, Alexis's book, I cried a lot. I'm sorry. Oh, no, it was wonderful to remember. To remember. Yeah. One line, one artistic director said, women cannot direct professionally. And those who do are all dykes or they're hysterical. And you said, oh, well, I'm both. So just to get back to him even though it's not. But it is shocking. And then also that personal violence as a woman, I think, you know, Alexis also talked about it about a break. About the experience personally.  I think it wasn't it. But Cliff or Adam's house. I don't know where, where you were the experience of it. A friend of yours and another. I think then at Adam's house, you know, I was in high school. Oh, in high school, you were in high school when that happened.  Yes, indeed. Well, we were the transition group. So we, we are basically the walking wounded. We had to, we were in the front line. And we had to keep on going so that other women could follow us. So yeah, we were the first women into the houses at Harvard. And my first year in Radcliffe, my house was supposed to be one floor male, one floor female, but of course everyone was in everyone else's floors. But there were no rules. No one really knew what they were doing. And the adults seemed to be completely absent. The women were not safe. In fact, we were targets. We had no one to talk to about it.  So we all wanted to be there and prove it that we could do it. So we didn't talk about it. I'm so happy for the women now that they, that at least there's a name for what happens. There is such a thing as date rape.  They're both rape. And that there are places to go to talk about it when needed. And that there is a reporting that is possible now. That wasn't possible in my day. So I'm very, very glad to see the progress, but it were, you know, the seventies were a transition time. You talk to any of us. And we carry that. We carry that with us. And we carry the absolute condescension. That was given to us as both students of in our fields. I never at Harvard ever had a female instructor, no woman professor, or did I have a woman section later. So I loved looking back and some of the reasons I was crying, reading the book Alexis's book is that we've made progress. We still have a long way to go, but we've made progress since I was coming up. Where we really were smashed. Yes, we seem to be at another crossroads. To some extent. I was thinking as we were, I was thinking about this conversation this morning. No, there is the need to movement, which actually began in 2006 with Toronto. Burke know a woman of color. Talking about sexual abuse and her and harassment. And then there are more women bringing this to the four, which is good, but at the same time, even as we sit here today in Washington DC, the Supreme Court is, you know, this minute, right this moment. Yeah. We're making a row. Yes. Right. So there were definitely at a crossroads, a very significant one. Frank is all right if I ask Emily a question. Absolutely. This is a conversation. Emily, I was wondering, you know, if a woman, young woman came to you today, as I'm sure they do and say, I would like to be a playwright. I would like to be a director in the theater. I would like to leave the theater. What would you tell them was the best route to take? Or is there such a thing as one route these days? There is not such a thing as one route. Okay. There's not such a thing as one route to become an artist of any kind, but certainly not in the theater. There is no ladder. But I must say that even though I got a degree from the University of Minnesota, and I'm glad I did it and I'm glad that I had the apprenticeship that I had. I, and I, this might be utter heresy given that I'm with. One of the great leaders in the education of theater in this country, but I'm a great believer not so much in the, in the university system, but in the apprenticeship system. I really think if you want to find your own voice as an artist, as both a playwright and as a director, you need mentors and you need apprenticeship. And then you learn by doing otherwise you become often. A cookie cutter version of your brilliant professor from whatever discipline you're in. I've seen it over and over and over again. So I'm a big one in find the people you most admire, assist them, watch them work, be in the room with them, learn the craft and then go off and do it yourself. And really, I though I went to drama school, I didn't go to drama school. I rarely went to classes. I went into rehearsals with the people I most admired. And as with Michael Langham, as you discussed earlier, who was the artistic director of the Guthrie theater. He was not, I had no mentors. That's why I mentor so many people myself now. But he was my superior. And he was a brilliant director. And he taught me a great deal. And one of the things he taught me is I don't ever want to deal with actors the way he deals with actors. I want some of the same results, but not how we did it. Never abuse an artist. Never berate people, never pick out the weakest person in the room and make them the whipping post. That was the old European way. And the director was the general and he behaved that way. I realized, you know, I don't know whether it's because I was a woman or whether it was because of just me. But to me, I saw sometimes actors giving better performances in their first readings than on opening night, because they were so tense and afraid of being wrong. And I'm not doing exactly what he said correctly. And so I decided both to watch him to learn what I could get from him and also learn what I never wanted to do. And that's been pretty consistent for the rest of my life also on how I ran the theater. I thought he was a great artistic director on some, in some ways. And what was it I was going to do that was absolutely