Welcome everybody, my name is Michael Sexton.
I'm the director of the Public Shakespeare
Initiative here at The Public Theater, and
welcome to Brave New Shakespeare conversations.
I'm really blessed to be in the company of
some extraordinary artists.
One is Linda Bove who is the founder of Deaf
West Theater out in California and was played
Linda for 30 years, is that right?
On Sesame Street, as the longest running deaf
character in television history.
And has done just some extraordinary work
onstage and off.
I'm also joined by F. Murray Abraham who is
well known to you, I am guessing, and a great
old great friend of us here at The Public
Theater.
He's done a number of things for us and we'll
talk about some of those.
And Okwui Okpokwasili who joins us too is
a performer, actress, and artist-extraordinaire.
We'll talk more about her approach to text
and to movement and the theater in general.
But welcome everybody to today's conversation
and thank you for creating those beautiful
videos.
I want to ask everybody here about how you
hear this speech in particular from KING LEAR
and how we think that this speech speaks to
our moment and to us and the challenge that
it presents to us as people.
The speech that we were discussing is extremely
personal and meaningful for me because my
father came over here as a child from Syria.
They were escaping a plague of locusts and
they would have starved to death if they hadn't
been able to come to America.
And even now, my Syrian forebears are have
been pushed out of the country and they really
are houseless, houseless heads with looped
and windowed, windowed raggedness, unfed sides.
And it's not just Syria.
It's an exodus all over the world, and it's
extraordinary how Shakespeare, once again,
has captured the truth.
Which is essentially what any durable, lasting,
true art form is.
No matter what it is, what art form, it's
essentially examining the truth.
And that's what Shakespeare's poetry does.
This moment in the heath when Lear speaks
these lines opens the doors the world and
to himself.
One of the things that this play depicts for
me is how long-standing imbalances and injustices
are revealed in drama and in tragedies.
And in a way, the storm that Shakespeare that
Lear is inside of is something like the storm
that we are inside of right now.
And you I know have done extraordinary work
revealing and battling the inequities as regards
to the deaf community, through your work on
television and in the theater and elsewhere,
I wonder if this speech in any way reminds
you of that situation, that is, the way that
suffering can be hidden from the privileged
and the protected.
Yes.
When I got the Lear speech that you gave me,
my first reaction was "This is not my cup
of tea, I don't do Shakespeare."
And then I started wondering about why did
you select me to do this?And re-reading this
simple piece, I found so much application
to my life, my childhood growing up, my parents
as well who are also deaf, and have gone through
so many struggles that then I've had to live
through in my life.
And it continues, you're right.
It continues even though people don't know.
And I feel like I've always had to fight,
like the poor people that are in this little
piece, to get attention, to get rights that
are constantly being ignored, and so it's
not just one realm.
I want to yell out to the world, "I'm here!
I am in this world and be a part of the world
with me!
Don't forget us.
Don't forget deaf people.
Don't oppress us.
Make sure that we're present and that we have
to pull up and reach others to, so we can
all be fair in our lives.
So reading this little passage was really
tough.
It created such a deeply layered emotional
response in me.
Thank you very much.
Okwui, as someone who creates theatrical work
that has a vocabulary that includes physical
gesture and dance and music as well as text,
and you're an extraordinary actress as well,
well talk a little bit about your approach
and your relationship to a text like this.
Yeah, wow, thank you Murray and Linda, first
of all, I mean these are incredible stories
and so resonant with me I think in the sense
of the way I look at, when I look at language,
can I create gesture that is responsive and
resonant with that language but in an but
thinking about an interior psychic space that
the gesture comes out of and so this is quite
resonant because I feel that if you can find
the gesture that resonates with an interiority
or particular, how should I say this, so like
a kind of gesture-making that doesn't look
on the outside, right, but is like looking
or trying to feel and sense from the inside,
it's trying to open you up to a multitude
of conditions that aren't restricted to language
but the idea is that language becomes a kind
of spring board for this internal investigation
that also, that will manifest in an outward
gesture of some kind, but it may also not
be completely descriptive or illustrative
of the text, but the text was a springboard
to go into the conditions that manifest itself
physically.
So, yeah.
It's not saying "this is what this movement
means" but maybe it opens up a space for others
to also move back or sideways in time and
connect on some cellular level to emotion,
to I don't know, you know so, so that's how
I approached this, and, but of course this
particular text is so, for me, you know, my
feeling is like okay you only ever start understand
suffering when you are under conditions in
which you suffer right?
