Pat Cruz and Juli Crockett discuss the creation of CNP's new audio play, "The George Project: A Liberation Through Hearing", inspired by and adapted from the work of celebrated artist Emilio Cruz.
We join a conversation between Pat Cruz and Juli Crockett as they discuss the creation of CNP's The George Project: A Liberation Through Hearing, a new seven-part audio play inspired by and adapted from When This War is Over, You’re Going to Get it George, a 1975 meditation on the brutal logics of war by artist Emilio Cruz. Cruz and Crockett share a lively discussion about the inquiries that forged Emilio’s work, and the power of creativity to connect us to multiple planes of the human experience.
Hosted by Marissa Chibás, this podcast was produced by CalArts Center for New Performance, the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts, Travis Preston Artistic Director and Dean of CalArts School of Theater. Produced by George Lugg and Rory James Leech. Editing and sound engineering by Duncan Woodbury. Podcast theme music by Cristian Amigo. Special thanks to Ravi Rajan, President of CalArts.
For more information on these artists and their work, as well as other CNP projects visit centerfornewperformance.org.
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Center for New Performance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 2
Pat Cruz and Juli Crockett on The George Project: A Liberation Through Hearing
Clip From The George Project
Oh George. That which is called Death has arrived. You want to depart from this world, but you are not the only one.
Marissa Chibas (Host)
Welcome to Cal Arts Center for New Performance, where we follow the artist. You just heard an excerpt from the CNP production of The George Project: a Liberation through Hearing. Our podcast is a place where visionary artists lead us into creative dialogue and discuss generous acts of world making. I'm your host, Marissa Chibas, speaking to you from our home at California Institute of the Arts. Today we join a conversation between Pat Cruz and Juli Crockett as they discuss this new seven part audio play inspired by and adapted from "When this war is over, you're going to get it George", a performance text by artist, poet, musician and playwright Emilio Cruz. Pat Cruz is the CEO and artistic director of Harlem Stage and also Emilio Cruz's partner and spouse until his death in 2004. She discovered the nearly lost text while going through an old filing cabinet and she offers deep insights into Emilio's ongoing inquiry into the mythic dimensions of human experience. Juli Crockett is a multidisciplinary performance maker who was commissioned by CalArts Center for New Performance to adapt Emilio's text written in 1975. As the American war in Vietnam drew to a close, "When this war is over, you're going to get it George" is a meditation on the brutal logics of war. It was never staged in the artist's lifetime, yet remains disturbingly relevant today in its conjuring of invisible microbial killers, endemic individual anxiety and unending war. As our guests discussed, The George Project and the unexpected swerve from what had been first envisioned as a live performance to its ultimate realization as a sweeping spatialized sonic production. Cruz and Crockett share a lively conversation about the inquiries that forged Emilio's work, about recording pillow talk between actors on different continents, about glow worm sex, and most importantly, the power of creativity to connect us to multiple planes of the human experience.
Juli Crockett
Oh, my goodness, I feel like I've been on a sea voyage where I haven't seen you or spoken to you. So I know. And, and here we are on the other side
Pat Cruz
At last. And, you know, it's been such an incredible adventure. And I have to say that the whole idea of your framing, The George Project, through this liberation through hearing is an incredible invention. I think, you know, and I think if I learned to expect anything from working with you in the past, it was to refrain from expecting anything. You know, just let it go and and figure it out. So as, as I've said to you via text and emails, I'm really very appreciative of the innovative way that you've taken to approach Emily's play from 1975: "When this war is over, you're going to get it George". Because it was always difficult in the reading. And then to imagine it being staged was this whole other thing. And the fact that you arrived at, you know, from the attempted staging, to this framing, you know, I'd love to hear more about the journey from that moment, two years ago, or was it more I don't even know.
Juli Crockett
Yeah, or even maybe slightly more, but it wasn't 2019 Time is a whole different ballpark.
