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uh huh. From Gainesville, Florida. Mhm. Mm. Coming up next on five live. You'll hear how many of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom face extinction in the near term and you'll see and hear about the work of the Florida players. Stay with us. Okay? Mm.

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Yeah. Mm hmm. The chimpanzee and gorilla, along with other primates, could become extinct in the foreseeable future. It's estimated that in the past 200 years, the number of primates decreased by 90% and the remaining 10% is also in jeopardy. My guest is John Robinson. He's a primate Ecologist with the Smithsonian Institution and John.

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What is the primary problem the apes and the monkeys are faced with? Well, the primary problem is probably deforestation. Most primates are restricted the tropical forests, and we are losing our tropical forests that are very, very high rate, which means that the animals that live in those tropical forests are having a hard time.

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You brought along some slides to illustrate some members of the primate family. So let's take a look at those we can. Okay, the slides. Here we go. Here we have a glorious a slow loris. A proscenium. We're just gonna go very quickly through two members of each major group.

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Here we have a lemur. Also prosimian People tell me they look like raccoons. A new world monkey. This is a serious monkey. This is monkey that I spent two years in Venezuela working with These are South American monkeys, the Night monkey. All these are in danger of extinction.

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Not all of them know some of them. Some of the lorises are the CBS monkey. No, this is the Japanese macaque. It's doing relatively well in restricted areas. The gelato baboon, the gorilla, which yes, is certainly this one, which is a lowland gorilla. Eastern lowland gorilla is in danger of extinction and some say, man also precarious in certain areas.

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So basically, we're talking about the encroachment of human population. I think there's a number of factors which are having an impact on primate populations. Hunting has some impact. Um, there was an estimate coming out of the Agriculture Department in Peru, which suggested that, um, 7.5 million monkeys were hunted out in Peru in a 10 year period between 1964 1974.

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Um, To what purpose? That's mainly for food. Um, there is also hunting for the pet trade, which is fairly big and certain kinds of animals, mainly the small primates. There's also, um yeah, some hunting for the biomedical research and that is mainly concerned with certain specific species like the cottontail Tamaryn.

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Um, the macaque is also again a species which used for polio research and therefore, um, fair. Bit of a fair number of animals are taken, but the major problem is deforestation. Um, I think we're losing our tropical forests at a rate of summer between 30,000 square miles a year and 100,000.

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These are highly adaptable creatures. Obviously, they certain habitat, they have a certain habitat. They're mostly restricted to tropical forests. They there's a lot of species. There's 175 species, of which 50 or so are endangered or threatened. Many of them live close to areas of intense human habitation.

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Um, the extinction faces most species extinction. You mean in the near term again, I think all species are faced with extinction and probably all species will go extinct. Um, but what we're seeing at the minute is an unprecedented loss of species, of which primates are part of that loss.

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Partly, that's a consequence of a burgeoning human population with the results of deforestation, etcetera, etcetera. So that's the problem we're facing. And we're probably gonna see, uh, well, again. The estimates vary, but we may see within the next 20 to 40 years a Ah, a loss of about 2/5 or 3/5 of our entire biotic diversity.

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What do we do? Um, on in the long run? Well, I think in a general sense, what we have to do is learn to look at resources as a renewable resource, which which we should conserve and manage, rather than a resource which we can use for short term exploitation.

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Are you talking about the forests? I'm talking about the forest. I'm talking about any system. But I think the forests are the most striking examples of that. We have what appears to be a very lush, rich forest. You cut down the trees and regeneration tends to be very slow.

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In some areas, you don't get trees growing back at all. Um, and what you get is a pasture which may not be good for very much. You're on loan from the Smithsonian and you've been here at the University of Florida some three years now. Aren't you involved in some sort of program akin to what you're talking about?

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We We've got a conservation training program here at the University of Florida, which is aimed at bringing people from the Third World to the University of Florida, exposing to a diverse and rich group of academics, exposing them to ecological concerns, behavioral concerns, and teaching them at least some of the theory behind long term management.

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Um, at least exposing people to the idea that that is something that we will have to do at some point. It's a little early on to make any judgment as to the impact of this. Yes, yes. Um, well, this is very much a long term project in that these people will go back to their countries to deal with a lot of these problems.

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Um, there's a lot of short term programs underway. This this very big efforts to, uh, set aside areas which will be in violent, which will not be affected by deforestation. Well, if you're talking to countries like Honduras, of course, which has fairly vast, I think relatively rainforests eminently poor.

