i was born in detroit michigan raised their went to school went to a great high school only two of its kind in america i was very fortunate study graphic art heading for a career in advertising as a graphic designer got a job in one of the biggest ad agencies in the country in about nine hundred sixty so how terrible it was i did not like it was interested in mining and theater got  ship the queen elizabeth and sailed to europe in one nine hundred sixty two and then up in paris thought i'd spend six months in europe but i met the crew was considered the father of modern min opened up my school and taught in the two crew fashion like a true disciple got worked into a corner didn't know what to do and by happenstance serendipity or a number of things i went to bali and that changed my life i studied mask theater in bali within your mind kakul performed with him in bali it was a whole different thing it was great very inspiring i always say if anyone is lucky enough to have an artistic experience in their life that changes their life they're really lucky i've had several so i spent three and a half months studying with kakul in bali came back and brought a lot of masks with me and changed my work completely we thought all of my work with the crew tossed out this and that and kept this and that in forged out of my own direction and that was in one nine hundred seventy three have been going on ever since with a number of digressions like writing books becoming an author doing my sculpture doing my graphic work design and now i am back in san francisco with my school called the flying actor studio that i call director james diamond and we offer a one year conservatory program or students come every day three hours a day five days a week for a year and we are now just beginning our third year and that's great i love it love teaching i know it's a cliche but i feel like i'm a gardener and i watch my plants grow i only teach because i learn another cliche but it's so true i wasn't learning and wouldn't do it then it's just wrote you learn about everything every person every student presents a different set of issues and problems that you have to overcome like i had a student year before last he could not move his pelvis a student in my class all he had to do was to sink in a spinal like this really love to crunch a spine and he couldn't do it the simple movement he could not do you know why couldn't he do it because when i do this movement in my spine sayings my pelvis rolls under to allow my spine to do that but his pelvis had no movement so he couldn't do the sinking of th spine he had no mobility in his in his in a spike and all he could do was go forward or contort left or right it was very difficult so i had a young girl sit on a chair in front of me and i said now watched joe i saw him recently we did something again and he had a little bit of difficulty to refresh on the pelvis but those are the kinds of things that are really exciting every student present something else you know a lack of connection in the body many people when they move their arm you feel like the arm doesn't know there is a torso and you were in the same room there's a disconnection so i've got to work on trying to find how to get the arm to move so it feels like it's connected to the torso and then you get other issues of the upper body in the lower body and the connected or not when you move are they talking to each other ok and then you've got the whole body when the body's on the ground is about you know the ground is there can you use the ground as a source of movement and energy and a source of relaxation but all that and then you cut your shoes or the breath some students just don't grieve and we do a lot of voice work voice and body very same thing same issues because of both you committing your energy and your focus your intention your body or voice and so we we them anything we don't assume you know but we do full body voice as if it works and what it so do you work with them on writing the literary writing delivery a lot on delivery sure how do you begin to word and a word of course y door to a storage room a time going to storage room come out of the storage room and stop and look you have to look really silly very difficult nobody can do silly goofy look goofy people can look silly you know that's really specific so you have to really work with people you know and then i make it was simple improvisation if this is with no text so far i've got a chair on the stage i want you to enter the stage you enter into a relationship with the chair but you can't touch the chair what he did was an interesting problem is it possible to create a relationship with the chair with the touching it well it is actually but then if you've got text i'll give them a tax i'll give them something from  is challenging the other take your little bobby for the audience you're like a swagger you're challenging each other in a public form there are people sitting there and they hate each other where you progress lump of all my heart the bigger the crowd the better his poem a child's christmas in wales we were blessed to have dylan thomas on this earth for a very short time we have his poetry but we have him reading reciting his own poetry and it's a marvel the presidency has in his voice so the voice is right the interesting because some people have great presence in their voice this do not it's just that's the way we're ma done thomas has great presence in his voice like you can get ten people standing on a stage that just standing there and you know you look at all of when your gaze is going to fall on one person in fact every one of the audience their gaze is going to fall on that same person because