Pat Cruz
Elastic in ways that we would never have anticipated either.
Juli Crockett
It's funny because there's so many pictures involved because the first time that Travis called me to present the text to say, "I'm sending you something, could you be interested", I have a very strong visual memory because I was at a work event that was in the middle of the woods in Mendocino. And somehow, I had reception, and I was in the middle of a redwood forest. And Travis called me and was like, "I'm sending you a text".
Pat Cruz
I love it.
Juli Crockett
So. So the whole project, for me has this mythic status of quasi fairytale and in in this liminal dream like quality, and that's something I think in the piece that helped to guide that process was, and really brought me to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and The Egyptian Book of the Dead. I mean, one because it's referenced in the text and what I learned about Emilio in his interest in it, but that it had that Bardo, in between worlds place, which does make it difficult to say, "Well, how do you stage this if it's if it's in Dreamspace"? But I think what, Travis, and when I say, Travis, I mean, Travis Preston from CalArts Center for New Performance, is that's kind of my that's where I live, where so much of my work has always been about trying to stage the interior plane of thinking and feeling a really freeing iteration, because taking it in such a physical space, and kind of dismantling it in a certain way there help to break it open. And in, almost see it like a score. Like where I could see the musicality in the movement in the zany enos of, you know, how the language played. So, it's amazing to think that that was pre pandemic was engaging with the text in that way. So during the pandemic, we'd been a little bit into it. And and Travis Preston reached out to me to say, do you think you could do an effective audio version of this text? And, without hesitation, I said, "Yes". In, in part, because of the work that I do with my husband, Michael Feldman, who's the composer on the piece, and that so much of the work that I've done recently really, is invested in sound and score and soundscape and those aspects. I had the sense that, yes, we could do an effective audio version, because of my preoccupation with trying to stage the experience of thinking and feeling this format, is, I think, the closest I've ever come to, to creating the soundscape of the mind.
Pat Cruz
yeah, you started by talking about getting the text in the middle of the redwood forest or wherever. And I have to say that with the fires that went on in California, I thought more about those redwoods and the images that I saw of them set ablaze than I did about the homes or the people. Because in many religions, but certainly the Tibetan and almost all nature religions, one is looking at the tree or trees generally, as being the connector between earth and heaven. And what I love is you're talking about getting reception there, because it was as if the trees were allowing the reception. They were the vehicles for the reception, which I think puts us on very holy ground. And I think that that's certainly what when one talks about perception especially when one is trying to measure reality, and whether reality exists because it's the way we perceive it. And the whole notion of Maya, and as you said, the lifting of the veil, or the dropping of the veil, but that sense of interior life, and how interior life is then affected by the way, we exist in time and place, with one another, with redwood trees, with God, with transcendence, all of those things, and finally, I guess, with liberation, and is, in fact, liberation, as the Tibetans would pause it, I think, from what I know, is a release, and certainly within Buddhism and Hinduism, is a release from the burden of this temporal play. And how does one navigate the temporal plane and free oneself of the desire to be on that plane, and at the same time, to be released from the pain that being on that plane?
In forces, or is that we're subjected to, you know, so there's so many elements in the way that you have deployed Emilio's text. And I have to say that, doing this project and hearing it and reading it again, you are much more familiar with many of the, of the much of the text, because for me, I read it 30 years ago, or 40 years ago, many years ago that was that and you then set it aside and take so much of it for granted. But what you have done by scrambling it, in fact, as you have brings it to another form of life and impact. And I have to say that the other thing that I was thinking about was when I tell colleagues about this project, I don't know what the hell to call it. I'm like, What is this? Is this a radio show? Is this a, as you said, an odd audio version, because I am so unfamiliar with that kind of form. But there always remain a couple of things that stand out to me in what I've called that kind of scrambling of the text, one I was thinking of, and that Emilio talked about in writing the work originally. Certainly, it's a condemnation of war, and all of the things that end and human ignorance is what I'm gonna say, um, but one of the things that he talked about was being inspired by Duck Soup by the Marx Brothers. And you and I talked about that, because how does that because that's where you get that kind of seriousness of the journey, from life's into whatever awaits us on another side, another plane. And to be able to look at that with all of the humour that is required to do the journey in such a way that there is joy that is balanced, balancing pain. And that those are the experiences that one is attempting to be released from - when Shirley says, you know, "I hate the fact that I enjoyed having sex with you so much, because it was such pleasure and pleasure makes me want to live". So, those kinds of things, I think, come out in this oral experience. And that, for me, probably it's clearer than if I was seeing this acted out on the stage, because it does force you into this interior place.
