We'll hopefully be tweeting questions, so it wouldn't be fair to ask you to turn your phones off if other people are using their phones. Spence will be conducting the interview, and there will be questions after. So if you do have a question, please make sure you speak loudly so our online audience can hear your question as well. Without further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce Spence Porter from Harvard Wood. Hi, everybody. OK, our guest tonight has been a major force in the American theater for more than three decades. He spent six years as a literary manager of Playwrights Horizons, then a decade as the artistic director of Playwrights Horizons, where among a long, long list of notable shows, he produced a few that you may have heard of. Some of you may know of Sunday in the Park with George or The Heidi Chronicles or Driving Miss Daisy, a vaguely familiar title. And then he moved on to the Lincoln Center Theater, where he's been artistic director since 1992 and producing artistic director since 2013. And the list at Lincoln Center is mind-bogglingly long and impressive. Plays by Tom Stoppard like Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, The Invention of Love, Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosenzweig, other Wendy Wasserstein plays, Contact, Revivals like South Pacific, various Shakespeare plays, Henry IV, King Lear. It just is an amazing list of achievements. And let's welcome Andre Bishop. Thank you. I feel about 150 years old. It's sort of amazing that you're not given all that you've accomplished. It's even more amazing that you don't look as if you're 150 years old after doing all that. Somebody, I was having lunch with an agent, a literary agent last week. And they took a picture of me in a restaurant. And I thought, well, everyone takes photos now. And he didn't tell me that he was putting this photo on Facebook. So to my horror, I got all these emails from people about this photo on Facebook. Some of them were nice.  She wrote in, God, how did Andre Bishop get so old? This really makes me feel great. Anyway, you're supposed to tell people you're posting your photo on Facebook. But this person didn't. Well, continuing with the ancient history theme, I got an email from a Harvard classmate yesterday in which he asked me to let you know. This is Peter Kulik. He didn't sound like he knew you personally.  Oh, well, how lovely. Yes. And which sort of brings me to, so there was a phase when you did some acting. How I don't think it's very common for small children to dream of growing up to produce plays. Everybody wants to be a star, preferably, or at least the famous writer. How did you end up choosing, producing, as your own direction? Well, everyone's life in the theater is strange. And people come to the way they come, often through indirect methods. I think it's hard today because younger people in the theater think, oh, it's just life has to be one direct thing. And I'm here, and I want to get there, and this time I'm going to do it. But most people I know, and certainly my generation, it wasn't like that at all. I was born in New York. I lived in New York. And I had parents who were not in the theater, but they took me to the theater a lot from a very young age. And what we're doing, this stage adaptation of, I'm sure you've all read it, the greatest book ever written about the theater, Act One, by Mois Hart. And in the early pages of the book, he says that the theater is the refuge of the unhappy child. I think most of us can identify with that, too. And I was that. So I wanted to be in the theater.  And I did do a lot of acting at school and at Harvard and in summer stock, and a little bit off-roadway and on tour. And I did voiceovers. And I studied a lot with this great guy named Win Handman who used to run the American Place Theater. He was a great, great mentor of mine. And I was uncertain. I wasn't a bad actor.  But I actually was quite good. But I lacked confidence as an actor. I lacked the kind of confidence and ego you need to be an actor. And one of my many psychiatrists said that my problem in life was that I had trouble going from the shadows to the spotlight. And I loved being in the shadows. And I loved being in the spotlight. But getting from one to the other was virtually crippling for me. And that's not the kind of personality you want to have if you want to be an actor. So I was really, I think how I became a producer was simply by chance and by luck and by timing. I was aged all about 26 and quite determined to have a life in the theater, but uncertain about who I was and what I really wanted to do or how I wanted to do it. And I was unhappy. And a friend of mine from Harvard, a director, said to me, you know, we were having dinner. And I guess I hadn't seen him in a while.  And I'm beginning to direct at this very small, off-off Broadway theater called Playwrights Horizons. And there's this wonderful guy there named Bob Moss. And you should go talk to him. And maybe he'll have something for you to do. So I went and saw this guy, Bob Moss, who was just beginning that theater. There was no money. The move to 42nd Street had just begun. And Bob, being a very generous person, said, and also in desperate need of help, non-paying help, said, you know, well, what do you want to do? And I said, I have no idea what I want to do. And he said, well, why don't you just come here and hang out, or whatever the word was, in 1975? And so I did. And I answered phones. We only had one phone. And accompanied Bob, and I think one or two other staff people, to this old massage parlor on 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. And it was cheap. And it was sort of in the Broadway district. And the porn industry wasn't going very well. There were still prostitutes and a fair amount of massage parlors. And we moved into something called the Sex Institute of America. And we had very little money. And we just wrote everyone we knew for money, because we had been at the old YMCA on 55th Street. And we wrote people like Richard Rogers. And he didn't send us any money. But one day, we were sitting there, and this giant truck arrived with gallons of paint and Ajax and Mr. Clean and mops and grooms. And we somehow, I mean, it sounds like a Mickey and Judy movie, but we renovated very simply this theater. We started putting on plays. The mission of Playwrights Horizons then, as it is now, was to do new American writing. And in those days, we did a lot of very small productions of many plays, like 20 to 30 productions a year, on what was then called the Showcase Code. And I loved it there, and I had no duty there. And then, I can't remember what happened, but Bob got so busy that there were all these unopened in the days before computers. Manila envelopes from Playwrights. And nobody was reading these plays. And I was at a theater called Playwrights Horizons. So I said to Bob, Bob, do you think I could read some plays for you? And he said, sure. And then I said, do you think I could write a report? And he said, sure. So stupid, now.  So that's what I did. And I became, simply by default, one of the first literary managers in America. I mean, people didn't have dramaturgs and literary managers. And then I'm skipping over a number of years. We did a lot of plays. Most of them were pretty grim. But Bob was a great believer that opportunities create artists, and Playwrights Horizons in those days was a theater of infinite opportunity, mostly for playwrights, but by association directors and designers. So we grew a bit. And then Bob had this idea that I hated that we would have a theater in Queens in the old world's fairground. This theater thing in the round, which used to be a cyclorama thing. This is a really long-winded answer. But it's interesting, sort of. And he thought that because we didn't make any money in New York doing these new plays by mostly unknown writers, that we could have a subscription theater in Queens that would do classics where we would actually make money people would pay. I mean, in the early Playwrights Horizons days, Bob and then I used to get up in front of the audience and make a speech about how we're working here. And these are young writers. And the audience is the last element to come in after the lights. And we'd quote from Shakespeare. And it was just all perfectly dreadful. And at the end of the performance, we'd stand by the door with a big shopping bag and ask people to drop their money in. And eventually we stopped that because the average was about a dollar a person. And many other things were dropped into this. I guess we'll have to tell you. We were still on 46th Street. Anyway, the theater in Queens supported the theater in Manhattan for a while. And then there was some of you older people might remember the big gas crunch of, I've repressed when it was, but 1979 or 1980, something like that. And the subscribers to the Queens Theater in the park all drove because it was a big parking lot. And we lost at least 