opposite to him. It was an unhappy theater. It was not a theater that worked with any sense of consensus. The hierarchy was to the old male patriarchal hierarchy. And everyone had to scrape and bow and, you know, be subservient to their superiors. And they talked about it as he is your not sure, you know, not the department head or anything else, but your superior used. How do you speak to your superior? There were no women who were in superior positions. And the women were very badly abused there. And also artistically, I believed in new writing. And that was a completely classical theater, but I loved getting classical training. I mean, I adore directing the classics. I love, you know, looking deeply into the core of a work and understanding. And you talked earlier at Frank about an ex Lucassion du text. There was no one better than Michael Langen with ex Lucassion du text with Shakespeare. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. Not those skills. And at the same time, I could say. I would never say that to an actor. And that's how I learned. Yeah, it is, it is, um, I'm standing to, to see it so closely than also was your personal life with some. Boyfriends. Marriages. Children. Water breaking, you know, in between, you know, it's all stuff we, we do not really take into account. And I think if the time of Corona has taught us anything now, this is matters. It's important. It's connected. The experiences you had as a student. You know, this is not. And I think this is why Alex is a, has been woven. Great. A carpet. She wove it together. So a beautiful that you could see patterns. Oh, beautiful. Um, um, I mean, I also liked that you worked with friends. Like, yeah, we live together. We work together. That you have a family. That's what often young artists, what we tell them. And it's really true. You work with, you know, your friends to stay, stay together, perform a tribe. This is the best way to survive. And your fellow student is not your competition. There will be both way. The best friend you will ever have. That's right. Lucky. That's right. Yeah. It's one of the best things I actually learned as an apprentice at the Guthrie. Was I remember one of the actors brought me a cup of coffee. I was so exhausted that day. And I was so surprised as I was the little, you know, what we call intern then apprentice stage manager. And he said, Oh, I think you're very bright. I know someday I want to work for you. And I remember saying that he said, I'm always wonderful to the apprentices. They are going to give me jobs in the future. And he was, you know, it sort of stuck with me. It's so true. And now I've been, you know, I'm two a year at the, so I've got about 60 mentees and then more, you know, in other departments. And now they call me, I mean, I've always helped them get work and all of that. Now they're calling me and ask if, you know, I would like to work for them. It's quite gratifying and sweet. And it's nice to be able to come to this age where you put a whole set of, you know, your children out there.  Yeah, incredible. And I think you, you really lived a change. You implemented change. You were part of the change. You wanted to see that, you know, black playwrights and diverse groups found a voice of women writers you brought in. You ran the MacArthur differently as the Guthrie, as I know in between, when there was like in 2012, some complications, you know, when the board all of a sudden they give you just a one year contract because I don't know if something didn't, they didn't like strange that power. They have, you know, you could have gone to the Garcia and you said, no, I want to continue my work here. Emily, man belongs to belongs to Princeton. So it is really something to look up because you said what you did and you did what you said. And this is very rare and we have our highest respect. Alexis, how do you organize an artist's life, a career? And we talk now, you know, about things that of course or jump to my eye, but the entire book documents so beautifully the rehearsal process, the writing processes, the failures project that didn't go nowhere. They've got bad reviews that others have good reviews like it's a real life in theater. How do you create a narrative? Do you see yourself as an author? Are you also writing a novel? I love that you sometimes describe this as a novel. Interestingly, and I think I may have told you this in a private conversation and just as an aside, I apologize for having to scoot out for a minute because a phone rang and I didn't want to disturb you. Somewhere we had pizza deliveries and all of it in the middle of it. Ruth Franklin, who has written a biography, she's a journalist, but she's written also a biography of Shirley Jackson has described writing a biography as akin to writing a novel in the sense that there was no such thing as a definitive biography. So you see or you find an array of events, comments, whatever and somewhat subjectively, you choose. And something that you may think is important, the next biographer may not or that biographer may find something significant that you don't think is significant. I'm a traditional biographer in the sense that I begin with the childhood and girlhood because I do believe maybe from my own experience observing others, reading Freud who knows that what we are exposed to and who we are as children influences to some extent what we become. Of course, we may rebel against that, but still it is there. So that's where I began with the story of Emily's life to this moment. Her childhood, her relationships with her parents and others and that was the main structure behind the book. And of course, as you go forward, you can't stick to that because Emily will be directing a new play or writing a new play. And so I jump around in time and