A Conversation with Aaron Landsman -- TORCHES: 30+ Years of Downtown Performance

when we learn the skill of performing ourselves um whether as actors on a in a play or as participants in a local government meeting, we're learning how to kind of transact something that goes beyond the actual words said or the room or that kind of thing. >> So, it's a little abstract, >> but I feel like the more theater can be deployed to help people understand how democracy works, the more robust democracy can be. Ooh. [music] [music] >> Welcome friends. I'm Kristen Martin and this is Torches. Today we have the provocative Erin Landisman. Erin is an award-winning multiddisciplinary artist who's obsessed with cities, shadows, anonymity, and how we perform power. He's the founder of Perfect City. I'm very excited to have this conversation with him today. Welcome, Aaron. >> Thank you, Kristen. >> Yay. So, how did you come to be in downtown performance? >> I think I knew that that's what I wanted to do before I knew that there was a thing called downtown performance. So, [laughter] I took a trip with my friend Carl from Minneapolis to visit ostensibly visit colleges, but really it was to just walk around in a couple of different cities out east and we were 16 and we were by ourselves and we looked at Colombia and we both felt like he was a kind of higher performing student and neither of us were very interested and so we walked all the way downtown and we ended up at the Vulca on 9th and 2nd and there was a woman with blue hair reading the Village Voice and smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee out of those big thick mugs. And I was like, "This is exactly where I need to be." And so, uh, I auditioned for the experimental theater wing and basically had four years working with people like Mary Overly and Anne Bogart and Wendel Beavers and Kevin Kulkkey and then basically got spit out into downtown New York. My apartment was on 13th and Avenue A. Um, it was a cold water flat that I had from like 1989 through 92. Um, and I kind of haven't looked back. Even if I've felt tensions at time between like how I'm part of the ecosystem, it's just always been home. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> And is there a particular experience that is like personal, political, or creative that most shaped who you are today? >> That's a great question. I feel like there are several. And are you thinking um prior to arriving or like formative in any way? I think just formative like what you just said was a lot about that, you know, that that you just had an instinct that this was the right community for you. But yeah, >> I think so there are a couple things like Minneapolis was a really in the 80s when I grew up there was a really thriving cultural scene. So there was punk music that I was a deep fan of. There was Prince. Um friends of mine were extras in Purple Rain. A guy I went to high school with became his drummer, you know. And then there was a theater scene where the Guthrie was run by Livia Chulle. this Czech director and or Romanian or Czech, I can't Romanian director. Thank you. >> And he was doing really adventurous work. I was participating in a lot of theater and the theater that I was part of, somebody came back a couple years who was a couple years older than me and she said, "You should audition for NYU and you should only go to the experimental theater wing." And then she described basically like the rolling around and making strange sounds. That was her training. [laughter] And I was like, "This sounds perfect." And so the kind of cultural hotbed that I grew up in was both freeing and limiting. And I think I always knew that um that I wanted to be somewhere that was bigger and more dynamic, but I also had a grounding in like the possibilities of experimental art. Um, the last thing I'll say is I had another friend and we were going to see a show at Northrup Auditorium and it was Sankai Juku, the BHO group >> and there was a moment Northrup is about like the size of the Harvey the Bam Harvey Theater and we had gone to get Ethiopian food at the first Ethiopian restaurant open in Minneapolis and kind of had our minds blown as two like you know middle-class Midwestern white guys this was an arrival and like just to paint a picture there was no sushi in Innesota 1986, right? There is now. >> Um, and so there were a lot of things that we didn't have access to. >> So we had that meal and then we went and saw S Kaijuku. And at one moment in that piece, it was really their signature piece. The lights come up and there's a deep blue background. Um, and there's a man hanging from a rope by his feet upside down about 20 feet above the stage. >> And the entire audience of about 800 people gasped. And I thought like, oh, this is something I want to be a part of. Like, this is the kind of culture that I wanna be a part of somehow. >> That's an incredible story. I also had a really amazing uh budo experience with Popo like in in the 80s, >> like in an outdoor community garden and doing some crazy physical stuff. >> Yeah. [music] I remember then seeing the when the Guggenheim had their Soho outpost, they did a piece on Bhau and Japanese art post war. >> And it was funny because when I had seen the performances and I had seen um >> uh Katuono also one time. >> Wow. >> And in my naive, I didn't make the connection to post World War II and post Hiroshima Nagasaki. And then seeing that exhibit made me think also a lot about like how a piece or how a body of work arises from its time. >> Um and I made it kind of deepened my appreciation for that form. >> Totally. Totally. Could you describe a moment of pure joy in your art making? >> Yes. I feel like there are a lot. The ones that came to mind when I thought about that question um have a lot to do with elevator repair service. And I joined that company in 2003 after having been friends with them for a while to work on GATS. And I think there were moments when the company would just sit around and make really ridiculous jokes that were kind of