50% of the subscribers. We closed the theater. We had no money. And at that point, I was basically the artistic director of the Manhattan facility, where we had, as they have now, two theaters, a small theater and a larger theater. And Bob was exhausted from this, from the worry of it, from the constant struggle of it. And we went out to Long Island. We took a walk on the beach. And he said, look, I can't take this anymore. And we have two options. We can close the theater and say, we, he did. And then I joined him. We did really useful work for 10 years or so. We did a lot for a lot of artists. And no one, God has not come down from heaven to say, all these theater companies have to last forever, because many of the great ones, in fact, haven't lasted forever. And I think some of the ones now shouldn't last forever, if you want my opinion. Or he said, you can take it over and do whatever you want with it. But I'm out of here. And I thought about it, not for very long. And I thought, well, I might as well try. What's the harm? So what I did, well, and I didn't know what I was doing. My point in talking for five minutes about this is that I lucked out, because I happened to be at a stage in my life, which matched the stage of Playwrights Horizons in its life, which matched the stage of the nonprofit theater movement in its life. And I was just the right person at the right time.  And I was good. But what happened to me could never happen today in quite the same way. Then I decided to focus the work of the theater on a specific group of writers that I was fond of and had cultivated, like Wendy Wasserstein and Krista Rang and William Finn and a number of others, Lupine and all that. And then, thank god, we did a couple of really successful shows in a row. And that put Playwrights Horizons on the map. And it also bailed us out financially so that we could actually survive. But all of my knowledge about, I never went to drama school except acting, class, private, you know, in New York, all of my knowledge of the business, the art, and the craft of producing was completely self-taught. I mean, if you had told me when I graduated from Harvard that I would be, have gone into the management end of the theater, much less work in the nonprofit theater, which I'd never heard of, I would have not known what you were talking about. So that was my path. Thank you. And so now we've got you to the point where you are, in fact, an artistic director. And I'm wondering, as one who has never been an artistic director, what exactly does an artistic director do? Let me make this a little easier to answer. Like, at any given moment, there are probably more than 1,000 possible great shows potentially out there. You are not yet in a position to do a season of 800 shows. How does that universe of possible shows get funneled down to a smaller group that actually reaches your desk? And then how does the decision get made about what a season is going to look like? Well, it's really quite easy. I don't mean the process of it is easy. The doing of it is quite hard. Producing is many, many things. And an artistic director of most of these nonprofit theaters does a lot more than just pick the plays and supervise the productions, though that is the main thing you do. But my fingers, and I dare say those of others who have the kind of job I have, we're into everything. Fundraising being, obviously, one of the principal things. I think producing is simply, I mean, this just sounds obvious, but it isn't so obvious maybe, is producing is simply the intelligent exercise of one's own taste. And at least that's what it is for me. I think that one has a feeling about a certain play. One has an intuition about how it might be done. One looks for certain things in writing that maybe someone else at a different theater does not look for. And you act on your impulse. I mean, sometimes I'm afraid to migrate detriment. I pay no attention. And I don't mean this to sound arrogant at all. I pay absolutely no attention to what the audience might or might not think about the play. I pay no attention to whether the play will sell well or not. I really couldn't care less, and I never have. I'm assuming that my, to use the word again, taste will appeal to somebody other than me. But I think when you get distracted by, well, will the audience, or as some people who run theaters say, well, my audience like this or that, it's just a trip to hell. It doesn't work. So there are obviously writers that I've worked with over the years, and that's the grand directors I've worked with over the years, that we all of us in these theaters have certain colleagues that we work with a lot because we like them and they like us. But more importantly, I think in terms of writers, we understand their writing and perhaps how to produce their work. And the greatest thing about getting older is the first day of rehearsal in a room full of actors and the designers and the staff. And there are always millions of people who come to the first day of rehearsal, what they call meet and greet. And the great thing for me now is to look around at people that I've worked with for years. I mean, we had meet and greet for Act 1 about, I don't know, two weeks ago it started. And I realized that I had worked with James Lapine since we produced a playwrights' horizons whose play called Table Settings in 1977. And we had Commission Sunday in the Park with George around 1982. So it's many, many years over many plays. And this is just one example. And here we are all these years later still at it, putting on shows. So the artistic director, I'm a great believer in one's own personal taste and one's own personal intuition. Someone else may not say that. But that's what it is for me. Now, for two decades you worked in tandem with Bernard Gerstin. Yes. How did that division of responsibilities work? Well, he was wonderful. I mean, he, for one thing, left me completely alone. And I could just do what I wanted. And he was supportive from a man. He was the management head. And he was the one, more than me, who said, yes, let's do this. Yes, we can do this. He made Lincoln Center Theater into what I call a theater of yes. And was the first one, despite the fact he was in charge of the money, to say, you know, let's risk this. Let's spend the money. Let's do as many shows as you want. So he was a great showman. I was very, very lucky at Lincoln Center and at Playwrights Horizons to have two wonderful management heads who were partners and enthusiasts and who didn't give a damn about the bottom line, even though they were in charge of the budget. And that's unusual. So again, I lucked out with Bernie Gerstin because part of the reason that Lincoln Center Theater, which some of you may know, had a very troubled past for many years and a number of managements until basically Bernie and Gregory Mosher and then me, you know, it was doomed. People, when Bernie and Gregory came there in 1980, I think it was around 86, the deal from Lincoln Center was it was about the fifth management. And the deal was if you can't make this work, we are going to either tear the theater down, turn it into a cineplex or an indoor ice skating rink and get rid of all the floors below it. I mean, because theater had never worked there. Lincoln Center was thought to be a music place, not a drama place. And it's turned out well. It has indeed. And also, I would say, in terms of picking plays, we are lucky enough and cursed enough to have two thrust stages. And believe me, thrust stages are harder to work with than proscenium stages. And people don't really understand that because usually we've used these stages very well with the right director and the right designers who know how to work in thrust. But not every play works well in a thrust theater. And quite frankly, the 50 to 75% of the great American plays of the past 100 years are basically small, realistic family dramas. And they don't really work that well in thrust theaters. So one of my duties is to find plays that are architecturally compatible. And that's a really serious thing. If you don't know how to use the Beaumont, how to use it and what do you put in it, you are really in trouble. The Beaumont is the biggest stage acreage, the third biggest theater after the Metropolitan Opera and Radio City, which doesn't mean you have to fill it full of scenery, but you have to fill it somehow. At the time you came to the Beaumont, you were right off of Playwrights Horizons where you were working with a very tiny stage. And as I remember, it's a percenium stage. So how was that adjustment for you? It was very, the adjustment was scary, I have to say. I didn't know what I was doing when I got to Lincoln Center. And it's just as well. I mean, I came there very easily. Again, I was lucky. And I really say that because I look back on my life and some of my friends. And Gregory Mosher left quite quickly after a few really excellent years. And I, to this day, don't really know why he decided to leave, but he