go back and forth. And there are also several threads that I followed. Her personal stories, psychological thread, emotional thread, her artistic threads. And as you were, as Emily said, trying to weave them together against the background of what was happening in America politically while she was growing up because as Emily also said, as you said, Emily, we're of the same timeframe. I'm older than you are, but basically, I too came through the 60s and the 70s and the women's liberation. Why did you grow up? Tell us a little bit. Why did you become a writer? I started out trying to be an actor. And from where did you in New York? Yes, I did a little bit of summer stock. You were born in New York? Yes, I was born in New York. And what did your parents do? My mother was a psychologist and she was in private practice and she was also the psychologist for the Dalton School for a number of years. And my father had his own company which was sort of an import-export company for fabrics, although he had started as a journalist actually. And I fell in love with theater when I was about 10 years old and I wanted to be an actor. So you saw a play in Broadway? This is embarrassing. I saw a revival of Peter Pan, believe it or not, with Mary Martin at the City Center. And I didn't fall in love with Mary Martin actually but I loved Cyril Richard who played Captain Hook and I just fell in love with theater and I had a great theater teacher at Dalton, a woman named Anne Mackay. And good theater experiences when I went to college and I came to New York to be an actor but that didn't quite work out. I hated auditioning. I was not very good at auditioning. I think I'm more of a critic at heart. So I went back to school as Frack knows and I got a Ph.D. in theater. But you know you say, Frank, that it reads like a novel and it does. And part of it, when you describe it, Alexis, it's written in a great tone so that it brings together the emotions and the psychology of a life but it also is in response to the time. And because the times deeply affected me in terms of my personal life, it's all intertwined but you see that in very good novel writing.  So there's a whole thing is, yes, okay. But what I'm saying is it's an oddly a page turner. It is. What's happening, you know. And I like it. My friends reading it. You are in the car. Going from this city to that, you know, from where you moved on. And then you say, well, where are they going to go now? How is the house going to look like? How is she going to react? Father, it is really so beautifully researched. And a little bit, as in Balanchine once said why he liked American dancers. He said they are kind of angelic. They seem to be removed in a way. They're not in the political fight. It's not emotional. They seem to be looking at the world like angels.  And I think in a way, your view on Emily's work also is it's reporting in a way, putting it in a beautiful form like a golden frame, like in medieval paintings, how we see them. But you look a bit from afar also without, you know, being blindly, you know, just complimenting or commenting or ranting. And you really, I think, Emily shines through. You don't stay in the way of what you write about. And one can only feel that all the work, all the stuff you didn't put in, you know, you polished it. But people say about diamonds, you know, you have to cut 60 to 70% of the weight to make it shine. So more light comes out and comes in. That's why diamonds are brilliant. And I think this is a beautiful work you did. So what did you like about writing this book? Was there something you felt that was different than all the other ones? Did you like something you enjoyed more? First of all, thank you. That's what you're saying is rather incredible to hear. Well, I enjoyed sitting down with Emily. We met sometimes twice a month, sometimes only once a month in her miniature office at McCarter. But these were conversations. They were not interviews. I don't like the word interview, actually. They were conversations. I think we learned about each other to some extent. And I can only say my feeling that Emily was incredibly, you were incredibly generous with your time and your memories, your perceptions. And it was as if you felt, well, I too would like to make this a good book.  So, that was your rather remarkable input.  And, you know, hearing, writing a biography of a person who is still living their life and will go on to live their life is the exception in terms of writing biographies. But of course, it's a gift as well, because you do get to sit down and I got to sit down and talk and ask questions. You know, probably sometimes embarrassing questions. Who knows? I don't remember. And that is a gift. So, I think that was the preeminent enjoyment I received from writing this biography, as well as I said earlier, making discoveries that I didn't expect to make. For instance, going to Northampton, Massachusetts and finding the house where Emily grew up, so she was about 14 and her family moved to Chicago. And I walked up to this house one day in Northampton, Massachusetts and there was a woman standing on the deck.  And I'm writing a book about a woman who used to live here when she was a youngster. Would you show me inside the house? And she said, sure. I don't think you ever told me that. How amazing. Oh, yeah, yeah.  Yeah. I don't remember it as being small. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. So did you go up to my bedroom where I had my imaginary world? Yes, we went upstairs, but upstairs was somewhat, was laid out somewhat differently, I think, now from when you lived there. Yeah. Maybe that is something we can also talk about. I like that very much next to so many things I've felt we really were part of, you know, the great conversations you guys had.  