Covid Conversations 1: Peter Sellars

In this profoundly dialogical exchange, Peter Sellars, theatre director, researcher, and teacher, Maria Shevtsova open out a whole array of questions on the integral relation between politics in its multiple manifestations. These not only concern damages inflicted by present Covid-19 pandemic but also those developed neoliberal economics past forty years more. Sellars’s view, neoliberalism has been hotbed social injustices, inequities, market other forms current enslavement, migrations, refugee related precarities, havoc world climate which plight humanity that planet are indelibly interconnected. His Shevtsova’s discussion links such vital concerns with his practice, ranges from engagement local communities indigenous peoples – he details some work collective, community organization two Los Angeles Festivals early 1990s to various music collaborates, institutional structures, highly proficient musicians, singers dancers. The focus chosen here is Indian Queen (2013), Sellars dramaturgically invents using pieces Henry Purcell combined prose fragments Nicaraguan novelist Rosario Aguilar. an internationally renowned director among whose more recent productions Mozart’s Idomeneo , premiered at Salzburg Festival 2019. Shevtsova, Professor Drama Theatre Arts Goldsmiths, University London, editor New Quarterly. This conversation took place 16 August 2020, was transcribed recording Kunsang Kelden, edited Shevtsova.