[MUSIC]
If this low keynote were musical, its overture,
would be my first memory of listening to an overture.
I was in first grade, at my local high schools production of Rodgers and
Hammerstein Cinderella.
I sat on my knees, on an old folding chair,
in a dusty gym temporarily converted into auditorium.
I crane my neck to watch the pianist play, every line of that overture,
trying to commit it to memory.
I was hooked, when the fluorescent lights of that gym
flickered off in the overture started, it was like a religious experience.
When I went to see a show, I never sat back and relaxed.
For me, theater always meant leaning in.
And as I've gotten older, I find myself not only leaning in, but
also looking around to see what the rest of the audience is thinking.
At a Broadway show a couple years ago, I remember looking over the balcony and
seeing to audience members, who had entered the theater appearing to be
strangers, reach across the aisle to comfort each other,
after a particularly to your field musical number.
These memories of being in a theater are the overture to this low keynote.
Because it's moments like this that have made me see theater as
a way to develop empathy.
If you're interested in becoming an empathetic leader, and
I suspect many of us here at the GSBR, I invite you to see the stage as a tool for
developing yourself and your communities.
So from this stage today, we'll explore first,
the function of the arts and theater especially.
And second, what the industry and
all of us can do to democratize access to theater.
Let's start with function.
I see theater as a sort of cheat code for developing empathy.
The best theater asks its audience members to lean in and
take an imaginative leap into new stories and new characters.
And that happens with an audience around us.
You may enter the theater as an individual, but once you're there,
you become part of an audience, that laughs together and
holds its breath together, you become part of a living collective response.
Theater is one of the only communal experiences we have,
with the group that we haven't filtered out ahead of time.
The results can be fantastic and even physiological, as evidenced by
research done by neuroscientists at University College, London.
They discovered, that watching theater can synchronize the heartbeats of an audience.
It's an experience so extraordinary, that it can overcome group differences.
In just a couple of hours, theater can work double time,
to not only entertain but to connect.
That's an experience everyone should have access to.
But unfortunately, the theater industry can feel
inaccessible if not exclusive and elitist to many.
One of its challenges is geographic.
Theater can be tough to get to.
Much of theaters trade of capital remains locked up in a small radius in a few
blocks in Manhattan.
That's a world that felt a million miles away from where I grew up in a small
town in rural Nebraska.
Back home, I was thankful for that occasional local production and
I savored any YouTube bootleg video of theater that I could get my hands on.
Another challenge is financial, theater tickets can be prohibitively expensive.
This is a challenge I saw firsthand while working with a Broadway theater producer.
There I saw how high ticket prices needed to be to even give the show a chance at
breaking even each week.
Beyond geographic and financial challenges,
there are perceived barriers to access.
Some wonder whether they even belong in theaters that may not have represented or
welcome them before.
All of these were challenges to theater,
before pandemic brought the industry to its knees.
Yes, this is an inflection point for theater, but
it's not the end of theater, it's just an intermission.
Like many areas in life, COVID has given us a chance to reassess and
make some changes going forward.
I for one, I'm starting to get optimistic about where we're headed next.
So for the second act of this low keynote, we'll look to the future
to see what the industry and all of us can do to democratize access to theater.
One of the keys,
is how theater will come back in a new conversation with technology.
Now, here we have to address the elephant in the room.
You and I, are not in the same room together.
I feel the tension of talking about my love of being in the theater
together live while giving this talk to a camera alone recorded.
One of the many reasons why I love theater is because it's an antidote to a life of
screens.
Look, I'm a sucker for a live experience, but I'm also excited about the ways
that technology can amplify some parts of theater to make it more accessible.
Technology can drive three shifts, in distribution,
development, and discovery of theater.
On distribution,
digitization has the potential to help theater reach wider audiences.
Yes, even reach some kid in Nebraska.
For all of you who devoured Hamilton from your couches this past summer,
there's likely more theatrical content headed your way.
Producers appeared to be shedding the old conventional wisdom that
putting theater on screen cannibalizes demand.
Instead, they're recognizing that while being inside of a theater is not
the same thing as watching what's happening inside of a theater.
The recorded version can increase viewership and
can generate demand for the live experience.
Additionally, theater will continue to explore ways to use technology to not to
share but enhance its storytelling.
From AR VR, emerging audio platforms and
other innovations, theater makers will find ways to
capture some of the sparks of live theater and new formats.
Distribution is changing and so is development.
The development process of a big show from idea to opening, is a long and
winding road.
It can be a multi year journey, from labs, readings, workshops, regional productions,
festivals and other stops.
But digitizing some of the steps of the development process,
can help theater makers develop their shows more quickly,
and more affordably and reach less insular audiences along the way.
There's also a benefit to the cross-pollenization of
theatrical development.
Putting exciting in diverse local theater on screen, makes it more accessible and
allows it to influence more theater makers around the world.
Finally, there's a shift, in how we discover theater.
A combination of improved technology and a global pandemic,
has propelled theater to pop up in more places and platforms than ever before,
including a Crowdsource Tick Tok musical.
It's an eye opening reminder that, theater isn't tied to a building.
That can help us discover new theatrical voices,
sidestepping some of the gatekeepers that have traditionally guarded the industry.
From distribution, to development, to discovery,
technology has the potential to amplify live arts.
And theaters and industry with creativity, coursing through its veins,
so I know this is just the start.
That's what the industry can do to democratize access to theater,
all worth with, what all of us can do.
Appreciate the function of the arts and
champion its importance in your communities.
That can mean seeing more theater each year in any format and
supporting your local artistic organizations.
Consider the social return on your investment in artistic organizations.
And once you leave Stanford and become leaders in your own communities,
see this stage as a way to develop yourself and those communities.
From this stage today, we explored the function of theater and
what all of us can do to democratize access to it.
And while many stages around the world remain dark right now,
I'm betting that theaters next act, will be its greatest one yet.
[MUSIC]