like literary riffs on pop songs. Um, some of them were kind of carnal and then all of a sudden we would have been laughing for like an hour and realize that we had to finish making a scene and everyone would panic for a moment and still sort of semiloughing try to stage an entire chapter of The Great Gatsby and that just felt like oh this is a impossible and maybe that's something to talk about as kind of you know our community of work and the idea of the impossible challenge. I had been adjacent to that kind of proposition and worked with like Rich Maxwell and stuff, but then working with the RS it was like this definitely won't work to stage an entire novel. And that felt like the first time I could see how rigorous difficult work could be also really joyous. >> Yeah. On that that goes right into something else I was thinking of talking to you about about risk and failure and you know that it seemed like that was doomed for failure. this idea of putting the entire novel on stage um and a way was found to overcome that obstacle and to create a theatrical context that was >> uh fulfilling for an audience and for the artists that were making it. >> Um are there other moments for you >> that you've taken a big risk >> and and and and what have you learned from failure in that context? Uh, I mean certainly the city council meeting project that I made with Mallalerie and Jim started with the idea of like once I had the idea of transcribing city government texts and making turning them into a theater piece, the initial thought was like we'll have some actors do it and it will be kind of like an ash our town sort of like look at people muddle through and it was kind of about that version of the piece was sort of about failure like the failure to really communicate within the context of legislation and sharing power. Um, and then at some point I joked to Mallerie that if we were really making a piece about participation, the audience should perform it. And we both laughed and then she went away because she's brilliant and sort of devised a strategy where audience members could perform these transcripts without having to play a character because we sort of stepped in to the process too saying something we want to avoid is a lot of the trappings of participatory theater >> and artifice. Exactly. where like I have to play a role, but the actors have been rehearsed and like that just felt like a thing we didn't want to get into. So, she found this structure and [snorts] the first couple times we did it, it was definitely still arguably not a good idea. Like, we did work in progresses that you may remember. They were chaos. Like, we had to orient the audience and the second time we did it up at Art, it took 45 minutes because we had more people than we thought and they had tons of questions. Right. >> So before we arrived at like the idea of an orientation video, we had a piece that would have sprawled for 3 or 4 hours, not in a good way. >> That project was in development at here three or four years. And I remember that first work in progress where we tried that. It it was like two hours, two plus hours. And we were like, hm, >> yeah, [laughter] >> how do we figure this out? >> But there was a real excitement. You could see the potential of the idea in that very first workshop, you I mean, I think I was lucky, and this is not just cuz I'm talking to you, to have the combination of like Mallerie as a diehard collaborator who's like, "We're going to make this work." >> And here as a space where it was like, "Well, that didn't work." >> Like, now we have to keep building this. And so to not assume that failure means scrap it. >> No. >> Um, and I think I I >> we learn from failure. >> Yeah. >> I hope. We hope. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, and I think I also feel like failure has become a kind of trendy thing to talk about, >> but I I feel really lucky having been a part of projects that really could have not worked, you know, that really probably shouldn't have worked unless everybody was the right people at the right place in time to do that work with the right venues and the right support. And so I'm I'm kind of curious now how artists think about failure for real like the project might not work >> and then as a field like how do we support artists who fail you know and then go on to make something that comes out of that failure that's really solid because I think the funding strictures right now mean that it's more high pressure to not fail and that younger artists who are kind of moved to the four sooner so they can get some of that support are like well you can be about failure but you can't fail and you're in your 20s you know I feel really lucky that I was like 40 when that started happening. >> Yeah I mean I do think that there's a fear of risktaking and I think it feeds into what's happening with the administration and people self-censoring in the face of the first amendment >> fears that they have in terms of the administration right now. >> Do you feel like that is um venue or artists or both? >> I think both is happening. I think that artists are starting to self-censor thinking like, well, I'll never get funding for an idea like that or if I say things like that. >> And I'm afraid that organizations are starting to step back, >> right, >> and not program artists that they would have programmed in the past or projects that they would have programmed, >> right? I mean, I'm wondering I I do feel like there's some huge bright spots and like am I can I name can I name people who I think are awesome? like Nile and Alex Tatarski and there's that generation like Crackhead Barney and I think there venues that are >> Nile Harris Harris is referring to and I think those artists are really not pulling punches at all. Then there's the work that I think I'm a big fan of. Like if I look at Jess Barbagallo's play that they just did that he just did and I was like this is risky because it's completely free to be what it wants because it's aiming for a kind of audience that's