Category: ARTS & THEATER

 

Leticia Ridley: Welcome to Daughters of Lorraine, a podcast from your friendly neighborhood Black feminists, exploring the legacies, present, and futures of Black theatre. We are your hosts, Leticia Ridley—

Jordan Ealey: And Jordan Ealey. On this podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide, we discuss Black theatre history; conduct interviews with local and national Black theatre artists, scholars, and practitioners; and discuss plays by Black playwrights that have our minds buzzing.

Leticia: Masi Asare is an assistant professor of theatre and performance studies at Northwestern University. She is a songwriter and dramatist and also works as a performance scholar specializing in the study of race and vocal sound and musicals. A Tony-nominated lyricist, her work includes Paradise Square and Monsoon Wedding. She has also been commissioned by Theatre Royal Stratford East, the Lilly Awards, and Marvel.

Jordan: Her scholarly book, Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage, is forthcoming from Duke University Press this October 2024. A past Dramatists Guild Fellow and Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Fellow, honors include the inaugural Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award for a woman composer of musicals, a grant from the Theatre Hall of Fame, and inclusion on the Women to Watch on Broadway list.

Masi has also published with Concord Theatricals, the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, Journal of Popular Music Studies, TDR, the Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre, and Performance Matters. This episode is an interview with Masi as we learn about her work as an artist-scholar of musical theatre.

Jordan: Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to Daughters of Lorraine, and we are so, so excited to have Masi Asare on the podcast. We’ve wanted to interview Masi for quite a while, so we’re really, really excited to have her join us for today.

Masi Asare: Thank you so much for having me.

Leticia: We are so excited because, as you know, we know each other for our scholarly work, but we also have talked so much on the podcast about Black women, specifically in musical theatre, and you are one of the Black women in musical theatre. And basically, for us, we’re like, “Black women rarely ever get their shine in musical theatre.”

We know we’re out there, but we seem to be in enclaves and hidden from the mainstream, which is not necessarily meaning that Black women composers and librettists want to be a part of the mainstream per se, but just to say, if you are someone that has an interest within musical theatre, where do you go to see people, who look like you, doing the thing that you may be interested in doing or just a fan of? So we’re so excited to have you with us today.

Masi: Thank you. Yeah. I think about this a lot. I mean, I know this is one of the questions you all have. And I’ll just say, as we’re getting started, in a certain sense, I do best not thinking about it too much and just keeping my head down and doing my work, and meeting the people that I want to meet, and doing my best to encourage other artists. I try to do some mentoring whenever I can.

And pretty much if anybody emails me—well, now I’m leaving the door wide open—but if anybody emails me and is like, “I’m a Black woman who’s writing musicals, and I want to talk to you,” I’m like, “Great.” So I do try to keep my door open and support and encourage, but I also can’t get too weighed down in it. I will also say, a couple years ago, I realized that I was only the fifth Black woman to ever be nominated for a Tony Award in the category of Best Original Score of a Musical.

And it really hit me hard to realize that, because in my scholarly research, I studied Black women performers and who’s been nominated for Tony Awards and who were the early winners of Tony Awards among the performers, but I had not really, for whatever reason, done that close of a look at the writers and composers.

Anyway, so one thing I will say is, I really reflected at that time, and I still think about this a lot. I do not have any illusions that I have more talent than anybody who came before me. The fact that there have been so few of us is a reflection of the opportunities that were available, the doors that simply were not open. There are many, many, many, many, many more Black women composers, lyricists, librettists who could have been in the spotlight had the doors been open. So that’s one thing I usually just say. When people are like, “But there are so few,” I’m like, “People have not been invited in. It’s not that there was not the talent.”

Jordan: I mean, you know how I feel about that. You are part of my research, Masi, on Black women composers. I am a huge admirer of your work as a scholar, but also as an artist. And I remember when you posted that graphic on Instagram, and it was something that I had taken notice of just because it was a part of my scholarly work. And I totally agree that it’s not the talent, it’s the opportunity. I think that’s incredibly succinct and brilliant way of putting that.

Part of the work that you and I are doing is locating that Black women have always been here, but also saying that they still are here. It’s not like we’ve gone anywhere. So I really appreciate you saying that.

So, with all of that being said, what was the draw to theatre? How did you come to theatre, and musical theatre specifically?

Masi: Yeah. It’s interesting. So no one in my family is in the theatre. There are actually a number of composers on my father’s side. My dad is from Ghana in West Africa, and there are a number of distinguished composers. I think it’s my great uncle who composed the Ghana national anthem. I might be getting this wrong. I should know my family history better. But we have some distinguished composers and musicians on my dad’s side.

And my mom—So I’m mixed-race, so I identify as Black and mixed-race—and my mom is white. Her family is from Norway and Appalachia. And so, they say that my great-grandmother, who was from Appalachia, had a beautiful singing voice. So I kind of traced my musical roots on those sides. But nobody was into the theatre, and my family was like, “What is this? What is this thing that you’re into?” They’re like writers and engineers and academics, and I just kind of got bit by the bug.

And my family was kind of, like I said, really all about academics. They also were kind of into the simple life. So I did not have a television growing up, which I’m a little bitter about, because I was the MTV generation, and I feel like I missed out on the major cultural event of my generation. I’m still a little bit salty about it.

So we just read a lot. I literally would just go through a stack of books a week. I read like crazy. My siblings were the same, and I took piano lessons. And when I realized that there was this thing where you could have music and stories together, called musical theatre, I kind of lost my mind, and I just never looked back.

I remember I grew up in a college town, and all the touring shows would come through. And from the time that I was fourteen, I called up and said, “I know there’s a volunteer usher corp. Can I volunteer?” So I volunteer ushered for all of the touring shows that came through town, and I saw everything that way, and I did community theatre. And that was sort of how I found my way to the theatre, even though nobody in my family really knew what it was or had context for it.

The fact that there have been so few of us is a reflection of the opportunities that were available, the doors that simply were not open. 

Leticia: Right. Right. That’s so interesting. None of my family is in the theatre or interested in theatre, even though I will say I have two young nieces who very much love musical theatre, which is nice to sort of share that with them, that I’m like, “Oh, yes. Finally, a kindred spirit with my nieces, my young nieces, who enjoy something that I enjoy.” So whenever I go home, we go see something. So that’s really interesting.

So you talk a bit about being bit by the bug, volunteering to be an usher. When were you like, “I want to pursue this professionally”? Was there a particular moment or mentor that led you to really take musical theatre seriously as a career and a profession?

Masi: Well, it’s interesting. I mean, even to this day, I sort of feel like, “Is it a profession? Can I make my living doing this?” I still have my university job, and I’m very grateful. I’m very grateful to have this dual track because it’s not an easy road to actually make a living as a writer in the theatre. I guess, I had a college job.

I mean, I think, like so many of us, I thought I was going to be a performer. That dream was somewhat short-lived. But I had a summer job, and then it became a job during the academic year in college, where I wound up writing songs for children’s musicals for a youth theatre outside of Boston. So it was this really fun place that would put on original musical plays with kids.

And in the summertime… I worked there when I think I was nineteen years old. It was the summer after my freshman year, and there was a songwriter there who since has become… I forget what his new title is. It’s not marketing director. It’s like some other fancier title at Concord Theatricals. We’ve stayed friends since then. But at the time, he was the staff songwriter, and he would just write three, four songs a week for these shows.

And I always say—Jim Colleran is his name—I was like, “Jim, I kind of learned to write songs from you,” because then, during the school year, he was off doing something else. I had sort of witnessed his process that summer. So summer of my sophomore year, they said, “Masi, can you put some lyrics to some existing songs?” I think it was a song from Mame, and they were like, “We’re sending this story in this different context, and we want to use this song. Can you just write some lyrics?” And I was like, “I think I can write a song.”

So I just started writing songs for these children’s theatre productions. The stakes were very low. The parents were happy no matter what. But I had to write very fast, and I kind of learned that way. There was usually a song that was like, “Welcome to our world.” And then there was a song that was like, “The monster is coming.” And then there was a song that was like, “We killed the monster.” It was a little formulaic, but I learned a lot about how you weave in underscoring and how you build tension, and I would live-accompany the shows.

And so, I think that’s really… It was a fun and kind of low-pressure, in a way, context to just start writing songs for the theatre. Then I will say, after I moved to New York in my early twenties, I was auditioning for things, and then I auditioned for the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Writing Workshop, which is one of the workshops in town. At the time, it was one of the very few, and now there are many, many more. It’s kind of a famous place.

And I remember that that audition was so easy compared to all these other auditions I had been going on to. Ragtime had just come out, and I was doing all these Ragtime auditions. And it was just like, I was always trying to fit into somebody’s box, and I wasn’t quite this enough, and I wasn’t quite that enough, and they called me back for Bombay Dreams.

It was just like, I couldn’t figure out what was happening in the performer world. And then I had an audition for the songwriting workshop, and all I had to do was sit at the piano and play my songs. And something about it just felt right, and I was like, “This is the best audition I’ve been on in a while.” And so, I think that was kind of a real turning moment, too.

Jordan: Oh my God, that’s such a cool story, and I love that you got started in children’s theatre. I think that’s amazing. And I think that theatre for youth or children’s theatre oftentimes doesn’t get enough attention for the ways it can open us up imaginatively. And so, I love that that was where you got your start. So kind of keeping on with talking about songwriting, we’d love to hear about how you actually go about writing the song. What cracks open that new idea, and what is your approach to songwriting?

Masi: Yeah. It’s funny you ask, because I have many songs that I’m supposed to be writing today, and I’m like, “What will my process be?” I think I have to say, I really like to write songs for story, and I’d write my best songs that way, when the dramatic situation is very specific. I have a hard time just writing a song from how I feel that day, which is why I don’t often write songs outside of theatre.

Sometimes I write to really specific political or cultural contexts. I’ll kind of have these cabaret songs that will come out, or sort of just, I don’t know, more sort of politically motivated songs. But they’re also sparked by really specific circumstances. So for me, I have to know what’s the dramatic context for the song, why the song needs to arise in this moment, and otherwise, it’s very difficult for me to get going.

Then what I often do, it depends. Sometimes I write book, music, lyrics. It’s harder. I’m working on a musical right now with a really wonderful collaborator, and it’s so much easier. I’m so happy to be writing music and lyrics and know that the script is beautifully taken care of. I actually have a couple of projects like that, and it’s really wonderful.

Sometimes the librettist, the book writer, can give you a monologue to work from, and then you can see what pops out for you there. But often what I’ll do if I’m writing music and lyrics is, I’ll kind of do two processes. One is, I will try to figure out what kind of musical landscape I want to live in. Musical style is really important to me. I think about it a lot as a function of character. And so, I’ll think about, “Well, what’s the kind of sound world I want this number to live in?”

And then I’ll kind of tinker a little bit at the piano and get some shapes. It’s all kind of sketch. I’ll sketch at the piano and with my voice, and I’ll have a little bit of a musical world. And then the other thing I do for lyrics is I free write. I free write text that I think this character would be saying in the moment, with no judgment. Whatever comes out, comes out.

And then I’ll go back through what I’ve free-written and see what kind of stands out, and then I’ll take that to the piano. And I don’t really know how to say it. I kind of like just let them settle into each other, this sound world and this emotional world with some key phrases. And usually, a hook, a title of the song will start to emerge, and I’ll just run from there. I feel like I’m not being very articulate, but that’s kind of how I work, I guess.

Leticia: You definitely are. And I think it’s also just important to hear about how our processes can be different. I’m not a composer or lyricist by any means, but the way that I write my academic work is very different than a lot of people. Right? So I think it’s important to discuss process and how we come, and to know that one size does not fit all. Yeah. The books may be helpful, but not everyone wakes up at 6:00 a.m. and writes for three hours before their day starts.

Masi: Oh. Well, no, not everyone does that…Well, I will say it’s interesting. I’m back in New York now. I divide my time between Chicago and New York, and I was in Chicago for a couple weeks recently. And I will say I had a big deadline, and I just went underground and just wrote. And in that sense, it is sometimes helpful for me to… Sometimes I’m better at it than other times, but to not check email. Well, definitely not check email, but not get on social media, like nothing, until at least 1:00 p.m. Just keep the morning clear so I can wake up and go directly into the work.

Sometimes I’m better or less better, better or worse, at that. But I think, I wanted to say, when you were talking about process, and also since you started talking about Black women in musicals, a piece of advice that I got from Kirsten Childs that was so helpful to me, that I always mention to other writers, I feel like… I had my first big commission for a new musical, book, music, lyrics, and I was talking to Kirsten. Someone had just introduced us, and I forget. I was just stressed.