they just have a presence that's just the way nature is and there are people with a certain presence visually or when they move that's why some people if they're photogenic or with their voice it's just there you can't fabricated you can enhance it but it's either you got it or you don't and you listen to the voice and one way you bring out your presence is knowing how to i came to understand this listening to p f one day and you listen to p f and listen to her or you can listen to anybody singer perhaps listen to them on the vaal and that's where you get the best look at the quality of their presence and piaf you listen to p f singing listen to her vitals and what do you hear what is the quality of that presence what is the emotion in her all different things what he earned is volatiles what would be interesting i could tell you but i'd rather you listen to him and really listen then listen to pete seeger what do you hear in his vocals and as different as those people are to look at what they expressed as visually of course it comes through in the voice and in the voice you're going to listen for the volume because that's where you get the best insight into who they are and you take piaffe or pete seeger equal presence equal presence that's why they are who they are and why is it you know there are a number of people i've heard i don't know why they for the most times  they happen to be women who play guitar can sing on to they can play the guitar and they're very socially minded and they play social socially conscious songs maybe the road or others but they're not they can't connect and just because their voice doesn't have that presence and you listen to it and if you're aware of this and listen to it in that way you'll hear it's just that's how it is that the person in the picture in the photo that you're in the group for you is not to look at them it's just how people are made some haven't some do not and it's the same thing with a gesture so if i'm going to do a gesture i want to just or from doing a gesture with a line front and center you for that impertinence i want to gesture to amplify what i'm saying typically people when they move their gesture because it's not connected it undermines what is being said i think we can see what's being said rather than strengthens and you want all to rip together so gesture you can almost say there's a science to gesture that i do a audience the flowers open and it is closed now there's another flower so there's a whole story in a little gesture it's got a beginning a middle and an end there's a feeling of completeness and fullness and that's what you want to offer to the audience so you're giving them a focal point something they can look at something that a whole is easy to look at that's what you want so that's what we study you know the man i study with was mar that's about it yeah they get back to you but there was also there was this guy from ireland he'd gone ever that was in berkeley for a while and  john i forgot his last name yeah great guy that is really interesting really entertaining monologues and it is a challenge to get people to listen to a monologue where you have to have a good story and hopefully you've got a presence that will make you interesting from the get go so how would you get somebody better at storing well look at what they have to say you know and then that would be i mean i think it's always a challenge and a cheat sure that you want to be encouraging you don't want to be too critical but how to make your story better why it's so there's like just sound dynamics which you got into the valley walls and the consonants which i think is brilliant but there's also the whole like surprise alamut in the way you tell the story but i'm going to talk about how i learned to write from your me how to move my body and to be expressive with my body you know the difference between running yoga or tai cheek and learning how to move my body in a way that i learn because in my in my form it's about communication and yoga you're not trying to communicate anything into a cheap you know trying to convey anything in my art you're really going to move your body in a very connected dynamic way with intention the same intention as anything else but trying to convey something so there's an issue of clarity and simplicity and economy you know so you see we're just trying to see i see things in terms of physicality so someone's walking down the street i want to see things the average person will not see i once sat with a young girl who lives  in berkeley who's a master of virtue also cellist and we were having lunch after a performance of hers and she's fifteen and i said you know when i watch someone walk down the street what part of the body do you think i look at first most people would say the hands of the face and she said defeat and she's right it's sung by that wonderful old actor forget his name what film was it in the forties and i forget  looking for life be it in gesture or voice and rhythm pausing knowing when to stop knowing how to end a word i say and a word or and a word there was the first actor to appear on stage is that actor james cromwell who was the farmer in the film babe and he standing on a platform on stage and you could see him head to toe are dead you're the difference i'm going dead at the end ok so he was right to do that because it gives a life to the word and it fills the space now if you were in film you wouldn't do that ok because film was much more naturalistic but the way he was standing on stage you could see his feet his feet he had known tension in his feet his feet were just wherever they happen to be and you can feel that you can feel the intention and perform you need