Juli Crockett
Yeah, I found that doing the it the audio recording and just the process of doing that, one was, interestingly to a very disjointed process, because in that I found that liberating because I got to do I almost said it was too much power as a theatre director because I got to do dialogue editing, in effect, where we would have rehearsals and record the pieces, but then, you know, I'd get to surgically construct the musicality of a phrase out of multiple takes, like a like a filmmaker. And it allowed for, to these pairings were the source material in it, because I think one of the things that was really interesting, and just a technological feat in itself is that, you know, one of our actors, Hakan was in Turkey, Vidushi was in India, Isa was in California, Sean was in Texas, it were your we'd all be meeting through this, you know, technological magic of of zoom and, and recording. But some of the recordings, one of the scenes that the the post coital, the bedroom scene, they call it between Hakan and Isa I had them each record that independently, in bed with their phone, you know, so they just were doing pillow talk alone. And then I put them together, you know, like, and then you put them together and and what it gives, I think in a lot of these performances, because ultimately, it was people recording this alone in their homes, in you know, dark closets or under blankets, it's really was amazing to see on Zoom, what you're seeing visually while this audio is being produced, but what it created, was this profound intimacy in the quality of the recording and the quality of their performances that I am not sure you could get o n stage.
Pat Cruz
Yeah, yeah, I agree
Juli Crockett
Because there's just too many variables. And in some of it, um, you know, when I was editing it, it made it so vulnerable and it's so it's so intimate, and in what I'm able to create that it just felt like sometimes almost like "Is this too much? is too much" because I think that there are such a host of other considerations, you know, in terms of live performance now both with you know, intimacy coaches and how people interact and what is appropriate to stage and what you would pull away from staging where doing it only in sound created a safety that allowed me to go so much further with some of these concepts than you would ever do with people in the flesh. Right. I think
Pat Cruz
Especially in a casket built for two
Clip From The George Project
I feel terrible. Why are you saying that? I despise the beauty a felt with you. Why, if it was beautiful, I don't know. Why is it the law? George any of those things fan want to experience pleasure makes me want to live they know there's no hope is upon us. I can death in the teeth. It sounds so childish. I mean it I mean it. In case you haven't noticed Morgan, or lying in a casket built for two.
Juli Crockett
it just it really trips me up. Think about where we were able to go in the piece.
Pat Cruz
Yeah, it's certainly freeing. Because and you know, it's funny because I've not been a big radio person or podcast person. I I'm not good with that. This I mean, that just whatever, I like live performance or theatre or and theatre, of course, and then really great movies. But one of the things that my niece said, who was more involved in, I think radio and hearing that she was saying that "it allows for you to employ your own imagination, in ways that we don't if something is absolutely set before us in a way that all you're doing it", I mean, there's certainly an imagination that is required in any kind of artistic experience, but to be able to have to fill in the eye ideas of what is happening physically, by hearing what is happening, you know, which is, is really quite wonderful. But then I thought, I'm listening to this, because, you know, I'm the widow of Emilio Cruz. And I've, I'm thrilled that this work is finally being resurrected, if you will, because it was never performed, you know that right? So other than a reading that we did around our kitchen table, so the fact that it has been really more than resurrected, reinvented in this way and thinking as I was listening about a question that I usually don't ask and really don't like, ask of Me, which is, "who is the audience for this? Who, who? Who would take this journey?