I had a deadline and I had to turn these songs around, and I was not sure how to do it. And she told me that before she writes—she has a dance background, so she was an incredible dancer on Broadway—so she said that before she writes, she does deep breathing. And this kind of blew my mind, kind of like how, if you’re going to dance, you need to warm up. But no one had ever mentioned to me that before you write, you might need to have some kind of a clearing process or some kind of a preparation.

I was literally going into the piano and my shoulders were up to my ears with stress, and I was just trying to write a song. And that made a really big impression on me. I have a little checklist of things I do before I write that I call Opening the Channel and, after I write called Closing the Channel, because I have found that, especially if I’m working on personal material or material that makes me very emotional, after I’m writing, I can feel like I’m just walking through the world like an open wound if I haven’t just found a way for that process to end and close the channel. So that’s something that I learned from Kirsten.

Leticia: That’s such wonderful advice that I’m actually going to be more mindful of thinking about that when I do the work that I’m doing, because you’re absolutely right. No one tells you, “I was an athlete for most of my life. I just didn’t get up and go on the court and just play. There was a process for me to warm up my body in order to do the thing that I was out there to do.” Right? So it makes so much sense. Why wouldn’t writing be the same? That is great advice. That is amazing.

One thing that’s often said about blues singers, but also Black women singers in any historical era, is that they are “untrained.”And I really do not like this term. I refute it.

Masi: One hundred percent. I actually have a checklist both for my scholarly work and for my creative work, because there are different things that I need to get ready. But yeah, I call them Opening and Closing the Channel. So that’s one thing.

Leticia: Yeah. Listeners, take that advice. That’s amazing, amazing advice. I have another question before we sort of jump into your academic work. I have noticed this trend of musical theatre numbers finding their way into television shows, and I think it was… Oh, man. Was it Run the World or Harlem? It was Harlem, I think. It was Harlem.

Masi: Harlem. Yes.

Leticia: Yes. Harlem, where they had Get Out: The Musical, and it was sort of a satire, parody of Get Out, and one of the characters is an actress. And then I’ve seen something like that in Marvel.

Masi: Yes. In Hawkeye, in the Hawkeye series. Yes. It’s kind of like a Hamilton parody on… What’s his name? Captain America. I forget what the character’s name is. Rogers, Steve Rogers. Right. Rogers: The Musical. Yeah.

Leticia: Yup. Yup. Exactly. Exactly. And I just noticed this trend for… Musical theatre is a popular form. Right? It’s always existed in this realm of popular, but then I juxtapose it with people not knowing that The Color Purple was a musical and movie musicals not always doing well. And “popular,” I think, is a term that we can unpack a bit more, but it seems to be finding its way, even if a show is not a musical, in TV shows. And I just wondered if you had any sort of thoughts about that trend or why musical theatre or musical theatre numbers are popular or seems to be increasingly more popular within TV.

Masi: It’s an interesting question. I think, in a way, it’s been going on for a while. Right? And as I have given my disclaimers, I’m not always up on all the TV stuff, given my flawed upbringing on that front. But I do remember back in the day, there was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode. That was a really big deal. You can think about shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

There was also, in terms of early web series, I’m going to get the name of this wrong, but Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along. I can’t remember the name of the show, but I’ll have to look it up and send it to you afterwards. But it was one of these early web series that was very famous and has a cult following now, sort of like a superhero musical. So I think there have been these things for a while.

I do think with the Steve Rogers… It’s so funny. I remember seeing that in Hawkeye, and I had been working on a couple Marvel things, and I messaged the folks that I knew and I was like, “Hey, if you need some musicals, give me a call.” But whatever. It’s all good. I think they actually have made that Rogers musical into a live stage production. I saw something about this last year, maybe at one of the theme parks or something.

I think that show is a direct offshoot of Hamilton. And also, interestingly enough, now we’re just getting into Marvelness, but the Captain America character has kind of like a musical theatre lineage. If you think back to those 1940s, he was in this variety show with all these showgirls. And Alan Menken wrote this very 1940s, all-American show tune for him and his character, and I forget which movie that was from. So he kind of has this musical theatre lineage in a way. So it’s interesting that it comes out in this more Hamilton-esque musical in recent years. I can’t remember what the other show was that you mentioned that also had a number.

Leticia: Harlem. Harlem. Harlem, which I think is interesting, because that show is very Black. Right? It’s a very Black show. And I don’t know, again, I have not done any research on this, if shows that are catered towards a Black audience is using musical theatre. I don’t know. Is there a TV show that did a whole musical theatre episode that was catered towards… Sister, Sister didn’t do an all-musical theatre episode.

Masi: Right. Right. We’re going to think of something as soon as we get off the phone. But yes, I think, I will see. I remember seeing that Get Out parody on Harlem on Prime, and I thought it was so funny. There was one song in particular. I can’t remember what it was called. It was something like “Liberal White Parents” was the name of the song, or something like that, and I was like, “Ooh, this is smart. Who worked on this?”

And, of course, I looked at the songwriters. And if you didn’t know, Sukari Jones, who is a Black woman lyricist, was one of the songwriters on that, along with Pasek and Paul. Sukari has been doing a lot of work out in Hollywood. She was a writer on one of the new musicals that Pasek and Paul did, one of the film musicals. I can’t remember which one it was. And Khiyon Hursey, another Black writer, has also been doing a lot of film and TV as well.

So we have some voices that are kind of making some inroads in that scene. But I remember hearing that song and being like, “Who wrote this?” And I know Sukari. She has a wicked sense of humor and is a super smart lyricist. Kind of, I think, came through the NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program maybe around the same time as Michael R. Jackson, like comparable. And so, yeah, just a wicked sense of humor and very sharp lyrics. So I thought those were very smart numbers.

Jordan: Yes. Oh my gosh, we love that, Get Out, so much. Yes. I remember that “White Liberal Parents.” It’s like (singing). A brilliant song. Incredible. Yeah. Really looking forward to experiencing more of Sukari’s work.

So we’ve heard a little bit about your creative practice and your artistry. As an artist-scholar, you’re also working on significant research projects, and one of those big ones is your book, Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters, which is going to be coming out from Duke University Press. I’m so freaking excited. I’ve been waiting for this book for so long. But yeah, tell us a little bit about that project and what folks might be expecting when we pick that up this October.

Masi: Absolutely. Yeah. So it’s interesting. It’s been a many-year project. I’m very excited that it’s coming into the world this year. And I think part of what’s been exciting to me about this book project is finding a way to bring together my creative practice and my scholarly work. So even before I really became a songwriter, I always taught voice lessons. And it was actually the way I made my living back in the day in between all those restaurant jobs and substitute teaching, and just trying to audition and keep it together. I always taught voice lessons, and I always studied voice.

And so, a lot of what I do in the book is listen really closely to not only the voices of singers, but also what singers say about their own singing, what singers say about their own voices and about their own singing. And part of what I’m trying to do in the book is a little bit of a move where, as I’m sure you’re aware, one thing that’s often said about blues singers, but also Black women singers in any historical era, is that they are “untrained.”

And I really do not like this term. I refute it. And I want to talk about the many different contexts in which training can take place. Right? Did training take place on the vaudeville circuit with Bessie Smith touring with Ma Rainey and sharing a stage and writing songs together and learning from the more senior star? Did it take place, in the case of Ethel Waters, at the elbow of the Black woman accompanist and voice coach? Not just the white, Tin Pan Alley songwriters. Right?

In Ethel Waters’s case, it’s quite fascinating. She often got these songs, and she would say, “Let me take this home. I’m going to work on it with Pearl.” And Pearl was her accompanist. And then she would come back, and they would do it in a more blues style. And then some of those songs have become very, very well-known. So what were the different contexts in which Black women singers learned to sing, learned their repertoire, and, in the course of learning their repertoire, also learned technique?

So I sort of traced a series of historical voice lessons. Often, it’s said or assumed that Broadway belting began more or less with someone like Ethel Merman, or maybe hearkening back to the great Sophie Tucker. But Sophie Tucker specifically asked Ethel Waters to give her a voice lesson. You can kind of go back in the history and see the line being passed along of who is carrying whose voice in their body. And so, I like to think about different ways of understanding what Broadway belting is when it’s done by singers of all different ethnicities.

I could say more, but that’s kind of where I start. And then I go on. I look at the Black torch singer in the 1930s with Ethel Waters, and it’s a very different kind of torch singer persona than the white torch singers are able to inhabit. Right? Oftentimes, there’s this world where we sophisticate leaning against a lamppost and a pool of soft moonlight. Well, Ethel Waters often sang her torch songs with a basket of laundry under her arm, and a different kind of weariness and a different kind of prayerfulness that she was asked to perform.

So I read about that as sort of the persona of the weary, bluesy mammy that these singers were asked to perform. And then singers that refused to do that, singers like Ethel… Sorry, like Pearl Bailey and Juanita Hall, who sort of asked listeners to hear their voices in different ways. I could say more, but I want to go on and on. But Juanita Hall is quite fascinating, because she performed in yellowface for most of her career. Right? A fair-skinned Black woman from New Jersey, but she’s best known for Bloody Mary in South Pacific, which is a character who is from what is now known as Vietnam. Right?

So she literally was playing an Asian character. She was the first actor cast in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song, which is set in San Francisco’s Chinatown. So she literally was doing all these yellowface characters, even though we celebrate her as the first Black woman who won a Tony Award for her Bloody Mary in South Pacific turn. It’s quite a complicated history to reckon with.

I also listened to how she was singing in blues clubs, and sort of had this operatic career, but also this blues career and how can we hear her voice in different ways. And then I go on and look at the kind of glamour girls and starlets and sex kittens of the ‘50s and ‘60s, the first two Black women to win Tonys for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, Diahann Carroll and Leslie Uggams. And we cannot forget Eartha Kitt. Although she has often been overlooked, she actually has more Broadway credits than many of the women of that era, and I think about her as well.

So those are some of the things I do. And then I guess I should say, since I’m giving a monologue here, I sort of go through these different historical eras of Black women singers. And as I’ve said, I’ve been looking at or trying to pay attention to how these singers were also voice teachers, really Broadway’s voice teachers, and how they listened to and learned from one another. I also look at Lena Horne as a kind of voice teacher for some of the young Black starlets who came up after her, despite the fact that she refused and was refused opportunities on Broadway and really rarely appeared on Broadway as a young starlet. But she kind of had her lessons to impart for the next generation.

So having done this, locating these Black women singers in this line of voice pedagogy, the final chapter is about historical voice pedagogy across the long twentieth century and the way that it often understands belting or other kinds of pop singing as, quote, unquote, “unhealthy,” and what we can make of that and think our way through it as we’re thinking about all of us who are now singing in styles that were innovated by these Black women artists.

Leticia: Wow. I’m really excited about it. I’ve heard you speak about the book for quite some time now. So I’m excited to have it on my desk and to really dive in and read it. And even when you were talking, I was just thinking about Tracy Chapman, who just performed, for the first time in a long time, on the Grammy stage. And I think about my own work with… I don’t work on musical theatre or Broadway per se. I tangentially dip my toe in every so often.

But I think about Beyoncé and I think about her documenting her own training and her own work to undercut this idea that what she does is just, like you said, untrained. It’s just natural. She just gets up there and does what she does. But no, she has actually made a concerted effort to track her training and to show the public that what you see in a Beyoncé performance or on an album is something that takes a lot of training and a lot of work.

So I think that’s specifically important when we think about Black women performers broadly, I think. So I’m really excited about your book, and I think it has far reach beyond the musical stage or musical theatre scholarship, and it will definitely make an imprint there. But I’m just thinking with you, how your work is definitely going to influence my own. So I’m really excited to dive deep into it.

Masi: Thank you. I mean, there’s so many of us. We know these things, but we have to put words to them so that other people can see them as well. And you’re absolutely right. And I’m certainly not the first person who has critiqued the idea that Black women singers spontaneously manifest their sound, as you’re saying, also in the case of Beyoncé. There’s just this idea that like, “Oh, she’s just feeling it. She just gets up there and feels it.” And that can really disavow the artistry, the work, the labor of the artist that is going into that.

And so, I just feel like it’s really of vital importance. I will also say one thing that really surprised me in the course of doing this research. I mean, when I set out back in the day, it grew out of my doctoral dissertation, I sort of intuited that the Broadway belt sound had aspects of… I don’t know. How can I say this?