did. And they had to find someone very quickly. And Bernie called me up one day at home and said, Gregory is leaving. I mean, I was friends with all of them because I'd worked for Bernie. I was the hapless and hopeless box office treasurer at the Delacorte Theater, one grisly summer. And Bernie said, Gregory is leaving. And I have a list of people who we're looking at to replace him. And it has to be done very quickly. And I'd like your opinion about all these people. So he, fine, he read me this list of mostly, in fact, exclusively directors. Because I had always felt that whoever was the artistic director of the Beaumont should be a director. And when they interviewed the entire world in New York to hire Gregory and Bernie, they interviewed me not for the job, but just, what did I think? And my big thing was, get someone who knows how to direct in that space and isn't afraid of it. Well, Gregory was a director, though ironically he never did direct in the Beaumont. So Bernie read this whole list of about 12 or 14 names of directors. And then there was this pause. And then he said, what do you think about Andre Bishop? And I mean, I'd never even occurred to me. I thought I really didn't like Lincoln Center. I thought I didn't approve of Lincoln Center. I thought it was too mainstream. I was nervous about thrust theaters, as you said. And but I said, well, he would be odd but interesting. And then I came up and had this kind of secret meeting at 8 AM when no one else was in the building with him and one or two others. And this all happened in a matter of three or four days. And they offered me the job. I had no interviews. I had met nobody on the board. And I took the job with unbelievable, almost unbearable sadness because I didn't want to leave Playwrights Horizons. Playwrights Horizons was my child. I mean, it had been Bob Moss's child. But we'd come a long, long way with that theater. And I loved it and believed in what it did. And I believe in what it does now, which is virtually the same as it did then, just better and better now. But I knew that if I didn't take this chance, I might never get a chance like this again. There are not that many theaters in New York to take over. None of the people who run them weren't going anywhere then. And they don't seem to be going anywhere now. And I also wanted to do more than just do new American plays. You know, I wanted to do Shakespeare. I wanted to do big musicals. I wanted to do revivals of some of the great musicals. I wanted to do the classics. So I said, sure, I'll do it. And it was, I hit the ground running. Gregory left in the middle of the season. I was working at Playwrights Horizons and at the Beaumont. There was nothing planned for Lincoln Center at all when I came there. And it was, if I had known how difficult it was going to be for a while, I don't know if I would have taken the job. But I didn't know. And it was the best thing I ever did. But it was really hard for the first few years. And I was, I mean, I'm prone to anxiety anyway. And I lived in a constant state of feeling anxious, and inadequate, and uncertain. That's the answer to the question. Going back to something you touched on earlier about it not just being a job where you select the season. So how deep is your involvement in the individual productions as they move forward? My involvement in the productions is intense in the beginning and intense at the end. And unless there's trouble extremely uninvolved in the middle. And by that, I mean I'm very involved in obviously the choice of director and designers and the look of the show. I'm very involved in the casting. If it's a new play, I tend to get very involved in the rewriting of the play to the degree that you rewrite it before you go into production. And like everyone, we do readings and workshops, all that stuff. But once we go into rehearsal, I stay away for a number of weeks, unless there's a reason for me not to. Usually because something's gone wrong. And then I come in at the end of the rehearsal in the room before moving on stage and see one or two run-throughs. And I try to avoid tech rehearsals as much as possible because it's just so unbelievably boring. And then I get very involved in previews. We have many, many previews at Lincoln Center. And I believe in them. Not everyone does, but I do. So you're suggesting that changes, really, significant changes get made in those previews? I do, especially musicals. I mean, I used to think, because of Playwrights Horizons, I used to think that you could turn something awful into something wonderful during previews. I don't think that anymore. I have come to recognize the truth, which is that a play and a production are, by the time you hit the first preview, the destiny of the play and the production of it is somewhat set. And you can make it ever better. You can, you know, you can, I mean, again in Act I, I don't know if, I'm sure many of you have read this book, I assume, if you haven't, you should read it. But, you know, there's all this stuff about once in a lifetime, the first play, Hoffman and Hart, wrote together. And they go to tryouts in the first act works and the second act doesn't. Then they rewrite it in the first act and the first half of the second act work and then the rest doesn't. And then Kaufman gives up. And Mosshard has a moment on the beach, just like mine. I think everyone has moments on the beach somehow.  You know, you said you took me on as opposed to the hundred of other Playwrights you could have taken on. And we have an act and a half and we're going to fix it. And Kaufman reluctantly gives in and then they try it out again and then the first two acts are working but the third act isn't working. And Kaufman says something like, you know, we have to stop. The actors are exhausted. We're going to New York in four days. And I think we're about 70% there and we have to settle for 70%. And Hart, who's, you know, a young guy who doesn't know anything much, says, well, what do you think a success is in terms of percentage, especially for a comedy? And Kaufman says, well, for a comedy I'd say 90%. If you're lucky maybe you can get away with 85%. And so Hart once again goes back to the beach and decides how to rewrite the third act. And they've spent all this money with this new huge nightclub set that they put in at the last minute and he decides to get rid of the nightclub set and go back to a very simple two person scene to begin the third act. And Kaufman says, we can't do this. This is crazy. We only have four days. It's too dangerous. And Moss Hart says, no, I want to do this because you told me we were 70% there. And if we're 70% there, we can get to 100%. And that's what they did. My point being, and I didn't used to know this until really only about five or six years ago, that I can usually tell by the first preview of a show whether it's going to work or not. And I don't mean be a great critical success or box office. I just mean be artistically excellent. You can tell and you can sort of tell when it isn't. And you can work very hard to make something good better. And you can work very hard to make something stinky acceptable. But you can't, you don't have the luxury now of completely reversing your fortunes. At least I don't think so. It's hard in New York and there's also the insidious, insidious influence. And I say this with profound anger of the internet and these theater chat rooms filled with what seemed to me to be mostly, not entirely, but mostly people who like taking people down. And it's a terrible thing because all these critics, you know, they're at home alone with their computers and they read these chat rooms and no one can persuade me they're not influenced by that. And it didn't exist in the old days. I mean there was word of mouth that was good or bad. There was the telephone. But there is a pack of people who just, especially with musicals, who want to weigh in their opinion and are more than usually delighted if their opinion is negative in the very beginning. And what I don't like about it is that they write under a pseudonym. They don't write using their real names. And if they would write using their real names, their responses I'm sure would be more measured. You know, because in the old days, even when I was starting out, but in the fabled old days of Broadway when Moss Hart was writing, critics and theater journalists, as you know, there were many more newspapers, saw them, loved the theater and they saw themselves as caretakers of the theater. And by extension, they saw themselves as caretakers of the men and women who worked in the theater. That doesn't happen anymore. And it's a fact of our lives, but it's true. And it's an awful, awful thing. It's not true just of the theater. It's true, it seems to me most everything now. So in New York, it's hard. I mean, you have to be in decent shape when you start performances. And it used to be that you could be a little bedraggled and people forgave you because the tickets were cheap and it was a preview. Let's imagine we're getting close to where we turn it over to the audience for questions. So let's imagine that you've decided to take a year off to go to Tahiti and write your long dreamed of epic poem on the invention of linoleum. And we have by a lottery selected somebody to take your place for a year. What would be the most important advice you would want to give that person? I don't know.  