in your heads, feel free to start sort of, you know, adding that to the conversation because this is an ongoing conversation. And it is in very short a conversation to determine sort of how do we train for the future? What can theater do for the future? And because it is an unrehearsed future. All of our talks are available. The entire history of talks is online on the Drama School Mumbai website. And it's a really great body of knowledge and I'm almost convinced that it's a podcast series in the making, so maybe that for later. And we're joined here with my buddy, Curators. Mwanya has decided to write Shotgun with me. Thank you, Mwanya. And Amy and Mweny are here. Mweny disappeared, you know, there he is. And we're the ones who are sort of leading the thrust of we have different quests ranging from sort of intersectionality and interdisciplinarity and hybridity to transcendence, to voicing. And all of this is kind of like what we are thinking about. One of my quests in this term came up in a pre-talk with Mwanya and her last two speakers. But my questing is really about what can theater be and how can it sort of take us, like what can learning theater and training in theater be beyond that art form and that craft that we use to make a well-made play or to be in a live space together or to do something on stage. And the question of course was a slap in the face right at the beginning of the pandemic. And Ben and Amitish both, I don't know if Amitish is still here, but I'm sure when he is, he's just signing in and joining us. And Amitish, hi Amitish, welcome, hi Ben, welcome. So I will be very quickly and very brief context and I'll leave it and now we can formally start and I will leave it to Ben and Amitish to sort of describe themselves and their work in a few opening remarks. But the reason that I asked them to come in is because both of them have been working at length and for a lot of time in spaces, non-theater, beyond theater. But they both come in from intrinsic sort of theater-making, Amitish is a teacher at the National School of Drama, Ben studied at Lisba and they both are theater makers, but they have deployed their skill sets in very exciting ways, which you can see on their websites which I'm sure Falguni will based at some point into the chat window. But the question was to Ben and Amitish when they first came in and talked to our batch that had gone into lockdown was, can you give these guys some joy and some hope because they're gonna be locked down for a year, a year and a half, can you help them figure out what they can do with this deep in-person training that they'd had for nine months? And Amitish and Ben both sort of took them through a few talks and showed them ways forward. And I just think it's really an exciting question to ask is this, how do we transcend, how do we transpose, how do we transfer and transpose our skills and our capabilities and our aesthetics and our sensibilities as theater makers into other spaces? So I will start there. Amitish, are you settled in, would you like to start or should we ask Ben to go first the menu? I'm very happy to go in a non-alphabetical manner. Yes, okay, fine. So, great. Ben, the floor is yours, please tell us all about it. Non-alphabetically, just barely. Hello. So I'm Ben Samuels, nice to be here, lovely to be here. It's a pleasure and a privilege and an honor. So I live and work in the UK. I'm originally from California. I run a small touring theater company over here called Olympic and I also work as a kind of visiting director and practitioner at sort of drama schools and universities in the UK. And both of those kind of roles have meant that I slowly over the years kind of have developed an interest in sort of what comes to be, what kind of comes to contribute to the totality of a kind of theatrical experience. So the writing and the performing and the directing but also the lights and the sound and the costumes and the makeup and all of those things, how all of those things come together into a performance. And this has been going on for a long time, my very first job out of uni. I built sets for regional theater in the States. So this sort of what are all of the different elements of theater has always been something that I've been interested in. And a number of years ago, a few years ago, I saw a call out for theater companies that were interested in experimenting with motion capture technology. And I trained with Amy at LISPA in physical theater and some of the cock based approaches to devising and creating theater. And so working with motion capture seemed like an interesting extension of that training essentially, which is, so using sort of the body essentially to animate, to animate digital characters or avatars. And so I replied to the call out and I was sort of thinking about a way to reply to it. And in that, there was also something else that kind of came from that sort of Lakaka approach, which is one of the things that had always stayed with me was this classic sense of everything moves and that we can observe the world out there and observe how things move and then try and embody that. And in that act of embodiment of observable phenomenon, we discover a certain kind of movement dynamics and out of those dynamics might even arise a kind of poetry. And then there's a sort of extension from that, for me, which is that essentially, which I think is really beautiful that kind of for me came from the training, which is this sense that everything kind of contains its own metaphor. And so when I started thinking about how to approach working with motion capture and technology, I sort of started asking this question of sort of what's the intrinsic metaphor that sits within the technology? And motion capture is sort of this sense that you have these kinds of things that are on you that trackers that sort of, that you've moved through space and this sort of computer system knows where those trackers are in space and then it essentially assembles a movement based on everything it understands about movement and then assigns that movement to anything, to any kind of character. So it's this weird, so this notion of almost, it was almost disembodiment for me or certainly existing in a physical space and a virtual space simultaneously. And so reflecting on that, I was trying to put this application together and I was back in California and my dad was napping on the sofa behind me and my father suffers from Parkinson's-induced dementia and that has gotten progressively worse over the years and is now pretty far along. And so he, as I'm sure if you have an experience of people who suffer from dementia, it's from an observer's perspective, he seems to spend a lot of time somewhere else, though his body is physically present, his mind seems to be present elsewhere and sometimes present here. And so thinking about my dad and thinking about this motion capture and embodiment and disembodiment and presence and absence, I sort of started to say it might be interesting to make a piece using this technology around a story, around a story that circled around a character with dementia and the experience of dementia and that became ultimately a kind of interrogation of reality and sort of where different notions of reality sit. And so that piece became Fatherland, which, yes, there it is. And so the way that we made the sort of the mechanic of Fatherland was that there was a performer who was me, who was sort of in the motion capture, would invite audience volunteers on stage and I'd get them to wear a virtual reality headset. And then I would perform different characters, multiple characters for this audience volunteer who would then experience the world of the story as well as those different characters from within, they would see it through the headset. So they were seeing a virtual world with all of these characters unfolding inside of it. And then we would project what they were seeing to the rest of the audience. So the audience was essentially seeing a kind of live animated film being constructed for them. So it looked kind of, I'm just gonna do a quick screen share like this. So you can see there's me, there's Alex who's actually the technical director of the show but in a rehearsal wearing a VR headset. And then what you see on the screen is what Alex is seeing in VR. And this is of course, and we'll talk more about this later. This is a classic acting exercise. It's the mirror. So in this moment, the character, so Alex is seeing the world through the eyes of one of the characters in the piece through the father. And he's looking in a mirror and he's seeing his own reflection. I am basically mirroring the person in the headset. And so this piece as this moment as it unfolded, unfolded in that kind of nice acting exercise way where I would just follow their movement and the person in the headset was, yes, had this amazing sort of was startled to kind of see that happen. This is another just example of it. So this is, again, there's a character with a piece called Esperanza and she's inviting someone to dance. And then here in the spinal one is the character sees a crow dancing on a window sill. So you can see me and then in the background, there's a crow.  And the sort of the central idea was that each character had a different link to reality and had a different relationship with reality. So the father had dementia, the son was sort of conspiracy theory adult and had all of these ideas around what it was that was causing his father's dementia and he ended up sort of compiling all these different conspiracy theories that involved everything from American mythology to giant pharmaceutical companies. And then the care had sort of much more grounded, both feet on the ground, was very much about the present, the here and the now. And so that was sort of, that was Fatherland and in two minutes. And one of the things that we encountered working on that piece and one of the areas that we hadn't really considered was sound when it came to making it. In that, how you spatialized sound was sort of one of the areas that we ended up kind of doing a sort of a quick fix for. But it became sort of a thing that I was interested in. And so I went and sort of investigated that a little bit more and discovered this whole amazing world of spatial sound. I should say in all of this that the work that we were doing in virtual reality and then as I'll talk about in spatial sound became was, there was a certain intuition with it. And because virtual reality is essentially, it's working in a kind of virtual space. It refers to space. And so as a result, when we were trying to construct for it, it was a very sort of theatrical experience of trying to imagine space and then enact stuff that would happen in a virtual space, in a physical space. The constant work is essentially to map physical space onto virtual space. And a lot of what we do in acting and in performing is essentially trying to imagine ourselves in other spaces. And so working in this kind of virtual reality with virtual reality was very much a very intuitive shift because we were essentially imagining, you're on an open space, but imagine that you're in a kitchen and this is where the sofa is and that's where the TV is and then there's a door over there. And you're making, as we say, you're making the invisible visible. It's just that the visible is manifesting itself in a virtual space. When we started shifting over into spatial sound, it became equally fascinating because you discovered that that sound has space and that space has sound. And so a lot of the work that I've been doing since the lockdown, moving on to Fatherland, which was a big, big project that we can no longer do because it involves audience volunteers and headsets and all this stuff. But further I investigated spatial sound and three-dimensional sound, the more kind of fascinating that became. Really briefly, the idea of spatial sound, which would be pretty familiar, I think to everyone who sort of knows the encounter, it's the same idea. It's the idea that there's a sound sphere around you and that you can locate sound anywhere on that sphere. So whereas you were used to sort of stereo sound, just hearing something in our left or right ear with spatial sound, you begin to get a sense of height as well as distance and proximity above, below, near, and far. And what's amazing about beginning to craft stuff with spatial sound is, again, there's a reference to space and you're beginning to think dynamically in terms of the sound of space and how you can create a story that moves through different spaces and that those spaces have a sense of physical presence through what you hear and that you're considering sort of, again, this sort of dynamic journey through those different, through the sounds of those physical spaces, as well as the other kind of dynamics that you can layer in through, again, our broader theatrical understanding and knowledge. So how do you so, which would be soundtrack as well as voicings, the sound of the environment itself. So all of this kind of stuff, when I sat down to work on more audio pieces throughout the pandemic and sprinklers, there's a piece that I wrote a short story that we then animated text to and then