Well, think about this. There’s another way I often talk about it. If you look at classical conservatories, jazz singers and opera singers are segregated. They’re not allowed to sing together. There’s, to this day, a widespread perception that singing things like jazz, gospel, rock will ruin… That’s literally the word that’s used, will ruin a classical singer’s voice. Right? So there are these segregated tracks.

And I sort of have been interested in the way that musical theatre is kind of a zone of musical miscegenation, that it is messy. We do train in multiple vocal styles for musical theatre, but why is it that… And it seems so clear to me that these things were sort of racially cordoned off. But what I found was that in the case of Broadway belting, it has become so identified with white women that some of the sort of narratives around that have become so subsumed. It was difficult to parse.

And nonetheless, this narrative around Broadway belting being innate, spontaneous talent, which is something that Ethel Merman certainly espoused, is something that has carried over. So it’s really quite fascinating to think about. There’s still a mythology around, “Well, some people can just belt. They can just do it in a similar way, but to different ends,” then “Well, some women can just riff,” or whatever it is.

I always say to young writers, “What we have to notice is what moves us.” What’s useful as a writer is noticing what I respond to. Then I could have something to take with me. If I really did not respond to it, I also learned something from that.

Leticia: Right. Right. Right. That’s so fascinating. That’s absolutely fascinating.

But do you have a favorite musical?

Masi: Oh, people ask this all the time. I should be getting better at answering it. I don’t. I don’t have a favorite musical. I will say this, and I tell this to my students. I feel like there is something to be learned from everything, even the things that you actively dislike. And so, I’m less interested in just liking things than I am in learning from them. I’m so hungry to improve my craft.

That said, some of the musicals that I return to are things like Into the Woods. I return to that, I think, in some ways because it’s one of the first musicals that I encountered that really is not about a heterosexual love story at its heart. It is about the relationships between children and adults, children and parents. That’s the heart of the piece, which you find, again, with things like Fun Home. It’s not like that’s the only show that does that, but it made a big impression on me at the time when I saw it, when it first came out.

I return to Passing Strange. I think the book is so razor-sharp in that show. I love the music. I love the West Coast vibe of that music. Structurally, I return to Fiddler on the Roof. It’s really structurally solid, whether or not one sort of agrees with traditions of marrying off one’s daughters. The sort of struggle of a person and their faith and the collision between generations is really… It’s built so wonderfully, that show.

And it’s really interesting. Of course, it was really not lost on me that I was teaching a musical theatre writing class in the fall and literally teaching it in a time… I was literally teaching about the importance of dramatic conflict as events were unfolding in Israel and Palestine, and it was really quite charged to be thinking about the ways that we must, as writers, represent the conflicts in the world around us.

And also, I guess Fiddler on the Roof brings up for me the incredible impact that so many Jewish writers have had innovating the form and, in a way, as a means of survival as immigrants. And at the same time, Fiddler on the Roof, literally a story about being kicked out of one’s home, and displacement being so rampant, not just in Palestine now, but in so many places around the globe. I think it’s things like that where you can see Fiddler on the Roof and find so many resonances.

I recently also learned about this Palestinian musical called The Little Lantern, Al-Fawanees. I may not be saying the Arabic name correctly, which was put on with about fifty-eight children in Ramallah in 2004, I want to say. It’s an adaptation of a short story by a very famous Palestinian writer about a princess who is charged with bringing more light into the castle when the king dies, and she can’t figure out how to do it, and she can’t capture the sun. And then finally, she issues an order for everyone with a lantern to come to the palace. And not everybody can fit, so they have to tear down the walls, and then finally, all the light enters the castle. It’s just kind of a gorgeous story. I mean, the stories that we tell matter.

Anyway, so I’m rambling. So I try to learn from anything, literally anything. I went to see Days of Wine and Roses just the other day. It was devastatingly sad, but the score was glorious, and there’s always something to learn.

I am also doing a project right now connecting with artists and scholars who work on musical-theatrical performance throughout Global South countries, because I want to learn more from what’s happening in other parts of the world, and not just Berlin and Sydney and the sort of places in the Global North that are the go-to, the London, the West End, the Broadway, the Hollywood tropes. So those are some of the things that I’m excited about learning about.

Leticia: That’s amazing. I love the reframing of learning, because I think that’s such a valuable lesson. If you’re in a classroom or out of a classroom, there’s always something to learn from everything. And it’s not a matter of like or dislike, but what can you learn from potentially your like or dislike of something? What is it that rings true to you and what doesn’t?

Masi: Yeah. And I always say… Totally. Exactly. I always say to young writers, “What we have to notice is what moves us.” What’s useful as a writer is noticing what I respond to. Then I could have something to take with me. If I really did not respond to it, I also learned something from that.

Jordan: Oh my God, that’s so incredible. Really, really great advice for folks who are looking into finding their own voices and learning. So in the spirit of that, something that we like to do to keep the learning going for folks who engage the podcast is around recommendations. And since you are our guest, Masi, we’d love to hear some recommendations you might have for folks who are really interested in continuing this conversation around musical theatre.

Masi: Yeah. I feel like I should have done my homework and thought about this a little bit more. I think in terms of what I’m looking forward to seeing, there’s a bunch of shows coming up I’m looking forward to. I’m looking forward to seeing Teeth by my friends Anna Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson at Playwrights Horizons. I’ve seen a number of readings of it. It’s something else, and I can’t wait for the world to experience it. Talented artists. I’m looking forward to that. Opens March eleventh, I think.

I’m looking forward to Lempicka, also some wonderful writer friends I know who’ve been working on that for quite some time. A bunch of friends have shows coming down, Great Gatsby. And then in terms of… I’m just trying to think what… I mean, there’s a number of things I’ve seen recently that I thought were fantastic but that have closed. I thought Purlie Victorious was kind of amazing. I wonder if they filmed it, or maybe, you know—it would’ve been a great one to film, kind of like they did Trouble in Mind for PBS.

But then in terms of books, one that comes to mind… I read this really great book. There’s a media studies and Black studies scholar at the New School named Brittnay Proctor, and she has a new book out on Minnie Riperton’s Come to My Garden, Minnie Riperton’s album. And it’s a gorgeous… It’s a little, tiny book. It’s readable. It will not overwhelm you, and it’s so lyrically written. I think Brittnay is really so smart, and such a great writer about music and about pop. That’s sort of in my pop music studies scene. That’s one.

I’m trying to think what else I can recommend. I feel like I should have recommended more things, like I’m dropping the ball. I should be assigning reading to everyone. But I will say, I often post… I’m feeling… I often do post on my Insta if I’ve come across things that I really like. So you can always look for me there, @masiasare.

Jordan: Masi, always such a pleasure to hear your voice and to talk to you and learn from you. So thank you. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Masi: Thank you so much to you both. I’m honored to be asked. Your podcast is famous. I’m very glad to be a part of it. And I can’t wait for all the great things that lie ahead for both of you as intellectuals, as cultural critics, as scholars, and making interventions in this university context, which is also not a simple place to be as a Black woman. So keep fighting the fight.

Leticia: This has been another episode of Daughters of Lorraine. We’re your hosts, Leticia Ridley—

Jordan: And Jordan Ealey. On our next episode, we will be interviewing Tarell Alvin McCraney. You definitely won’t want to miss that. In the meantime, if you’re looking to connect with us, please follow us on Twitter, @dolorrainepod, P-O-D. You can also email us at [email protected] for further contact.

Leticia: Our theme music is composed by Inza Bamba. The Daughters of Lorraine podcast is supported by HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. It’s available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and howlround.com. If you are looking for the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify, you’ll want to search and subscribe to “Daughters of Lorraine podcast.”

Jordan: If you loved this podcast, post a rating or write a review on those platforms. This helps other people find us. You can also find this transcript for this episode, along with a lot of other progressive and disruptive content, on howlround.com. Have an idea for an exciting podcast, essay, or TV event the theatre community needs to hear? Visit howlround.com and submit your ideas to the Commons.

Munroe: It has created a culture where, to a non-theatre going audience, the entire conversation is around what Broadway tour is coming to my local playhouse. The money is funneled into there and out of local theatre projects. It’s a shift for audiences as well as theatremakers.

Scott: And those New York touring productions are coming in without any connection to the audience or community, and the audience has no connection to the performers. It has become a transaction; they’re buying a product.

Munroe: Okay, so that’s how we got here. Now I want to hear about your vision for smaller, artist-owned, for-profit theatre companies that operate as a central thesis of the book. The idea of being exclusively for-profit is so fascinating. What would this mean for these theatres?

Scott: That’s at the center of it. In my model (which is based on Shakespeare’s the King’s Men and just about every theatre company throughout most of theatre history), company members own shares in the theatre and are paid according to their share of the company profits. I’m trying to get artists to think of themselves as owners, not employees. So there’s a direct connection between the bottom line and their bank account. But the artists are in charge! They decide what plays to do, who is doing what, how much money will be spent on a production, and so forth. Where we’re at right now, everybody, including the artistic and executive directors, can be hired and fired at the drop of a hat. We’re seeing it happen regularly. I don’t think that’s a positive. What makes that comfortable for artists is that they’re getting paid regardless of the success of their work.

In this new model, the people who are going to be part of the company buy a share in the company, so that every decision being made is going to directly affect how much money is coming into your pocket from that theatre. Of course, the argument is that you can’t make money in the arts. That’s why the nonprofit model exists, so that the gap between expenses and income can be filled with contributions. But along with that comes a huge number of staff to handle grant writing, fundraising, marketing, box office. Some of these theatres that are crashing have hundreds of staff members! I don’t think that’s sustainable. A theatre needs to be small, agile, and lean. You don’t need these big staffs to support a small theatre!

A smaller theatre that serves a specific community can build an individual relationship with that community and keep those community members coming back for more. Not only does this allow the work to be more personal, but it also allows the work to be responsive. For example, who could have predicted the massive cultural phenomenon that the collision of Barbie and Oppenheimer had over the summer? It’s this magical moment of cultural conversation that came out of a unique moment, and if you’ve scheduled your entire season the previous spring, you can’t respond to it. A smaller, scrappier theatre company could say, “Let’s plan upcoming programming around this cultural moment that will engage and bring together our local audience into our work.” Those moments build trust and connection between you and your fans.

Munroe: How does a smaller theatre company go about building and developing that audience that trusts and cares for them?

Scott: You build your audience one person at a time. The idea is not that you have a mass, general appeal to every member of the community for every show. The idea is to pick a certain kind of person and build relationships until they’re pulled into the fold. What stories are being told? Not just stories that appeared sometime in New York City, but what new stories that connect to those communities will engage and challenge those audiences? We want stories that people will be talking about in line at the grocery store.

Munroe: One of the things that you discuss in the book is the need for each theatre to have a playwright as an integral part of the process, and that’s the perfect justification for it. The playwright can write the stories of the community that they understand.

The theatre wants audience members that are going to resonate most with the work, which is also the most beneficial from a financial standpoint and from an artistic one.

Scott: Playwrights are the most forgotten artists in today’s theatre. Shakespeare was a playwright! Molière was a playwright! They were writing work that was specific to the communities that they inhabited and to the actors they were working with. I believe that a commitment needs to be made to the playwright to say that the theatre will produce everything that they write. Not a reading, not a workshop, a full production. Playwrights develop in the same way that the actors and directors do—by being in front of an audience. If the playwright is a shareholder, the money that they make is directly connected to the level that they’re engaging their community in their work.

Munroe: It’s work that resonates with the community.

Scott: A perfect word, it resonates with the community. You’re not going to do something that is really going to go against the ethos of the community because you have to stand with them in line at the grocery store the next day. I’m not talking about pandering. It doesn’t mean that you can’t raise things that are going to be challenging in some way, but you do it in the way that you can challenge someone sitting across from you at a potluck. It’s not just hurling a bomb and running away; it’s real engagement with the heavy topics.

Munroe: I think that’s so wonderful and wise because it allows the community to be challenged from an insider. Their beliefs aren’t being attacked by someone who doesn’t know or understand them.

Scott: For the company, it’s not as much about getting butts in seats, but the right butts in the seats. In other words, the theatre wants audience members that are going to resonate most with the work, which is also the most beneficial from a financial standpoint and from an artistic one.

Munroe: On maintaining these changes, you talk in the book about how mission statements have gradually become ineffective over time. What steps can these theatres you propose be taking to make more effective vision statements that will serve them and their communities over time?