in the conversation and I do feel like that is I'm just like where does that I hope that work continues to thrive or that kind of work. Um, I think in the field, you know, there's been that conversation of like how regional is New York City work, how regional is downtown work, how does it translate outside of the city or outside of the coasts? And I hope that it continues to get made regardless. Like that's one thing about our lives here, as challenging economically as I think New York is now and how restrictive it is to new people coming, there is still this sense of like we're making work for us. Um, and that field has gotten a little bit more diverse, I think, even than 10, 15 years ago. So, all that is to say, I think there are bright spots, but I agree. I see I see venues more kind of like getting nervous about what someone might propose. >> Yes. >> Um, and then some venues are just like, nah, we're going to do this, you know? >> Yeah. They're not taking the risk. Well, I just want to follow in on what you what you just were talking about uh about the downtown community that the the work is for the people who are already part of the community. >> Um >> but I think that a lot of the downtown work has like a ripple effect outward that that it starts here >> but then there's an outsized influence to this one community of artists. So it may start in a small a smaller I my implication the implication I was hearing was like an insular community. >> Yeah, it's both. I mean, I think I'm a really big fan of the margin, meaning I think uh work that is >> kind of resolutely for the community it's embedded in, but might have aspirations in a great way to say like this is available to you. Like how is work inviting? How is it, you know, here if you're willing to come on its terms? And I think about Nile and Alex as being examples of that where it's like a lots of people beyond their the enclave that they're in the generation they're part of have really loved that work >> and it's still not going to compromise especially aesthetically on what it is and narratively especially you know. Yeah. So I think it's the the work I don't stay interested in work that aesthetically trades on a kind of in joke where it's like oh I have to know about the Worcester group on up in order to understand the aesthetic of this work and I think like my favorite artists are the ones who are like wow I learned so much from these people and now I'm going to continue making it mine and expand it. I was thinking about your city council meeting and that piece. >> I think that you invited a different audience to come to that. Right. You were your audience was not the typical downtown theater audience. you want you wanted those folks to come too, but by the selection to do the piece at the Chelsea Vocational High School across the street from here to [snorts] do it out at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center and at Elario, >> you were able to speak to different communities and you embedded yourself in those communities to ensure that you had folks show up, >> right? >> So, I think that's a whole different approach and that's been a big big part of the way you've been thinking as an artist, as a citizen artist, as an activist artist in your community. Can you talk some more about that work? >> Yeah, I mean I think also just uh any conversation about being with in and for communities outside of our own has to for me I learned a lot from the foundry and Melanie Joseph. And so I think watching foundry shows even when they were, you know, what we might call like art for art's sake, like Race of the Arc Tattoo, there was a sense of like you were walking into a world that was diverse and inviting and purposeful in terms of how that organization wanted to reach people. And so they also because of their things like food, water, shelter, the the series of town halls and panels, the conversation on hope, >> like I just felt like I I was lucky to be form formed by some of that work as an audience member and then as an artist. >> Um so that was like getting my feet wet when I worked with a foundry on my play open house which was in 24 New York City apartments >> including this one. including this one [laughter] and um in all five burrows and Melanie and I made a decision that we were not going to only work with people we knew. So, we had to find someone in the Bronx if we were and someone in Staten Island. >> And that allowed us to invite different audiences in. And then we also asked the host in each place, you might remember, to bring like a third or half the audience. >> And so that was like a a dress rehearsal for city council meeting. >> And in New York when we worked, we worked with this cohort of high school students. They were paid. >> We um in each city where we did that project, we found a local issue that was vexing people and then got adversaries to make something with us. So in New York, we actually had so much more investment um that we took a long time to figure out what that issue was and we came down on standardized testing and mayoral control of the schools. >> And so we paid a group of high school students from five different schools in three bureaus. Um and they made a fake standardized test with us and a kind of chaotic scene that um that led to the passing out of test booklets for an audience. And then they answered questions. We would bring in elected officials and school officials different each night to answer questions from the from the um uh they sorry. So the kids um asked questions of elected officials from sitting on the stage and the elected officials power dynamics shifted because they were at the testimony stand. >> Um they were kind of on the spot. >> In each school and in each site where we did the piece, we asked the students like, "Okay, how would you get your friends to come to this weirdass show?" And they would be like, "Well, first of all, you have to go visit each class. Um, you have to visit the principal and find out which classes would be um, you know, amendable to