created a kind of spatial soundscape to accompany the story called The Garden, which I think is, which is now, which is still up, oh, there it is, on BBC Taster. And then we've been working for the last eight months or so on a piece that we'll be releasing shortly, all being well, which is kind of an immersive audio play where basically you as the listener take on the perspective of different characters and you start to hear the world of the story, as they, of the same story as it's experienced by different characters. And so we're including those characters own sort of internal thoughts and reactions to what's happening to them. And that's a piece called Pengea and we are hoping to have it done very soon. And with all of this kind of stuff, just to kind of wrap up what was really, what's been sort of fundamental and as the thing that I keep coming back to is this notion of space and dynamics and using essentially our theatrical understanding of how you created dynamic experience for an audience in space. And then transposing that into either virtual space and virtual reality or the, or this audio space and 360 degree, the sound of space and audio. And I think that's, I'm already over my time. That's me, I really look forward to talking more, chatting more and the conversation. Thank you. And with that, I mean, that is a really, that's exactly kind of where I'm going to trust further in terms of the conception and understanding of space, especially from when we were thinking about it in terms of embodiment versus disembodied space. So I'll come back to that. But Amitish, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you, Jaehan. Ben, that was fascinating to listen. You have already visited your site to take a look at your work in a more deeper, more meaningful way. But I really wish that one day you can bring your work to India and we can also experience it live here. Before I begin, I just want to express my solidarity with everyone in Delhi who's going through the pandemic and through this immense tragedy that's unfolding around us. The city is grieving, the city is in mourning and the city is extremely angry. And I was really into minds whether to, if I could make it for this talk, if I should, there are constantly messages coming on my phone and I don't know what message brings what news. But at the same time, I think this is the kind of environment that also bleeds into my work. And it's also important to think about how this affects the way I work and what is the immediate future of the kind of work that we're developing here. So I'm here. I just collected my thoughts and might not be as focused as I usually am. So please bear with me. Like Ben's work, my work also has personal triggers. So I tend to work conceptually and poetically. I have no regard for disciplinary boundaries or borders or disciplinary integrity. I have from the very, from very early on in my career, have moved very freely between theater performance, poetry, writing, technology, and visual art and photography and back. And so it's a sort of a blend of work that I end up creating. I'm also interested in my work in investigating non-theatrical subjects. For example, in 2015, I created an entire festival of sleeping in which I invited audiences to come and immerse themselves in different sleeping conditions and in different relationships of sleep with other bodies and with our environment in public ways as well as in private ways. There was another work that I created which was about mourning and this was in collaboration with a professional mourner from South India trying to investigate the deeper, unsayable knowledge that we find in traditions of mourning and grieving and what they can mean to us today in our modern world, where I think we've forgotten to mourn. When I work with technology, I work with it in terms of its political force. I mean, technology can be extremely fascinating and also can help us create a spectacle but for me, what's important is to sort of uncover the layers behind the screen and behind the materiality of these devices and to see what are the different kinds of inter-relational experiences these technologies are sort of unleashing for us, they're proposing to us. So when I work with technology and performance, I sort of work with it in a more conceptual way. And one of the things that I often ask, one question that I often ask of my work is that, should it be done? Do I really need to do this and why? And that question keeps nagging me. It's hanging like a knife all the time and I've abandoned many projects midway because they just didn't seem urgent enough. I also work with narrative in a non-linear way. So when I write or when I work with a dramaturg, I'm not so much interested in building a plot and a story and what happens next, but I'm quite inspired by the way epics are written. And so the event is already there right at the beginning of the work. Everybody knows it. Now the purpose of the work is to actually look at the event, revisit it again and again and again, and to keep hearing about it, to keep participating in it in different ways so that the layers in that event begin to unfold, unpack in front of us. So when I work with original writing, when I do it myself or when my writer does it for me, we kind of write in a circular way to keep coming back to the one single event. And so it kind of produces a very interesting kind. So for me, the idea is that when I invite audiences to watch and experience my work, it's not so much about, it's not so much a time-based work so that you go from 0.1 to 0.2, then you kind of get the, these are kind of immersive works that I think about which you can enter and exit as you will. And you're invited to stay for as long as you like. So there was a work that I made which was a 48 hour immersion in which we had taken over an entire building and it was sort of based on Bertolt Brecht's epic play called The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagany. And so we created the entire city of Mahagany inside this three-story building and there was a choreography of different kinds of performances taking place. And the building also had its own economics, it had its own currency and audiences had to buy and also trade and also, and so there were these different kinds of transactional relationships that were set up inside. And this went on to 48 hours and everybody was invited to also sleep or leave and come back in a few hours. The specific work that I want to talk about in a little more detail is a work that I made last year which was entirely online. And this started right after we went into lockdown in March 2020. And soon after the lockdown, we started to see many, many authoritarian governments in South and Southeast Asia taking advantage of the pandemic and rounding up artists and activists who produced work that demonstrates dissent. And so in India and elsewhere, in China and elsewhere, we, I kept reading about a lot of poets, artists and activists who were being incarcerated. And one of my friend's parents was also amongst these names in India. And I started to sort of work on the idea of losing somebody and this idea of the virus, the biological virus and this other kind of virus that is part of South Asian politics now. For me, went hand in hand and so I started to think of a virtual world that was much like our city, that was much like Delhi, but only that there were some rules that were not there. For example, gravity was not there. And so I started to sort of work with coders and programmers in this coding language called B5 which is a generative coding language. So what happens is that here coders write the code but what that code does is that it kind of loads on everybody's browser and generates a world according to certain rules. And this world could be different, slightly different on one screen and another and another. But these rules kind of guide this world. So I started to write these rules down and I was, and I like writing rules for a world.  And also there are these sort of some relationships between audiences and performers that get, that the parameters of it get set. So I started to create rules and then the coders would translate these rules into code and then the code would generate this virtual world. This virtual world was about 200 rooms and houses that were flying around in a storm. I had went and photographed how the center of Delhi looks when it is the most polluted. There is a light amber kind of haze that pollutes the entire environment. So I photographed that and I came back and that exact haze is then sort of reproduced in this virtual world so that when you enter this virtual world, there are these sort of rooms that are sort of whirling around you and there are the lamp posts and automobiles and cycles and benches and everything that you see in the city around, it's just up in the air, it's going around and each one of these objects is interactive.  All performers are live, you go from one room to another room, all these performers are live and they're talking about somebody, they're talking about one person. You know at the start, there's one, a poet in this world has gone missing and everybody you meet has had some kind of a relationship with the poet. You meet poets very close, people who are very close to him, you meet his neighbors, you meet other people who've heard about him, who've been inspired by him and you slowly begin to understand that not everybody can be trusted in this world. There are some characters who seem to be speaking the truth but they really aren't. There are others who can be believed and there are yet others who are very clearly spreading rumors. And so I'm inspired by Italo Galvino's imagination of cities and for me in the city is being in a, how the kind of experience you get when you're in a foreign city and you're walking through an unfamiliar street and you want to hear whispers from the apartments and windows of the houses that you're walking by just to get a feel of what are people talking about here and that is something that I wanted to recreate in this virtual world. So you enter, you listen to these people and every few minutes you get the option to exit the room as well. If you click on the button, you exit the room. If you want to stay, you don't click and then you keep listening to these performances. Every few minutes, an option comes on your screen about what you would like to hear next and then these sort of titles of scenes and the audience is invited to vote just like the votes that we see on Instagram or Facebook or they're these instant polls that are running. And when the audience votes, they get a minute, the scene or the title that gets the most votes probably will be played by the performer. So the performer knows they also get instant poll results and they know what has been voted for and there are rules amongst performers as well that there are times that they will choose to play what the audience voted for and then there are times that they will not, they will reject the poll and go on to play another scene. Other rooms have films and also Sonic Art and you kind of go in and out of these rooms. It's a 90 minute long show and right at the end you kind of come out. One other thing that we needed to do and I'm going to wind up now in a minute, one other thing that I needed to do while rehearsing and building this piece was not only to think about how to adapt theatrical exercises, you know, ways in which we perform in physical spaces to online spaces and a lot of performers because you were in lockdown they were performing from their homes and there was a lot of effort that went into finding nooks and crannies in the house that can be dramatic that has a sense of mystery and can also be turned upside down. For example, there was a scene in which a performer does this entire scene hidden inside one shelf of his cupboard and so in the beginning, you don't get to see what this is but as sort of the scene moves forward, the poetics of the homes that we live in came into play in this kind of online theater but I also needed to create an entire backstage mechanism so I worked with the coders and I created a backstage dashboard, you know, just like the kind of controls we have in physical theater where there are wings and green rooms and sort of these kind of control mechanisms between light sound and performers. So there was a dashboard in which I could see how many of the actors were streaming and were live, how many people were watching them in their separate rooms. There was a start show and an end show button and the code that was running was lying as well so we could track bugs and the immediate things that the code was doing in the performance and then there was a chat button which was a broadcast button between us and the audiences and the audiences could ask us questions and we could broadcast messages to them. So I'll wind up here and maybe open this up to a conversation. I know Jehan has a few questions. I have a couple of questions that I noted down for Ben as well and everyone else as well. Thank you. Thank you Amitish. I have to say that I'm really glad you showed up today. I know what you're going through in terms of, I mean, we're doing it in Bombay as