intention equal everywhere throughout the body and in the voice as well you've been doing film too long in film and you shoot from here up your lower body is not an issue but in stage it is i'm interested in what i call head to toe theater there's a lot going on the feet of the feet touch the ground and walk many different ways that have different feelings to them so you know so i'm very sensitive to bodies and of course and corporate but i mention it yesterday today people will say the audience is very common radio broadcasters journalist t v the audience i would say the audience does that give them more respect it's not a question of respect it's what's more alive we're interested in life as performers on stage we are interested in life as anything in the arts you're interested in life and if you can't recognize the difference between something that has one hundred percent life and ninety percent alive then you're looking at the wrong stuff then you're interested probably in ideas and people who are interested in ideas usually are not interested in the life i see in architecture all the time i'm passionate about architecture i've written two books about paris urban ism and architecture the transformation of the city i'm doing a thing right now in detroit the city where i was born via the postcard and i'm very interested in the rise of modern architecture in the thirty's forty's fifty's and a lot of people basically i'm just interested in what is alive and some forms speak with a liveliness and some three dimensional forms do not and some people are more interested in ideas and as long as an architectural structure expresses the idea then that's successful but those of us who are experiencing an architectural form we don't know of the idea of the person ad when they create all we do see the artifact and either it's going to be alive or not in one times out of ten in those instances where there's an idea motivating the thing and no concern for livel hundred fifty s it looks like a giant room heater i just bought the postcard today online and i imagine some are god who in the world would care about a postcard of this ugly ugly building an ugly it was this is an old postcard contrite and i'm preparing a detroit show i've got a large collection of pairs of detroit postcards early twentieth century and when you assemble a lot of photos of detroit paris or any locality and spread them all out and look at them and you begin to see the relationship between the photos what you want to do is look at and see what is the st  was well done ok let's see what's in the box or a book a book they sent me a book and a box like this it's crazy it's crazy out of the book well the first book i wrote was it walks through last paris and this is the english edition it came up first in french in two thousand and two i wrote the book and i spent five years working on it going back and forth to paris many year for five years twice a year in the spring in the fall to photograph paris it's got hundreds of photos of atlanta it's got hundreds of photos of nineteenth century and early give you the history of what happened and why they did what so i did the first walk it took five years it came out in paris and was just an amazing reception became an instant bestseller my publisher in paris flew me over to paris it was just amazing i had my fifteen minutes of fame in paris let me over to paris for a three week phenomenal and i said i'll never do it again because it was too hard i had no sponsorship no grants no subsidies i'm not affiliated with any university or anything this is just my own passion man curiosity and then i began just poking around in the in the libraries in paris and got certain our second book  so this is done a neighborhood it's not organized as specifically as walks but i think a neighborhood with you know twenty five spots and you can pretty much make it your own walk go from this corner in that corner and then my third book on paris is paris postcards the golden age no one knows that the and became a key to the economy it was the first former social networking which is like email changed the world with many of the same issues of definitely defamation and slander libel had to rethink these things  the upper classes hated the postcard it was not uncommon for a parent to say to a child if i ever see a postcard again young man you're grounded was considered vulgar people went to school to learn how to postcard you know who the world's fair is at paris at and that the tourism was just phenomenal business on the commercial yeah i don't know they probably did to a degree you know places would sell postcards from all over the world but it was a huge huge business and employ tens of thousands of people and people made fortunes of many postcards anyway so i did this book came out a couple years ago and it's all postcards from my collection i've been collecting for many years and i still did and then my last book which he want to call for years ago his name was valentine because he was born in valentine's day in six hundred twenty eight his name and is great rakes because well he was born in ireland he was anglo irish bloody hyphen between anglo and irish his family was from england central england from the region and darbyshire were a lot of lives mining was carried out and still is and to rake was a fisher or a cleft in the earth from which lent or was mined so there were a great rake small rakes long rakes short rinks and he came from an area where there was a great rate and great bra so that's my fourth book and i'm working on a book right now which is a piece of autobiographical fiction the title as it is right now is paris museum of dreams but many percent don been kind of