having you visit. You have to do this kind of poster with these kind of colors at this kind of it can't be landscape, it has to be portrait, you can't use this kind of font." So, they gave us this schooling >> and this is before like widespread social media. Um, and so that also got us a high school audience both of um, educators and students. And the really sweet spot was when we did it at Chelsea, they the the students from Chelsea and a couple other schools brought um brought you know a third of the audience and then a third of it was our kind of downtown theater audience and then a third was because there were elected officials and here's audience and a real mix. So in that piece because it was participatory, you had audience members watching each other re react differently to the same material >> and that felt like what that piece we didn't know what's that's what we wanted that piece to do but that's what it did on a good day. >> That's fascinating. Um you've also talked about theater and democracy as embodied systems >> that invite us to both be a participant and a witness. >> Yeah. >> Can you [laughter] share what that means to you? >> Sure. Now I now you say that back and it's like did I write that? But it didn't. Um I would say that both theater and let's say a government meeting is an example of democracy >> um are arrangements and systems that ask us to be in our bodies transacting power or information of other kinds or or kind of like stories. For me, the intersection recognizing that a lot of government meetings are actually performances. >> That that doesn't mean they're cynical necessarily, although plenty of people manipulate people obviously through power and through the performance of >> what they what they think we want to hear or what they think we will be won over by. In a democracy, when we learn the skill of performing ourselves, um whether as actors on a in a play or as participants in a local government meeting, we're learning how to kind of transact something that goes beyond the actual words said or the room or that kind of thing. >> So, it's a little abstract, >> but I feel like the more theater can be deployed to help people understand how democracy works, the more robust democracy can be. that's my like soapbox for why to use this stuff. >> So I find that like I go to classrooms and schools and communities and I'll bring like a 15-minute demo of excerpts from the city council meeting piece. So we watch an orientation video, they take up a small number of transcripts and then we have a conversation at the end and there's a tiny nod to what we called our local ending and it's in the conversation where they're like, "What just happened?" Oh, when you said that I felt like I was cut out of the dialogue. What if you had said something different? Or when you said that when I said this and you as the mayor, who I know is not the mayor, didn't respond, I felt like I was being ignored. But that's just the rules. So you get a kid talking about how it feels to be in front of power to recognize that that power is really >> only has veilance because it's a performance with a set of rules. >> Yeah. um then you can begin to think about systemic change like very slow small systemic change. >> Yeah. I was interested to read and I think this is in your work with perfect city um some thinking that you were doing around NICHIP meetings. >> Oh NICH meetings. Yeah. >> Yeah. And the way that um >> the way that they are not truly a community meeting that's asking for input from the community that there's an agenda that is shutting out the community's participation. and you were talking about what theater tools can be applied to that to actually make that be a space that could be about dialogue. Can you talk a little bit about that that application of the theatrical into the political context? >> Absolutely. So, I think theater on one hand you can learn some new tools, right? Like it's great to learn how to speak >> um powerfully and it's great to learn how to hold your body so that you convey a sense of conviction. It's also a great way just by going through the motions of performing someone else uh from a city council meeting somewhere else or a NICHA meeting, you start to um understand that you carry a lot of embodied knowledge about policy, right? So, Perfect City's whole operation um and that NICHA meeting was a really great example was like not only is this meeting not meant for people to feel included and participate, it's um everybody who's at the meeting kind of knows that like they literally I was the the the description came from an article I wrote for the architectural league's um magazine Urban Omnibus. They were like go visit a Nicha meeting. they're super contentious and can you write about it as theater? >> And I was like, I think so. You know, and I went and what was so clear was that everybody knew it was a little bit of a scam, but they also knew that the board for NICHA was there on stage and even if they didn't get a response in the meeting, they it was the one place they knew they could get something done. So like at the NICHA, you know, administrative offices, it's hard to get someone on the phone, but those people who should be on the phone just because of staff cuts, they're not are there at the meeting. So you can be like, "My boiler doesn't work. There's mold in my grandma's apartment and really raise a stink and it might actually have a chance of getting addressed by you subverting what the meeting is supposed to be for." >> Interesting. >> So it was like a lot of what I want to do with the arts and democracy is to say, "You have this knowledge. you understand a lot more than you were told you understand. >> You might understand that the rules don't necessarily work for everybody or the structure. Um, and now let's play with that. Like let's use a creative tool to play with what we do with that knowledge. Um, one other thing I can one other weird little nerdy tidbit is that um I'm working now with the National Civic League, which is a 130year-old 120-y