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Second, I think Forest country in the hemisphere. How can you convince those people to do without the timber and all the resources of the rainforest? Well, I think what you're seeing is take Honduras as an example. There is a fair bit of deforestation to put in cattle ranching and that cattle ranching is mainly to feed the fast food hamburger business in the States.

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So, yes, in a sense, our actions are affecting them. We don't have to convince anybody at that level. Okay, John, if we could let's look at these other slides. You have to pinpoint those. These are a few of the species which are endangered. This is the line tail tomorrow in which is probably the most endangered species presently there probably, uh, somewhere between 50 and 100 animals.

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These are species of the Brazilian eastern forests. Um, the area the forest, which was in the area where Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are now heavily populated. There's just a few patches of forest left. This is the cottontail tomorrow, um, cotton top tamarin again. A small monkey.

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This animal was pushed almost to the brink. Well is pushed to the brink of extinction. Um, mainly because of biomedical research. Um, needs of this animal. It's a small species which occurs in the northern area. Is it likely to survive in the short term in the short term, within the next 10 to 20 years?

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Yes. Beyond that, I don't know. This is the pygmy chimpanzee. This is one of the two species of chimpanzees. There's the large chimp and the small one. This species occurs in a small area just south of the Congo River or Zaire River. And at the minute there is a logging concession which has been plunked right over its range.

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So it's a species, which at the minute, is doing all right. Um, but if this login goes ahead, we've just lost another one you mentioned earlier your experience in Venezuela with one particular species of monkeys elaborate on that. Well, what we were doing was looking at a relatively large population of these animals to get some idea about the population demography who breeds who doesn't who dies when, Uh, this kind of information is fairly crucial to making management decisions.

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You have. You have a population in a small piece of forest uh, how do you manage it? And we don't have the basic information yet to make those management decisions on very many species, if any. And this was an effort that will feed into that, I hope.

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Do you have to educate people as to the importance of these creatures? I would think that's essential and what you're trying to do. Let's face it, In our culture, at least, Monkey Ape is a derogatory term when related to human beings. Is that true? Do you find it's derogatory in a sense, But at the same time, I think we have a strong emotional attachment to monkeys and apes.

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They're always favorite exhibits at zoos museums. Um, they're also important because of their close similarity to us in research areas. Biomedical research obviously has been a major problem, but that gives these animals value. So yes, we have to educate people. But when people hear that the mountain gorilla is in a lot of trouble, that gets that gets a response.

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I think people are concerned about primate conservation. Yes, education is a very important part of that, but I think our major problem is getting that information out, letting people know that. Yes, we have very important concerns here. Um, not so much arguing why we should conserve these animals.

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Of course, people like Jane Goodall helped, I think, to raise the consciousness of people they have inevitably, Yes, yes. And about evolution. Just quickly, you know, our evolving from lower forms. You ever run into any reaction and creationists, whatever. From whatever culture, I think you run into that idea.

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I think it's I think it's an interesting idea. I think most of my research and I think a lot of our concerns with primates stem from the fact that they are very close to us, that we can learn a lot from them and that almost Presupposes that they are, as they related, that we grew from them, that that whole assumption behind that whole interest and if they already become extinct, it should be in its own good time.

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Yeah, shouldn't rush the process and not be a direct consequence of our actions. Very good. Well, thank you very much. John Robinson, primate Ecologist from the Smithsonian Institute Institution. Now with the University of Florida. The Florida Players, the theater company at the University of Florida. They've had students who went on to make it really big paid on away.

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Buddy Ebsen, Patrick O'Neill and presumably the Florida players will continue to turn out polished actors among college theaters. Florida has one national honors. Let's listen now to one of the students in the theater department at the University of Florida. Junior Malcolm gets he's going to perform something on the piano for us.

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Malcolm. Uh huh. I'm just a Broadway baby walking off my tired feet pound in 42nd Street to be in our show Oh, so a Broadway baby Learning how to sing and dance Waiting for that one big chance to be in our show Oh, gee, I'd like to be on some marquee All twinkling lights A spark to pierce the dark from Battery Park Way up to Washington Heights Someday, maybe all my dreams will be repaid Heck, I'd even played the maid to be in a show.

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Say, Mr Producer, I'm talking to you, sir. I don't need a lot only what I got. Plus a tube of grease paint and the follow spot. I'm just a Broadway baby And if I stick it long enough, I can get to strut my star for working for a nice man like a Ziegfeld or a Wiseman in a big time.