Yeah, if you were going back. So it's like a sabbatical. That's right. What are the things every new artistic director needs to know? Well, if I wasn't going back, if I was leaving the job, I would say to the board or whoever was in charge, find someone different from me because fresh blood is very important. And a new point of view about how a theater runs itself, what the theater does is good. Change is good in the hands of intelligent people. If it was just a year and I was coming back, I would say find somebody who's exactly like me because the theater, you can't disrupt a theater that way by someone who comes in only for a year and wants to do everything differently or even 50% of things differently. But I don't think I will ever take a sabbatical, but I think I will eventually, you know, I'm not gonna stay there until I'm 100 at all. And I would, I mean, it would be really good for the first time to have Lincoln Center Theater run by a director. The idea that I had all those years ago before I came to work there. That would be really interesting and that's never really happened. What's ever happened successfully? Well, yeah, I mean, Kazan, who was one of the original, they never actually made it up to Lincoln Center. And then the consortium of directors that were there in the, I guess, 70s when Richmond Crinkley was the producer, I mean, it lasted, I think they did two plays or something. But a really great director who would direct on those stages, especially in the Beaumont and also be the head of the theater, that would be interesting. And now let's take some questions from you. No, I'm very glad it was Mark Weston. I don't know if you recall the name of Abel Zunluck. I had an, well, I was with the playwrights from the word again when Mr. Moss. Probably before me. No, when you were there. I was there. He was a day of the painter, all those. Had an incident that happened about three months ago. In 1980, I had a play that was going to Broadway with Kevin O'Connor. And it was a successful play. But Kevin died and the play went down. I submitted it to playwrights Verizon about three, four months ago. I got the most interesting letter back saying, you're writing of the 80s. You're writing is in the 80s. We love the play, but it's not today. And I got to thinking, what do they mean? Now, my feeling is I'm wondering whether death of a salesman today, if it just started with Mr. Miller, would they have accepted it today? Or would half have to be a drug dealer?  I don't know. Is that the upgrading of a writer today to fit today's period? No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't know, because I haven't read the play, so it's hard for me to answer. I don't quite know what they meant. Whether the play, did they mean the play was that word people use, dated? The writing of the play. The writing was... Like Neil Simon, we always had a play every year. It's been a long time that Neil has been on Broadway. And I'm wondering if those plays came in today without his name just starting. Would they be on the stage today if they were written way back then? That's a really interesting question, because I don't think there's a really interesting answer. I don't know. I mean, I think the theater has always, like every profession, moved with the times. Artists, whether it's playwriting or music or whatever, are reflective of the society, or should be reflective of the world in which they live. I had this long conversation, well, I've had endless long conversations with the people about musicals and why don't the younger composers of today write melodies? And I don't know why. I used to have a theory that all the melodies, all the combinations of notes had already been arrived at, so that there were no more melodies. But I don't really know if that's true. But what I do know is the world that, all the greats that we all love, including going up to Rodgers and Hammerstein and even beyond to Steve Sondheim, their view of the world is quite different than the view of most young people now. I think most young people now, despite the fact that these people lived during several world wars, despite the fact that many of them were Jewish and refugees from abominable lives in Europe, or what could have been abominable lives in Europe, the world is a very precarious place and a very dissonant place.  And the play was written in 1989 and it's a series of scenes that starred in, I think, 1968 or something with Eugene McCarthy and goes up to what was then the present when she wrote it in 1989. Well, now we're gonna be in 2015. And I was very afraid that the play would seem dated, especially the 1989 part, which was then today. And it's all about, as you know, women, the women's movement and a woman who, who she and her friends have every reason to believe that the ensuing years are gonna be ever better for them. And Heidi, at the end of it, has adopted this baby and Wendy was quite severely criticized at the time by many women because they thought she's copping out and she's saying the key to life is having a baby, which even is a single mom. And of course that wasn't what she was saying but that's what some people thought.  I mean, and the world of 1989 of her play seems just like another historical period. But what makes it interesting is we, the audience next year, will look at the end of her play and think, well, she was right, those women did get far and well, she wasn't so right and those women didn't get as far as they thought they were going to get. So the play has taken on, this is my hope anyway, this patina of great sadness and regret because the end of the play in 1989 was triumphant. And when people see it now, it's not so triumphant because we know what's happened in the past 25 years. That's a long answer again to saying about your play. Sometimes there needs to be more distance between when you wrote the play and even now, I mean, when we did these Odette's revivals, we did Awake and Sing on Broadway and Golden Boy.  Odette's won't work because it was a period where his work was extremely unfashionable and thought to be anti-capitalist and communist, all that, none of which was very reasonable. And suddenly we did these plays and they caught on again. But we could barely get the rights to Awake and Sing because his son, Walt, who lives in LA, didn't want them done in New York in a major way. He was too afraid that people would say his father dated old. So it's not very helpful to you, but maybe send it to them in 10 more years and see. No, I'm semi-serious. Next question. All right. This is kind of a big question, but I guess I'm interested in your time working with playwrights and plays, that how you've seen the role of new plays change over the years and where you see it going. And you sort of, like you mentioned, the internet and media and changes into the media. I mean, it sort of seems to me that like new American plays used to be more of a big part of media and entertainment than they are now. And just how you've seen it change and where you think it's going. Two answers. I think the theater in general played a bigger part in the media that it does now because in the old old days there was no television. And then there was television and it imitated the theater for many years. And then it, but I think partly because the theater has been decentralized. I mean, New York is still perhaps the theater capital of the United States, but you all know there's a million theater companies all over this country. And they didn't start out by doing new plays, but they sure do now. And I think that we are living, I mean, I say this and people look at me like I'm insane. I think we're living in a golden age of American playwriting. There are new plays being done in vast quantities all over this country. It just, we don't know, when you're in the middle of something you don't know, I'm sure that the golden age of Athens, no one sat around saying this is the golden age of Athens. But we are in a golden age. And the demand for new plays, I know this may sound odd for those of you who were playwrights. The demand for new plays is enormous. It's much greater than it ever was. I mean, if you go back to the theater of what I was, Odette's or Moore's Heart, that theater mostly consisted of 20 or 22 playhouses all squeezed into mostly the West 40s of New York City. That was it. And those who wrote for the theater were pretty much the same sort of person. And the theater has, because the country has so diversified and changed. And you know, it's just that people in the theater are always like, everything is always negative and it's always like what isn't happening. And you know, this goes on in the nonprofit theater endlessly, this organization called TCG, which is a very useful, wonderful organization. But you know, you're always seminars about why aren't we doing this and why don't they do that and how can they do this when they should be doing that? And it just drives me wild. We should celebrate our theater in this country. And we do, but not enough, I think. No, you've raised your hand over and over again. So let you get in here. Okay, it's kind of a two-part question, but one is how has your mission evolved given all the changes in the culture and everything else, has it evolved to today? And also given all the plays, particularly I'm interested in musicals, but those musicals that you've read, you've produced over the years, is there a play that you are waiting for that hasn't yet arrived? No.  