Juli Crockett
That is the question, right? Yeah.
Pat Cruz
Do you have ideas about that? Do you all think about that? Or at at CalArts and the Center for New Performance?
Juli Crockett
I am sure that they do. But to be totally honest, I don't? Yeah. Um, I think I think so much of the way that I make work is that I am my ideal audience. Where am that in? I am a asshole, you know, in terms of myself as an audience member, like what I want is everything.
Pat Cruz
Yeah, yeah.
Juli Crockett
I mean, I'm like, if the work does not change my life in some fundamental way, I don't want it - just I've never seen anything like this is generally the response I'd like to write when I look at something. But there is an image - this is something that stuck with me since childhood, when I was when I was in high school, I got to live in Bermuda, my junior year of high school. And in I went out one night and was taken to see glow worms mating. And in you, and you and you stand, you know, by the water, and there's, you know, these rocks, and then it begins. And in the the women female glow worm has been in, florecent circle, you know, very fast and then, and then the men are these blinking beacons that you see blinking, blinking, blinking, and then the women spin and then the men blink towards them. And then they come together in a phosphorescent burst, you know, and then the women that don't find demand they spend and spend and then it slows down, and then it dims in there go. And I think of that image, so much of that's how I feel my relationship with an audience's is it my job is to just slide up and spin and be like, yeah, and then you end and it's, it's a real faith based thing. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, the audience hears the beacon and comes because I do think, and this is something we've discussed a lot, because it's at this point now where it's kind of like I had this tremendous freedom and engagement to create this thing. And then it is the question of, "how do you share this with people? What, in what context in what space"? I very much hold to the fact that I am an experimental director and an experimental player, right. And I think part of the truth of that experiment is not knowing who your audience is, right? I think not knowing what the work is, you know, where it's, yeah, it's Well, let's, let's see what happens. Yeah.
Pat Cruz
And I think, if I may, that feels like a necessary privilege of the artists, you know, I run, in my hours of spare time, a performing arts centre Harlem Stage, and I'm reminded of that, since you talked about I want a transformative experience. And if it's not that it's like, Okay, next. And our one of the things that we use as a kind of subtitle is diverse artists, transformative art. And I believe the same thing, I believe that if you're not going into an experience, and being transformed by it, in some way, whether it's cellular or a spark of an idea, or a spinning glowworm, I love that that image, because I do believe that that that is what allows or should allow artists to be free to create what they create, rather than who is the audience for this? Because as the arts administrator, who has been leading an arts organisation for several decades now, that's a question that we have to ask. You know, and, and I don't think artists should be subjected to that. And we don't impose that in terms of the artists who are working with us. We want them to be as creative as possible, as inventive as they possibly can be. And then we figure out how to bring audiences to it. Or if it's bringing the male glow worms, which I love, and which completely anthropomorphise them by calling the females women. I love the women, the women glow worms. Okay, I love that. Yeah, we were all like in this together, right? There men glow worms and then theres the women. Exactly, with the entire universe, right? And that is a part of this, because there's so many questions that Emilio raised, about identity, about, you know, your name is my name, my name is your name. All of the things that are embedded in the idea of that I think the piece his original writing is about is about control authority. And then how do how, how are those elements imposed upon us in such a way that leads us to life or death? And how do we resist that? Should we resist it? You know, and I think when we think of the place that we are in now as a society, oh, my God, where we're looking at, again, some of the things that I know you talked about, which was the invisible enemy, is it a microbe? Ah, yeah, I think it is. or is there an army that's coming in with bullets or some form of ability to kill and leave dead bodies? Who do we become when we absorb that fact? What is what is our relationship to the veil? And the and the myth of this within the concept of perception? I mean, it's, it's so wonderfully complicated that I love it. And, and the fact that it is challenging, and you have to be willing to be challenged.