Scott: I say this as somebody who has written my fair share. Out of the positive motivations, the goal of a mission statement has become to not leave anything out. “We’re going to do big plays with lots of people, and small plays with a few people, and musicals, and non-musicals, classics and new plays”—you get the picture. That doesn’t help you.

When the artists come together to decide on what they want their theatre to be, they should be setting real guidelines for the kind of shows that they want to produce and then finding the audience that wants that too. When a play crosses the table, if it doesn’t align with what we set out to do, we can be more comfortable passing it up. This isn’t to say that it shouldn’t be revisited every few years to say “is this still who we are?” so that the company can grow and change with the community.

Without those boundaries, you end up with mission creep. If there’s a ten thousand dollar grant that sort of aligns with your mission that you reach out for anyway because you need that money, then the theatre loses any sense of identity that it started with.

Anna: Thank you for clearing that up—that was a big point of uncertainty for both myself and the actors, and solidifying the identity of the Judges was pivotal. We should probably get onto the glossary, or you’ll be sitting here all day while I list research at you.

Juliana: When you asked me what the glossary should look like, I sent you a “radical” example. Michelle Huynh, an amazing dramaturg at UCSD, had created a glossary like I’d never seen before. In addition to specific key words from the text, she named themes that we had discussed with the playwright, poetry, and questions to chew on. So, tell me about your glossary.

Anna: One factor that made the glossary so large was the desire to have a plethora of quite specific words to choose from. We needed more than friendship; we needed companionship, abandonment, love, trust, etc. to choose from as there were constantly different sensations entering and exiting! Inspired by Huynh’s glossary, ours featured artworks, poems, stories, reflections, and questions…beacons for each actor’s individual process of discovery.

Juliana: For example, I was really interested in uncovering more context surrounding Voltairine de Cleyre. She is mentioned by name in the play. You had sourced speeches from her work as a radical advocate for women and immigrant’s political rights. As I went down my own de Cleyre rabbit hole, I learned of her debilitating migraines, as well as a traumatic assassination attempt on her life. These were additions that I wanted to highlight for everyone, especially the actor playing Julia.

Anna: We found ourselves co-navigating an ever-weaving tapestry of feelings, ideas, and identities throughout the play. When we went to organize the research into a Google document glossary, we decided to form six groups, separated in two categories. Each group was a part of either the “Seen” or the “Unseen” category. This binary helped us categorize ideas that characters may or may not be aware of.

Juliana: This split in the glossary was helpful to underline the juxtaposition in the play for the actors. The Judges may be unseen to most but their actions have real impact on the women. The audience watches Julia hallucinate. They do not see what she sees, but it’s clearly very real to her. They have to believe that what she is seeing is, in fact, what is happening. Her perception has to supersede ours in that moment.

Anna: Yes! The groups (which correlated to parts of the body: heart, brain, etc.) outlined the physical and non-physical truths of our characters. Some of these women are in serious life transitions, some are ex-lovers, some have gone through painful and treacherous experiences that their friends may not know about.

Juliana: It was a place where we could navigate the surrealness that was happening in the play. One of the central images that I had was a photograph created by Cuban sculptor Ana Mendieta, from her Silueta series. In the image, we see the artist laying naked in a void in the ground. Her body is covered in small blooming flower cuttings. There was something about this image—a cycle of death, resurrection, suffering, pain, absolution, purification—that felt like what the women were moving through.

Anna: I’m so glad you brought up Mendieta and her siluetas, whose work, as vast and conflicting as it is, manifests as a naked imprint of her body in the earth. While it can seem very overwhelming as a concept, it’s what we do as human beings: we bring the unseen into the forefront of our mind, and we come to self-awareness. We are all on our own journey toward self-understanding on both a physical and a celestial level, and it’s centered through the physical bodies we inhabit. Sorry, I’m going way out there again!

Juliana: I live for your run on sentences! So, how did we incorporate the glossary during tablework?

It was really special to be investigating women’s histories as a group of women. 

Anna: We had a massive monitor in the space projecting our glossary (which was an ever-evolving digital document). While you and the actors ventured into the text, I followed along with the glossary posing questions, sharing ideas, and providing images to help us dissect the work more critically.

Juliana: It was really special to be investigating women’s histories as a group of women. Our stage management team, assistant director, yourself, and the cast were all women. Can you talk a little bit about the poetry packet? It was such a tender way to share your own heart with the cast. And modeled the vulnerability I was trying to set up in the room.

Anna: You shared early on that you love to engage in poetry with your actors, so I went out on a search for poems that might help us tell this story. I fell in love with the works of a collection of women poets (Georgia Douglas Johnson, Emily Dickinson, and Angelina Weld Grimké to name a few), whose artistry I cherished even more as I researched their lives (just as Irene did with her love of nostalgia). These are women who lived anywhere from the 1850s to the 1950s, and as we read their work, it was like you could see our characters. You could see Julia through these poems. You could see Fefu through these poems.

In light of Alexei Navalny’s death, join us for an evening with the Swiss theatre artist and director Milo Rau discuss his latest documentary project, The Moscow Trials. Milo Rau is regarded by many as the most significant politically engaged theatre director working today, following in the footsteps of Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator. 

 

6:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Talk with Milo Rau about his latest documentary project, The Moscow Trials.

 

6:30pm

Screening of Milo Rau’s documentary, The Moscow Trials. 

 

About the Documentary Project

The Moscow Trials
Congress, Performance, Exhibition, Movie and Book

 

When punk activists Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a penal camp this summer for their unannounced appearance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it sparked protest rallies across the globe. But this was just the end of what have been 10 years of show trials against artists and dissidents, trials which Putin’s system used to hinder any kind of democratic change whatsoever.

 

The project The Moscow Trials attempts to inject impetus into rigid Russian circumstances through the form of political theatre. In Moscow’s Sakharov Center a court is being set up in which a three-day trial show will provide the stage for the exponents of Russia’s cultural war. The images of the kangaroo court set up to try Pussy Riot could be seen in all media outlets this summer. All over the world, support movements were founded. The singer Madonna called for the release of the activists and Nobel prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek condemned the trial in a pamphlet posted on the Internet as the “end of all democracy in Russia”. A five-minute appearance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow was enough to sentence three of the activists of Pussy Riot to two years’ imprisonment. On what grounds? Offending the feelings of believers, blasphemy, and agitation against the Russian nation. An absurd judgement which was met with horror in the West. But what appears to be a sudden epiphany of an authoritarian theocracy has a long prior history. It begins with the nomination of Putin as Prime Minister in 1999. The former KGB agent secured his control by closing ranks with nationalist and extremely orthodox circles. The chaotic, but liberal conditions which were present under Gorbachev and Yeltsin quietly began to disappear. Those artists in particular who didn’t want to fall into line with the new politics of regime loyalty and Russian orthodoxy quickly came to the attention of a system in which the law, the secret service and the Media all work together closely. With the destruction of the exhibition Caution! Religion in 2003 and the trial of the curators that followed, the point of no return was reached. With the authorisation of the state, the Moscow patriarch called for the “expulsion of demons” and the “salvation of Russia.” After a show trial, the exhibition’s curators barely managed to escape being sentenced to hard labour, with one of the main defendants taking his own life. As a result, dissident artists and activists were repeatedly forced to go either abroad or underground, much like the recent activists of Pussy Riot. “This trial was the death of critical art, it has destroyed the milieu in which we were able to live,” said cultural philosopher Michail Ryklin in an interview later on.

 

In the form of political theatre, The Moscow Trials retraces the steps of this story of a state and church-driven campaign against inconvenient artists. A court is being constructed in the Sakharov Center in Moscow, which previously played host to the destroyed exhibition Caution! Religion in 2003. In a re-enacted show trial with the most important exponents of the Russian cultural war, “art” faces up against “religion”; “dissident” Russia against “true” Russia. There are no actors on stage; instead there are the protagonists of real, political life: professional lawyers, a constitutional judge, witnesses and experts of all political shades. In the style of a courtroom drama with an open end, cross-examinations, summations and disputes on the sidelines of the trial will bring about a disturbing and conflicting image of today’s Russia: are Putin’s cultural policies violating freedom of opinion and human rights? Or is it indeed art which is violating the feelings of believers? Who is the offender, who is the defender? A randomly selected lay court, made up of six Moscow residents, will reach a verdict after three days. For or against the artists; for or against Putin.

 

A documentary film, a programme, a video installation and a closing exhibition will document the project and illuminate the socio-political background and effects of performance art.

 

Concept and Artistic Direction: Milo Rau
Curation and Production: Jens Dietrich
Co-Curation: Sophie-Thérèse Krempl
Stage: Anton Lukas
Sound: Jens Baudisch
Press Release: Yven Augustin
DOP: Markus Tomsche
Specialist Counceling: Sandra Frimmel
Production Manager and Dramaturgy: Milena Kipfmüller
Assistant Director: Yanina Kochtova
Casting Moscow: Anastasia Patlay
Corporate Design: Nina Wolters
Web Design: Jonas Weissbrodt

 

In Cooperation with:  Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar, Institute for the Performing Arts and Film / Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Konzert Theater Bern, Gessnerallee Zürich, Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora, Memorial Russland, Sacharow-Zentrum Moskau, Wiener Festwochen, Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brüssel, Goethe-Institut Moskau, Fruitmarket Kultur und Medien GmbH.

 

Funded by: Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.

In light of Alexei Navalny’s death, join us for an evening with the Swiss theatre artist and director Milo Rau discuss his latest documentary project, The Moscow Trials. Milo Rau is regarded by many as the most significant politically engaged theatre director working today, following in the footsteps of Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator. More about Milo Rau here…

 

6:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Talk with Milo Rau about his latest documentary project, The Moscow Trials.

 

6:30pm

Screening of Milo Rau’s documentary, The Moscow Trials. 

 

About the Documentary Project

The Moscow Trials
Congress, Performance, Exhibition, Movie and Book

 

When punk activists Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a penal camp this summer for their unannounced appearance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it sparked protest rallies across the globe. But this was just the end of what have been 10 years of show trials against artists and dissidents, trials which Putin’s system used to hinder any kind of democratic change whatsoever.

 

The project The Moscow Trials attempts to inject impetus into rigid Russian circumstances through the form of political theatre. In Moscow’s Sakharov Center a court is being set up in which a three-day trial show will provide the stage for the exponents of Russia’s cultural war. The images of the kangaroo court set up to try Pussy Riot could be seen in all media outlets this summer. All over the world, support movements were founded. The singer Madonna called for the release of the activists and Nobel prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek condemned the trial in a pamphlet posted on the Internet as the “end of all democracy in Russia”. A five-minute appearance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow was enough to sentence three of the activists of Pussy Riot to two years’ imprisonment. On what grounds? Offending the feelings of believers, blasphemy, and agitation against the Russian nation. An absurd judgement which was met with horror in the West. But what appears to be a sudden epiphany of an authoritarian theocracy has a long prior history. It begins with the nomination of Putin as Prime Minister in 1999. The former KGB agent secured his control by closing ranks with nationalist and extremely orthodox circles. The chaotic, but liberal conditions which were present under Gorbachev and Yeltsin quietly began to disappear. Those artists in particular who didn’t want to fall into line with the new politics of regime loyalty and Russian orthodoxy quickly came to the attention of a system in which the law, the secret service and the Media all work together closely. With the destruction of the exhibition Caution! Religion in 2003 and the trial of the curators that followed, the point of no return was reached. With the authorisation of the state, the Moscow patriarch called for the “expulsion of demons” and the “salvation of Russia.” After a show trial, the exhibition’s curators barely managed to escape being sentenced to hard labour, with one of the main defendants taking his own life. As a result, dissident artists and activists were repeatedly forced to go either abroad or underground, much like the recent activists of Pussy Riot. “This trial was the death of critical art, it has destroyed the milieu in which we were able to live,” said cultural philosopher Michail Ryklin in an interview later on.

 

In the form of political theatre, The Moscow Trials retraces the steps of this story of a state and church-driven campaign against inconvenient artists. A court is being constructed in the Sakharov Center in Moscow, which previously played host to the destroyed exhibition Caution! Religion in 2003. In a re-enacted show trial with the most important exponents of the Russian cultural war, “art” faces up against “religion”; “dissident” Russia against “true” Russia. There are no actors on stage; instead there are the protagonists of real, political life: professional lawyers, a constitutional judge, witnesses and experts of all political shades. In the style of a courtroom drama with an open end, cross-examinations, summations and disputes on the sidelines of the trial will bring about a disturbing and conflicting image of today’s Russia: are Putin’s cultural policies violating freedom of opinion and human rights? Or is it indeed art which is violating the feelings of believers? Who is the offender, who is the defender? A randomly selected lay court, made up of six Moscow residents, will reach a verdict after three days. For or against the artists; for or against Putin.