I mean, I love reading plays. I read at least six or seven a week and I've been doing that for years. You look, you do, I do look for the big, you know, the mythical creature, the big American play. I'm very sensitive to the fact that there are many great, small American plays. I mean, the fashion now is, as you all know, you know, 90 minutes, no intermission, that seems to be, I mean, when I went into the theater, it was just the end of the three act play. And the three act form is by far the most graceful form. It's like sonata form in music. It's a beginning and a middle and an end. Well, you can't possibly do three act plays. Now, I mean, occasionally, if it's a revival, but rarely. So, I'm sensitive to the fact that a lot of writers feel that they should or want to write small scale plays. And I appreciate it because those plays can be, we've done some short plays that are really astounding, what you can do in 90 minutes. But what you can do in two hours and 45 minutes can be astounding. But I think, you know, in the case of musicals, I think that's different because the young writers now, this is gonna sound foggy-ish and I don't mean it to be because I kind of welcome it, but they don't, they're not as interested in narrative. They're not, and I'm not saying this critically either, by the way, they're not so interested in cause and effect. And in musicals, you know, I grew up on Rodgers and Hammerstein and so I like good old musicals with plots and characters you care about and that's why we keep doing Rodgers and Hammerstein. We're about to do The King and I next year, which is gonna be my third and final cause we did Carousel and South Pacific R&H show, but that's not what the young writers are writing. What they're writing now is, has much less form, a lot of content and a lot of melody, if you can get through it, to it, but it's much more haphazard somehow because I think life to them is more haphazard. So I think for somebody like me in my job, I have to keep abreast of what's going on because it's the artists who tell us what's going on. I'm not the producer, I'm a producer, I'm not supposed to be telling the world what's going on cause I don't have all my ideas, virtually every idea I have comes from plays. So you look to the artist to be the barometer of the world and sometimes it's ugly. Is there somebody towards the back I'm just not seeing because I'm seeing mostly hands towards the front. Okay, if I'm not missing anybody, I almost called on you before. They're all asleep. Hello, my name's Leslie and I'm a lyricist librettist and my question is, what is it, twofold, what is it that really, really attracts you to in new musical as opposed to saying what are the things you really look for in that? Well, you know, we've done a lot of new musicals at Lincoln Center Theater and I did a lot when I was at Playwrights Horizons. I mean, we were almost, besides the public, the first non-profit theater to actually dare to take on new musicals and it's, that's a really hard question to answer. I think I've become slightly, I probably shouldn't be saying this, but I've become scared of new musicals. I've become scared, a little bit timid about producing them as brazenly as we used to because we've had some very hard knocks and sometimes we deserve them. I mean, sometimes we put on musicals that we're really not ready to face New York anyway. But I guess I still tend to look for those old things which are a story, character. I don't want to say melody because the definition of melody has so changed because the form of songs has changed. But where there's a complexity, I guess, of composing. But all the musicals that we've done that I've really loved, I guess if I look back on them and I really haven't up until this particular moment, some people would say, well, they're old fashioned. They would say the light in the piazza was old fashioned. They would say, perhaps that show we did that I love though it was not successful parade was old fashioned. They even might have said March the Falsettos, which I did at Playwrights, was old fashioned. But I'm looking for the same thing in content but I'm sensitive to the fact that the form has changed. Okay, we're down to our two last questions now. So if there is somebody towards the back room, make sure I see him and I see two hands. So you first and we'll see whether other people raise their hands for the final question and whether it's a competition or not. A classic or Shakespeare or something like that. How you decide that, you know, how to choose that.  Not usually an actor, in fact, not an actor, but sometimes a director, but with revivals. I mean, there's certain writers that I really loved, Odette's being one of them and I do think and I hope that I'm not tooting our horn. I think that our revival of Awakening and Golden Boy has really spurred and Odette's revival in this country just because I'm aware of the plays now being done and they're big plays, they're quite hard to do just economically. You know, I love Shakespeare so I tend to want to do it and again to go back to something I said earlier, I have to be sensitive to the Beaumont stage. Odette's actually wouldn't work very well in the Beaumont but Shakespeare does. Anything that's presentational where the actor can take in the audience works in the Beaumont, which is why ironically it's such a great house for musicals or serious musicals, that's part of the reason South Pacific did as well as it did was because it was in a big theater that was nonetheless intimate and the back row is row P and we could do that reveal of the orchestra because of the thrust that you can't do in a Broadway theater. So with the revivals it tends to be like I'm passionate about J.B. Priestley and there's a play I'm longing to do called Time and the Conways, which I haven't been able to do yet. So I get these fixations and sometimes a director will come like Jack O'Brien came and said, let's do Henry IV, both parts as one evening and it's actually happened to be my favorite Shakespeare play, but it was his idea. Yes, sir. Two parts to the question. The musicals in the 60s and the 70s used orchestras of 20, 24 musicians, standard. Nowadays you have four or five musicians. Is it that the producers and the investors are making more money nowadays or is it the musicians are more expensive? What was the reason? Well, your question is basically a commercial theater question. It's not a question that I, fortunately, have to deal with very much because in the words of Bernie Gerstin, our job was not to make money, but to spend money. So when we did South Pacific, we had as many pieces as they had in 1949. We did the original orchestrations with the original size orchestra, but I'm coming from a different point of view than a commercial producer. We don't have investors to repay. We have a board to be responsible to, but commercial producers do and it's wildly expensive to have a big, big orchestra. And also, quite frankly, sound reinforcement is part of it because everything is mic'd, everyone is mic'd. Everything, you can put things on synchronizers that imitate five or six different instruments. The large orchestra, in some people's minds, is less necessary. It hasn't been our experience. I mean, we're doing the King and I and we're doing it with the same amount of instruments that they did in 1953. Otherwise, why do it? Part of the success of it and the glory of it was this incredible sound. Does that answer your question? Oh, is there another? Sorry. But you and the Roman theater accept unsolicited, unsolicited scripts for a musical course? We know. We can't. Our output is we're not a theater that does that much new work, you know? And we just can't keep up with it. If you can find it to come through like your best friend whom I know or some agent, we just can't keep up with it. There are other theaters, I assume, Playwrights Horizon's still being one, where they do, but the Beaumont is not a theater for new plays for the most part. It's just too big. Occasionally new musicals, but not even that. So get it to us another way. Andre, thank you. You're welcome.