Juli Crockett
I, we had that conversation so many times of, you know, the sheer audaciousness today of making a three hour piece. And who, who has time for that? Right, who has, you know, and should it be? And like you were saying it, I feel that if you're creating work for a known audience, you're always behind the times. Absolutely. And that and that that requires, you know, a profound amount of faith Just to trust that, that the impulse in the instinct and make something simply because it's what's being spoken to you, though I know it's human nature of when we think about, you know, fast food and chain stores and tribute bands and remaking old movies, you know where it's this thing where we, we, we keep feeding ourselves the familiar because it it keeps us safe we think teah, yeah, but it keeps us muted and numb. Yeah. Because we're so afraid of, of the transformation. Yeah. Of Change. Yeah. Not being not getting the memo. What to do,
Pat Cruz
It's what we do to bring order to order that allows us to be saying,
Juli Crockett
Yeah, or to or to simulate sanity?
Pat Cruz
Exactly, exactly. I love it.
Juli Crockett
And that, that's, you know, one of the things in the piece is just exploring, you know, truly how tenuous that relationship is.
Pat Cruz
It's very real, it's very real. And I think a part of the, the pain that is experienced by so many now, is this pain of isolation, were isolated from one another, and isolated from ourselves. So unless you can stand yourself, and attempt to understand yourself, I think that we are increasingly separated from one another because there is a lack of community. And it's so funny, because I've never felt really the need for community. And maybe it's because when you do what I do as a profession, you're constantly in community, the community is evolves out of the work. So you're working together. And I think that that's one of the joys of doing the work that we do. Do you know what I mean? It's my, it's my religion and I, I'm a proselytiser, an open proselytiser for art as a form of liberation. So it's, it's a joy to have this experience with you. And to learn from you because I'm relearning Emilio's texts through your eyes and through your ears do you know, and that that is incredible for me, because, like a lot of our past work and activity, it's kind of over there on the shelf and in the past, but you've brought it back for me, in a way that has been a real joy, and I'm just so happy that we're going to be able to share it with with whomever wants to partake. Right, exactly, exactly. You know, because is it intended for the individual? Or is it possible to have it as an experience that is communal as one has, when you go to the theatre? Or you're sitting around a campsite? Or a fire in some kind of prehistoric world? In which you are experiencing something together? And is it the or is it the fear? Is it the, you know, presence of God? Is it the fear of death? All of those things make a huge difference in this experience, you know, um, so I'm not sure you know, as you've created this, and, and have insisted on, okay, here's the solo experience, it's got this these earphones, and you're hearing it and it's a complete immersive experience. How has that transformed if it is if it can be transformed into a work that is experienced jointly and with others? And what does that mean?
Juli Crockett
I think I mean, that is certainly an experiment that I'm interested in. And and one of the things we have talked about a lot with Travis and I and between the Center for New Performance and and I with this piece is the desire to to maintain a connection with Emilio's visual work. Yeah, as well. Because I think that I mean, at least for me, that was such an essential part of what I would keep looking to was was both his essays about his process and then looking at his his work. Yeah, yeah. Because so many of those elements are there. And I do want to say there's another thing that he talks about in one of his essays that I just think I'm so fascinated by his process and how adventurous his process sounded to me. Yeah, because he would talk about with the HomoSapiens series to have how he would just start with the spine not knowing right, where it was going to go. But the part I was thinking of is that there when he would talk about believe it was he would do the charcoal drawing, and then he'd pour the wax on it. Right, not knowing if that would destroy the piece. Exactly. And that was, and that resonates so much for me if as we make these choices, as we're building a piece where you're like, that is the experiment of, well, this could be terrible. I don't know, if
Pat Cruz
or if they're buried. And and I have to say that he would try these different forms of bees wax, some of which were more heavily dark than others. And I would come in from work, and he'd be in the studio and having just poured the melted wax onto the drawing. And it would be like, we'd be standing there waiting to see, is it gonna? Is it gonna be clear? Are we going to see anything underneath the wax? Because there were so many variables that then either, you know, could bury the image altogether? Or could it could come through, as if through skin, it was just so tenuous a process, you know, and full of the surprise of creation in that way,