 

A documentary film, a programme, a video installation and a closing exhibition will document the project and illuminate the socio-political background and effects of performance art.

 

Concept and Artistic Direction: Milo Rau
Curation and Production: Jens Dietrich
Co-Curation: Sophie-Thérèse Krempl
Stage: Anton Lukas
Sound: Jens Baudisch
Press Release: Yven Augustin
DOP: Markus Tomsche
Specialist Counceling: Sandra Frimmel
Production Manager and Dramaturgy: Milena Kipfmüller
Assistant Director: Yanina Kochtova
Casting Moscow: Anastasia Patlay
Corporate Design: Nina Wolters
Web Design: Jonas Weissbrodt

 

In Cooperation with:  Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar, Institute for the Performing Arts and Film / Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Konzert Theater Bern, Gessnerallee Zürich, Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora, Memorial Russland, Sacharow-Zentrum Moskau, Wiener Festwochen, Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brüssel, Goethe-Institut Moskau, Fruitmarket Kultur und Medien GmbH.

 

Funded by: Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.

 

Tjaša Ferme: Welcome to Theatre Tech Talks: AI, Science, and Biomedia in Theatre, a podcast produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide.

Annemarie Hagenaars is an actor and performer with degrees in astronomy and physics. She works as an actor and coach with drama-based training company, Bi-Jingo; as an actor and educator at Mount Sinai Hospital; and as a business developer on AI solutions for climate adaptation and mitigation. She founded her own company as an independent theatremaker and educator, and toured the Netherlands with her one woman show, The Story of The Einstein Girl.

Annemarie, you’re an actor and an astrophysicist with degrees at the same time. This is rare. This combo is extremely rare, and some people would claim that they’re in the opposite sides of the spectrum. But I would love to hear how you think they’re similar, how you think they complement each other, and really about how and why did you choose this path for yourself?

Annemarie Hagenaars: Well, basically when I was eight years old, there were two hobbies that I had. One was astronomy. I would go to the local observatory and take classes there. My father would drop me off every Saturday morning and I would take a class on everything basically. And on the other hand, I was also involved with, well, first the local choir, but then I discovered acting, so theatre club and astronomy club. And that’s actually been the story of my life that I’ve always meandered between the hard sciences, so to say, and acting. And then at some point, well, I’ve always had a difficulty making a real choice between the two.

I couldn’t let go of one thing, even if I was for years full-time in acting and taking on all kinds of acting jobs, jobs that were totally different from each other. But I think when you’re saying, what is the similarity between the two? Well, I think the major part is to have a curiosity. And the creativity of the two is also… The imagination when you think about the galaxy of everything that’s happening there. So you have to have that imagination. And it’s the same when you’re an actor. So imagination is a big part, but that research is also a big part. What I love about theatre, and you say that I’m always so thorough and well-prepared, and that has to do with that curiosity and research, thorough research. Whenever you are exploring a character, that’s the most fun part, to really understand why a character makes certain choices.

And of course the whole psychology comes in. So my interest is not only in physics, it’s also the brain, the human brain. And then maybe to make it more clear, so when I studied astronomy, which was my bachelor’s degree, which was full on calculations, math. Math was really heavy algebra and analysis. It was just math. And then after my bachelor’s degree or during my bachelor’s degree, I noticed, okay, we’re doing all this math. I know how to calculate this, but why am I calculating it this way? How did people come up with this theory? How did, for instance, Einstein come up with the theory of general relativity and why am I doing the calculations the way I’m doing them right now? And then, because eventually it’s people behind those theories, it’s people who invent the math to be able to describe the world around us.

So that was my fascination, and that’s when I decided to do my master’s in history and philosophy of science with the emphasis on the foundations of physics and what is the foundations of physics that’s really going behind the theories, really diving deep into what’s behind all those theories. What’s the human thought? Why did people come up with this?

Tjaša: I also have the same questions. Humans invent everything, right? So if you go to the paradigms, you’re like, but how did you even come up with this idea to calculate it this way? And then also, is it possible to go back to, I don’t know, point zero and reinvent something? In human sciences, everything’s a matter of an agreement, isn’t it?

Annemarie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And what you are saying about going back to point zero, yes, that’s totally possible. That’s something Sean Carroll talks about when he talks about the multiverse theories and what’s the Big Bang. But what I discovered for myself personally when I was doing my master’s was how, when you’re studying physics or even in high school when you’re studying physics and chemistry, you’re always presented with: this is the truth, this is what it is. And then when I discovered, when I was doing all these calculations, there’s only one way to do this calculation to come to the right answer. And when I started studying the foundations of physics, I discovered, oh my God. Especially with thermodynamics for instance, that theory that was developed, it still has a lot of holes in it.

And then you discover, wow, that’s the case with a lot of theories in physics, they have holes like Swiss cheese. Physicists are still working on tying things together that still don’t make sense. And that’s something I learned while I was doing my master’s and I had these weekly discussion groups with all these people who were very knowledgeable in the theories of physics. And I was young, I didn’t know everything, and I was just like, wow, people don’t know. Even my professors who’ve been in this field for, I don’t know, forty years, they still don’t know. And here we are discussing with each other about time travel and the implications of certain models of the universe that do imply time travel, that it might be possible to time travel. And that’s when I was like, wow, this is philosophy.

Tjaša: I am curious specifically, what does point to the possibility of time travel?

Annemarie: Well, it has to do with, and this has been a long time and I have to admit that I just don’t have time to read up on the latest research on everything, but what I remember is that it has to do with different models of the universe, which follow from general relativity theory. There are different shapes, so to say, of the universe. And in these calculations, so if you just calculate according to those models, then you discover in some of those models, hey, wait a minute, time is curved, curled up. So it means that you actually can go back to the same point in space and time if you just follow the model and calculate it. But that’s the model. We don’t know if the model really reflects what happens in reality, and that’s our whole thing when the brain comes in, right?

Tjaša: Yeah, thank you for saying that. Exactly. We don’t know. Not everything’s tested and proven. And I love that you were talking about Swiss cheese because then it kind of becomes obvious that in order to fill up the gaps in somebody’s theory, you do need to employ a lot of imagination and then speculative models and calculating. But it’s almost like the imagination is the precursor that gives you the idea that you later on start working on and trying to see if you can make a mathematical formula out of.

Annemarie: Yes. And that’s why that’s exactly the overlap between artists and very, very successful physicists. So that’s when I always explained it during my lectures when I gave a lecture before I performed The Einstein Girl, sometimes after in schools, universities, I would always demonstrate it with, we always think that artists are on one side of the spectrum and physicists are on the other side, that it’s this line and they’re so separate from each other. Artists, there’s this cliche, oh, I can’t do math. I was never good at math. And then the physicists are like, oh, but me, and I am not artistic at all. But actually, when you have brilliant artists and you have brilliant physicists or brilliant creatives, so to say, basically… And Einstein is a great example of that. It’s like a circle.

Tjaša: I’m just realizing as we’re talking about the spectrum, when I was writing down the question for you, I first wrote part of the spectrum, and then I was like, oh, actually English says side of the spectrum, which indicates this duality, this two-dimensionality of it. Like you said, it’s on one line. It’s going from past to the future. It seems like it’s always one line, and it’s much more than that. First of all, a spectrum I think is usually presented as a circle, right? It’s like a color palette. It’s a spectrum of colors. It’s round. And so it’s so funny how limiting the language and the grammar in itself is, and once you start just questioning the differentiation between how we visually represent something and how it’s manifested in a language or in a written word, already there, there’s a whole spectrum of possibilities, right? A million of the shades of gray.

Annemarie: Yeah, absolutely. I read this book once by Hugh Brody, The Other Side of Paradise or something. That had such an impact on me because that book was really about, well, first of all, his whole research on the Inuit and how the Inuit don’t have that duality built in their language while in western society, duality is really a thing. And he presented it as that it had to do with our monotheistic religions that somehow good and bad, dark and light. But I think that is something we build in every part of society. So what we just said about that one line, artists can’t do math and physicists can’t be creative artists, like, no, it’s not true.

Tjaša: That’s true. If I remember correctly, you studied philosophy and time in physics. Tell us more, just a little bit more about what that is and what did you discover, or if you have any running theories of your own.

We’re living in the now, and the now is basically that present that’s moving along that line, but we can’t capture that in physics. We can’t capture that in the laws of physics, that movement, that flow.

Annemarie: When I did my master’s in foundations of physics, I also discovered about this discrepancy about how we describe time in physics, in the formulas with the parameter T and how we experience time in our daily lives. And one big thing is that in physics, in the formulas of physics, we can’t describe that flow of time, that feeling that the present moves, that time is one dimensional in an arrow that goes toward the future. And there’s the thing, the way we describe it is as a line where the present is moving along that line of tying points. We have the past behind us, the future in front of us. It’s a very spatial representation. We talk about time in spatial metaphors. That’s how we describe time as well in the physical theories. That’s what Einstein basically does in his theory of general relativity.

It’s not exactly the same, but he treats time as a fourth spatial dimension in his thoughts to imagine it. So when I discovered that time was so problematic, the philosophy of physics, I’ve always been fascinated about how time passes by, how we experience time that you make choices and that those choices, you can’t go back in time to fix that. It’s so definitive really, moving along that timeline of the fixed past, something that happened, and then the future with those millions of possibilities. And it all depends on the now. We’re living in the now, and the now is basically that present that’s moving along that line, but we can’t capture that in physics. We can’t capture that in the laws of physics, that movement, that flow. And that was what my thesis was about.

So it was about a cognitive perspective on the flow of time in physics, which is basically, I drew from recent research from the cognitive sciences on how time is perceived in the brain to get some answers on how we might bridge that gap between how we describe time in physics and how we perceive time in our daily lives, which has been a problem since the Greeks. The Greeks were already thinking about, and maybe way before then, how is that possible?

Tjaša: I love what you’re saying. I was just trying to imagine what you were describing. And what I discovered was that oftentimes I actually experience time in bubbles. Right now we’re talking about a certain topic. As we’re dialoguing about a certain topic, I feel like this time is actually a bubble of interest. And until we move onto the next subject or I am thinking about the next question that I’m going to ask you, I don’t really actually perceive time because I am in time.

Annemarie: Yes, and that’s really what the brain does. So what I also discovered during that research is exactly what you are describing. When we are very much engaged in the moment, we lose track of time and time passes by really quickly so that we feel like, oh my God, that flow of time is sped up while in physics, when we measure the time, which we do with clocks, no, it’s the same speed. So where you’re in the now, it’s different from when looking back. It’s because of the different snapshots that the brain makes with the memory. So memory has a huge impact on our perception of time when we’re looking back.

Tjaša: That’s a great explanation. That makes total sense. It also feels like if you’re paying attention to time, then time runs slowly. As soon as you start paying deep attention to something else, the time runs. I’ve had moments where from 3:03 to 3:07, I experienced three hours of deep thought. You know what I mean? Sometimes when you really have to… I feel like the deep concentration really unlocks this ecstasy of presence. Ecstasy of presence and at the same time, there is a way perceptually to experience almost opening a window and getting another three hours or something like that. This has happened, I don’t know, in my personal experience, once when I was applying for a grant and I really had an hour to write the grant, which is impossible, but I was incredibly motivated, and I had some people who were incredibly encouraging.

So I remember that between 3:03 and 3:09, I wrote the entire grant. It gave me three hours, those six minutes, which I don’t know how that’s possible except that I went so deep into the problem of what I was trying to untangle that my own being was ethereal, and maybe it was not bound to time or regular brain constraints when it comes to how much you can do in a certain amount of time.

Annemarie: That’s right. It’s because you’ve already spent so much preparation, so much thought into it that in the short amount of time, you can really create something that that’s it. And that’s why ideas come in an instant, right?

Tjaša: Yeah. Yeah.

Annemarie: It’s like all of a sudden you’ve done so much mulling over and you’ve so much thought, and then all of a sudden that light bulb goes on, and then you’re like, wow, that’s what it is. And then it all clicks together.

Tjaša: I have an idea. So maybe when you’re thinking something over and you’re only trying to create connections among different notions, not that it’s linear, but you’re traveling the distance between one notion to another to create a relationship between them. And once you’ve created a relationship between them, the memory consolidates and it becomes almost like a curved space in your brain. And all of a sudden this, I don’t know, condensed into a dendrite or something, but basically the time traveled when you were making this connection is now way, way, way, way shorter because you’ve established the relationship between them.