The title of my synthesis this morning is the development of Greece, with the full force of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Greece takes on a truly global concept, meant for a truly global constituency for us. The intention is to produce products, product lines and milestones, which are big, high-profile, innovative, visible, new, novel, nonsense, new models for city multiplication and city delivery system, new models for jointly building expansion capacity, new platforms for delivering agronomic, post-harvest and processing innovations, new products, new players, new challenges and new opportunities. Greece's vision of success is a series of qualitative impact cards with our outcome-driven innovations through product-oriented harmony and partnerships, partners of two kinds, direct, strategic and key, and the other boundary partners. I really don't know. This is the most contentious issue. Calling investment by partners in a contributing global, benefit-nationally invisible, as a working contribution unit with a specifically defined product, not simply a support or service provided in Greece. And how are they taking into account in this meeting, sharing new life in Greece? Logically, the expected impact is development of new technologies that fit farmers' needs. Our farmers' needs new survey that think fine, fostering improved policies and technology, targeting to enable improved price production and marketing will move to be think one in order to justify, in order to satisfy the demand-driven, farmer-oriented production system focus for what we are trying to do. Research approaches raised from the digital-typing, field-typing strategy, the higher venture and rise, sub-wide improved deadlines, resource management against resistance, dealing with the rise virus, and the rise. To simulate those textured defenses as global research approach for disease resistance, green super-rise for Asia and Africa, variety testing scheme, to learn the Alliance business model for post-arrest operations. But the most intriguing of all is Joe Rickman's 400 ex-combatant women in Burundi, where PPS, old farm demonstration, and farmers' field schools have been conducted. His button cry is getting technology to the target users. Quite interesting is the fact that Africa imports 400% of its obiturized needs. Someone at least bit the Philippines, the titan of the biggest rise importer in the world. Africa advices rise for Africa, sounds like an appropriate name, except that he has stopped naming reading lines of its releases. It continues, however, to track down what it releases without naming there. Every presentation mentioned partners, partners, without all their work would never be done. But how are partnerships possible? Are they the mirrors of altruism or the faces of aggression toward self-interest? What hopes it is the former, not the latter? In doing what they are doing, what a partner hopes, more than me, emerges. That is why a global program admissions. Thinking globally, acting globally, and benefiting globally. Of the many altruism programs I have participated in, this one brought the most questions, the most answers, and the most curious expectations of the audience. Quite noticeable is the active participation of young post-doctoral fellows on the way to being the next generation of rise scientists developed in China, under the green super-rise program. Be free to live China, so they can join other writers, men, producers, the strategy production and mitigate program for as far as one in India, with partners like the state governments, engineers, etc. Training was also provided. The right of tracking is being done using a different approach. South Asia is more than India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. It's part of every project. And I want to underscore this, because without capacity, you can't do your work. Critical working groups must have the rich, the ability, the system, and the credibility. It's more of an action group for knowledge management and dissemination. India's certified club advisory program combines experience and knowledge. Eventually, it will be a self-sustaining program, characterized by examination, education, experience, and evidence. This seaside evaluation of early entries using direct singing is a likely sign of the next revolution because of the present result. The rights-based production system in Bangladesh are delivering, they are developing, but waiting and delivering SSNN technology, fascinated with the expanded version of success from 60,000 directly affected households to more than 1 billion. I don't know how you do that. More than 30 years of research led to science-based SSNN. Printed materials failed to deliver, hence, we have no backbone applications. I wish there were actual cases from the film to report. It's also said that this is not for everyone, especially the rights mapping and global rights information gateway. Why should we do it? The answer is very simple. Together, we know more about rights than any other group or organization in the world. I think that's a valid reason. And then we have the SSD knowledge base using household survey database, which is a gold mine. I believe it. It's a gold mine of information. And now, for the courtable cause. Why? Believe it or not. Number two, business models should be location, technology, and after the specific. Another one from Joe Lickman. We can't eat potential, but we can realize it. Another one from India. Part of our seats are never easy, I agree with you, to have a man straighter impact in Africa. That comes from Africa. And finally, and collaboration makes the world a smaller place. I hope that, secondly, is right. That's all.


I have a new games console. It's a Nezono chip handheld gaming device. This is the Player 2 gamepad. The gamepad is vile and spongy and generally horrible in every possible way. So let's try to turn this into an Uiga gamepad. This is just a simple straight through cable. This is connected to here. I've used a sharp tool to scrape through the tracks here. That's not my best joint. So this feels just as bad as it ever did, which is right. I hate that. These are micro switches. That will do. That's not very good actually. It needs a shim of some kind. So I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I've managed to bodge the gamepad into working with the keys. I 3D printed some shims to give the right spacing inside the keys and as a result they are nice and positive. The magic number turned out to be 1.5 millimeters of padding between the bottom of the hard plastic keycap and the switch itself. It could probably do a little bit more. It's a little rattly but it works. It's nice and clicky and it feels very positive. So I'll just take that apart and show you the bits. So there's the PCB. So we have here this is the circular piece that goes on the bottom of the D-pad. You can see it's got the snubs which push against the key switches. These buttons are a little bit different. Each one has one of these little caps that fits over the whole, the post in the middle of the key and yeah that works fine. The bad news is that after making something of a dog's dinner of the cable I have discovered that it is not a straight through nine pin cable. It's only got four wires in it and not all of these pins are actually connected to anything which means it's completely useless for connecting up the gamepad. As I need, well I have the pin out here, I need seven pins and this is five including the ground shield. Well yeah the good news is that at least I've got a connector here that I can plug into the Amiga. It's now small enough now I've carved all the bits off it. That's not supposed to be in there. So I'm going to have to do a bit of thinking about that. So we now don't need the rubber mat but I think I'm going to keep at least some of it partly to fill these holes which are a bit ugly but also to see if we can do something about the rattling. So let's do a bit of surgery like so and this can go down here. Now let's try the PCB. I'm hoping that that will provide a little bit of cushioning. Hopefully it's not too thick and I don't need to adjust all the pads again. I actually forgot to test it with that in place because obviously I had to cut it to make it fit. Still works fine. It's still quite rattly. I may be possible to jam some of the mats in but I don't think I will. I think I'm just going to live with it like that. Okay so that's actually the gamepad part is basically done. I now need to try and connect this up to a connector somehow. I've got the connector from here. I would need to pull that apart in order to get at the actual pins so in order to solder stuff onto it. I do have one of these. This was the one that was going to go on the gamepad itself. Honestly this is not a good fit to plug into the Amiga and the biggest problem is trying to get hold of a piece of 9-core wire. Technically 10-core if you include the ground. So having done a bit of thinking I've got lots of these. These are Ethernet cables. They are 8-way and they are twisted pairs so they come in 4 pairs. They're twisted together to reduce interference. That gives me 8 wires so that's not enough for a proper straight through 9-pin cable because I need 9 pins plus ground but 8 is fine for the gamepad. Of the gamepad buttons we're not using button 5 here which is not connected and we're not using pin 7 which is plus 5 volts. I did go and looked it up and all these are active low so I need to ground them in order to make them register so that all we need are 4 wires for the directions, 2 wires for the buttons and 1 for ground that's 7 which we can get out of one of these cables. Because this isn't enough for a 9-pin straight through I'm not going to try to wire one up and then put this on the gamepad itself. So what I'll do instead I think is just to connect this straight into the gamepad and solder it to these terminals. It would probably have been better had I known this ahead of time so that I could solder this directly onto the PCB but honestly I think having it like this is easier and then the other end I can attach to this and I'll need to rip this apart to get access to the actual pins. There's a big chunk of resin which everything is potted inside and this this bit will actually pull off and you can see the pins and the framework that the pins are