You see, here we were with Winnie Mandela, you know, for four weeks being driven back and forth. We were, you know, discussions with Gloria Steinem and the staff and who rejected, they wanted to rewrite anything. I think, and Katanio in some ways and said, this is not how we work at Lincoln Center Theater and others, we don't do that to a writer and but you still got it done and Paul has got involved. And so many others, the Greensboro work, so many of us will be really so close to it and next to little, tiny, tiny gold nuggets also about Emily, but the very beginning, I think it's Emily Town and you had that world, which I said, Emilyville, yes, where you should write maybe a TV series or put it into a film or write some children's stories tell us a little bit. I think that's a beautiful idea that you as a child imagined and you speak about imagination so much that we can imagine everything. I think in the talk with Carol Martin, you also said, you know, we shouldn't forbid that you're not of this or that diverse background. You cannot write about this or that must say, no, there's imagination, we are artists, but tell us a bit about Emilyville. Well, when I was liberated from sleeping in my sister's bedroom and was able to write while she was older and had very different interests than I did, my mother took pity on me and said, okay, you can have your own room, so I had the guest room and I was very little really and my sister and her best friend always kept me out so I had to entertain myself and I made myself, my room was my own sort of kingdom or town called Emilyville and my father was writing the biography of Theorella H. LaGuardia, the mayor of New York City and he had given me a big bear for a birthday present and I had named him LaGuardia so he was the mayor of Emilyville and then I set up all these different animals and I made model horses, the horse crazy little girl and I made a town and it had town laws and town rules and I made them out of little scraps of paper put into a match book, you know, in a matchbox, I had, I don't know, I just spent my whole like making up this whole world and then there were stories that would happen in the town between the people who lived there and I ran the town and my best friend in first grade was also like to write, like I like to write and we would write stories about her town and my town and so it was just living in a, you know, in a totally imaginary world and I loved it. I still love to be alone or with another friend who likes to live in an imaginary world but yeah, that was my childhood, making things up. What were some of the Emilyville laws and rules?  It wasn't very sophisticated for me. Amazing. And you wrote them down and like in little... Oh yes, yes, I wrote them down. So did you see that, Alexis? I wish the world would be, yes. Alexis, did you see the stories? No, I asked Emily, I remember asking you if you had any of the stories that you'd written, also stories that you wrote when you had that wonderful teacher who told your parents. Your parents' timeline, yes. You know what's so sad is we would write them, Ruthie's father was also a professor at Smith in government and we would take our fathers' blue books or yellow books, exam books and those were our books and we would write our books in those books. All right. I kept them all in my drawers in my bureau at home and my mother went into a fit of cleaning when I was one year when I was away at college and I came home and realized they were all gone. And I never...   That's the tough one. Yeah. What also came through before we perhaps moved that also into your creation, what you're most famous for, what I think Alexa said, theater from the person's own words, she said. I was also stunned by the energy that you have that also were shining through when you were a student. Often you were a great dancer. People said, you know, what's electric?  You would teach, go out, learn, write, direct and the energy you brought to your profession. What motivates you? Really deep, deep down, what is it? Where did it come from? Goodness. Where does my energy come from? Yes. Why? And in that idea, and you put it into theater, what is it that makes you work, the clockwork work? Well, I really don't have an answer, Frank. I guess my love of it, I really do love it. I love the process of writing. I love directing. I love the process of, you know, I love to bring large groups of people. And whether they're in my mentees and the apprentices or whether it's the people in the rehearsal room or whether it's the staff at the theater. There's a big part of me that I think. Loves doing that and also giving other people opportunities that were so hard for me to have. So that I was able by running a theater to not only do my own to give opportunities to others to do their work. And that was equally gratifying for decades. And because I cared very much that women and people of color were not able to get their work done, but I had the ability to help get their work done was a great privilege. I think how are we going?  That's right. You once said, you want to vibrate truth at every second and to put that out. And some of your actresses at Emily talks a lot. I like that comment. I think Alexis played it that you were engaged. It's an actress for the first time. I think you said, oh, go and talk to the costume designer. We've never done that in our life and they loved it. So you did things differently. You were described as a hippie Brigitte Bardot by some of them, someone who was really her life out there vibrate.  