well. And we did have a chat in the pre-conversation about whether we actually wanted to do this or just postpone, but we just decided we will take it literally one breath at a time is exactly what we've been doing here. Thank you so much for being here and doing this with us Amitish. Really appreciate it. I'm going to thread backwards, I'm audible, right? Yes. Yes, okay. I'm going to thread backwards because I'm going to thread all the way back from the idea of needing to make an intervention or should I even make this piece? And why should I even do it? And what is urgent for me? And then thread backwards to the fact that Amitish, you're not making theater, just the theater, you're making it even to be non-theatrical and you use this term, which excites me also, which is the idea of social practice, your work as social practice. And then thread back again, keep going back further than thinking about like when, then when you craft a piece of work as a theater maker but for these non-theater spaces. And I'm speaking from a theater maker's point of view but I hear in everything that you and Ben have talked about, everything that I think about when I'm putting together a play or creating a piece of work, even, you know, devising a piece of work with a group of actors for an audience. But I can see all those sensibilities at play. So I'm just trying to thread back through that and understand sort of how does this go from instinct to actual craft, because if we thread back further that we talked about audience interaction and the fact that in your work, there is a relationship between audience and performer, audience and piece. And then there's a relationship between, between in terms of how we manipulate the space, a space for the performer. And all the way to the beginning because this is the point where I feel like everyone stops before they even take a step in this direction, which is they say, it's not embodied, it's not live. I can't breathe and feel the person in the room with me. But over here and over the past set of conversations, I think when we even talk about holding space, under your speeches, for example, is holding space, but it's holding space in a virtual place, but it's still giving us a real experience. The digital course that we just did feels extremely intangible because I don't know what my 28 students went through because every time I close my laptop, I'm back here in this room. But yet something has happened, but yet something has not. And so I just, I'm gonna leave it there and ask you guys to sort of, maybe you guys can now thread forward and maybe five minutes with Ben and five minutes in imitation and we'll just literally open it up to the room because I really do think there are some interesting comments that are starting to emerge over there. So threading forward back again through the conversation, but now how do we take that from instinct to craft and do we even take this step? And what happens to that thing that we left behind? Did we leave something behind? Question mark, question mark, question mark. So I guess I can jump in quickly. So I had the real good fortune, Jehan to work with you and Ira last summer to kind of put together this short course on transference and transposition for DSM and I think one of the questions that we asked ourselves the outset was essentially, what are we doing when we make theater? And what is, and what do we mean when something is theatrical? And we sort of tried to deconstruct that and we sort of split it and we ended up calling it a superpower because it is a superpower to get a group of people together and work for a period of time in order to put something on stage for an audience and hold them in that moment is an incredible feat. And we actually split it into two different parts into essentially a process, an understanding of that there's a process that comes with making theater and then there's a kind of, and some kind of a moment, a distinct moment in time of performance and then sort of to start to deconstruct those a little bit into what is it that goes into that moment of being on stage and then asking essentially what, of all of those different elements that exist in that moment of being on stage, which are the ones that are fundamental? Which are the ones that you're like, I cannot negotiate on that. And from there, you can then begin to move forwards and sort of thread forwards from which are the ones that, so okay, I want to retain this from my practice and then how can I take those threads, take those threads forwards into other mediums and into other and into other spaces. So I think that's sort of a chemo and I think from me and I sort of spoke about this last year and it sort of threaded through the little talk that I gave, it had to do with space. It absolutely had to do with a sense of space and retaining a sense of working in space, whether that was physical space or sort of immersive digital space, but that space as a partner for me was, if I had that, I sort of knew where I was. And then I could then sort of try and upskill and sort of learn all of these new bits of technology and software and all the stuff that you needed to do in order to manage that, but that intuitive knowledge of I'm crafting something for a sense of space was kind of got me through it. The other thing that I was interested in from what you just mentioned, Jehan, was the sense of lightness. It's funny, we use this word capture with this technology, motion capture and sound capture, audio capture, but we were doing some recording the other week with this sound engineer Heinrich and one of the things that we've learned, so we use binaural microphones, so which capture space. And one of the things that's really amazing is that usually when you're trying to do video and this kind of stuff is do you wanna get rid of sound? You wanna try and have a clean sound, but when you're working with these tools, there's something really fantastic about capturing the moment and the sound of that moment. And there's an immediacy to that and a presence to that that then translates into the work, I think, so that when you're doing this recording and a plane goes overhead, usually that's a killer, but you're like, no, actually it's amazing because you listen to this. And at that moment in time when we were doing that line, that plane flew overhead or there's another recording where we have a fly buzzing, you know, a car goes past, you know that that is a discreet, unique moment in time and that you are taking that moment that you have caught in all of its kind of fullness and then transport and then sort of turning that into the work that the audience is then receiving. So it's not necessarily live, but I do think it retains a sense of its presence and its immediacy. I think, I was gonna talk about iteration as well, but I think I'm gonna say that. So yeah, that's some threading forward thoughts. Anateesh. Yeah, one example I give when I teach students about liveness is that, think of a cricket stadium since cricket is the core of all sports in South Asia.  Will it be possible for you to follow the game? The ball is this small, right? And what you see in the post technological era is that even when you are sitting live in a stadium watching a game live, you often turn to the massive screen that is installed in the stadium to actually really follow the game. And so you follow the screen plays slow motions, it plays zoom ins. We have the third empire, which is again a technological intervention into physical live sport. And so even a game like cricket, which is live and is being played physically needs, it's a post technological game now in the sense that in the way in which, it is experienced, watched, played and results are declared. It's also sort of this idea of liveness also affects the way we watch things on screen. For example, you would respond differently to watching a cricket match on the screen if you knew it was live or not, right? And so nobody can deny the fact that you will have goosebumps in a tight game even if you're watching it on your screen if you knew that this was live. So liveness is just not, liveness is an ontological category. It is a category that it is enough to know something is live and the other conditions of physical proximity, et cetera, need not be fulfilled. And, you know, I mean, Philip Oslender and several others have actually spoken about how our experience of liveness has changed from one decade to another and from one century to another. One of the things that I find fascinating about amphitheaters is that they are very, very fascinating about amphitheaters and something that we also saw in Occupy Wall Street movement a few years ago was the idea of the human microphone that the liveness of a speech was not just a relationship between the speaker and the listeners but it was actually a relationship in which the speaker would speak and then sections of the audience would actually transfer the speech from front to the back and that everybody was actually participating in speech making as this was happening. And that's another kind of liveness where, you know, I mean, there is a physical proximity but there is no one nodal center of liveness and that it's a liveness that actually takes place in waves across different sections of people. So I would look at, I would sort of open up the idea of liveness across physical and digital boundaries and try and invoke different kinds of settings in which this can take place. I also, yeah, sorry. Sorry, finish your thought and then we'll take it to something else. I would also say that I think that most technological theater has made it more difficult for physical theater to take place, not just the fact that there are new rules in place for physical theater, but also, if intervention, interaction, participation is not possible in physical performances, then why am I witnessing it in the same physical space? It's something that I would ask myself that physical and live performances for me in the post-technological era are necessarily interactional, they are interactive. They are, you know, that the mechanisms and the tools and the parameters and the ways in which performance unfolds in the physical space needs to have some kind of unpredictability to it. And I think that is something that liveness for me has become more dangerous in a sense. It's more radical, not just of the effect that it has on my skin, but also of the unpredictable nature that's inherent to the life. I have a really interesting question, Amy, your belief in theater as social practice. Angir, sorry, yes. So, because we're talking about, Amy talks about spaces of resistance here. And Amy, why don't you take it and actually ask your question? But Amitish, I also wanted to maybe ask you what your thoughts are in terms of the urgency of why you're making particular pieces of work right now. You talked about Delhi being very angry right now and what does the virtual space offer us in terms of these spaces of resistance that Amy speaks about? Amy, why don't you elaborate further or? I think that's a really wonderful way of making it concrete, Jehan. But I couldn't hear Amy. Oh, sorry. So, Jehan was making concrete what my reflection and question to you both had been in the chat, which is, you mentioned this sort of secondary plague of demagogy and it seems so obvious that there's this focus on bringing live bodies together. That seems to be crucial to these kind of demagogic leaders. I mean, Trump had flouted all the dangers to bring people together for games and for rallies and it just seems that they seem to understand that if people are brought together in real space, bodies are brought together. They have, there's a kind of concrete political power to that. And so I think, Jehan, you're bringing it to a very good point, which is, you talk about this anger and the reaction in Delhi right now and just wondering how the virtual might become a both. And I'm just sort of still struggling with the way in which it seems such a fragile alternative to the concrete power of real bodies in real space. I mean, the demagogues seem to really understand that. And so I'm just curious about your thoughts, both of your thoughts about this. If I can jump in here. Amy, that's an excellent, excellent question. I think this is a question that I'm going to go back with after this interaction because this is right after my heart. There is a traditional modern power of gatherings. One of my favorite authors, Alan Reed, has a lovely, has a quote-worthy sentence in his book on theater, where he says that theater might be the last human gathering left. And one also knows that how the theatricality of a gathering can be whipped up to produce the kind of demagoguery in authoritarian powers that we see today. In my experience, the physical and the digital amplify each other so that physical gatherings in India, for example, have become larger and larger and larger precisely because of the digital mobilization that is compelling people, driving people to gather physically at these rallies. And there is a significant effort to mobilize people through digital means, which then we see the results of in physical spaces. And the opposite, I think, and the traffic sort of