Like and of course, he does say, you know,
I've taken too little care of this, right?
And it, you know, there's a feeling of also
of, a feeling of anger that I have but yeah
I think right now for me, in what I've made
is an experiment.
Along with my collaborator to think about
interior and exterior space.
And I think we were thinking about a winding
storm, so we were doing, it's a little bit,
like it's, it was an experiment, you know?
To think about those, to think about the conditions
but also then to think about also the poor
naked wretches, right?
To give a little bit of space and time to
a body in a particular configuration, to me
that, where I was exploring trying to get
warm but being naked.
But I wanna talk a little bit about the role
of the theater and of poetry and dance and
other artistic forms in this moment, this
particular cultural and medical and political
moment.
What role is art playing for you right now?
Both as a consumer, as an appreciator of art,
and as a practioner.
I don't want to sound over dramatic but it's
saving my life is what it's doing.
It's reminding me of my humanity.
I continue to study even though I am ensconced
here.
But it's a joyful thing because I can't begin
to tell you how, speaking of resonance, how
the heath speech, and we're talking about
a true tyrant.
When I played Lear, he was really a, he was
very dangerous man.
He was the king, he could do anything he wanted
to.
And he did.
And I think he abused his daughters.
But, the point is, if I made him as wildly
tyrannical as I could, and then he came back
because of this storm, because of what happened
to him, it's almost an example for anyone,
anyone who watches this.
It shows them the path.
They can come back.
They can rediscover their humanity.
They can be a better man.
They can turn over, not only a new leaf, but
a new life.
It's never too late.
And I think the only place this can happen
is in the theater.
It does affect us individually, person-to-person,
on a very personal basis.
We need this.
It's a reminder as I say, of our common humanity.
Well I can't say it better than F. Murray
just said it.
I felt so connected to every word you were
saying, F. Murray, about the importance of
art in our lives, for humanity.
So, it doesn't matter whether one is, if one
hearing or deaf, or what color skin we have,
I mean we all are part of this world, if you're
in another part of the country, Europe, Asia,
where I have travelled and experienced art.
It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if we
speak different languages or we have different
cultures.
That human connection that is shared through
theater is what we've lost right now.
It really makes me feel like I'm starving
for parts of my life, for my art, because
it's such an important part of my life, it's
such a big part of me.
Thank you.
Thank you Linda.
Okwui, can you speak to the same question?
And also, has this moment changed your practice
in any way that you can describe yet?
You know, yeah, first of all, I also agree
with what Linda and F. Murray were saying
about the need for all of these forms of art.
For forms that are the result of a creative
practice, to share that, we need that, right?
We need to tell our stories in some way, through
the body, through sound, through text and
poetry.
For me, however, I do feel like this excess
of content being generated online through
Zoom is actually it's kind of driving me a
little bit crazy.
And I think there's this expectation for many
of us artists to well we gotta keep going,
we gotta keep going, you know?
And I do think theater, dance, all of these
forms for me they resonate because our bodies
are next to each other.
This feels like some simulacra or something
and I'm like okay, yes, I need this too.
And maybe, I think this can signal somehow
how important these forms are to our psychic,
emotional, and civic survival.
And so I can only hope that when we've come
out of these conditions of the pandemic, that
there will be a greater appreciation of how
vital the things that we do are, and I think
my, the experiment I had, the experiment I
did with my partner for this is maybe is the
first thing I've generated.
Because I've been thinking about what to do.
That's really moving to me, Okwui, that this
is the first thing that you've generated.
In a bit.
Thank you.
Linda, yes, I want to say this is the first
time I've made something.
The first and only time that I made something
during this period, and it took my mind and
my heart and my soul and my energy.
It brought it all back together, maybe I had
been a little bit lax, but I so appreciate
that opportunity.
Okwui, what did you want to add?
I just wanted to add for like all my frustration
about the excess of content being generated,
it's absolutely necessary.
And I don't want it to stop.
I'm just like, it's just that it's that mirror
and that other, the achey feeling.
Anyway, but.
No, that's beautiful.
Alright guys, thank you so much.
It's been just a beautiful time to spend with
you guys.
Thank you.
And thank you all out there: do more work,
when you have the moment, when you have the
energy.
Take care of yourselves.
Bye.