Is that? That's true. I also didn't like repeating. I didn't like having to do it again the same way all the time. And I couldn't find the way to keep it fresh for myself. Plus the stage fright. I went on an Ibsen play with Guthrie II. I thought, oh, I'll try it one more time and see how it feels. And my knees started to shake and the sweat was pouring down my body and talk about not repeating. I didn't do anything I was directed to do. And the poor actors I was playing opposite were all just trying to keep up with me. It was an awful experience. So I have great, great, great respect for actors. I love what kind of discipline, technique and incredible bravery it takes to be an actor and realize I'd rather work with great actors than be an actor myself. Also, I would always be looking at the bigger picture and I'd be looking at what the director was doing and I'm thinking, well, why did they choose that dress or why did they choose that design? And I don't really understand that the function of this scene is this, that and the other thing, not what they're trying to do here. And so I was never an easy actress in the room. I was always looking at the bigger picture, which was a clear sign to me that it wasn't ultimately the place I belong. Where some of the fun was shining through, I think you took a clown's workshop, I think the cox school or something. Where you said or quoted him that the nose is the smallest mask in the world, but you played a nurse clown. You're not kind of a therapist, a shrink, and a nurse taking care. Even now, there could be a nice nurse costume you'll have one. Is that something you enjoyed if you would have been? I loved it. It was so fun. I was also a silent clown, which I found interesting. I think about the cox school is you find your own clown inside of you. And I was very shocked to find out who my clown was. And I cherished that what I learned from that.  And I learned a great deal. Alexis really captured it in the book. It was a wonderful interlude for me, not to take myself so seriously and to let go and look inside as well. It was great. It's a great teaching experience. I mean, learning experience to be taught or to find your clown in the Le Coq method. I highly recommend it. Yeah, incredible. So maybe we also, Alexis, talk a little bit of the plays, even so they are so well known and we have also talked about it. But I think what you said, you know, theater from a person's own word that anticipated, Carol Martin said that, you know, Emily anticipated that theater of the real decades before it became accepted. You know, that the idea that we put it in perspective, a young female student who comes basically more or less out of Emilyville faces, you know, such horrible situations of violence against women, but also violence against female directors, you know, and normally you would, you know, then try to, you know, please or do the classic entry on top of it says no, I want to do plays with words I create, write or record. And there are a lot above them are about, you know, the Jewish people, survivors, black people, victims of shootings from the Ku Klux Klan, women beaten up when the war came home, but also looking at the whole person.  Do you think it is these plays, these inventions, this work to put it on stage or is it her work together? What do you put it? Well, that's a hard question. Her plays what I admire most or gravitate to most, for instance, in still life or in execution of justice is that they, they are not simply documentary plays in the sense that we once associated with the plays of Peter Weiss, for instance. So I pronounced it correctly, Peter Weiss. Peter Weiss, yes. They, yes, she, Emily uses people's words, but they also are theatrical creations. You know, she dramatizes the relationships between the the figures in her plays. And what I believe makes them so lasting is that if you look at still life today, and indeed, we will be doing that because there is an off of Broadway company called Playhouse Creatures that is doing an entire retrospective of her work and will be, I don't know, is it a reading that they are putting on or a production of still life? I think it's a production. That's going to be a production, yes. The others are different kinds of readings both live and and and recorded. Yes.  Yeah. There are three figures or characters in this play of Vietnam veteran who comes back home to his wife and is fairly abusive. He also has a lover, a woman who adores him. And the climactic moment in the play, as I recall, is when he confesses the Vietnam veteran confesses about murders that he committed when he was was was in Vietnam. But there are there's an underlying there are underlying texts here that underlying stories, if you will. It's an anti-war play on one level, certainly.  And as I wrote in the biography, I think it's a feminist play, although the feminist in this case is definitely Emily, because in a sense she's giving a red alert that here are two women involved with this man and in some way dominated by him, whether positively or negatively. And they they seem to be living through him, as opposed to living their their own lives. Execution of justice, which is about the trial. Can I just add one thing, Alexis, to that? I'm sorry. One more thing before you go on to execution, that with still life, they're also thrilled by the warrior in him. And he reveals that one of the horrors of being a warrior is you realize that he loved discovering he loved killing and that there could not be war without that love. And once that's revealed to a man, you can't once you know what you can't unknow it. And that love for violence is what keeps violence going. And I'm looking at the country that we live in, which is so filled with a kind of love of violence. So anyway, that was all these issues are, you know, as current today as they were back in 1979. And execution of justice, which, you know, was about down on the surface, the trial of Dan White, who murdered Maia Mascone at San Francisco and made and murdered Harvey Milk assassinated both of them one one morning in San Francisco. You know, there is that aspect of the play, the trial, the prosecution attorney, who, you know, did not really do his job to the best of his ability, perhaps. But but underneath is a story of San Francisco, which can be extended to a story of America that there are many, many people in this country who hate the other, whoever the other happens to be, whether it's people of color, or homosexuals, gay men and women, or, or liberals, and, you know, and will turn to violence in order to express that, that hatred, that fear. And that certainly makes this play as as viable today, if not more so, unfortunately, than it was in 1984, when it was first produced at the actors theater of Louisville.  