flows backwards as well, where there is a physical gathering or a physical event, which actually has much bigger ramifications in the digital sphere. One of the popular means that are going around in India right now is that imagine if this pandemic had come in the pre-Internet era to India. We would not have had a fraction of the truths, the facts, the real news floating around and being consumed by people today had we been living in a state-sanctioned period of media and without the internet. Now, South Asia has a very different relationship with digitality, which is that our digital spaces are freer spaces right now. The physical spaces. For example, if I do theater in Delhi, I need to take permissions and licenses from three different authorities to be able to stage my play. In the digital world, I don't need any one permission. And this is how we're seeing social media erupting in South Asia, where social media is a space where people are able to express far more freely than they are able to express within the confines of their families, friends, and also institutions. And this is what I say a lot when I lecture here in India is that our relationship with digitality is a political one. It's not just a social one. And we have to understand what this new freedom and also chaos that it unleashes means for us in our cultures. And I think if we can understand this, our artistic practice here can take a different turn so that resistance can be produced both in digital ways and in physical ways. And I'll just end with one example, which is that one of the projects that I've been doing for the last two years is a billboard art project. So I've taken over and occupied a public billboard in the middle of Delhi, which is just about a kilometer away from the parliament. And I've been writing text for it for the last two years, produced about 150 pieces of text that I've gone up every day. It faces the parliament, so it's for the parliament and also for people who pass by. But what has happened is that the poetic nudges that drive my text have actually encouraged a freer debate on online platforms. Because as people pass by, they take photographs, they upload those photographs onto social media, and then there are these threads of conversations of hundreds of people who are talking to each other around what that text means and to our current scenario. So that the physical billboard kind of flows into the digital circulation. And then from there, I also try to follow the different conversations that are going around it. And then that affects the way I write my next text. So let's think of it as land and ocean, we kind of flow in and out between physical and digital. Sorry, I keep having this internet issue. Mark Phoenix, I saw a note from you, and I just wondered if you could step in and elaborate on that. And also, I believe you wanted to know about the backstage dashboard. But the other question first, Mark. So which are the things that I've been chatting about? What are you? I thought it was really interesting. You were trying to say the rooms for rumour lies and truths were surrounded by fake news. Yeah, I like this idea. It's almost like rewriting whatever Joseph Campbell sort of archetypes of who should be in a room. And it feels it's really nice, the room among the liar, the truth teller or something. And I think it's just interesting in our current state with a Q and on and science denial lists. So we've got problems over here with people walking out on the streets, increasing the virus because they want to be together. They want to make a complaint. They think they're rebels. And then we see in Delhi what the result is if we carry on doing that sort of behaviour. So it feels like it's a very current idea to be playing with, which I was inspired by there. Yeah, and then you mentioned this backstage dashboard. I want one to go about making or finding something like this, because I've been trying to work with improvisation, bringing it into reality and people using, as you describe, people being in their own cupboards, with the heads inside washing machines, sitting on the toilet. I've had some great sort of student plays with what they do with their camera. But in terms of producing something for an audience, I'd love to be able to have some sort of backstage communication tool that works a lot better than that I'm finding with OBS and things at the moment. So I don't know whether. Yeah, just so regarding the dashboard, we actually I am going to release the skeletal part of the code for the open source community at large. So we put in a lot of how we built this virtual reality space was that we actually sort of built the skeletal code and then adorned it with sort of ways and colours and shapes and forms that can be taken away entirely and be put back and assembled back in a very different way for a different idea. So in July is when our IP of the code will get lifted from our sponsors and we should be able to release the skeletal code for the open source. And so that will have the dashboard as well. Mark and I'll maybe I can take down an email later and send you the link when it gets released. Coming back to the first observation of Luma's it's been a favourite subject of mine because also because we went from a partly ironclad socialist state into a chaotic neoliberal capitalist state. And so what so the purpose of rumor changed overnight. In the ironclad socialist state, the purpose of rumor was to actually let people know the truth because the state would be a propaganda machine. And so it was only through rumors that you actually got to know how indeed that war was fought or how indeed that policy was passed in the parliament, etc., etc. In the neoliberal capitalist world, rumor has been weaponised to create panic in the stock market, to create panic amongst communities and to actually demolish truth with a capital T. And so as an artist, I've been trying to work with rumor as material and to see if it is possible to actually sort of unpack these different layers and levels of what rumor means and how rumor gets performed in the politics of rumor itself. Could there be a rumor university where one could actually admit oneself for a moment and learn about rumors? After all, what is acting if not performing a rumor? So these are current sort of sessions of mine which might become more. But thank you for pointing that out. Thank you. I have, Nitika, you've had your hand up in the participants' hand up section for a while. Nikita. Yes, thank you so much, Rehan. Yes. Firstly, I mean, I've been Amitabh's student and I've also vehemently followed his work over the past seven years, I think. And I know him as an artist and as a teacher and I just feel like within under his futures because we've also discussed, especially in season one, the pedagogy of teaching. I would love if he could also, hi, Amitabh, by the way, thanks, lovely, lovely talk. And I love the rumor of university, sorry, the university of rumors. I would like it if Amitabh could also expand upon how his process as an artist also sort of affects or guides his pedagogy while he's teaching students, especially because I know that recently NSD also did all the diploma shows online. And how does that teaching translate?  But how do you transcend that while teaching someone who's just beginning to create work? I, so we have about five minutes. And actually I would love this question for both Amitabh and Ben. Because they haven't been teaching theater as far as I know. They've been teaching theater for all of these reasons. So it's a great closing question. So, Amitabh, and then Ben. Ben, would you like to go first? Oh, sure. Ben, could you unmute yourself? No mute, Ben. Yeah, I just had, I just had the question spinning in both ears with a slight delay. So I'm just wondering if you could, if you could re-articulate it. I asked if, Jehan, if you'd like to do this, you can do this too. Sure, just, you know, your work as artists has taken you, you've had this whole experience and this whole new understanding of and how it's informed your work as artists. But when you go back into the classroom and you're teaching students now in a space where they have to work, not just as theater makers for physical embodied space, but actually for all of these new possibilities, how is that shifting your teaching or what is, I don't think, what's being foregrounded in your teaching now, I think is what I would ask. Yeah, I mean, so for me, I think, one of the, this is what I was gonna speak about earlier, it's great, is this idea of iteration, which is something that I picked up from working with technology and with technologists, which is basically the idea of doing something over and over and over again until you get it right. But when applied to, but having come from theater and then sort of working with technology and with technologists, they're understanding that there is a process by which they're trying to get something, they're trying to make something happen. And that, you know, I came from having sort of almost no background in this stuff. So sort of had this mystified idea that people sort of went to computer, do this and the computer did it. Whereas in fact, realizing that that's a whole entire process that people go on that takes stages and that there's some little thing that's not quite right and that's not quite working and that by going into that and fixing that thing, maybe that gets the result that you want. No, not exactly. And so you have to keep going through this sort of this process of iteration and reiteration until you finally try and arrive at the sort of the result that you're looking for. And recognizing that that is very similar to any process, to any process of creation. And so taking that into working with students. There's other aspects as well, I think, that have to do with, for me at least, having slightly more sensorial awareness is the only thing that I could. So again, as I said, I've been working a lot with audio and I've found that I listen much more than I used to. I used to be guided by sight. But I find that my ears are much more open as well these days than they used to be. And this in terms of, because at the moment I'm working in a room with people, which is a fantastic privilege to be able to do. But just sort of, it's, I find myself, yeah, like I said, hearing to what is going, hearing what's going on. I don't almost equal level to seeing what's happening. Yeah, that's quite valuable to listen to, Ben. But the question is quite tough, actually. Nikita, you've seen me struggle in class trying to translate ideas into pedagogy. I do know that it is important for me to to translate questions that I have personally as an artist, but also questions that I see are coming from the students community and to see what their meeting point could be. And if there is a meeting point, then can I translate my concerns into their language or that is it possible for me to observe my process and to distill a few exercises that I found useful while creating my work. And, you know, invite students, offer it to the students and to say, why don't you make, you know, in Ben's words, why don't you make an iteration of it and see if this is helpful. I actually, I mean, the other question is also very valuable for me because what we create in the pedagogical space with students is also personally extremely inspiring for me as an artist to then feed off when I make my work. So there is a sort of a back and forth, you know, between these two spaces where I'm constantly translating what I've learned in the field into exercises and experiences and articulate them for the students and also to then see the experimental ideas and practices that we are evolving with the students and to see if they hold in the professional independent space outside and so it's difficult for me to mark very clear boundaries or where this happens. Just want to also sort of, you know, acknowledge the two other questions or observations that have come in the chat box. Mongeani, I'm sorry if I'm not pronouncing the name correctly. And Ongwenya, I completely agree with your observations and completely in sync. I think we do need a new vocabulary because we're going through extremely disruptive times and also the idea that we need to think about lightness and meaning making, not in polarities of embodiment and disembodiment, but a third way. And a third way is a good place to wrap this up. It is on the dot. I think even three minutes early, so I'm a bit proud of myself. I want to formally just say to Amitish, Ben, thank you so much for making the time and doing this for all of us. You guys can always pick up the recordings for the whole talk in case you want to go over anything. Again, on our website, Drama School Mumbai, there's a page called Unrehearsed Futures. Every single talk that's going up in season one and season two are recorded and just stored there as a living and growing body of knowledge. Please, Amitish Ben, come back to Future Talks because you'll get to hear Mongeani, Amy, all pure, amazing people. It's been mind-blowing and a really, a spot of mental refreshment and rejuvenation that is much needed in these times. The room is open. The recording can finish now, so thank you.