old organization that started around the time of Teddy Roosevelt. and they evolved the current structure that we have had now for over a hundred years of what a local government meeting looks like. And they were like, it's time for a change. Like we're trying to change it now to more things like citizens assemblies because those meetings were never really meant to include people in power. They were meant to be to create transparency >> so that we can say we have a public record that this stuff happened the way we said it was going to happen. But all of the deals, especially back in the day, went on behind closed doors. And then the meeting itself was a way to say look we did it. And so everybody working on local democracy or on democracy innovation is thinking about like oh it's time for a change because this was never about >> participation and inclusion. It was about showing people the receipts you know >> right? So why do you choose art as your means of resistance and your form for activity rather than organizing or politics or is that a false binary? Are you doing both? I would say kind of yes and I mean I kind of wrestle with that question sometimes you know because >> there might be faster ways to try and make change happen I think so one thing about me as an artist is that I don't produce at the rate that a lot of people do. I make work a little bit less frequently partly because I'm involved in a number of things but partly because I really love a long process >> and so working on city council meeting was really like 5 years from the meeting that set it all off that I saw to the final performance in 2014 and then now it's been another 10 years of evolving it as a kind of tool for teaching and uh the book that we made and so I did you >> tell the title of your book >> the city we make together written with Mallerie Catlet University of Iowa Press. >> Great. >> Um, still available in stores and online. Um, [laughter] and you know, I think that long process taught me that creative work as a tool. Um, and I don't and not just as as an instrument of change, but just like as a tool for anything kind of gives us a chance to look at things that are structural and play with them without the consequence of like >> am I going to get elected or is the protest going to work? >> And then there's another like aesthetic reason for me. I grew up my parents are both like, you know, kind of occasional organizer, educator, activist types. And um I grew up in the protest movement and I kind of don't love I don't know how protests are effective although I think they are on a mass scale. Like I think um Black Lives Matter in the wake of George Floyd's murder was effective even if it doesn't lead to like legislative change. There's a different conversation that is happening that has emerged from that series of protests. I think Occupy Wall Street was successful but you can't kind of quantify the success. I do worry sometimes that a lot of activism in New York City is so partisan and so uh insular and so based on perfectionism that that just doesn't call to me in the way that um making art with an eye on community change does. >> Mhm. >> There's a really cool documentary just came out called Emergent City and it's about the Sunset Park reszoning and the battle around that and they followed people for like nine years. um who were involved in that, developers, activists, >> and it points a little bit at some of the problems with contemporary activism for me as an end in itself. >> Um because what you find is like when the activists didn't get all their demands addressed and met right away, they sort of tried to cancel people like, you know, their current fairly liberal, very new council member or the community board. And so I think art is a way where we can be like we're all here, you know, like we're sharing this neighborhood or this planet and so we need to figure some stuff out and it's not going to happen overnight. And so that feels like the opportunity that Perfect City is trying to kind of create for other places. >> Do you want to talk a little more context about Perfect City for people listening who don't know about it? >> Yeah. So Perfect City was a group that I started in the wake of um city council meeting being completed. I had a little money aside. I um met an urban planner named Alan Chan who grew up on the Lower East Side and she said city kids are urban planners from day one and they rarely go into the field especially kids of color. Um and she said city kids know you know you know this cuz you grew up here right? >> Yep. >> Um you ride for public transit before you're born. You understand the invisible boundaries of where you're welcome and not welcome. It's really sophisticated and the people that go into the field tend to be white men from the suburbs and their aesthetics for what good design is have political implications for cities and neighborhoods. So I was like, okay, what if I gathered a group of young adults um who maybe had an interest in cities but no formal training because I don't have any formal training and paid them and said in a year year and a half we're going to make something out of our conversations. Um, and I started asking them like, "What are you all experts at in the city?" And, and in one of those early meetings, a guy said named uh Jamal Ayala, um, who I'm forever grateful to, said, "Well, I'm an expert at not running into people I don't want to." And we all laughed. And then Mallerie Catlet was there, and she said, "Can you draw a map of that?" And he drew a map of himself walking across Tomkins Square Park from his house to his friend's house, kind of referencing obliquely people that he didn't want to see. and also referencing that like as a large African-American man, he didn't want to be seen as lurking in the playground where he didn't know anybody. So, he had to get through that really quickly. And the dog run was off limits because of an X and like the raetball courts were off limits for another reason. And so, we all cracked up and then everybody