And I would ask you, I don't know if you feel like answering this at this time, but you have been working on the pianist, which is your stage adaptation of Shpilman's memoir. Yes. What is the underlying meaning of this play that you are creating? Well, I don't know if anyone remembers or saw that movie, which is a great work of art by Polanski, which is an adaptation of the memoir. And I'm not adapting the movie, I'm adapting, as he did from the memoir. It's the story of a Jewish musician, the pianist, Wodek Shpilman, and how he survived the Holocaust. It takes place from 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland all the way to the end of the war, where he is one of the last the Jews standing, but certainly also one of the last Warsaw residents standing, how he survived is basically the story and much of it is that he kept himself alive through his music. He kept himself going by practicing in his mind all of the pieces in his repertoire, and he kept composing in his mind new pieces of music. I think again, I don't know who said we always write the same play over and over, but in some ways I think I do. I have an absolute horror of injustice and of violence against people and of people who make victims of who they consider to be the other. Probably my mother, because of it goes with Mother's Milk and Steep in my gut these themes, my mother's family was murdered in Poland, except for her mother and one sister. The entire family was wiped out by the Nazis, as was my grandfather's family in Warsaw. My father's best friend was a professor called John Hope Franklin. He marched with John Hope Franklin from Selma to Montgomery, as I think both of you mentioned and it is very clear in the book he was one of the founders of African American history in this country and one of the great legend in the African American community. I'm very lucky that he was like a second father to me once we moved to Chicago and I went through the 66 to 1970 having dinner with him at least once a week and his family and becoming very, very involved in the struggle for equality of Black people in this country. This play The Pianist is about the survival of Jews and again it's a you could say it's a Holocaust play but it's also a play about how quickly fascism can come into play and come into power. When I started writing it, which was about six years ago, I wondered whether we needed to hear the story of the Holocaust again and then as I was writing the first draft of it my husband called me in the next room and said look up and I did and there was the swastika, the flags of the swastika, the neo-nazis marching in Charlottesville screaming Jews shall not replace us and I went well I don't really believe in coincidences, this is a sign that yes we do need to hear about this again. Also working on it continuously during the administration of Donald Trump and watching what I thought was a very possibly scary reemergence of fascism in this country and seeing that today even more and the rise of anti-Semitism but also the rise of anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-women movements in this country and again a sort of fear of the loss of democracy and a rise of fascism this play began to take on even more significance for the present day. So did that answer your question Alexis, I can't remember where I'm getting to right I lost my train of thought, I mean right in the midst of a preparing for a June workshop of it actually in New York. And there was something else I wanted to add which is a little bit off topic but Emily and I you and I discussed at one point I remember asking you what do we do about this word adaptation? Yes and you know I guilty of using it myself in the biography often because that's how some of Emily's plays are you know described in the print versions but it's more than that. Yeah I mean also there are at least two different kinds of adaptations that I work on one is when I'm adapting a masterpiece a great play from one language into the other language and I work with a bilingual person to do that whether it's you know Lorca with the House of Bernardo or the Czechos or whatever that's called an adaptation. So just you said you sit down just the technique with the translator next to you that's how you do the classical adaptation. Tell us a little tell a little bit how your technique how does that work. Okay and just want to add then the other thing is to make a play out of something that's in another form and that's a different kind of adaptation but when I'm doing an adaptation translation I will often have read many many translations and then I will either ask someone to do their own literal which is my least favorite way of doing it or I sit with someone who is a a bilingual speaker and go through them. So my favorite one was doing it with the House of Bernardo or Lorca's great play and my intern apprentice at the time was named Donna Harrell and she's going on to do great work in the in the theater herself and she's bilingual she's a Spanish speaker from Central America