6ix9ine got beat up at the LA Fitness a couple weeks ago. Now, I sent it to Sean because I was like, Sean, look at the comments. And in the comments, there's a bunch of people in Spanish talking about how great of a guy 6ix9ine is and how amazing he is.   So yeah, and it's like, if you look at like a lot of 6ix9ine's like really early stuff, I mean, he was appealing to like Eastern European rap fans and like, you know, like the kids in Russia, they like to listen to American rap, you know what I'm saying? That was his demographic. And like he was doing good at appealing to them. We could argue and I've seen a lot of people make the argument about 6ix9ine is if we had stopped hating him early on where he had became as big as he did. If we had just all we had just all been like, hey, but we're going to ignore him and all look over here.  Right. It's hard.  When people really say they want to cancel somebody or whatever, usually just ignore. Yeah. Ignore it. You ignore that indifference. That's what kills people. The energy that you give, love or hate, that's going to keep feeling that fire and make the monster bigger, bro. Yeah, bro, love and hate is just the same energy opposite of the spectrum. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but I mean, but you can tell he knew that, you know what I'm saying? Like to your point, you know, and he doesn't do it as much now, which I think is good.  You know what I'm saying? Just to rile back up, hey, bro, it's like, man, when people really like me or feeling different about me, nothing's happening for me. When people hate me, like I get the whole world in my hands. You know what I'm saying? Like everything goes the way I need to go. So, you know, you look at the angle at which way, which way you going for. I'm going for the hate. You know what I'm saying? And I sent you this video of him the other day. Remember the video I sent you the other day? It's just crazy to look at now. Right. Yes. Right. So, six nine got beat up at LA Fitness like a couple weeks ago. And he used that time to make a music video while he was in Mexico of him. It was almost like Spanish God's plan. It was kind of like the vibe I got from the video. You ever seen the God's plan video? Okay. For the actual video, yes. Okay. Not the song. Yeah, not the song. The video. The video was like Spanish God's plan, bro. Like God's plan to Mexico. You know what I'm saying? And just six nine being charitable, giving back to people, you know what I'm saying? He's like a really nice guy. And I sent it to Sean because I was like, Sean, look at the comments. And in the comments, there's a bunch of people in Spanish talking about how great of a God six nine is and how amazing he is.   You know what I'm saying? So, you being cool to us and we're gonna rock with it. I'm like, man, this is why they do it, bro. Like they can just slip into it. It's like, he's seen both sides of it. Something like, I mean, the American audience is like 90% hate. 10% probably love, right? Spanish audience is like the complete opposite. It's like 90% love, 10%, you know what I'm saying? Hate. And so then I even think about someone from his viewpoint is like, man, maybe that's the strategy, bro.  You know what I'm saying?  I use that attention to fuel my love fire over here. You know what I'm saying?  And the result is that I'm still hot and nobody really understands why. You know what I'm saying? I'm still. That's it, bro. That's exactly what it is though. I say it all the time, man. So some artists and managers are just waiting for lucky moments when the ones who are killing it have systems to consistently take artists to another level over and over again. And if you wanna see what that looks like, we just did a collab where we not only show the system that we use that's resulted in Billboard hit some of the biggest viral moments on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. But also we got J.R. McKee to break down how he took the artists from zero to one of the biggest hit songs of 2022 and getting a Grammy in January of 2023. This is recent stuff, not old tactics. If you wanna check it out, go to www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Don't forget the www or it won't work because J.R. gets into the details of looking at the data, decisions that got made, how much content got created and how they adjusted the content over time for different parts of the campaign. This is real behind the curtains type of stuff. So again, go to www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. If you wanna check this out and apply it to yourself, back to the video. You have to, like, you have to build on both sides if you wanna take advantage of it. You can't just have one side angry or one side loving you. And that's it. Yeah, it doesn't matter to defend you at that point.  So you don't have to do anything.  So like the perfect example I always use, like I did like this PR video series early on and like our first like iteration of brand man network courses, right? And it was using one of the examples was the Super Bowl, Beyonce, Bruno Mars and Coldplay. Yeah. Great performance. I loved it.  Oh, so many people think it's dope. So many people think it's dope. Couple of days later, it was just undercurrent started. People are mad at Beyonce. I don't think mad at Beyonce for her Super Bowl performance. They mad it was so good. Like, we're like, we're confused. Next thing you know, they talk about her outfit and her doing the fifth and Black Panthers. Still, I kind of referenced this on that other episode. My unknown and stuff, like I still just don't reference it and think of it that way cause I don't think of that stuff negatively, you know? Cause my background, I'm still like a little confused. Like, okay, people are mad at Beyonce. Oh, Black Panther stuff. I was like, okay, yeah, I forgot that. A lot of people look at the Black Panthers as terrorists and all that stuff. Okay, cool. So, and it's like, I think mostly in that case it was like right wing, it wasn't even just right wing. I just, let's just say white people in that particular case, the way things were polarized between races around that subject matter. Now, why do I draw the line that way? Cause now I'm observing and I'm seeing some conversation. I see some hate comments, you know, about Beyonce, but of course they go beyond Beyonce and start talking about the whole race and people. And it's like, dang bro, like hold up. Now I'm starting to feel something. I'm not going to engage online, but I'm like, this is crazy and now I'm paying attention. I'm aware. What's the point? I'm somebody who saw the performance, enjoyed it, cool, keep moving. To the point, I'm not overthinking it. Think of the braids or any of our outfit. If I'm really paying attention, I might, oh, yeah, that's a nod to such and such, but other than that, just keep moving. But once you have these other people who hate, they're feeling some things in their bag, but that's not enough for them just to hate and be in their little echo chamber. You have to connect the dice and let the people who love find out about the people who hate. And now you got war. Now we can get this shit popping and the conversation goes from, oh yeah, I love this, I love that to this massive conversation that gets way more media, free media and attention than it would have gotten by itself without any type of polarization. So I always try to remind people, you need to strategically make sure the sides meet at some point.  Sometimes people will fake hate and create fake comments and things like that and then show it to the side that loves them, right? Or sometimes people will show something that would hate something, but it didn't happen for them to be aware or they'll just create that and make sure that those people that hate it see it, right? And fan that flame, because when you think about it, yeah, things are free accesses everywhere, things get millions of views, but we're so segmented today. This thing could happen. We're in our own bubbles. The people who hate it, it's not for them, it's never gonna algorithmically get to them in a lot of cases, unless someone manually connects the dots. So that's how you saying that hate is bringing us together? In a weird way. I don't think that's the point of it. It's bringing us together to create more hate. You know what I mean?  It brings the two sides of the audience. No, 1000%. 1000%, it brings both sides together and you have to have that to create the conversation which becomes your marketing campaign if you're using this strategy, right? And it's a scary strategy for many people to use. I was like, even if you're not, I think like we're using extremes, you know what I'm saying? To illustrate the example. We're gonna get into softer examples though. You're right, you're right, I'm stuck, I'm bad, I'm bad. Especially our last one.