attached to. So I'm going to dismantle this just to see if that will work because if it doesn't I'll have to change my plans and come back. So here is the connector after I've ripped it apart it's reasonably nice it doesn't have a shell which is a pain I can probably 3d print one without too much difficulty it'll be nasty but it ought to work and here is the Ethernet cable I have decided to destroy new in the bag this one has it looks like old-fashioned crimped connectors rather than the molded on ones and I'm hoping that this will mean that it's a bit easier to get at the wires so can I just pull this off just save me having to split the wires apparently not okay and inside there are the four pairs and oddly enough Ethernet cables never seem to be particularly tight there's actually quite a lot of slack space in here let's just expose the wires up to about there trying to get the sleeve cut reasonably tidily well that's not reasonably tidily but it'll do okay so the each pair is twisted together but we don't care about that so we've got orange and orange striped brown and brown striped green and green striped and blue and blue striped and we get the pin out out which I can't get on camera it's just a little bit too big but here for the little joystick you can see pins 1 to 4 are forwards back left and right so these are going to be soldered on to they are numbered you can see the numbers on the socket which is nice 1 2 3 and 4 then we have pins 6 which is this one the button 1 8 for ground and 9 4 button 2 so let's just strip a few of these let's try orange first I hope these aren't aluminium they are silvery and they don't seem to be taking the twist very well aluminium is used in wires because it's a good conductor not as good as copper but cheaper by far but it doesn't take solder that's not taking solder you see it just runs off pants right well that cable is a complete non-starter I'm not going to be able to solder this is there something else I can do these need to be crimped that's the problem okay what I've got here is a header pin kit now this is used for wiring up well headers it crimps on but the metal that the pin itself is made out of is solderable so if I put a pin on one of these wires so the wings fold flat over the insulation which holds the pin in place and then the bare wire itself goes into this thing which I can then crush and that should make electrical contact it's decent just decently solid I mean this is terrible but for the low-grade switching we're doing for the gamepad it's no digital or analog data it's just like human presses on or off that should work fine and we should be able to get solder on the pin so that I can then solder this again I am running out of hands it's got to push into the solder pot okay let's try and find time to hold this with there you go so that one is pin one these on camera and there we have a robust joint okay I think that's actually whoops going to work okay let's crimps up some more you get these things in this ribbon so I just need to pull a few off if I can find the end there we go and we're going to need three more for the directions two more for the buttons and one for ground we cut there okay so now we get to solder them good now blue goes into pin eight is there any slack to let me get pinned pin a good blue to pin eight and yeah I am also noticing that all these header pins are touching each other so I'm gonna have to do something about that I think I'm going to have to desolder these and start again took a depressingly short amount of time to desolder okay the issue is I didn't put any heat shrink on so let us both do that and also take off a bit more bit more shrouding okay I did one off-camera just to make sure it would work and I wouldn't set fire to anything and it must have done so quite nicely so I'm just going to use the right colors so we want that much heat shrink push it up to about there which exposes four or five millimeters of pin and we take our lighter and we lightly toast it perfect also help hold the wire on I don't have any brown and white heat shrink so I'm just going to use brown again likewise with all the striped colors the colors will help in making sure that everything's in the right place I'll it's a fairly obvious whether it's a colored piece of wire or a striped piece of wire fantastic my lighter is empty so here's a corresponding nine pin plug from a different project so if we plug that in we should then be able to do continuity tests actually top off this this is from my hydroponic setup which I was unable to actually make keep plants alive which is a bit of a problem with hydroponics that is it's a problem with the hydroponics if you can't keep plants alive so so here and here yep actually you can do the here I think oh and also I noticed that I wired blew up backwards so good good anyone orange is here yeah the order changes rather oddly yep we need to net between the two ends that was not connected this is green green yep not connected blue and white and blue good we have finally a electrical connection that will plug into the Amiga and yes I will need to 3d print a plug for this yeah these won't work because of the wings they're just too big alright so we now need to do the other end which is going to be exactly the same thing but without the soldering so honestly I'm just going to do that off-camera okay that wasn't too bad once I got the hang of it over here I have some sockets in pin order over here I have wired pins up to the PCB so the pins will go in to the sockets that's not really making good contact that's okay I got the socket strong that's worked well why isn't this one it is pushed all the way in it is kind of working that's very loose so is that are these aren't these aren't all the way in that's why just need to push them in with a thing and they latch into place little plastic things on the DuPont connectors hold the pins in place okay that's better so not much better anyway the advantage of having pins is that we can rearrange the what does what in the inevitable situation when I get the mapping screwed up but let's actually do some mapping and figure out where things should go so I use the good old multimeter in continuity mode black is common she let's use the crocodile clips for this one so this is going to be our test probe let's see what purple does and blacks hooked up to common like so so right purple is left orange is down can be back yellow is up red is be that's going to be button two and that means that green must be must be green is right we missing one green should be right oh that's came loose that's why it wasn't working right green is indeed right so I know why I'm confused about there being a small number of wires which is that the wire for button B has in fact come off that should have been connected here so I'm gonna have to find it and solder it back on so if I were a B button what color would I be I am now quite ashamed of myself that purple wire has got a bare end or they all have bare ends here yeah here's a white wire now has the track come off yeah I can see a little bit of brown on the bottom of the wire which is copper from the track that's come off so we're going to have to expose some new copper zoom in this okay well we have exposed quite a lot of copper in multiple tracks I hope that's not going to come back to bite me we can read in this if I can figure out how to do it with you go to hands so if I do that hasn't come okay we're gonna have to put solder on this track there's a bit bridging yeah that was me trying to solder myself okay that looks good right we'll put on one more pin I'll show you how it's done it's very similar to the sockets in fact I was putting those on incorrectly what you do is the wire itself gets held in place with the smaller set of wings that forms the electrical connection so we fold those down and push really hard and then the big wings hold grab the insulation okay so multi meter there should be a yep and we haven't shorted through to be excellent that bit's done white is a okay so let's stick the pins into a proper DuPont connector pin thing we want the order to be yellow that is distorted and won't go into the hole try this end right yellow orange this is back same thing again you know these soldered as connections are so much less convenient than just soldering something with solder but you know aluminium wires if I had some proper multicore cable it would be a different matter nope that is not going in there we go purple okay and green now the other one is a three-way and this is the two buttons and ground so ground is black and that one goes in the middle don't do that just yet button one is white no it hasn't I think I may even put that in backwards yes I have there's a little projection on one side of the pin that goes into the plastic latch and holds it in place okay so button one ground right and button to storted now even more distorted okay so we're done so the wires come round to this side and connect to here now we want brown to match with yellow whoops these pins are very irregular okay and this side we want green to match with white is that actually okay I think that's good enough now I was there is enough clearance for the connectors to go there if I loop the wire around like this and kink it unpleasantly that should provide a cable clamp so then the back will now that's not fitting here okay let's do it without a cable clamp and we'll just be careful these things are getting in the way I think need to find a place for this base yes and he's pressing the other side of the board okay so we want the wires to go roughly there so let's just get out and stand by and just tape it in place we only need it to be there why we're putting the back on once it's done the back will hold everything in place how is that good now I need to find where I put my screws and put them in put them back in this is the common wire this blue one and this green one should be button B I believe so this one over here should be the other button good and there is actually no possible way I'm going to be able to hold one probe on the ground one probe on one of these and press the button at the same time so let's just cut straight to the chase and get the Amiga out so here it is running treasure island dizzy and let's plug the controller in and see what happens hopefully not exploding my Amiga well nothing bad's