and um she's also because she's a theater person she knows that it can't just be a literal translation from the Spanish it has to be what the intention of the playwright and so I go through line by line and so she reads it loud in Spanish first allowed to me so I get in Spanish or in her translation no in Spanish in Spanish okay and then I might even read through the whole scene then we'll go back line by line and I know what the scene is because I've read other translations right or I might even have one there so I have a big idea of what she's saying go wait a minute could this line possibly be funny could it be ironic could it be you know and and so then I begin to try to get to the to the key of what Lorca's intention was because he was a great man of the theater and so she translates for you do you say tell me this sentence word yes and what does that mean and she tells you in English word by word and helps you to think about it and she might just even do it you know word by word and then to go well in this context or for example I'll give you an example um one time at the end of the play at the end of the first act when all of the um people from the village come to uh because that's what you're supposed to do when a when when a for a for after a funeral and Bernarda doesn't want to give them anything to drink or eat or do anything you're supposed to do um and she knows they're all snickering about him because he was not faithful and all that anyway all these women dressed in black come into the courtyard and and um often um she kicks them out with the word go back to your shacks and tell the world what you think of me or something like that and I so Donna read it to me and she said go back to your caves and tell everyone what you think of me I said caves could that be you know does that mean actually you know is that another word for shacks could be just no it's caves I said could it be this could it be that it's just no it's caves so then we went and we started researching it and of course it's caves um this Andalusia I mean it's in southern spain and a lot of these poor people lived in caves I kept it I I kept you know so there are things like that there's in no other translation right there was another one where um I I always look for laughs you know I want to get as much humor as possible if that if the uh artist intended it in Shekhov definitely did and Lorca even in has a Bernarda alba I can tell you there are two laughs that he intended and I got them both and that was because I was sitting with um Donna and she was able I said okay now say this line say the line but in this inflection with these words and it was funny and I said could you have intended that she said oh definitely and when I read that in Spanish I laugh yeah never see any other translation so I mean that's why I mean you need to be with someone who both knows the theater and knows the language for all its nuances you know and I think that's also why your adaptations in that sense are so successful you really put work and you listen and you have the awareness like you can choose a costume you choose an actor you also choose a translation for this is it five years old ten do you do it yourself how significant that really really is for the work you've been doing stage for people so tell us a bit what what Emily what Alexis then originally also the adaptation the other way of adaptation how how do you when you adapt material and I'm sure you have talked about it a lot but still how does it differ from that and what are your main what are the Emilyville rules of doing this well for the pianist right now for example yeah they um in in the memoir the family is not very well fleshed out you don't really get a sense you know and get little hints of who the family was and they're all murdered in Treblinka in the first act the way I have it is going up to the point where they family gets on the train to die and the pianist is saved right so the very first act of the first half of the play is this family and you want to get to know them and you want to care about them and you want to love them as much as he does so that their loss is filled also they were a very secular family they were a very assimilated family it would be like Jews on the Upper West Side now quite frankly and I want anyone watching this feeling oh this could be me this could happen to me and suddenly there they are stuck and very things are happening so quickly that they can't save themselves so I invented a lot I wrote a play I wrote I fleshed out characters I made real people I made a family dynamic and I made a family on stage and they also created a fictional character to help key into the play that helped me get free enough to then and keep inventing so I would collect first and then your collage and no no I'm not writing from beginning to end and I'm writing a play I mean I you start in the beginning and you write until the end I'm inspired by the original source yes now also it turns out that at this moment I went to Poland I said I couldn't really write it unless I went to Warsaw and I wanted to meet the son and the widow who were still alive she was still alive then and I wanted to talk to them about the pianist and I mean he had only died a few years earlier and I wanted to know what kind of man he was what what his personality was you know any anecdotes or stories or family feeling you know any of that I wanted all of it I also wanted to touch his piano which he had in the house and I wanted to go through Warsaw with his son who had his father had shown him all the places he hid during the war and I had that toward them and I also still I always need to have a driving force inside of me why I need to tell the story and I got in touch with the Poland Museum folks and they got me in touch with