drew an avoidance map. And it turns out that if you draw what you avoid in your day-to-day life, you understand all kinds of systems and laws and things like zoning and >> fascinating. Yeah. And so that working group around the same time really got focused on gentrification, which was not the word that I came in talking about, but they were living it. You know, they were from the Lower East Side of New York coming to a settlement house, Aprons Art Center, um, and meeting and going like, "Our neighborhood is changing like today." And I [snorts] said, "If we're really going to do something about gentrification, it's not going to happen in a year. It's going to take like 20. Haha." And they were like, "Cool. 20-year project." And somehow I just stayed. Speaking of impossible challenges, like most of the people who worked on that first year are not part of the group, but there are a couple. And you know, some years that means we're doing one or two things and other years it means we're three of us are have funding to be full-time involved, but we decided it's a 20-year project and we're in year nine. >> And now that encompasses city council meeting is a teaching tool. It encompasses different kinds of mapping. Um, there's a curriculum that I made with Ebony Noel Golden and an educator that gets young people involved through different kinds of artistic work into thinking about local government structures and stuff like that. So, Perfect City is a sprawling small uh endeavor that has me and a group of people that are younger than me um at the center. >> I'm going to shift us a little bit to like our field. [snorts] Um, I'm curious how you have felt that institutions or producers supported or failed to support your work. >> Oh, yeah. I mean, >> I go back and forth with this and I think any artist who has any amount of support or success, what we call success, right? Mh. >> And I think like I I think we'll feel that institutions are an asset and a difficult tension. So I would place myself in that >> and at the risk of you know I on one hand I want to be a little bit politic because I think everyone's in the field for the right reasons. >> Yeah. I think they're just like behaviors and practices in the field that I felt are unsupportive that have to do with like, you know, being promised a gig and then not hearing from anyone for years. Like that kind of thing just feels like institutions are have license to do that all the time. >> And I think there's just like a level of respect for artists that I think sometimes gets lost because there are so many of us trying to make our work and very few slots in the kind of coveted >> places that we want to get work. Yeah. So there's that. I think that the foundry again is a place where I felt wildly supported to make mistakes in the comfort of a well-resourced process that wasn't going to put my show up until it was ready, you know, and that feels like the way, you know, as a road map for other institutions. That's rare. I have some sympathy because I understand why it's rare. It's like everyone's struggling to get shows up and make money, you know, like make a living. >> But I think that was an example of like something that really worked like I think we need six more months. You know, I remember Melanie saying that we thought this was going to be a year and a half, but I think we really need two years total. Um, and I would say, you know, obviously the here residency was a chance to say we have three years. we can approach other venues with the safety of being like we're going to make mistakes in the comfort of our own residency and then we can come to you and develop it um from a place of strength and then same thing with funders. Mhm. >> So, like having a three-year timeline meant that we could apply for funders that would take a risk on artists that they didn't know well. Um, like me and like Mallerie and um although Jim was more wellknown as a designer, our collaboration was new, but it was like, okay, you have this bedrock of support, I know that if I support you, it's going to be put to good use. Um, I think the jump from small venue to medium-siz venue is still an issue. I think in the field like going from and I know that like places like BAM built the Fiser in order to help dance artists transition from Dixon Place and PS122 and here to like what would be at the Harvey or the or the Next Wave or Tour Europe. >> And I think that that kind of line of progression still doesn't quite make sense. And I think some of that is just financial. >> So that's one thing. And then the other thing I'll say at the risk of like you know alienating people who run venues is we don't need another half billion dollar venue that serves the same audience and presents the same work as the three other venues that have been built for that much money in the last 10 years. Right? >> We need that money to go to the field. You could instead of endowing a building, you could endow how many artist fellowships really significantly in the city or in the state >> for 10, 15, 20 years, you know, and literally like these buildings cost a half a billion to $500 million to build and you could invest that money, you know, and come up with $150,000 fellowships that would go on in perpetuity, you know, for working artists making experimental work. So that pains me because I just think the other thing about that is like the staff aren't getting paid well. You know what I mean? Like they're not getting paid like really well, >> but they're getting paid better than the artists. >> Yeah, they're certainly getting paid better than artists, but I think the pressures on them are pretty intense, you know? Mh. >> And so I think like that is a thing that um continues to kind of break my heart about New York is that like because I did arrive at the tail end of you know when you could have shows in your loft um when you could have shows at an old school building when you could have shows in someone's living room um and call that an institution >> and there were like tons of problems with that