Juli Crockett
I'm very curious in terms of, if you have a sense of what audience Emilio thought he was creating for
Pat Cruz
the audience of Emilio. Yeah, just as you thought, you know, I mean, his his drive to create was, as you've had a glimpse of, was monumental, because he was making are all of the time 24/7 - There was no break. So whether he was writing or playing the drums, or painting or creating sculpture, it was all of the time. And it was a joy and an education for me to experience that. And it you know, for me, it was one of the, it is the critical factor that has made me who I am, you know, and I have been informed and educated and lifted up and, you know, despairing, all at the same time, when I didn't know who might see an experience this other than ourselves. And there was no way to predict that, and not particularly a drive to make it happen. You know, while Amelia wanted very much to be able to share this work and have it seen that was not the driving force in the making of it. And, you know, as the widow, I've not been very good at picking up that responsibility. Because I'm very much of the thinking that you and I have talked about in the past, you know, when you look at the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and you talk about, you know, walking through this journey, this channel, to the next life, or to the end of the cycle of life and death. How you how you respond to the demons on one side of that aisle, and the seduction on the other side. Whether that seduction is the physical seduction or mental, you know, however that takes place, whether you think of that as angels and devils however you want to cast that. I've always been just, you continue to walk toward the light and you go through the door that's open to you. And I'm not trying to force open a door or even knock on them. And I was always of the mind that people would come to it when they came to it
Clip From The George Project
God damn this war. This stinking goddamn war. I mean, this is a war. It is dammit. where the whole thing stinks. putrid shit smelling confusing war. I'm a proceed. what kind of pro with any pride would fight this war . I want no part of this war. God damn this war. This stinking goddamn war. I've seen some war boy. I mean, well, this is the war. It is dammit. Well the whole thing stinks. putrid. Shit smelling confusing war. I'm a proceed. What kind of pro with any pride would fight this war. I want no part of this war. Goddamn this war. This stinking goddamn war. I've seen some war boy. I mean, this is war. It is dammit. Well, the whole thing stinks. putrid ships knowing confusing war, I'm a proceed, what kind of pro of any pride would fight this war, I want no part of this war.
Juli Crockett
I have such a hard time with that part of what seems to be demanded by a lot of art organisations now in terms of justifying your work. Right. And justifying the social impact of the work and identifying who the audience is of your work. And, and in my "I have no idea" doesn't really fly on a grant.
Pat Cruz
Oh, my God, I know. That's, that's for somebody else to do.
Juli Crockett
Yeah. And which is why, you know, I will that organisations, you know, like CalArts Center for New Performance, have my just undying gratitude of being given the opportunity. And this, I mean, I cannot describe how amazing that is, as an artist, the opportunity that you and Center for New Performance provided me with to say make what you're gonna make. Yeah. Like, just go. Yeah. And in how that. Um, again, like my, in Michaels experience of getting to spend, I mean, we spent a year just with the audio of the piece, you know, between capturing the audio and then finishing mixing it was a year, yeah, yeah. Of, of just having that, that luxury of of engagement. I think that something that so present in Emilio's work. And, and with the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Egyptian Book of the Dead, these cultures that had the presence of death as an immediate reality. Yes. And as something to be - in Buddhism as well - It's something to be contemplated, prepared for, practised, and not avoided. Yeah. And I think that that's something that the pandemic and having that happen, and having this overwhelming presence of, of the the materiality of death of the of the bodies that we live in an era of we have sewage, and we have done such a good job in some ways of, of hiding bodily reality and spiritual contemplation as well to a great extent in that some of it can for me, create such a precious aliveness, you know, in that realisation, that's something that drives me so much, so much lately, is this feeling of there's only so much time, you know, there's only so much time and, and so, and I think that's happened with a lot of people where, you know, the great resignation of quitting people quitting their jobs or changing jobs or moving or whatever they're going to do. Because it's this opportunity to really ask yourself, what am I doing?