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Barone Oh show, Yeah, and that you're in rehearsal for Gilbert and Sullivan's Mercado Strikes Me, Gilbert Sullivan. Sullivan is particularly British in wit and irony. Do you have a problem in dealing with North American students? In this case, I think we have some problems. We try to take a variety of the different kinds of musical theater and give our students and exposure to, in the course of two or three years lots of different forms of the art.

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And we have not done a Gilbert and Sullivan here in some time, and that was one of the reasons that we wanted to do it. And we have the right students for those roles right now. And so it seemed appropriate to do it. Pirates of Penzance did extremely well in New York recently.

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I think that's probably another reason to me. It's because Linda Rundstedt, she said she couldn't come and help us, but this should be exciting. I think the doily cart company, by the way, go down. Yes, it shoot within the past six months is that right? They couldn't salvage it.

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Finally, they just didn't have the didn't have the financial support. It's a tremendously expensive form of theater. That is the light opera. And they disappeared. I understand that you portrayed Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams Cat on a hot tin roof not too long ago. Well, I've done it several times.

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When when you get if they get into you get you get it right. The last time I did the role was last summer at a theater in Virginia called the Wayside Theater. I did that role, I don't know, a couple of years ago here, here on campus.

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And as you suggest, Uh, it's, uh, it's really fun to be able to go back and correct some of the things you missed on the first go round. Sure, it was a good experience. What happened to Tennessee Williams? What, in terms of his dramatic output? Well, I I think several things, and this is pure supposition.

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I happen to be an abject Williams fan, not only because he lives in Florida now, you know, we have that that in common, I, uh, chronology caught up with him. He he is advancing in years. Uh, he's not a young man these days. Uh, and I think probably his His dramatic output was so strong for so long that it becomes almost, uh, topping yourself every time you come out of the chute, so to speak.

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I think that he wrote so brilliantly for so long that it was just a question of of of time, Uh, until he would no longer be able to to sustain that kind of, uh, of high quality output. Just cranking out Pulitzer Prize winners. One reactors. Do they have the same problem?

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Is there a similar problem with actors? Can they get burned out? I they can. It doesn't happen a often enough to to be something that calls attention to itself for the simple reason that it is so tough to make a living in this business that actors have to in quotes, pay their dues for so long and work so hard to attain some level of exposure that that the anticipation of what's around the corner is the sustenance for the vast majority.

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Now, for the young actor who happens to get lucky. You know, the the old Hollywood story discovered on, uh in Schwab's drugstore. You know, drinking a milkshake or something in that kind of circumstance, when someone gets tremendous, uh, exposure very early, you can think of instances where it has been difficult to sustain not only the artistic output, but the adulation and all the things that go with it make it very difficult for for young actors to keep their feet firmly on the ground.

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Of course, Jokhang, you are dealing with young people all the time. And what do you tell them about opportunities in the business? I mean, we know it's more than rough out there. Um, I think the Florida players does a pretty good job warning students about what it's like.

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And our students don't leave academia with ever having without having had tasted the outside world. Most of our students work professionally in the summertime. After a year of sort of semi professional work in summer repertory theater, many of them get jobs in outdoor dramas or in summer stock musical companies or with related summer stock company to make a decent living unlikely.

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I wouldn't say it is unlikely. I would say it is very difficult and you have to be patient actors do not burn out quite the same way that, say, Tennessee Williams did, because they are hungry so long that when it finally comes and if it does come, um, I think that they think when you waited 20 years for something, um, you're not you're not about to give it up.

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For example, Dustin Hoffman was 30 years old before he could earn enough money to to eat to put food on the table. It wasn't until later in Greenwich Village for a long time portrayed in the movie, and I know that he would never go backwards now.

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So it was Gene Hackman, I think, he said, at the same time with him in the Village. So they did struggle. So it's really a question of if you really want it, you might have it if you're gifted to begin with. And this is one of the things to supplement Joe's comment.

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What the first thing I tell kids when I see them, when they come in and say, Hey, I want to do this and I said, Are you compelled? Can you do anything else? Is there anything, uh, you know, brain surgery, like your mother and father wants you to do or a law like your uncle or what?

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Is there anything else you can do? And if the answer is no, that's a beginning place. And then if they have the talent, the drive, the dedication to discipline to go with it, no one teaches talent. Are you willing to go nose to nose with them and say, Look, get out.

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You know, you really don't belong in this visit. Uh, that's really, uh, that's, uh Well, let's give you a straightforward answer. I do it every day. Absolutely. The one thing we try very hard not to do at this university. And thank goodness we have enough youngsters who want to come here.