you know and I think largely the audience that that served was a little bit more monolithic. I think that the fact that work has spread to the outer burrows is not a bad thing. Even though I wish it was easier to like walk places. Um, but I do think that the idea of, you know, size and kind of money going to real estate that ultimately helps real estate, you know, like a lot of these venues, they don't necessarily help keep the city viable for artists or anyone else, you know. >> Um, they they tend to help gentrify neighborhoods. Um, so I think that's a that's the thing that continues to feel like >> I think we need to move on from that phase. You know, we have enough houses for places. >> Yeah. Um, on that energy about the spirit of New York City, the spirit of downtown, >> um, with the spread of work across five burrows, do you think the spirit of downtown still exists >> or h and how has it changed? You know, [sighs] >> I mean, it's a great question. I don't know that I have a strong answer because I think I don't know if I could define a spirit of downtown except that, you know, there was a sweet spot for me. >> The woman with the blue hair reading the voice. >> That's definitely that's like definitely spirit of downtown. [laughter] But I looked at her and I was like, she's in my mind, if I go back 40 years, she's like in her 30s. And so I was coming in aware that there was a generation of people who had kind of paved a way. >> Um and then I studied with some of those people >> and I think some of those people were brilliant artists who were a little bit naive that it was always going to be like that. And so um the spirit of downtown I feel like our generation watched it change. And I think there was a period where like you know Richard Foreman would give the ontological to his resident directors. Sidebar, I think all if uh maybe most if not all of those directors were white and most of them were men, >> but so there's that and that's and you could get three to four weeks in the space um and all of your friends would come help take down the set when it was strike and put up the lights when they needed to and show up and act in the shows because everyone could work three or four days a week at a restaurant and kind of eek by. And we all felt like it was getting more expensive. So it wasn't like that golden era, but it was a little bit more viable to have a community that could see each other all the time, you know, and from what I understand a little bit like I went up and did catch at PS21 and I got to meet a bunch of artists who were 20 25 years younger than me and they were like, "Yeah, that's still like that." Like that there is a version of that that happens in Bushwick and Ridgewood and it happens with people performing for each other in the spare room in an apartment. So I feel like that spirit's really alive. I sometimes wish we didn't all have to struggle and then have the next generation struggle for increasingly what seems like smaller amounts of resources. Like that's the part that feels like at what point does it make more sense to go to Philly, you know, and Minneapolis and Austin, even though those cities are getting more expensive, too. I have told a few students um who I know don't come from personal wealth that if they want to start a theater company, Philly is a much more viable place to do that right now. And I know artists who've moved there after 15, 20 years in New York and they're like, "Yeah, it's better," you know? So that's a little like, uh oh, is there a downtown or is it national, >> right? >> Is that better or worse? You know? >> Yeah. But is New York City a key collaborator for you? I mean for me >> because I lived my adult life here, you know, and it was a place I knew I wanted to make home >> um since I was 16. So >> and I think I it's a key collaborator because I still occupy the position of someone who came here, you know, and so perfect city started with born New Yorkers and there was definitely I never felt like they were like what are you doing here? But I do feel a kind of debt to the city and the people who have tended it, you know. Yeah. Like I live in an HDFC co-op, which without going down too much of a rabbit hole means that you have to make under New York City median income to live there. And um >> these buildings in the East Village and other neighborhoods came about because landlords in the 70s were bailing on New York. And tenants could get together and work out a deal with the city to basically get free apartments if they agreed to rehab and keep these income restrictions online. And so the matriarch of my building was Dona Lisia Torres. She died at 99. She had eight kids. Their landlord bailed. They fixed up the building with a group of artists um including Butch Morris uh the composer. And they made that neighborhood viable in so many ways, right? Like Alicia Torres is one of the people who would like block bulldozers during the Giuliani administration from bulldozing the community gardens that they had set up. So they made invented spaces out of something that was rubble. And invented spaces is a term I want to give credit to Selena Sue >> who wrote a great book called Budget Justice. It's a great book. >> Yeah. And so they made something that wasn't there before rather than saying the city is yours. Please come in, you know, which is the invited space idea. Um, and so I'm a little obsessed with like what does it mean to continue to go like you're building, you live where you live because someone put their body on the line. And I think that is a story of New York, you know, and a story of New York culture. Um, that often gets a little glossed over when we talk about like downtown. >> What would a truly sustainable artistic life look like? >> I mean, it would look like not having to worry about health care year by year or month by month. I mean that is like my biggest thing of like uh having had years in which my family's coverage is precarious and years in which there's a baseline um that the baseline means that I can take more