And what has meaning for me - what what has meaning for me? I just wanted to jump in because one of the Emilio's favourite quotes from was from Artaud, and I think we might have talked about this before, but it was, "I hate and renounce the coward who refuses to be born again each day". Is that incredible? And, you know, just the speaking of it is is, is so meaningful for me. Yeah. And has that I think the the, the quality that Emilio was striving for.
I mean, when I think about the pain of life, one of the ones that I think about a lot is kumbu. In the myth of Sisyphus, and he says, "We must imagine Sisyphus smiling".
Pat Cruz
I love it, I have to go to that
Juli Crockett
because that for me, that's life is like in that art, is "I'm gonna wake up today and push the boulder up the hill again. It's gonna roll back". and to do that joyfully. With a sense of bemused irony, you know, of this is, this is the job.
Pat Cruz
That's certainly a different take on that, you know, Oh, it's wonderful. I love it.
Juli Crockett
And, you know, there's so much of by I mean, that's the thing of who we look to, like be that's one of the things or you go, you know,"who are you reading? What work is informing you"? And I think it was, it's funny, I was just reading the quote again, yesterday. And it's in it's a, Kafka was, you know, talking about like, "we shouldn't read things that make us feel good. We should read things that wound us where it's very sad, you know, art is a acts to break the the frozen, you know, terrain of the heart", or whatever it is, when I think about some of what you've told me about Emilio in his zero tolerance for stupidity. Where I do believe part of that community is a hunger for - I have a friend, who's a musician, Mike Ibarra, who says "iron sharpens iron", you know, where there's a desire in your creative community for no bullshit, like, don't tell me. It's, it's okay. If it's not okay. Like, just let me you know, give me something to push against, you know? Yeah. And, and that's when I think about those those were my origins of reading, you know, Dostoevsky and Kafka and Artaud. And yes, Kumu and Sartre and - and yes, I just listed a list of white men, but
Pat Cruz
but, you know, it's a list that I have to say, when I talk, you know, to, to my staff, you know, who are a lot of folks under 40, they don't have a clue. And it's not like, that was just not a part of their education. So I'm like, "Okay, so who knows Janae here?" and what and it's like "uhhh", and, and they're not threatened by the question but like, kind of pissed off that they didn't know. And, and because it has not been a part of, at least in American education. I mean, even the most expensive American education, because, you know, I'm working with people who went to Harvard and all kinds of places, and I say, Well, I went to Hirsch high school. And then I went to the School of Emilio Cruz. But it just amazes me. And if you don't have that kind of just a frame of reference, even if you don't know, if you know a little bit more than just the names and have read one of the works, then it allows you to understand so much more and be receptive to so much more. But if you don't have that, I don't know. It's like going on a long walk and somebody has taken off one of your legs. And it's like, okay, so how am I gonna do this? It it just I despair. I despair of that. I despair of the lack of an informed education. That has been, I think, very deliberately denied.
Juli Crockett
Absolutely. By design.
Pat Cruz
Yeah, Because the better to control them. Yeah. You know of George just listening to the radio - to bring it back to George, um, "who's on the radio? Who are you listening to"? And there's so much foolishness out there.