Annemarie: Yeah. Yeah.

Tjaša: Your fascinating show, The Story of The Einstein Girl starts with the formula that includes the big L at which you then speculate that stands for love. I was curious, where did the formula come from? Did you originate it? And can you briefly explain it to the listeners?

Annemarie: So this theory, the Lagrangian, so the famous equation, the start of that part is a letter that exists on the internet. I found that letter all of a sudden, and nobody knows who wrote it. And a couple of years back in 2015, I believe, people thought that there was actually a letter of Einstein to his daughter, and it was just floating around on the internet, but it turns out to be a fake letter. So it’s not from Einstein at all. Who wrote it, nobody knows. It’s just out there on the internet. I know some journalists did some thorough research to find out if this letter was fake or not, and it turns out to be fake, but it’s basically a letter, a love letter to his daughter. And I didn’t use the full letter and I changed it here and there.

And the formula that I changed it to, the L stands for a general form of energy, which is the Lagrangian, because the original equation, that was really true. Of course, we all know the famous equation, E = mc², but in his original paper, Einstein, when he writes about that, it’s actually not the E, he uses the L, which is the Lagrangian. That’s a general form of energy. That’s just a different parameter to describe it. Later on, it became energy. But that’s when the thought came up like, oh, wait a minute, the Lagrangian, what if the interpretation can be love and then start the play that way? That was again inspired by this fake letter who writes about that. And then discovering that in his first article it wasn’t actually E = mc², it’s Lagrangian, it’s L=mc². It’s like, okay, well, maybe we can turn that into love and start from there and see what happens.

Tjaša: So basically L as love is completely your speculation?

Annemarie: Yeah.

I think love is the most powerful form of energy, and that’s what I wanted to play with… There must be something physical around us. 

Tjaša: Okay. That’s awesome. Do you believe in it? Do you want to believe in it?

Annemarie: Well, I do believe that love is energy, that there is a way we can think about energy, like positive energy. We all have these different associations with energy, energy can be negative, can be bad, but eventually, I think love is the most powerful form of energy, and that’s what I wanted to play with in this version. There must be something physical around us. It might be something that future physicists will really find out when they work together with cognitive scientists. That’s why these two fields, they need to merge. They need to work with one another because what I think that there’s this energetic field that we can tap into with our brains because it’s all electricity eventually. And that we can have that communal or that community thought, and that also might explain why sometimes we feel that the universe is giving us something when we really work hard for something and serendipity happens.

You can’t really explain it, why it happens at that moment, at that time, but somehow the university is throwing something back at you. So to say, hey, listen, you are on the right track. Keep going. And you can have a thousand explanations for that, but I find it very interesting to see how can we explain a social cognitive science, not just one brain, but just the whole community and they’re doing a lot of research in that. Like just what happens with people watching the same show, the same theatre show? What happens to people’s brains and is there some superposition of different brainwaves of people if they all are in the same state? Quantum mechanical almost, that you have brains in the same state what happens when everybody has that feeling? It becomes bigger. There’s a field of waves going on in that theatre, right?

And I think that’s just an example of something really local, but what if that happens on a huge scale all around the world? That might also explain, I don’t know, why some inventions have been done in the past independently from one another, but around the same time period as if humanity was ready for that invention and in different spots without knowing, people came up with the same kind of inventions. I don’t know, I’m just throwing that out. I have no idea, there must be other explanations, but so that’s what find it fascinating.

Tjaša: I also find fascinating what happens, let’s say in a theatre when everybody’s experiencing the same thought or the same energy or the same elevated mental space. They have one thousand people or one hundred people meditating in town squares, and right away they can see that the level of crime decreases by, I don’t know, 60 percent in such places. There’s been a lot of cases like that so yes, what does this mean for our theatre, communal theatre experiences? You said that the fields of physics and cognitive theory or cognitive sciences need to be connected. And I think actually that actors are the perfect tissue in between because we are embodied, but in some ways we’re masters of the embodiment. We usually know how to modulate our thoughts, how to modulate our emotions, how to modulate our energies and our body. That’s a lot. What is fact about The Einstein Girl and what is fiction?

Annemarie: Okay, so what is fact? So she really existed. So she was born in 1902, and really nobody knows what happens to her. The only reference that we have is that she’s mentioned in a couple of letters between Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric. And those letters were found in 1986, because that’s when those letters I think were released. They were donated to the Einstein Papers Project that was started. I think Einstein’s, was it his granddaughter, but I think her name is Evelyn Einstein, but she found those family letters and she donated them to the Einstein Papers Project. And there was a physicist who worked on that project, and he discovered it. So he discovered in the letters, wow, there’s actually a daughter, but nobody knows what happened to her.

So Philip Sington, he’s a novelist and he writes amazing books in which he uses things from history and creates his own story. So he created this story as well, The Einstein Girl, what if she is still alive and she’s looking for her parents? She’s going on a search who her real parents are, and then discovers that she’s Einstein’s daughter. What do you do with that information?

Tjaša: That was the premise that then launched you into starting to write your own one woman show about it. What did you take liberties with? What did you invent in this story? And what were maybe some of the mysteries that were attracting you to start this project in the first place?

Annemarie: So first of all, Philip Sington’s novel was a gift from a friend of mine when I graduated in 2009. So when I graduated on the history and philosophy of physics, one of my friends gave me this book as a gift, and I read the book and everything came together. History, philosophy, physics, psychology, everything I found fascinating came together in this novel of Philip Sington and I thought, oh, I have to do something with this. But Philip Sington’s novel was written from the perspective of the doctor, of the psychiatrist who treats the woman, so it’s his story. It’s his story of him falling in love with her, that he can’t help himself. He’s engaged to another woman, but there’s a whole… His brother was an astronomer who got killed in the World War II. He himself was a psychiatrist who dealt with all these colleagues of his who were doing these Nazi experiments in the basement on patients because it was situated in Berlin during the Nazi time.

So all that fascinating history came together, but I thought, what if I write something from the perspective of the girl? How is the girl, this woman experiencing her memory loss, her identity loss, her quest for understanding who she is, and then discovering that she’s Einstein’s daughter? What would that feel like? And then in order to describe that, yeah, I took numerous liberties. I used Sington’s novel as a base, as a source of inspiration for the story itself, but then I looked for metaphors from physics to describe that feeling what that woman must go through. And that’s when I just came up with this metaphor of the black hole, because basically when information gets sucked into a black hole, it just stays in there and it can’t go out. So I use the metaphor of her brain, of there’s information in there in her unconscious. She has information about who she is. It’s just not getting out. It’s not coming to the conscious surface.

So that’s how I use that metaphor of the black hole to describe her memory loss. And then those memories are the light rays. Light rays that get stuck in the black hole and they can’t come out, but black holes, according to Steven Hawking, can evaporate. So they can eventually release that light again and then evaporate so that’s something that I use as well through the story. Eventually, her black hole evaporates. She remembers again who she is. There’s little light rays that come out, little memories that escape to her consciousness. And so that’s that metaphor that I used. And then there’s the other metaphor. There’s the metaphor from quantum mechanics, that quantum mechanics, initially the base, the foundation of quantum mechanics is Einstein came up with that in one of his papers in 1905, but he denied the theory. And basically that’s what happened in the story to his daughter as well.

Tjaša: Yeah, he made her and then denied her. Oh my gosh.

Annemarie: That he made her then denied her. Yeah.

Tjaša: I see a pattern. Jesus.

Annemarie: Yeah. So those are the two metaphors that I used to tell her story, to convey her experience to the audience. And depending on whether you know more about memory loss or a black hole, and that’s that story of the source and target domains of metaphors, depending on what your base knowledge is, you learn new things about other domains by building analogies. That’s how we learn. That’s how human beings learn new knowledge. It’s building a relationship between different concepts. But if you’re a physicist, you are probably more familiar with the description of a black hole, and then going into the psyche of a young woman who loses her memory, that might be something new that you learn. On the other way or the other way around, if you are a psychologist or if you are someone who ever experienced memory loss, you’re like, wait a minute. I’m learning a new concept about the black hole. So apparently this black hole sucks in everything and it can’t get out. Yeah, that’s the idea of using metaphors from physics to help create storytelling.

Tjaša: I so enjoyed the vulnerability and the exploration of this character, of The Einstein Girl when I saw her. Of course, as a theatre person I was very interested in the, not discrepancy, but just two different ways of how you worked with the same text basically in two different countries, in two different languages with two different directors. So how the aesthetics of the country and cultural trends really influence our perception of storytelling and acting.

Annemarie: Yeah, totally. That makes sense. It’s a difference.

Tjaša: What are you finding in the Netherlands? What are you finding that the theatre aesthetics is?

Annemarie: So when I did those two different versions of the story of The Einstein Girl back in I would say 2012. So I did an experiment with the audience during the Amsterdam Fringe Festival. The first weekend I performed one version, the Dutch version which I had worked on with a Dutch director, different music, different light. And then the next weekend I would perform the American version, which also had different music completely. It was the same script, and that was about the only thing that was the same. My acting style was different. My whole mise-en-scène, how I moved on stage was different. And we had a completely different engineer working on the lights, and that was very fascinating. When people came back the next weekend, and I asked them to write down what their experience was. There were some people who saw one show and not the other, but there were people who saw both shows.

And those people who were more into books tend to like the Dutch version better because they had more room to imagine, because the American version was more cinematic in a sense. So people who were used to going to films and watching American films, they appreciated the American version more because I had really worked with the director like a fourth wall really almost in the method kind of style because this director had taught at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute, and that’s how I met him, and that’s when we decided to work together on this play. So that was really fascinating. While with the Dutch director, it was more focused on technique almost. So I worked with her on my voice, I worked with her on dance movements on stage. We really worked on the visual while with the American director I really worked on my internal life of the character itself. So it was two totally different processes, but both fascinating and both very helpful for me in my development as an actor.

Tjaša: You’re so brave and so adventurous. Who would take on doing a one woman show and then do two different versions with two different texts, with two different styles? That’s almost crazy. I’m so proud of you. That’s insane. It’s a huge undertaking to do something like that. But it also shows your, let’s just say more sciencey part of you that’s maybe interested in the experiment and not so much into, or as well alongside the immersion that I think that all actors seek this complete immersion of being in something.

Annemarie: Yeah, absolutely. And to make it even more complicated, when I went to schools and universities for them to book my show, including a lecture, I offered them four different options. I offered them the Dutch version in either the Dutch language or the English language, or the American directed version in either Dutch or in the English language. So there were basically four different versions that I offered them.

Tjaša: Oh my God. I think this is maybe your artistic approach to demonstrating Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. What do you think?

Annemarie: Yeah, because sometimes, of course, if I would do the Dutch version in the English language sometimes I noticed that my American version would come through because I was used to working on this American version in English. So it would become a blend. It would be sometimes very difficult for me to really distract the two.

Tjaša: I can imagine how that would be hard. That’s super hard. Humans are just creatures of habit, and our subconscious is just so massive and obviously once you memorize something, it does become a huge part of the subconscious. And so I think that the actor’s freedom actually comes from this automation. The text and the live comes from the subconscious, and obviously there’s other things that you are consciously directing in terms of energy. But I think that’s a very tough experiment for an actor. I wonder, what are the future opportunities of when our listeners can see or hear The Einstein Girl, and what else is cooking for you? What else are you working on that’s blending the vast field of physics, astrophysics, philosophy, history, paradigm shifting and acting and theatre?

Annemarie: You know what it is? I have a lot of ideas, but the hardest thing is to really put those ideas really into concrete scripts. What I’ve done in the past, in these couple of years I’ve done a lot of collaborative projects like Bioadapted, like working with a company like Gorilla Science and really finding other collaborations to work on science and art projects. I haven’t really worked on my own projects as much. So yeah, there are a lot of ideas, I just have to—

Tjaša: Okay. So for everybody that wants to collaborate with your wonderful self, where can we find you? What’s the website? Instagram?

Annemarie: Oh, you can definitely find me on annemariehagenaars.com. So that’s my website.

Tjaša: Where are the two A’s? Just tell us where the two A’s are.

Annemarie: Oh, yeah, yeah. So Hagenaars is spelled H-A-G-E-N-A-A-R-S.

Tjaša: Thank you.

Annemarie: And you can find me on Instagram @annemarie_hagenaars and LinkedIn.

Tjaša: Yeah, you love the LinkedIn. You’re using it very well. I have stuff to learn from you. I can’t deal with so many platforms.