happened yet so let's try pushing some buttons oh this is working well B doesn't do anything can I jump hmm yes apparently touching water kills you and that's the end of the game oh yeah I remember this the treasure island dizzy is brutal there we go and now we can jump left jumping is a bit awkward using the left and up but that's how they did it in the Amiga days I'm not sure I can stop on the again now I've picked up a coin good well this is actually working it's not bad it's a lot better than it was when it was the original game controller with the rubber buttons this is quite usable and is certainly capable of playing games to test things hmm it might have been worthwhile mapping one of these buttons to up so that I can get a more intuitive jump of course if you go down that route you eventually end up with a complete Arduino inside the thing and on the fly keyboard remapping using the extra buttons but I don't want to do that oh and apparently I'm dead again anyway that works it could be improved I think a couple of an extra millimeter on these buttons wouldn't do a world of good printing some new ones takes moments so the most difficult bit is taking it apart and trying to get the cable and so on wedged back in the right place the d-pad is fine so I can easily hold jump press I can easily tap jump while holding left or right which is a good thing I'm not really a fan of d-pads but they're better than joysticks anyway that is now done so I am going to wrap it why did I just die I have no idea yeah this game is tough right well I hope you enjoyed this video and please let me know what you think in the comments I don't know yet how many pieces it will have been in yes anyway see you all next time


Item number SCP-2954 Object Class Euclid Special Containment Procedures SCP-2954-2 is eventually killed by SCP-2954-1 during Suburaya events. During the event's duration, personnel should observe from afar due to potentially life-threatening damage SCP-2954 causes. Guards are stationed around the area of events to deter civilians during inactive times. Class A amnestics are to be administered to civilians witnessing Suburaya events. Description SCP-2954-1A refers to six large pieces of weaponry resembling satellite dishes located on the boundaries of a deserted rural town in... Japan. SCP-2954-1A are capable of autonomously discharging electric arcs through unknown means. Analysis of SCP-2954-1A's interior reveals no relevant components apart from a rope and pulley system used to position SCP-2954-1A. SCP-2954-2 refers to creatures bearing a mix of reptilian, amphibious, and pissing traits. They are 50 to 60 meters tall with a smooth, blue-gray dorsal coloration and a red pleated armored underbelly. Their back and forearms feature prominent, spined fins. SCP-2954-2 instances are bipedal, walking hunchbacked with their mouths always slightly opened. They are also capable of spitting a corrosive fluid. Suburaya events start every seven days with a single SCP-2954-2 manifesting and beginning to destroy its surroundings. As SCP-2954-2 rampages, SCP-2954-1A activate, firing at SCP-2954-2. SCP-2954-2 will move towards SCP-2954-1A, presumably in an attempt to destroy them. As this occurs, sounds of gunfire, land vehicle movement, and orders shouted in Japanese are heard. Artillery shells materialize in mid-air, aimed at SCP-2954-2. While the military forces, henceforth referred to as SCP-2954-1B, are invisible and intangible, projectiles fired inflict physical damage. During Suburaya events, SCP-2954-2 destroys at least one SCP-2954-1A. Explosions similar to that of destroyed automobiles also appear as SCP-2954-2 attacks the invisible SCP-2954-1B forces. As SCP-2954-2 approaches the town, the intensity of SCP-2954-1's attack increases. The combined assault from SCP-2954-1A and B always results in its death. SCP-2954-2 will collapse, then gradually grow transparent before disappearing completely. Once SCP-2954-2 disappears, disembodied cheering can be heard before all damage done to the environment is reversed. Addendum X1 While exploring the area of Suburaya events, personnel discovered an abandoned building containing movie posters, film reels, and various documents. Posters depict a creature similar to SCP-2954-2. The title of the poster, translated from Japanese, reads Fukeru's Assault. The movie reels follow Suburaya events and are labeled 1 through 20. Of note are the following, translated from Japanese. Our sponsor gave 20 monsters to shoot. We'll pick the best footage. Filming completed. 1974 Don't forget, call our sponsor to say further shipments are unneeded. Daiju producers, do you need more Fukeru? We can resupply until you're satisfied. Daiju producers, you have not replied for a while. Regardless, we will send another shipment. Happy filming! There are multiple and similar copies of the last message. While the oldest date stamp is from 1972, they continue to the present day. New letters appear sporadically in a file cabinet near the front entrance. When personnel first discovered the building, the documents had overflowed and spilled to the floor.


And what did you think about both starting pitchers tonight and Jay Hap and Clark Schmidt? Good. I thought, first off, Jay, stuff-wise, was solid. Mixed pitches, drove his count up. I thought was, in a lot of ways, picked up where he left off in spring training. So that was really encouraging to see him come out and set a good tone for us. And then Clark, I thought, was excellent. I think he relished the opportunity facing our guys in Yankee Stadium. I thought the stuff was sharp. You saw just how special of a curve ball it is. And I thought he was not only the quality of the pitch, but also the ability to command it. And I thought he did a great job of that tonight. He talked about being aggressive, not backing down to some of those big-time hitters. Did that impress you for not having a ton of experience at this level that he is so confident on the mound? I don't know if it oppressed me this time around, because it's kind of what I expected. I mean, that's first off the scouting report and the makeup reports that I heard about him going into spring training. And then he showed that to us while we were down there. He's continued to show it here. So I can't really say I was that surprised. I expect he's a confident kid that when he goes out on the mound, he expects to be good. Just how odd was it playing an intra-squad game in an empty Yankee stadium? Yeah, it was weird, but something that is important that we get used to. And so these days are going to be important not only to obviously build our guys up, but slowly but surely get used to, obviously, a different environment that we're going to be playing in. I remember around 9-11, we had an inter-squad game in the middle of September in Old River Front Stadium. And that kind of brought back that memory of how odd that was. So we've got to get used to it. And today was the start of that. And I expect us to. Jake Siner, go ahead and unmute. Erin, this is the first time you guys got to run something like a game situation just with some of the new protocols. I'm just curious, any pickups, any learning experiences, anything that surprised you in adjustments you plan to make regarding those rules going forward? Yeah, I think it's getting used to. I think the challenge will be once you get into an actual game of real competition and the everything, the thinking that goes into every pitch and trying to think ahead. But also being mindful, obviously, of the protocols in place and the social distancing and certain things you're not allowed to do that sometimes you do without even thinking about. So that's why as important as these games are for everyone to get used to playing in a different environment, obviously getting the reps that are absolutely necessary at this time of the year as we get ready for the season. But just also just getting comfortable in what's a little bit of an uncomfortable situation. Next question from Eric Boland. Eric, go ahead and unmute. Erin, I'm sure you've probably had that for a few days, but the schedule was finally officially released today. What was your just general reaction to the 60 game schedule and how it laid out for you guys? Yeah. Well, I knew we were playing the East, not leaving the East. So I don't know. There's a lot of formidable teams, obviously, and when you combine the National League and the American League East. So I know it's going to be a tough road. And I know we also look forward to that challenge and look forward to hopefully being ready to go when we head down to Washington in a couple of weeks. Brian Hoke, you can unmute. We can't hear you, Brian. It's not working for you, Brian. Let's go to Sweeney, Sweeney Murdy, if you can unmute. You got me? Yeah. Hey, Erin, I know you said you were going to do this, but can you just explain what some of the reasons were behind whatever defensive alignments you were trying? Yeah. So we kind of decided to go just to play really safe with the rain and then dump in, obviously, the outfield just because it was a little wet. And it was probably fine before the game even started in left and center field. We just didn't really feel like we wanted them running around in a wet field. But right field was pretty dry. And we checked with Judgie before, as far as when he was out there running, and he wanted to give it a go. So initially, we were going to go probably three innings, every other inning with our outfielders. We were going four innings with the infielders. So just a way of creatively trying to get them there at bats and stay in the game, but also get them off their feet and build them up a little bit defensively. So we'll be creative here in these early days where you might see some different alignments, but the rain factored into that a little bit tonight. Marley, go ahead and unmute your next question. Hey, Aaron, can you hear me? Yes. I'm asking the question for Hope, because he's having a little trouble with this computer. So Hope wanted to know the plan, actually I do too, the plan for Garrett called tomorrow, please. We'll see. He built up pretty good his first go around. Probably three, four innings, probably anywhere from 50 to 60 pitches would kind of be the plan. But we'll also kind of take it inning by inning. But there's a potential that he could give us for tomorrow.