Juli Crockett
And and I think back to what are you reading? Is that why I continually return to I mean, it's why I went and got a PhD in philosophy because I was so I realised in my own writing and the questions that I'm asking and one of my thinking, yeah, is it's always, you know, what the bigger questions were - and that's, again with Emilio, when I'm reading about how he's approaching his work is, he's working on a mythic philosophical plane. Yeah, it's not responsive to - I mean, which is, actually, let me rephrase that. Because as I was gonna say, it's not responsive to real day, you know, politics - It is, but because it's working on a mythic plane, which is applicable always. Right, exactly. That, that that's so so I think that is the the crisis in in, in education is when you're moving away from those those deep, fundamental questions. Yeah. You can get so lost, it's like, you know, being lost, not seeing the forest for the trees, you're sitting there looking at a tree, not realising you're in a forest. I mean, because being a parent and watching a child go through the current age is just,
Pat Cruz
I can't even imagine
Juli Crockett
Heartbreaking and adventurous where I'm not - I mean, it just, I just get filled with rage and despair. And, you know, and just bitter laughing irony that, you know, my child has been doing active shooter drills since he was in kindergarten,
Pat Cruz
Jesus, I can't even imagine what kind of paranoia that might and it's not it's not paranoia if somebody is out to get you. Right, right.
Juli Crockett
There is an anxiety and just awareness that I mean, again, I, I know that. I mean, obviously, we're, we're privileged to live in the country we live in, and we have the life and there's people living in war torn nations who grow up to create incredible things and be humans. Like, it's, it's, it's shocking not that it's great, but it's shocking how much horror a human can endure. And that's right. And that's right, I think and,
Pat Cruz
And come up on the other side, remarkably, remarkably. But, um, but you know, and when we were kids, we would have to have the, the air raid drills, because then there was going to be the nuclear bomb dropped on our school.
Juli Crockett
And that's something I try to remind myself is, like, every generation thinks it's the end of the world.
Pat Cruz
So you have to gounder the, under the desk, the little wooden desk, it's like, okay, what is this gonna do?
Juli Crockett
Yeah. But in relation to this piece, it's just the osmosis of all things was shocking. Don't you know? I just think there is no way and when, when so many of these philosophers, Kierkegaard is another one that I was really into when we talk about this. groundlessness you know, that. That is reality. Is this you know, sand through your fingers? Like, I really don't know and how much time and energy and effort in in this is some of this stuff, with with with George back to the piece in the radio, Is how invested we are in believing in our reality. You know, because once you - and I think that's the the magic in the horror of the great philosophers of all, you know, religions, cultures, thought is that it's almost like letting your hands off the wheel in in going like, actually, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. And and opening to the all all of the possibilities and being able to take those thought experiments in and they can be deeply jarring, you know, and really put you in that place of questioning what I think I believe, who I think I am, how I think the world works.
Pat Cruz
Yeah.
Juli Crockett
And that that critical thinking. element is what has so been eradicated from education.
Pat Cruz
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Juli Crockett
Is it everything's being pulled to a grid? Yeah. And not allowing for that. expansiveness of imagination.
Pat Cruz
Right. And the ambiguity of it all.
Juli Crockett
Yeah. And that anxiety of thinking there is an answer - and I need to be right.
Pat Cruz
And that's George too "'I'm certain'. 'I know you're certainly certain about something. Certainly certain, aren't you George?'".
Juli Crockett
Yeah. So that that is a that is a dangerous alleyway.
Pat Cruz
Absolutely. It's not even a street. It's an alleyway. Yes. It's a deep hole.
Marissa Chibas (Host)
That was Juli Crockett and Pat Cruz in conversation about Cal Arts Center for New Performance's: The George Project: a liberation through hearing. This podcast is produced by Cal Arts Center for New Performance, the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts. Travis Preston, Artistic Director, and Dean of School of Theater. Produced by George Lugg and Rory James Leech. Editing and Sound Engineering by Duncan Woodbury. Podcast the music by Christian Amigo. Special thanks to Ravi Rajan, President of CalArts. For more information on this and other CNP podcasts, visit the CenterforNewPerformance.org You can find more episodes, and subscribe for upcoming ones at Centerfornewperformance.org/podcast Or find us on your favorite source for podcasts, including iTunes and Spotify. Thank you for listening. And until next time...