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In lieu of Alexei Navalny’s death, join us for an evening with the Swiss theatre artist and director Milo Rau discuss his latest documentary project, The Moscow Trials. Milo Rau is regarded by many as the most significant politically engaged theatre director working today, following in the footsteps of Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator. More about Milo Rau here…

 

6:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Talk with Milo Rau about his latest documentary project, The Moscow Trials.

 

6:30pm

Screening of Milo Rau’s documentary, The Moscow Trials. 

 

About the Documentary Project

The Moscow Trials
Congress, Performance, Exhibition, Movie and Book

 

When punk activists Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a penal camp this summer for their unannounced appearance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it sparked protest rallies across the globe. But this was just the end of what have been 10 years of show trials against artists and dissidents, trials which Putin’s system used to hinder any kind of democratic change whatsoever.

 

The project The Moscow Trials attempts to inject impetus into rigid Russian circumstances through the form of political theatre. In Moscow’s Sakharov Center a court is being set up in which a three-day trial show will provide the stage for the exponents of Russia’s cultural war. The images of the kangaroo court set up to try Pussy Riot could be seen in all media outlets this summer. All over the world, support movements were founded. The singer Madonna called for the release of the activists and Nobel prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek condemned the trial in a pamphlet posted on the Internet as the “end of all democracy in Russia”. A five-minute appearance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow was enough to sentence three of the activists of Pussy Riot to two years’ imprisonment. On what grounds? Offending the feelings of believers, blasphemy, and agitation against the Russian nation. An absurd judgement which was met with horror in the West. But what appears to be a sudden epiphany of an authoritarian theocracy has a long prior history. It begins with the nomination of Putin as Prime Minister in 1999. The former KGB agent secured his control by closing ranks with nationalist and extremely orthodox circles. The chaotic, but liberal conditions which were present under Gorbachev and Yeltsin quietly began to disappear. Those artists in particular who didn’t want to fall into line with the new politics of regime loyalty and Russian orthodoxy quickly came to the attention of a system in which the law, the secret service and the Media all work together closely. With the destruction of the exhibition Caution! Religion in 2003 and the trial of the curators that followed, the point of no return was reached. With the authorisation of the state, the Moscow patriarch called for the “expulsion of demons” and the “salvation of Russia.” After a show trial, the exhibition’s curators barely managed to escape being sentenced to hard labour, with one of the main defendants taking his own life. As a result, dissident artists and activists were repeatedly forced to go either abroad or underground, much like the recent activists of Pussy Riot. “This trial was the death of critical art, it has destroyed the milieu in which we were able to live,” said cultural philosopher Michail Ryklin in an interview later on.

 

In the form of political theatre, The Moscow Trials retraces the steps of this story of a state and church-driven campaign against inconvenient artists. A court is being constructed in the Sakharov Center in Moscow, which previously played host to the destroyed exhibition Caution! Religion in 2003. In a re-enacted show trial with the most important exponents of the Russian cultural war, “art” faces up against “religion”; “dissident” Russia against “true” Russia. There are no actors on stage; instead there are the protagonists of real, political life: professional lawyers, a constitutional judge, witnesses and experts of all political shades. In the style of a courtroom drama with an open end, cross-examinations, summations and disputes on the sidelines of the trial will bring about a disturbing and conflicting image of today’s Russia: are Putin’s cultural policies violating freedom of opinion and human rights? Or is it indeed art which is violating the feelings of believers? Who is the offender, who is the defender? A randomly selected lay court, made up of six Moscow residents, will reach a verdict after three days. For or against the artists; for or against Putin.

 

A documentary film, a programme, a video installation and a closing exhibition will document the project and illuminate the socio-political background and effects of performance art.

 

Concept and Artistic Direction: Milo Rau
Curation and Production: Jens Dietrich
Co-Curation: Sophie-Thérèse Krempl
Stage: Anton Lukas
Sound: Jens Baudisch
Press Release: Yven Augustin
DOP: Markus Tomsche
Specialist Counceling: Sandra Frimmel
Production Manager and Dramaturgy: Milena Kipfmüller
Assistant Director: Yanina Kochtova
Casting Moscow: Anastasia Patlay
Corporate Design: Nina Wolters
Web Design: Jonas Weissbrodt

 

In Cooperation with:  Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar, Institute for the Performing Arts and Film / Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Konzert Theater Bern, Gessnerallee Zürich, Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora, Memorial Russland, Sacharow-Zentrum Moskau, Wiener Festwochen, Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brüssel, Goethe-Institut Moskau, Fruitmarket Kultur und Medien GmbH.

 

Funded by: Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.

LaJuné McMillian: What’s different about this process versus a normal motion capture process is that normally when someone does motion capture in a studio for a project, they’re often met with lists that tell them everything that they’re not supposed to be doing in the suit. So it’s like you can’t roll around on the ground. You really shouldn’t be doing really outrageous jumps or really outrageous spins, mainly because you want the cameras to be able to see all of the dots. If it’s an optical tracking system with infrared sensors, they want to see the dots at various different points. So you have to basically guide the actors in doing that.

I’m using a different type of suit, which has even more rules, and it’s like, okay, don’t do this, don’t do that so that the sensors can see you. But for me, I never said that to my collaborators. I’m like, I don’t really care if it’s perfect. I want to see you. However the technology interprets that is how the technology interprets it. And oftentimes, the suits break midway through the performance, even after we do a calibration, because they’re just doing them.

Tjaša Ferme: Welcome to Theatre Tech Talks: AI, Science, and Biomedia in Theatre, a podcast produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide.

LaJuné McMillian is a new media artist and creative technologist creating art that integrates performance, virtual reality, and physical computing to question our current forms of communication. McMillian is passionate about discovering, learning, manifesting, and stewarding spaces for liberated Black realities and the Black imagination.

Your work in general is this very unique intersection of performance, of new technologies, of archiving, of education. So can you tell us a little bit more about what was your path? How did you get here?

LaJuné: Yeah. I guess I’ll start from my time in college. I went to NYU. I was part of what was then called the Integrated Digital Media Program. And before I transferred to that program, I originally went to school for mechanical engineering. And so I thought that I was going to have this career as an engineer, but then I realized very early on that that just was not going to be the vibe for me, mainly because I was having difficulty in my classes, but also not just with the coursework itself, but also with my peers and my community. And so I was just like, oh my gosh, this is going to be it. These are my peers and this is who I’m going to be working with, and so this is just not going to work out for me. So yeah, I switched my major to digital media. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know that you could make art with technology. That was never something that I even considered. And so it was a very happy accident.

Tjaša: Can I actually stop you here? I’m actually super interested. What is digital art? I feel like it’s such a blanket statement. I mean, everybody kind of pretends they know what it is, but I don’t think that we really all know what it is or all facets of what it is.

LaJuné: Yeah. I think, I guess there are two ways to answer the question. For me, being an artist in general, taking the technology out of it, I think my role and what my job is, is to basically take a witnessing role to the world around me, to my community, to my collaborators, and I guess make content about that. What does it mean to go through life and storytell and record those stories and hold those stories and then retell those stories? And when I place technology back into that equation, I’m really talking about, or I’m thinking about, how to do those retellings with various different mediums through various different mediums of various different tools.

I like to work with different technologies. I create video art, but then I’m also making virtual reality. I’m also making live motion capture performance art. And the stories themselves, they morph and change, but I’m trying to always figure out what points or portions of those stories stay true throughout. I do like to work with mediums in a way where I’m never trying to just make a story one-to-one. The video art never has to be completely the same as the virtual reality product because they’re two different mediums and they have two different ways of being experienced and being seen. And so, I think, for me, I just like to work with that and morph with that. And then it becomes this wider conversation about my relationship and my community’s relationship to these tools and to these technologies.

What does it mean to then question those power dynamics—how much power we give the digital tools that we’re using…? And what does it mean to restructure those power dynamics so that we as users of these tools are not just extracted from, but are contributed to?

And so, yes, it does become a conversation around using tools and softwares that are sometimes used for surveillance and for very harmful outcomes. How do you hack those digital tools and different digital technologies and make them not do that? And so, yeah, I think that in that way I’m also questioning the softwares, pushing them, breaking them, and then telling stories with them. And then I’m basically asking how stories and how our stories, whether it be through oral storytelling, through spoken word, or through movement, or through our bodies, how does that rupture or hack the tools that we’re using?

And so I guess that’s what my job is as a new media artist. But I guess with technology, there’s so many different tools. I think one of the things I’m also always talking about is even just the term technology, I think a lot of people reserve that term for digital technologies, but there are various different technologies that are analog, that are not having to do anything with the digital. So what does it mean to then question those power dynamics? How much power we give the digital tools that we’re using versus the other tools that we use? And what does it mean to restructure those power dynamics so that we as users of these tools are not just extracted from, but are contributed to and from?

Yes, we’re using these tools every day, but I do also have an understanding that there will be new tools that will need to be built that have ethics already built in from the onset. And so, what does it mean to then create those system of values before things are even made? So it’s questioning a lot of the tools and softwares. It’s saying, okay, we can use these for our projects, but it’s not necessarily dependent on them or saying, this is it. This is just going to be what it is. But I also know that I’m one person, so I can’t necessarily build software and tools and make art and build community and do all these things.

So basically, I’ve been focusing on what does it mean to be in community with people, especially because for me, I grew up an only child, so I never really grew up… I grew up with my mom, my stepdad, but I never really, I guess, had intrinsically the ideals around what it means to be in community and what it means to truly and fully see someone else. And so it’s been a lot of a learning curve for me too, mainly because, what is accountability and how do I hold myself accountable to my community that I’m building? And how do I grow and morph as an artist? And what does it mean to build out and carve out space for all of us to do that same thing? So now that we’re working with these tools and technologies, we’re questioning them and we’re saying, okay, what is implicit within this tool and software that reinforces the idea that I am not enough and that my body isn’t worthy? And then, how do I then counter that and say no? Even though this is saying that I know that that’s not real. And in the future, we need to begin to build technologies that already infuse our humanity within them.

So that’s pretty much where my standpoint is rather than just focusing solely on what other people and other systems are doing.

Tjaša: Super interesting. I love the intertwining of your own personal story because it really explains the journey. I find it really interesting that you said that you needed to learn how to see other people and how to be in community. And so it’d be interesting to hear more about how the technology was helpful or not helpful in this way.

LaJuné: Yeah. I guess going back to my time in school, essentially when I started working with a lot of these tools, it was a very weird process. I had gone through a lot of just breakdowns because I guess school and all of these things are happening at once, and you’re being forced to grow up and be an adult, but also you’re given these tools and these softwares and they’re being thrown at you in every class and you’re being told to just make something with it. And what I realized was I was making stuff, but I was also taking in… It also wasn’t helpful in the fact that I didn’t really have language for what was actually happening when I was learning these tools and I was making stuff.

And so as I got a bit older and I began to find language, and I began to see, oh my gosh, this tool thinks that all Black people look a certain way or all Asian people look a certain way or that we should be able to just drive people as avatars instead of just allowing them to be human and to tell their own stories, I didn’t realize that all of these ways that we were interacting and all of these systems that we live in through our daily lives were being just reestablished within the softwares that I was using. And so it very much contributed to a lot of my, I would say, current mental health issues.

And also, it was a very lonely experience in that there wasn’t many Black people in my cohort. So it was having to do a lot of these things oftentimes by yourself or with just one other person and not having anybody else to back you up and say, “Oh, I hear you. I understand this is happening.” And to have that language for you, that’s a very traumatizing thing because you’re going through all of these terrible, consistent experiences and not really knowing what to do about it.

And so I actually ended up not even graduating from my program due to financial aid issues, but what that experience taught me was that… Right after that, I ended up directing a skating program and doing all these other stuff and reestablishing that. But then, what I realized was that it wasn’t necessarily academia’s approval of me that I needed. It was my voice that I needed, and that was most important. And so when I began to speak more, people started to listen, and then people started to get interested in what it is I was saying.

Then, around that time, I came up with the first iteration of the Black Movement Project, and it was just a database of motion capture data from Black folks. But then I realized that that would actually just contribute to the same paradigms that I didn’t necessarily want to be a part of, mainly because it didn’t address the erasure, the extraction, the exploitation of our movements in our bodies that have existed since America’s inception. So what would it look like to begin to think about what a space, an archive, a library, what would that look like? How would you interact with it? How would you make with tools that that space has? Those were questions I began to start asking because I just feel like we can no longer really afford to continue to think about our data in just quantified ways. None of us are just numbers, and so to treat our movements in our bodies and all of the different types of information about us as just data sets, I just think that that’s very harmful to us.