creative risks. >> Absolutely. And as I get older having made work now for three decades that becomes more and more important as I have a kid you know um I'm not interested in my kids suffering because I continue to want to be an artist. So like that um you know there's plenty of other reasons the kids suffer so like [laughter] uh why give him one more um you know so I think that's a big part of it. I think things like UBI for everybody making below a certain amount of money would be great. >> Um I think obviously like the affordability. >> Why don't you translate that for folks who might not be familiar with it? >> UBI is universal basic income. >> Um which is an experiment that's been tried in a number of communities. Um and >> we had it here for a short time in New York City. >> That's right. for two years or 18 months >> during co Yeah. >> Yeah. And then the um artist creatives rebuild New York did a kind of 18-month experiment. >> Um and it's something that's worked in other countries. I'm a big fan in response to your question. I'm a big fan of placing artists among other people of limited means. Um, not that every artist has limited means, but that like what works for public school teachers, librarians, bus drivers, um, anyone else who's making a kind of working to middle class living would work would stabilize artists. Also, I think on a more kind of creative level, longer commitments. So, it's like we're going to be with you for 3 to 5 years. Um, which is something I've had from here, from the foundry, and from ABS. So ABS has kind of let me carve out a place there that's now gone on for nine years. Um that sometimes just means I have an office to work out of. Sometimes it means I have presentation support. Um but it it means that I can follow like the strands of my work without feeling like this one better measure up or I'm I'm out. You know, that feels like another part of it. >> What do you hope to leave behind for the next generation of theater makers? You think a lot about next generation in your work? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Because I've been teaching more. I mean, my relationship to teaching was I taught business skills workshops for years through the Creative Capital Foundation. And I love that because it meant traveling around and not really teaching the art part because I kind of knew coming from an educator's background, my my parents are both teachers of different things. I was like, I'm going to get really wrapped up in my students. like I like watching their discoveries and I don't want to mess that I don't want to mess up my creative pursuits by getting really wrapped up in my students discoveries. It was like a good selfish thing. >> Um and so now I feel like I started teaching the creative stuff 10 years ago and it really makes me feel like beholden to a continuing series of generations, you know. So I would say I'd love to leave a sense of possibility that for people who are younger to know that the way everyone says to do theater or other kinds of art or the way to live an artist's life is not set in stone ever. and that some of my favorite artists are people who um have continued to expand and explore and not be limited by what their reputation is or what their most successful project was um or what they're most known for. I will say that sometimes I feel a little resistance. Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, it' be easier if I just continued making X, Y, or Z kind of work." Um but I really am happier not doing that. Um there's a story from Tom Weights, the singer songwriter. Someone asked him like why when this album Swordfish Trombones came out it was such a massive shift and they said what what changed and he said well I started writing on instruments that I didn't know how to play only and I was like that feels like words to live by you know so I would love to like leave a space where artists can be like I don't know how to play the banjo but this is definitely what I want to do you know >> I love that that's great is there anything we haven't talked about that is important to you [gasps] >> one other thing about that's very specific to like our world of performance making that was just as I was coming over here I was thinking about technology and it's like a whole other hour conversation right because it gets into things like social media and maybe AI although I'm just like averse to talking about AI personally um which is bad um but I was thinking about how when Johanna my wife and I um were first started making work with video in it we were like well if we rent a projector it's 300 bucks for a week and if we buy a projector it's $1,200 and we could rent it out and so we bought bought this projector that was like 7 lumens and we used it in our shows and then we would like wheel it in like a you know like an overnight bag like a wheeling um you know luggage and we would wheel it to other places that would rent our projector and I think about how far technology has come you know I mean I think like three years later Ken Ninsel had something he could hold in his hand that he could move around or if I look at the work of like radio hole and Jim Finley's work and Mal's work your work >> where hybrid the term that here used to use was like a new discovery and now it just feels like that's what I love about you. >> It's ubiquitous. >> It's ubiquitous and it's kind of like well of course you know if you need to use social media as part of how you deliver your theater of course. Um it's not and I I like that because it's sort of less precious. >> Yeah. We have 4G on our phones. We have all this access. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Thank you Erin. This has been an amazing conversation. No, not at all. It's wonderful to see you. >> Yeah, you too. Yeah. >> Keep up the good work. This is awesome. >> Thank you. And thanks to How Round for hosting us and we hope you'll come back to the next edition of Torches. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Ooh. [music] [applause] >> [music]