catan out with well we have a competency at the top which is one problem that's a problem people who don't really know very much about him th but they they contribute a lot of money to a campaign fund and they get appointed to an office and they don't bother to research so but of course that's what assistance are for you seven done them probably fifteen years now is great and plus i just learned fingering somebody made it and gave it to me wow twenty five years ago it's beautiful here in the borders and i look at it sure i love would considered endangered would like i was getting really scared for my fiddle bow which is made from print and book which is the heart of the rose with tree which grows mostly in brazil in africa so we have all these instruments like was reading in the wall street journal probably because it's an investment that this musician went to the airport and because his instrument had was one hundred years old had ivory and brazilian rosewood and evan a fingerboard on it they seized it and he can never have it back in america and america this is the cottage i designed in nineteen ninety six and built bill the reading that as it turns out that's not what it is my studio remains in the house my chocolate club meets over once a month what's your childhood like ricky chocolate club we've been around for seven years to me once a month to it was much easier to say this picture is leonard doing some of his constructions they're quite wonderful as a child motion and this is what you might call static mobility don't have enough time to do it as much as it wish i could give a whole lifetime to it but other things preoccupied me i use it as an example to show the extent to which the world was photographed as they say as they said in the old days the world was snapped shut and together they photographed the everything every rocky coast every every street corner every village never knowing which photograph would make the postcard to make someone a fortune so they just shot everything hoping something was going to grab the public so with this postcard i say who could be interested in that postcard why would they shoot something so remote well i only know one person who will be interested in the postcard and that's me because my mother was born in this house right now this is my great grandmother on the porch coincidence i know people always say to you how do you know that and i'll show you how so if you pan to the right and you see in this photo this is my mother in the front row this is my grandmother grandfather and this is the woman on the porch of the post her car and when i went to paris in the one nine hundred sixty s this little boy was living in paris his family had moved to paris well this part of the family moved to detroit he was living in paris  ut that and it looks like i'm going to get apartments are three of my bar mitzvah oh wonderful and of course the story that goes along with yours i've talked to so many times sell to make some money because i was so desperate i was dirt poor girl so i eventually ended up with structures like this like this and became much more form i didn't know that it's called tetrahedron and i thought if i could take that form of that pyramid and replicate it make a lot of them as a module and then join them in an interesting way we have you could sell them and make some money because i was so desperate for money i was so poor and eventually led me to this course is much more complicated than i would imagine and someone actually made a short film about us called surprise by love and i was indeed surprised by love when i thought that baby coming into the world under those conditions so to nation slowly and then when he was born in just one book i did in an instant and i had a huge moment before and after it was before i saw him and after him and i and this soil and he has my side you know and he's really changed everything for me and in   teaching and writing and it's all it's all good it's all good i'm really lucky i've got a great circle of friends my work is always changing and it's inspiring  me and that's what has happened in recent years since we were together last anything you bring your teaching well i i'm working with two or three very ad people i'm not looking for new students and we're really building material we should be building a show i've not gone that far to say that yet but we're building material and doing things that their skill level will allow them to do so that's new i've never worked in  there's the same card in color on a photographer went out they would shoot many photos on the same day of course and i like to find cards that i call sequential is super target for same day same photo shoot so watch this car right here everything is changing except that in the metro theaters and i don't mind so i've got about an hour in some odd minutes of all different parts of paris i'm a dad for postcards only i would take the time to spend hours and hours looking through thousands of postcards on line or postcard dealers to find to shop by this in photography nineteen zero six cousin bell writing i send you a picture of the answer is opera house in the world and look where she wrote it to lincoln street in berkeley that's two blocks away nineteen zero six isn't that wonderful great i don't know what happened to the sou money my pleasure my pleasure ok all the best good fortune to you thank you thank you thank you same to you and to everybody here's the same card in color a photographer went out they would shoot many photos on the same day of course and i like to find cards that i call sequential zx supertanker for same day same photo shoot so watch this kurt right here everything is changing except that