What I was also experiencing was this sort of hollow, you know, sort of empty, pittish feeling in my stomach. I would break into a sweat every now and then. I would just suddenly get into these sort of panic phases where I just felt like, you know, just, I needed to just get out and, you know, gas for breath. I asked one of my colleagues to give me a video from last year or the year before. On how this format actually runs. And then my colleague sent me a same session between Farid Zakaria and Anna Goodall. I hope you know both. And then I said, my gosh, I think I cannot be Farid Zakaria. I'm not a journalist, but not only I'm not a journalist, but he's a great journalist. But I also appreciated that I would be doing this because this is a rare opportunity, as I said, to meet Dipika and to ask her on many issues. Maybe she doesn't know, but I will tell her today, our lives almost crossed somewhere else, more than 20 something years ago. She was born in Denmark, but she left Denmark one year when you were one year old. And then I was trained on epidemiology in Denmark in 1988. So same place. And then I was really surprised. So who brought us together? Denmark is one and now, but this is, as I said earlier, great opportunity for me because as WHO, we really admire what you're doing. Thank you.  And you have done a lot. And I was saying to your colleagues, triple L foundation, the leave, love and laugh. As you know, the very definition of health is health is a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being. It's not merely an absence of disease or infirmity, but as you also know, mental health is the most neglected.  But not only that, around 80% of them, people with mental health conditions do not have access to mental health care they need. So the problem is really, really serious.  And for me today, a great opportunity too. People like you, like Deepika will really change the tide. And I hope this moment will also increase the awareness, improve the awareness, and help people think about the enormous problem we're facing, especially with mental health, and decide to join your movement. So having said this and congratulating you for all your achievements and expressing my respect, for people maybe who may not be familiar with what you're doing, very strong advocate of mental health. But what triggered that? Why? Thank you for that lovely introduction. And good afternoon, everybody. Mental illness crept up on me when I least expected it. I think most often, or at least in my case, it comes with absolutely no warning signs. And I was going through a phase that, you know, the perception and the general understanding was that I was at a professional high. I'd had successful, you know, consecutive hits professionally at the movies. I was in an amazing relationship. My parents and my sister have always been, you know, extremely supportive of everything that I've done in my life. And so everything that we think should be okay in our life was going more than okay. It was absolutely perfect. And I remember waking up just one morning, leading an absolutely normal, or what I thought was normal. It started with, I fell, I fainted. There was a complete blackout. I fainted, I hit my head. And I used to live alone at this time. And luckily the house had arrived. And she saw me lying on the floor and, you know, sort of revived me. And then, you know, I gained consciousness. I sort of slept through the day, got an appointment with a general practitioner, went and saw him. He said, oh, it's nothing. It's probably just exhaustion or your BP just fluctuated. And that was it. That was sort of the physical symptom. But what I was also experiencing was this sort of hollow, you know, sort of empty, pitish feeling in my stomach. I would break into a sweat every now and then. I would just suddenly get into these sort of panic phases where I just felt like, you know, just I needed to just get out and, you know, gas for breath. And I would just cry, like, out of nowhere. I would just break down and cry with, there was no one really had to say anything to me or I didn't necessarily have to be in a specific place. I would just, you know, just, I could be in this room and suddenly just feel like I need to cry and express myself, you know. And then there were days when I just didn't want to get out from bed. I would just want to sleep and not wake up because to me sleep felt like my escape and I felt like I didn't have to deal with the reality of what I was experiencing. I didn't want to eat. I didn't want to interact with anybody. I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to go to work. I had lost, you know, motivation with absolutely everything. And fortunately, you know, my mother happened to be there a couple of months into this. My parents live in a different city and they had come to visit. And I was sitting in their room and they were packing up and ready to leave. And I had one of those moments where I was just watching her pack and I suddenly just, I broke down. And she looked at me and she said, what happened? Is everything okay? And I said, yes, everything was okay, but clearly everything was not okay. And, you know, she asked me the routine questions about is it my relationship? Is it something at work? And I just kept saying no. And I didn't know what to, you know, what was that one thing? I couldn't point my finger at it. And she immediately looked at me and said, Deepika, I think you need professional help. And that's when we called Anna Chandi who, you know, at the point was a family friend, but also a trained psychologist. And, but at that point, we felt like we wanted to share this with somebody who we could trust. Someone who was not going to, we were concerned about what the media was going to say and we didn't want to be seen outside a psychiatric clinic. So everything was hush, hush. I remember calling up Anna. She was in the middle of a personal crisis. She was traveling. And I called her and literally, you know, she asked me two questions and she said, I'm flying down to see you right away. You need professional help. You need to see a psychiatrist. And, you know, immediately, I think literally that same evening or the next day, she was on a flight, you know, she came to see me. We then, you know, together went to another doctor who finally diagnosed it as clinical depression. And I remember having after struggle for so many months of having to go about the motions of doing everything, you know, going about my professional engagements, having to speak at events, having to perform scenes, having to engage with people, having to do all of those things, but actually not being present. I remember feeling a sense of relief that, wow, at least now we know what this is that I was experiencing because I think that the toughest part in the journey for me was not understanding what I was feeling or not understanding what I was experiencing, not being able to explain to people what it is that I'm feeling. So if people would say, hey, how have you been? And I would have to lie and say, I've been great, I'm fine. When actually I was not feeling okay because I didn't have the strength and I didn't have the words to explain to somebody what I was experiencing. And so just the diagnosis in itself to me felt like a massive relief. At least now we knew what this was. But I think this is where my journey to recovery began because I think accepting what Dr. Sham Bhatt told me was equally an important part of my journey to recovery. And I think what I see around me very, very often is two things. For example, when my mother said, I think you need help. I could have easily rejected that and said, no, mom, that's crazy. This doesn't make any sense. I'm not seeking professional help. A, B, the other situation could have been my mother could have completely discouraged me from seeking professional help. So I think the two things that we managed to achieve here as a family is one, the fact that somebody close to me within my family recognized the signs and symptoms. One, two, encouraged me to seek help. Three, that I was open to the idea of seeking help. And I accepted the fact that, okay, if our body is sort of susceptible to illness, so can the mind. And I think that's when I understood the importance of the mind and the body and understanding that in the same way that we take care of our physical health, it's equally important for us to take care of our emotional health, our mental health. And then, of course, that's how my journey to recovery began. It is through, during that time, I realized that there was a lot of stigma. There was a lot of hush-hush. There was a lot of not wanting to share with too many people what I was experiencing. And I think all of those experiences made me reflect on why we were behaving, including myself, why we were behaving a certain way, why was I not telling somebody that I'm not feeling okay emotionally? Why is it that I was seeking professional help privately?  That's okay. And it was all of those experiences that made me think and reflect and say one second. I took a step back and I said, why have I, and why have me, and why have we gone about this this way? And I think that's when I realized the stigma and the lack of awareness that's associated with mental health and mental illness. And that's what led me to come out publicly with my experience with anxiety and clinical depression and subsequently setting up the Live La La Foundation because through that process, I felt like through an interview or through the press or through the foundation, if I was able to express the signs and symptoms that I experienced, and if there was even one person in this room who identified with those signs and symptoms and said, you know what? I'm going through the exact same thing, but I've not been able to put a finger on what it is that I'm going through. I wanted to make that journey that I had been through of the unknown, of not understanding what I was going through. I wanted to help somebody who's probably in that same situation, not understanding what they're going through and probably help them understand their signs and symptoms. And that was sort of the intention of going public with the illness and then also subsequently setting up the Live La La Foundation. Thank you. I mean, that is so moving. And one of the souls, actually, who saved herself, I think from your story, many young people can learn. We're losing a lot, 800,000 a year. And this is one of the largest killers of young people. It's serious and that's why. So what would be your advice to young people? What they should do for themselves and what they should do to help others? I think there's a lot of things that the youth can do. I think that we can do as individuals. I think to begin with, just to become a little more aware as people. So let me give this in two perspectives. One is, say, for someone like me who is experiencing anxiety and depression. I think if I feel certain signs and symptoms, whether it's restlessness, whether it's not being able to sleep, sleeping too much or lack of sleep, whether it's irregular, your eating patterns, are you eating less or are you eating more? Are you having suicidal thoughts? Are you now disinterested in the things that you really used to look forward to? Are you feeling a sense of sadness or low for a prolonged period of time? And I think it's very important to understand the difference between sadness and depression. Sadness is something that we all go through in our lives for various reasons, death, failure and exam, heartbreak. I think sadness is transient. Depression is not transient. I think depression sort of lasts for a much longer period of time. And I think that's when you realize that, okay, this is where I need to share. This is where I need to express. So for someone who's experiencing that, I think it's important at that very moment to share with somebody that you're close to. It could be a friend, it could be a colleague, it could be a family member, it could be a sibling. But I think the first step really is to share with somebody around you how you're feeling. I think for people around, it's important to not just sort of dismiss it as attention seeking. It's important for us to feel empathy towards the person who's telling us something. I think we all have now a habit of asking each other how we're doing without really listening to whether we actually, if I ask you how you're doing, am I actually interested in how you're doing? And would you be vulnerable enough to share with me how you're doing? So I think all of those things, I think just in the way that we engage with people on a daily basis, sharing with each other, understanding from each other, and then of course seeking help. So it's important for caregivers to encourage those feeling certain signs and symptoms to seek professional help. There is a lot of stigma, especially in our country, especially in India, there is a lot of stigma with regards to seeking professional