people who give both your family tree and if you are interested there's still one Jewish cemetery that was not destroyed only because the Nazis didn't have time others everything else was destroyed and they found my great-grandmother's grave for me and when I put a stone on her grave I realized I'm also a Warsaw Jew my family come from here I need to honor them by telling this story we don't know what happened to our Warsaw family whether they died in the ghetto or in Treblinka or in Auschwitz we don't know that nobody survived but being there for the generation before boom I it just did something to me and I came home and finished finished the play yeah yeah it's it is almost you know which is so beautiful this cedar the opening the question why is this night different than any other night and you say and you do the evening for your show will be why is this not different but because I'm going to tell you the story you know and why don't I need to tell you yes yes it has to be so personal it's not you know taking what's on somebody else's page and and typing it in and making it you know stage worthy it's and I don't know if you know this do you know the stroke report you know from this I think it was discovered by Ange Virtua so knew also was my teacher and he published it with Günter Grass it was the police reports daily police oh yes of course yeah you know you know which is one of the most horrifying documents absolutely um I'm seeing I begged a friend of mine Hans van der Kreuzinger who is a director in German is like you should do this this is just an incredible shocking thing to really understand the brutality and you know what you pointed then also out you know I am a monster I say yeah in the everyday life of it the sun was shining there are nice people at Christmas celebrations at home they might have been charming you know and did their job it's incredible and so really I would really like to encourage everyone you know look at this book you learned so much I learned you know I might have known but I didn't realize that Bam had a repertory company you were involved in and I was closed down in the next wave festival the money for next wave festival was liberated because that I guess it's not working out and we don't get the big reviews and people don't come and it's uh sad we hear about Greg Mosher you know who also helped you in between like people who connect you which he did and there was Oscar Eustace and Jim Nicola people we kind of know and many so many many other things so you want to see how what theater is about what a life in the theater means uh uh you know read this book and if you want to have a model also like Emily looked at theater directors and artistic directors if you want to write about an artist an artist life of someone who I think this book also is a beautiful model in its honest approach it's a kind of beauty in the simplicity of research as a famous letter I sing from Abraham Lincoln who said uh I am sorry my letter is so long I didn't have more time you know and and which is a big lesson also for theater you should take time you know how you know how beautifully you crafted this uh Alexis it's just great so I'm really um here it is and um have a look at it and um and we we talk about this not out of promotion we talk because of our interest and of significance so we think this is an insignificant important book about a significant influential uh American theater artist whose work will be looked at and already is looked at as a classic which is a big deal to have that in lifetime and so really both of you um thank you for sharing and I know the book is goes you know uh over 300 pages so much in this impossible to cover it all but this is also for you the readers to discover take the time it's also the job of you guys with the way you know want to know more read the book you don't get interested and and maybe one Netflix series less so we all do like them but here some transference of knowledge something happens when you um when you um when you read that and um I want to um also uh say thank you to howl round you know for hosting out and for um for being um with us at tj and uh vj and um and see our my seagull team and um so I'm looking for my my my lineup to find it here you know for our upcoming talk so this is just uh in the middle of the series uh where we are we have uh uh and Katanya coming up uh and Carrie Perlow will talk about her director's approach to pinter uh and um and uh Ed Stoppard um and Katanya in her book on drama tour Gigi worked also for years on that and Bogot on the idea of resonance of um of um what it means um to direct and uh and so much more so um please do join us again in our invitation you can go on our google drive and download chapters or introduction from all the books which i think is a wonderful gracious gift um to everyone and um Emily thank you for joining us thank you so much really congratulations on your work and um and all our respect from everybody uh who is working in theater rights and things about theater and also Alexis for your book really beautiful work celebrating um the life but also you know highlighting really all of it and which and we have a look beyond the official biography which we really hear about the awards people and it's all true and it's remarkable actually to get all that but it's a whole life behind it and we got a little glimpse into it thank you all and I hope you will join us next Monday bye bye thank you so much thanks to our listeners for taking the time to to be with us and uh and that means a lot to us there's so much is out there as we always say but I think this is a very special um um conversation so thank you for for joining us and for taking the time out and I hope it's as meaningful as it was for me thank you bye bye thank you