Tjaša: Yeah. In your Black Movement Library, I feel like the portraits of artists are extremely individualized. They’re extremely, from a personal point of view. And what they seem to be saying is that they found some confidence and liberty within this process of expressing themselves and dancing and working with you and using these technologies as much as they’ve seen mostly motion captures and motion sensors. What do you think how the technology played a role in them finding the liberty and finding ways to express themselves better?

LaJuné: Yeah. Basically, how I came up with the idea for movement portraits, it was this question of looking at various different motion capture databases and only being met with lists of movement and sometimes not even being met with the name of the actor who made the movements, not being given any other information about those movements. So I was questioning what it means to hold and celebrate various different types of data at the same time. I think that, yes, you can have a movement library. There are various different ways that people move, and you can see that through various different genres of dance. However, when an individual comes and does that movement, they’re bringing their full selves to that movement too. So it’s important to not only pay homage to the movement, but also to the person who’s able to do that movement.

And so with the movement portraits, I decided that I was going to begin to really dive into the stories of the people that I’m working with, my collaborators. And so I do these documentaries with them, and I do these interviews with them, and I ask them about their movement journeys and their movement practices and their movement histories. And then I ask them about their favorite colors, and we start from that as a base. And then I create their avatars, and then they put on the motion capture suit.

And what’s different about this process versus a normal motion capture process is that normally, when someone does motion capture in a studio for a project, they’re often met with lists that tell them everything that they’re not supposed to be doing in the suit. So it’s like you can’t roll around on the ground. You really shouldn’t be doing really outrageous jumps or really outrageous spins, mainly because you want the cameras to be able to see all of the dots. If it’s an optical tracking system with infrared sensors, they want to see the dots at various different points. So you have to basically guide the actors in doing that.

I’m using a different type of suit, which has even more rules, and it’s like, okay, don’t do this, don’t do that so that the census can see you. But for me, I never said that to my collaborators. I’m like, I don’t really care if it’s perfect. I want to see you. However, the technology interprets that is how the technology interprets it. And oftentimes the suits break midway through the performance even after we do a calibration because they’re just doing them. So it’s very much just a… I try my best to build a liberatory process in how I am witnessing them through a lot of these different tools and technologies.

Tjaša: I love it. So you’re asking them to bring their full person and the full artist to what they’re doing. You’re basically saying that technology oftentimes needs working in gloves, dainty. It’s almost this, a laboratory environment where you have to be a purified or stilted version of yourself, and you’re rejecting that paradigm and you’re saying, no, let technology do what it does, but I want you to be a full-fledged human and artist that you are.

LaJuné: Absolutely.

Tjaša: I love that. I love that. And basically, while doing this, you’re also the documentary filmmaker for this project and for the ice skaters as well, which all of that is a huge job to be your own technologist and also the filmmaker of the process.

LaJuné: Yeah. And I do work with one of my really good collaborators and friends, Emmanuel Montegon. And basically, he helps me with a lot of the filming process.

Tjaša: Good. It’s always good to have a team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s the background of ice skating, when you were just saying that?

LaJuné: Yeah. I grew up figure skating. When I was around nine, is when I started to pursue it a little bit more seriously. But when I was younger, I used to watch it a lot with my great-grandmother on TV. And right now, I’m actually working on a new media live motion capture performance project on ice about the history of Black figure skaters because my great-great uncle, which is her brother, he taught himself how to figure skate out of various different rinks in New York City. And so skating has been in my family. I’ve had cousins who’ve grown up skating. So I guess it was just natural for me to be interested in doing it, even though my parents never necessarily tried to convince me. I was the one who was doing most of the convincing on my part. And so, yeah, I had my ninth birthday at the ice rink, and then I just started taking lessons from there.

And I think, as the years went on, I mean, I just fell in love with it. I think skating was absolutely my first love, but I don’t think that my parents had necessarily the resources to be able to provide me with the extent of training that I needed. I got good training, and my parents did all that they could, but I was skating with girls who were homeschooled, and literally their ice rink was their life, and I wasn’t getting homeschooled or anything like that. So yeah, it’s definitely a different world. After high school… Well, actually, midway through high school, my mom was just like, “Listen, you got to just start focusing on school.” So I quit and it broke my heart. But what I’ve learned, I guess, now is that I can, and that I always will have a relationship to the sport. It just grows and morphs and changes.

I’m really excited to be working on this ice show, though. I’ve been working with Ice Theatre of New York. We did the first iteration last December, actually around this time. And now I’m actually in the process of starting interviews again. So I’ll be doing interviews with actually some of my great-great uncle’s peers, their families. So yeah, that’s pretty much with skating.

Tjaša: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And where has Black Movement Library been screened, and what were the responses that you have gotten about people experiencing it and moving through some stuff through it, with it?

LaJuné: Yeah. Basically, it’s had a few different iterations. It actually started with just two folks, Ronaldo and Nala, who actually were in the second iteration, but we started in Barbarian Group. Barbarian Group is this creative agency in Manhattan. And so they gave us an art residency there, and we did the initial movement portraits there. And we actually did a performance there too, which was really funny because it was in the middle of their office space, but it was really cool. And so that was where the initial performance happened.

And then, two years later, in 2021, we did a larger scale version at the Brooklyn Public Library. So I was able to bring on more dancers that I was in community with. And it was really amazing. We were there for two nights. I was able to… Basically, I use their motion capture data, but it gets sent to me into Unreal Engine, which is the visual gaming software that I use to create all the visuals, but it allows me to be able to do it in real time. So as the performers are dancing, I’m able to, live, change the elements on their avatars.

So then we did that. And then, one year later, in 2022, I translated the performance into a virtual reality experience that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and then went to London Film Festival. And then, from there, it also showed as a Times Square midnight moment around the same time that it premiered at Tribeca. And then, after that, we did the first iteration of a pop-up library experience in September. And so, basically, I organized a collection of books around the subjects around race and technology, race and movement, but also Black political movements. So trying to make this intersection of these three different fields into one space, and to be in conversation with one another, alongside with computers that people could use as well as access to the actual tools.

And then I also hosted a Black movement and digital spaces like mini conference. And so it was just two days of journaling, movement, embodiment work, as well as intro to technology, all of these tools that are being used, and also this integration of conversations as well. So I got to speak with other Black library owners, and we got to talk about the future of Black libraries, but then I also got to speak with other Black technologists, and we got to really talk about what it means to learn in this field. So what I’m really interested in is really trying my best to insert technology, digital technology into these fields that really need it and really need to embed it within their conversations and spaces.

Tjaša: What is it that white people don’t know about Blackness and technology?

LaJuné: I mean, I think I would say that… I mean, for me, going through life, you look at things as a scale of harm or how much harm is caused. And if it’s not that much harm being caused to me, then why should I care? I feel like there are probably people out there who are feeling that way. It’s like, I already have all these other things. This isn’t harming me that much, then I should just leave it alone and not bother with it. But it’s like, no, actually, what if we looked at a lot of these different harms in a more holistic way and said, hey, actually, all of these harms are connected. They’re all intertwined, all connected. And if we approached it with an entire community shift in how we’re relating with each other and with ourselves and with our families and with our communities, then we could really get a lot of work done.

I think that a lot of what I’ve seen also over the years is using technology as the sole scapegoat to a lot of the issues. So a lot of people are blaming artificial intelligence, blaming machine learning, blaming this, blaming that, and it’s like, no, we actually need to deal with these foundational issues of racism, sexism, fatphobia, all of these isms. We need to deal with that. And then, from there, we can begin to build tools and technologies that better reflect how our community values life in our humanity.

I think, so oftentimes people try to put the… Is it called the horse before the cart? Yeah. They try to put the horse before the cart and they’re like, “Oh, I can just build a tool that will fix this.” And it’s like, no, you can’t just build a tool that will fix this. You need to actually do and commit to the inner work that is necessary.

Tjaša: I know. It’s so complicated. It’s so funny. We live in this quick gratification society or where you think that just by building another Super Mario game, you will be able to address the world’s problems. And it’s like you are creating more problems presented as solutions in virtual and simulated realities, but it doesn’t actually address what’s happening right here in this physical reality.

How do you use AI in your work, if you do, and what are your general views on AI?

LaJuné: Yeah. I don’t necessarily use machine learning in my work right now. I do have some projects that I’m interested in creating though. And I think that it really starts with, or at least from my understanding of machine learning, it really starts with the care of the data that you’re collecting. For instance, there is a database that is involved with a lot of these movements that I’ve been recording over the years, but I’ve said that I’ve been creating movement portraits and various different other artworks with the movements and not necessarily using it to compare itself with the other data to derive some new work.

So I haven’t done anything like that with it yet. And I didn’t start with that because I just needed to really do a deep dive and understand the data that I already had and just be like, okay, what is this? How do I work with this in an ethical way? And now, from there, I’m thinking about, okay, how can I begin to build what I’m calling different types of consciousness? Mainly because I feel like a lot of our ideas and a lot of our movements are very similar in various different ways. And so what would it mean to collect and honor those various different movements and ideas into one place and be able to hear some of those different ideas and maybe even come up with new ideas? That’s how I would use it. I am working on a new project though now that will be more about that, but yeah.

Tjaša: I mean, plug it in. Tell us what you can. Tell us what you can reveal about it.

LaJuné: Yeah. I’ve been working on a… It started off as a one person performance, and it’s called Spirit to Child. And so, essentially, I’ve been developing different series of prayers, just writing them down, and they’re all about prayers for this moment, prayers for my inner child, prayers for me now, and then prayers for my community and my world. And so, in the performance… It’s a live motion capture performance. So I’m wearing the motion capture suit. And I develop these worlds based off of that, very similar to the other work that I do, but I move through each world and I bring the audience with me and I recite the prayers, so there’s a prayer for each world. And then I wrote them all down on dissolvable paper that I then do this water ritual with. And so I send the prayers to spirit, and then I asked the audience to send with me their prayers to spirit as well. And so I began to think about this idea of, I have my prayers, the audience has their prayers, but what if I could also collaborate with other artists and try to understand what their prayers are?

I actually just came back from Jacob’s Pillow. I was there for ten days, and we did a first iteration of a collaborative form of that. And so the first four days we did some journaling around prayers for a Black liberated reality. So what is a Black liberated reality? And we each responded to that prompt, and then we recited the prompts as we were moving through the space. And that also, well, it had motion capture in the worlds available. And for me, a lot of my worlds and my process and how I think about live motion capture performance is that I think of it as this interaction with the portal. And so all of these portals to Black liberated realities, and so all of these performances or what it means to interact with, to step into, to be in that Black liberated space.

So I’m really interested in creating a machine learning project where I collect all of the prayers, and I then allow the consciousness to reread the prayers, but then also to remix them and to develop new prayers. And so I’m really excited about that.

Tjaša: Did you just call basically an AI program or machine learning “consciousness”?

LaJuné: Yeah.

Tjaša: I love that.

LaJuné: A collective consciousness, yeah.

Black liberated realities exist now, and I know that they exist because I feel like I can tap into them, especially when I’m with and working with my collaborators.

Tjaša: Yeah, yeah. What is a Black liberated reality for you?

LaJuné: Well, one thing I normally always say is that Black liberated realities exist now, and I know that they exist because I feel like I can tap into them, especially when I’m with and working with my collaborators. It’s embedded within moments of time. They’re not always super long and drawn out, but it’s a moment in space where you feel seen, you feel heard, and you feel this overwhelming love and care. And that’s really hard to come by because I feel like I move normally through the world, through life, having to have a shield over me all the time, having to overly be protective and not connect and not be vulnerable because you have to protect yourself. Because if you don’t do that, you could die being that open. But on the flip side, to have a space carved out to be able to convene in that way, I think that that’s a Black liberated reality to me.

Tjaša: I love it. This was so beautiful. I hope that these prayers come true and that you find more of these spaces and more of these moments. Thank you so much. This was amazing. There was something so human and vulnerable and soul soothing. Thank you so much for sharing so much about yourself and your journey and the work that you are making, that’s super important. And I feel like you are a voice of a generation just from your experience, from everything that you’ve been through and what you’re feeling and expressing.

LaJuné: Thank you so, so much. I mean, I’m just trying to vibe. And I don’t know. I really don’t know how… I feel like I just fell into this, and I’ve just been riding the wave ever since, but it’s been worth it, and I’m really just happy and grateful that I can be here to tell the story.

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