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Our programs are selective. Admission. We we have many more people that want to do it than we have room for. We have the luxury of being able to tell the student who simply doesn't have the stuff. Hey, save yourself a lot of grief, find something that you can do very, very well.

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And and as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the educational process. That's not a turn down. That's that's going through the process of opening and closing doors educationally until you find what you can do. Sometimes this occurs very early. Sometimes it takes us a little longer to come to that realization, and typically the student knows it.

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What's the toughest thing to get across to? A a young person, the student in terms of his or her acting discipline, discipline the idea that you have to see if I can say this very briefly the willingness to make a fool of yourself. Most human beings, in my observation, are not willing to take chances on things that we have serious doubts about the outcome.

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In other words, we tend to like as humans to do those things that we think we do pretty well. So for an actor, every day the actor must be willing to in order to stretch himself in a creative context, he has to be willing to make a fool of himself.

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And and one of the very difficult things for young actors is to let him open up and take that chance, knowing that they might fall down and appear foolish momentarily in front of their colleagues. And once they reached the point of being able to open up and have confidence in their intuitive judgments.

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Along with the coaching that they get, they can make great strides. Until that happens, It's kind of like the Saturday golfer you can get so good and no better. Joe, do you spend much time on improvisations with the students, um, in musical theater? Not as much as I do in acting classes when I'm teaching, Acting many of our students where they only reach musical theater, uh, are learning to synthesize three different disciplines they're learning to.

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They've taken dance courses and they're beginning dancers and they're taking private voice and their voice. Students and they are actors and have had some acting courses. And so most of what I do in musical theater is trying to take these three ideas of these three fields and make them work together.

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Uh, improvisational work is usually done in acting level classes, beginning acting classes and intermediate classes to create strongly developed personalities on stage and characters that have some backbone and that kind of thing. But that's the initial test, really, whether somebody can let it all hang out.

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In a sense, we we we have a number of ways of getting them to do that and improvs are certainly are certainly one games. There are all kinds of tricks they can. If they're that inhibited, they might as well step aside ultimately, or even a real shot.

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Well, well, we give them. We give them a good shot again. We feel that it's, uh, it's not quite like looking at a horse's teeth. You know, uh, if after a student has had an opportunity to sing and dance and act as Joe suggests, and to and to indicate to us some, uh, some level of commitment and motivation if after that process has occurred for a while and after in the evaluative judgment of the faculty, the student gets low marks, then we cut him loose.

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We do a great deal of advisement and a great deal of, uh, follow up with students and written evaluations that occur semi annually. And we make them audition at the drop of a hat so we can kind of judge progress as it comes, and and and hopefully that process doesn't let the good potential student kind of fall in the crack unnoticed.

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Well, we have to cut it short here, but do give us the dates on the Mercado. The run. It opens January the 26 runs through the 29th, and it runs also again February 3rd through fifth Planet. I wish you continued good fortune with it. Well, thank you very much.

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We're always delighted to visit with you. Thank you. University of Florida Department of Theater James Hooks and Joe Conger be with us next Tuesday evening on five Live. We'll hear from the Gainesville Community Playhouse. It's artistic achievements and its financial problems, and you'll meet a former ambassador in the Middle East who will talk possible solutions to problems there.

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We'll see you next Tuesday. But first, let's go out this evening with more from Malcolm Gets milk. Uh huh. When sunny gets blue, her eyes get gray and cloudy. Then the rain begins to fall. Pitter patter, pitter patter. Love is gone. So what can matter? No sweet lover man comes to call When Sunny gets blue, she breathes a sigh of sadness, like the wind that stirs the trees wind that sets the leaves to sway in like some violins are playing weird and haunting melodies.

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People used to love to hear her laugh. See her smile. Well, that's how she got her name. Since that sad affair she's lost her smile changed her style. Yeah, somehow she's not the same But memories will fade and pretty dreams will rise up Where other dreams fell through her renew love Hurry Near to kiss away each lonely tear And hold her near When sunny gets blue People used to lava to hear her life See her smile Well, that's how she got her name Since that sad affair she's lost Her smile changed her style Somehow she's not the same But memories will fade And pretty dreams will rise up Where her other dreams spelled through Hurry new love Hurry near to kiss away each lonely tear And hold her near When sunny gets blue Hold her neo and sunny gas boom Oh Mm Mhm Mm Mhm.

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Mhm, Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. I don't Mm mhm. Mm Mhm. Mhm, Mhm. Hurry new love Hurry near to kiss away each lonely tear And hold her new when sunny gets blue Mm, yeah,