help. Parents do not want to take their children to counselors or to psychiatric treatment because they're concerned about what other family members will think. They're concerned about what society will think. And I think, I've come across situations where there are people experiencing mental illness who want to seek help, but somewhere the family is not willing to allow them to do that. And sometimes it's the other way around where the parents want their children to seek professional help, and the child is resistant to that. In my personal experience, I think acceptance of medication. I think for me, it was a combination. Again, I'm not someone who can prescribe and say yes, you should take medication, but I will say that in my personal experience, it was a combination of taking medication as well as lifestyle changes that have led to where I am today, but it is also a constant taking care of myself. It is an illness that can come back, so I have to take care of myself on a daily basis. The amount I sleep, what I eat, exercise, mindfulness, all of those things are things that I still have to do on a regular basis to ensure that I don't go back into that dark world and dark space again. Yeah, thank you. I mean, from what you said, you triggered something, actually, from your programs, they say more than just sad. Yes. And then you're not alone. Yes. It's not just the campaign taglines. Yes. But just wanted to know, what do you mean by that? For me, the message is so heavy, but I wanted to hear from you because you started it. So more than just sad is, in the same way that I explained, that I think us trying to, as a foundation, explain the difference between sadness and depression. Sadness is transient. Depression lasts for, if you feel the signs and symptoms of that sort of heaviness lasting for more than two weeks, is when one should ideally seek professional help. So that is, I think it's important for us to understand the difference between sadness and depression. You are not alone is our campaign, but also something that I really, really believe in, and that's one of the things that organically came out the very first time I spoke about mental illness. I wanted every person experiencing mental illness to know that they are not alone. Because what happens is you always feel like you're fighting that battle alone. Because unlike a lot of other illnesses, there are no obvious physical signs or symptoms. It's all in your mind, most of the time. And so, if I met someone who's sitting here experiencing depression, I'm most probably, unless I'm a professional, will not be able to tell in this room who is experiencing depression.  It comes with a lot of guilt. You start feeling like you're the only one experiencing this. You start feeling like, why is this happening to me? When the reality actually is that, and the statistics vary, one in three, one in four, one in five, people experience depression once in their lifetime. So, you are not alone is to reach out to people, to reach out to the youth, to reach out to adolescents and tell them that they are not alone in this journey. But if there's one message that I really want to drive home is that there is hope. If there's one thing that sort of drove me every morning to wake up and fight the illness, is that I saw hope. I felt like, there were days that I wanted to give up, but I think somewhere it was hope every day that would push me to the next day. And I kept saying, okay, this is going to pass. This is going to pass. So, yeah. So, why not because of that we ask one question? Either yourself, if you have experienced it, any mental health condition, a family, very close, or extended family, or anyone who knows starting from ourselves, can you stand up? Wow. Anyone you know, could be yourself, it could be a family, or it could be a friend. It may take time to remember sometimes. But it's more than 50% of the house actually majority. That's the magnitude of the problem. And I think to her argument, it makes no sense. I'm sorry, I didn't stand up for myself. I stood up also for knowing people who... Yeah. So, both of us stood. Nobody is immune. Nobody. We will know somebody close. And that's why with mental health conditions, nobody should be alone. Because we all experienced it, or we know someone close, we experienced it. And that's why I say that it's heavy. What you're saying is it really makes sense, but something that I also wanted to understand from you. Then maybe some issues about, if you can share with us about your foundation also. And not only the two campaigns, but I know you do more than that, including training of... So, can you tell us maybe about... So, we set up the Live La La Foundation in 2015. We actually started by setting up a comprehensive website which actually had all the information on what is anxiety, what is stress, what is anxiety, and what is depression. I'd say two of the key features that we have, that we set out to achieve was a sort of database of professionals in the field of mental health. And that is something our country didn't have. So, we actually spent months vetting and making a comprehensive database in terms of the professionals that are available in various cities. So, anyone experiencing any sort of distress could go on to the website and seek, look at the names or the kind of people and seek help. We also have tie-ups with various helplines. So, a lot of people would go on to the helpline and speak to different people from the helpline and seek help. And then, of course, the information on the website itself. The reason I mentioned this is because this is not something that was available before we set this up. We then set up our school's program where we speak to adolescents and educate them on the importance of mental health and talk to them about what mental illness is. We've covered over 150,000 adolescents and over 20,000 teachers. We have a program for general practitioners because we believe that general practitioners are the first line of defense. And unfortunately, in our country, a lot of the physical symptoms are not really correlated to emotional distress. We always try and medicate or try and cure the physical illness without understanding the correlation between the mind and the body. So, a sensitization program for general practitioners with regards to mental illness. We also do programs in rural India where we enable, you know, I think there are certain organizations in rural India that have been doing some phenomenal work. And I'd like to believe that the Live La La Foundation, apart from funding, has also enabled for a lot more work to be done. And we've recently started research and we also do, sorry, we also do research and we just in September launched a rural, sorry, a lecture series, an annual lecture series. And we did that in September for the very first time where we want to bring together people from different parts of the world who will help us shape the narrative with regards to mental health. Okay, so I will ask you also one advice. I hope you will continue to advise me. If you have just one advice for WHO, but we have just not even two minutes, under two minutes. I ask you to stand up and so on. So maybe I will reward you by giving you the opportunity to ask questions, maybe two people, lucky ones, two people. Okay, one here. So there is a man, so I will need the, yes please. All right, good afternoon everyone. Thank you for sharing Deepika. My name is Naim. I am a Lusaka Global Shaper from the Global Shapers Community. I'm a medical doctor, psychiatrist registrar from Lusaka, Zambia. And as the Global Shapers Community, we are a group of 20-somethings and we are more than 10,000 people. There's more than 420 cities all over the world. And we've got a project called Mental Health in Inclusion and Equity. And we're literally doing exactly what you're doing for the past five years. That's what our aim is. So we really like to commend you and congratulations on the Crystal Award. We're very, very excited for you and with you as a youth, the things that you're doing. But then coming back to the points that you raised at the first, to say you had options. But many- I said one question. Yes, many people don't have options. You know, you were lucky you have a privilege to actually get in touch with a psychologist. Yes. But many people don't have that. Yes. So what advice would you have for them? Because one in 40 seconds, as you know, and the second leading cause in 15 to 29 year olds. So what advice would you have for those youth? I actually would not in this situation have advice for them. I would actually say we have advice for us and for people, for stakeholders, for people in a place of power and influence. I think it's important for us to ensure that we have accessible and affordable healthcare. A statistic out of India, for example, for approximately 1.5 billion people, we have only about 4,000 psychiatrists. That's something that we as a nation have to look at. That's some, you know, and that's a statistic out of India. Less than, and on the higher side, less than 1% of a nation's health budget will be allocated to mental health, less than, and 1% is really on the higher side. So these are things that we have to look at. Yes, I do consider myself extremely lucky in this situation. Extremely lucky at so many levels. A, that I had my mother and someone so close to me who identified and recognized it. You know, and the fact that it was so accessible and affordable, and I think it's important for all of us in this room to make that possible. And that's why I brought it up yesterday during the speech as well. Okay, please. Just brief. Very quickly. People are nodding from... He gets a long one. Okay. But I'll keep it very brief. You know, congratulations. Once again, for having recognized the urgency and the importance of mental health, I have a question quickly that, you know, the good thing that happened is that you were able to, that you were not in denial, and you did reach out for that help. I know someone, and especially this is a case with men I've found, I know two men, that they have it. People are pointing it out, but they will not go for help because they see this as a huge defeat and in some way being very unmanly. And so won't go for help. What do you do with that? How do you persuade what you do? Oh, gosh, I don't know if I'm equipped to answer that question. If there are any psychologists, psychiatrists in the room, they're probably the right person, people to answer that question. Anna, do you want to answer that question? Yeah. But before she answers, I think as humanity, I think it's important for us to express ourselves. I think globally and especially in India, men are taught to not express themselves. Men don't cry. Men don't express. And I think those are the fundamental things that we need to change. But of course things like that, it's sort of entrenched in the way that we're brought up, that it's going to take generations for us to be able to change that. But at a more sort of urgent basis, I think I'll allow maybe Anna to quickly answer that question. Because there are different attitudes and prejudices for the stigma associated with mental illness. So very often as therapists, we engage with them continuously because one of the most important things to remember, sometimes the person who's suffering lacks an awareness as to what is happening. So it's a process. Okay. Thank you. So there is that one question from me. Which one? What advice for WHO? What advice for WHO? I would actually flip that on its head and say, what advice does WHO have for the Libla Vla Foundation? And what more can we do together? Yeah. To address this gentleman's question over here. I will use this opportunity actually. You have passed all my questions colourfully. So the next will be recruiting you. Meaning to work with your foundation very closely. You're making a difference. And in a very important area, you're fighting stigma. And that's the most important one. There is stigma in the community, even in the family, by the way. And there is even stigma more worse than in the health sector. And there is even stigma more worse than in the health system itself, the health services. And we have to fight stigma everywhere. And that needs all of us. It should be everybody's business. That's why WHO now puts mental health as a flagship initiative. And we need everybody. But yours, who have already done a lot, I think would be a great opportunity for WHO to partner with you. I had one last comment to make. I feel like if mental health can be included in our sustainable development goals, not just health, but mental health as well. And I would like to assure you that, starting from the Secretary General, the whole UN system is committed to this. And when you meet him one day, you will see. So the sustainable development goals of course belongs to countries. And we see a growing commitment, but not enough. So together we hope to make a difference. Namaste.


So, I'm a college president and over the last 24 hours I've been inspired by the amazing innovative talent that I've met around here. People who have been actively involved in a number of very complex and difficult problems and finding innovative solutions to really make a difference. My challenge as an educator is how can we produce more of them? In many ways when you start getting to understand the histories of these people, some of them have become what they are by accident, not necessarily because we intentionally prepare them to do what they're doing today. I am the president of George Mason University, it's a large public university, the sort of the great American universities where just every day people, young people from all walks of life get educated. That's the challenge that I'm trying to resolve. How do we do that intentionally? Now, we face an enormous amount of very complex problems today. In fact, last month the United Nations for the second time in history, they got together and agreed on a list of 17 of those and each of us may add our own three or four or ten to that list. When you go through that list what you realize very soon is that each of those problems are incredibly complex. They're complex because they cannot be easily understood from just one disciplinary lens. They're complex because they affect different stakeholders differently, because they cross national boundaries. They're what we call wicked problems that resist any approach from any traditional single lens, single disciplinary lens. There are many of those whether it is to deal with infectious diseases or providing access to education and I'm just choosing one just for the sake of illustration. You may all remember the disaster on April 24th of 2013, a building in Dhaka in Bangladesh by the name of Rana Plaza collapsed. Over 1,100 people died, another 2,500 people resulted, came out with very serious injuries. That building that collapsed was never intended to be a factory. In fact, the day before there were signs that that building was in distress and that something like that could happen. The workers didn't want to go in and the employer said either you come back in or you're fired and you're not going to have many options to make an income. Workers went in, building collapsed, you know the rest of the story. Now, interestingly, if you have that discussion in any of our classrooms and one of the questions you may ask is whose fault was that? Was it the fault of the greedy owner of the business that was exploiting those workers without minimum safety guarantees for them? Was it the corrupt local politicians who did not pursue the right sanctions and revision? Was it the fault of global trade? Was it the fault of Walmart or Cortengles or any of the retailers that purchased the products that were made in that factory? Was it your fault or my fault? I bet you in this room some of us may be wearing a garment that was made in that building. What fault is it? Very hard to tell. In fact, if you ask students, well, how would you solve this problem? What would you do about it? Do you become a labor activist or you set up an NGO or you create an organization and try to boycott products that are purchased from those? Well, each of those may tackle an aspect of the problem and perhaps make the problem even worse. These are very, very wicked problems. So how well are we doing in our universities to prepare people like the ones that are walking the halls here today who may be able to find that innovative solution to any of these wicked problems? What my diagnostic is that so far we're not doing too well. And in fact, if the case of the Rana Plaza disaster was used in an economics class, you will end up analyzing and dissecting the set of incentives that led to that situation. And you would miss every other aspect of that problem. Maybe you will look at it from a standpoint of labor relations and you will lead to a totally different diagnostic. You may look at it from a standpoint of global trade and the conditions that are embedded in global trade deals. Depending on the major that you pursue, depending on the discipline that you choose, you will learn to look at the world from one angle. Any of the people that you will meet here today, no matter what is the wicked problem they're dealing with, they will tell you it is impossible, impossible to understand any of these problems from that single disciplinary lens. And yet that's what we do in colleges. We get you through a very disciplinary way. We teach you the analytical tools to understand the world from one particular lens. That's what we know how to do. So we're trying to figure out how do we change that. And perhaps the best way to figure that out is to maybe deconstruct or reverse engineer the cases where maybe by accident or semi-intentionally we have done this right. So here's some of those cases where I think in my own university we've done this right. Here's one of them. This individual, you may recognize her, Zainab Salbi. She was the founder of Women for Women International, an organization that was motivated by some of the abuses that women suffer in areas that are ravaged by war. And her idea, by the way, came out of class projects and she was mentored and assisted by a number of her professors, really was a very interesting solution to that problem that borrowed ideas from an understanding of the political nature of what those women were suffering, an understanding of the culture of the place, an understanding of the role of education in dealing with some of the issues that those women were facing. She, her solution, took the form of a global non-for-profit organization that raised money from wealthy donors and foundations, but also leveraged the power of women in place who understood the dynamics, the local dynamics better than anybody else. Well, we've spent a lot of time with her trying to figure out what we did right during her time at Mason for her to be able to do what she did. There are other cases, Jamie Constis. Interestingly, Jamie was very, she created her own degree program at Mason. She was interested in Spanish and Spanish culture. She was very interested in computers and data. She was also very interested in children exploitation. That's really what drove her passion. She took internships to spend time in Panama to work with the National Center of Missing Exploited Children, but also to work with Datatel with an information technology company. When she graduated, she joined the FBI. She was able to bring together the knowledge that she had acquired from those complementary fields and her work led to arrest 500, in fact, achieve 500 convictions of traffickers dealing with children and to save more than 1,000 children. She was able to not only be what we call a critical thinker, the whole mark of American liberal education, but to be a critical doer. Not only to be able to dissect a problem and to understand the problem from multiple angles, but actually to do something creative, innovative about it. This is a third case, Roger LeBlanc. Roger still hasn't achieved the impact that the other two have, but he's showing us the way of how universities can do this. Roger is fascinated by issues of sustainability. He wants to dedicate his life to sustainability, and he used every minute during college to create movements of students, to create initiatives and actions, to have an impact on our campus and even beyond. In fact, some of his landmark achievements was to create a green event during March Madness that now has been replicated globally. What does that teach us? What it teaches us is that it can be done, but it cannot be done with traditional structures. We need different models, and that's what we're trying to do at George Mason. What we're announcing today is our creation of a school of impact and innovation that tries to do precisely that. Our school, by the way, is not in any of the existing colleges or schools, is an entity that draws faculty, innovative faculty from across the university, is led not just by an academic leader, but also by an industry leader that understands how multiple solutions are being applied in practice, and it brings the best that the university has to offer, but also the knowledge and the ideas that are happening in the community around us. We are collaborating also with organizations like Evolved that are helping us understand what the right capabilities are. What are the skills that the people that we run into in the halls these days, what are the skills, the abilities that they have found a way and managed to acquire? Our goal is to have a series of programs both for undergraduates, for graduates, and even for people who are already in the field. There are lots of organizations offering solutions in every area of management and leadership, but not necessarily in the space of social impact and innovation. So we're designing bachelors, we're designing a masters, and we're creating tracks that hopefully will position our graduates to either take jobs in the organizations that are on the forefront of creative problem solving or to create new organizations to find new and innovative solutions. We think we're a good place to try this out and we encourage you to join us in any way that you would want to. We are a young university and that creates a culture of entrepreneurship that is not that common in higher education. We are one of the pioneering Ashoka Changemaker campuses. We are large and this is important because some of the initiatives we've looked at and we've looked at great things that are happening normally in elite institutions that are really not very scalable. Everything that happens at Mason has to scale up. Our student body is incredibly diverse. Over half of our entering classes, minority, about a third are the first in their families to ever go to college, about a third are on Pell Grants. How do we do this on scale? And we have 20 years of experience in challenge driven learning. We are also in a very interesting, surrounded by a fascinating ecosystem. We are right outside of Washington D.C., although we are outside of the Beltway, which protects us a little bit from the craziness in downtown Washington, but gives us very easy access to it. We're surrounded not just by the federal government and all the multilateral organizations in Washington D.C., but we're also surrounded by a vibrant business community and by probably the richest network of NGOs and think tanks perhaps anywhere in the world. We want to bring that ecosystem of institutions to help us do this and do this right. There is plenty work to do and there is plenty of room at the table. So we're encouraging any of you who has an interest in educating the next generation of these creative problem solvers to pull up a chair and join us and help do this. Challenging us, challenging our model, joining us, if you have resources that can help us do this, even funding us, whatever it is you do. It is important for us that you know where we're up to. Thank you very much.