I'm curious what us as -- not -- not as actors,
what's something that we can do to engage, to help encourage the artist as citzen?
We are equal partners as we come together and collide.
You have a key responsibility to that when you're occupying that seat,
just as these actors and writers have a key responsibility to you.
So it's the active engagement I think of, to be up and forward in your seat, to be
present, to acknowledge that you have a role in it too --
that is vital. That's vital.
It's not just coming at you, you're going to it. And it's the marriage of those two
things coming together that are essential. And then go out and talk about it.
You all live in communities, large and small. You all have relationships with
your community schools or your gathering places. You should be advocates for
making sure that the arts are in the K through 12 environment.
This is a situation that has suffered horribly since the 1970s,
not only in New York City, but around the United States, and the arts programs in
terms of their intensity and excellence are -- are spotty at very best, and I
think many of us, I know, sure, here, but you know, around the United States,
believe that the arts are an important and essential part of a k-12 curriculum.
That they allow children to grow creatively, that they allow these young
children to -- to explore areas that they could not explore in other ways, and it
is the voice of parents and citizens within communities that
make the difference, because everything in education in the United States is local.
It is very hard to quantify, you know, the effect of -- of theater, because you just
have all these individuals, you know, gathered in this space, and then they are
all dispersed and they go off into, you know, their -- their little boxes in the sky.
They live in New York or they, you know, they -- they fly away, go to another space.
And so you just -- you're just not very sure
if your art is making the impact that you want it to. And so if there's one
person who's affected then maybe that's enough.
Uh, maybe, yeah, but you hope that you know the people who have scattered and
went into their little boxes into the sky are having little breakdowns in
their mind that will allow them to go into their lives and look at people differently.
We live in this culture of the silent veteran.
I know this firsthand, being a veteran and an artist myself. Well, a veteran, but I'm also an
artist and an activist, and one of my primary missions in my life is to bring
the arts and bring my love of the arts to my community, to the veteran, so that I
can hear their voices, and I can hear what they have to say, because that's the
truth when it comes to the veteran.
So the question is how do we face that challenge of not only reaching to the
audience, but including the audience, and hearing their stories,
pulling them into the conversation, into the discourse, and you never know, they
could be artists in waiting themselves.
Exposure was a key thing for me.
One thing that we try to do is attack it indirectly and actually not focus so
much on on picking military-themed material, but presenting characters that
show the human struggles that aren't specifically military or civilian,
and focusing a project on that, and not have civilians tell a military audience
what it's like to be in the military. But having said that,
that's not to say that if you're not in the community of people that you can't
understand someone else's, or have empathy for
someone else's circumstances, and write something or
perform something that -- that they resonate with even though they have no
history with it. But for me exposure was a big thing, and that inspired me to do something with it.
Having a shared experience with them
always has led to conversation and it's not just at ATAF events. Like, I've
gone to Exit 12 Dance Company, let's say,
a dance company started by a marine that, sort of, their
mission is sort of to bring the military experience to civilians and just -- just showing up.
I guess that's what Jim said. And then by going out and seeing what they're doing
and being really supportive of that has been, I mean, that's how we built our
audience in New York City.
In 2007 I brought a theater program to northern
Uganda to work with former abducted child soldiers there and really the
focus of our program was the 14 teenagers that we were working with to
support them in sharing their voice with their community
but what I also found interesting was when we performed, which we did, in their
internally displaced persons camp, over 1000 people showed up from their
community to see these young people perform, and certainly the young people
who are performing -- you could see that they stood a little taller,
they spoke a little louder, you could see the pride they had when their voices
were landing on on their community.
But what interested me was also the reaction of the community and watching
other children watch their peers up on stage, and you could almost feel that, "I
could be that -- that's something i could do some day."
Much of the response that I got was, "they're starving to death and you're going
to do theater with them -- don't they need food?" and certainly I think it's what you
said about, you know, the value of it when you see it. After we
came back with the film people knew that value, but how would you recommend, or
and I don't know if you get these sort of comments or challenges in getting
support for what you're doing, especially when there are so many budget cuts in
the schools, fighting for the arts and how do you address that and answer that?
I think it goes back to what I was saying just a little bit earlier that
the young artists that we have at Juilliard, and any dedicated artist, is
absolutely and totally committed
to his or her work. And I think through that commitment, through that
determination, through that energy,
what they're doing is communicating ideas and values that that will break
those barriers that you saw in Africa, and that would not
necessarily be the situations that one would expect. I mean, as I said in my convocation speech,
we can't provide food, we can't provide sanitation facilities, we can't provide
medical care -- what do artists provide?
Well, actually, they provide our humanity. And I think in our world too often,
not just through tragedies and disasters, geopolitical disasters, but through
the media, which is so quick, so intense, so superficial, to be quite
honest, that we lose some of the very basic values that make us human beings.
So all I think we can do is for those of us who are involved in educating
artists, or those of you who are artists, and those of you who consume art, is
to make it an important part of of what we are as a society and not let it pass by.
Because look, I say that the the last president that really supported the arts
was Thomas Jefferson, and -- and I'm not kidding too much. There is no
politician that has taken any position, plus or minus, on the arts, because it's a
it's a political hot potato.
How do we incentivize our politicians to to say something positive about the arts,
is what our effort is. I don't think it's quixotic. I think it just takes time and determination.
The thing you said about those kids
communing, in essence, with that broader community and empowering each other in
that moment, I think, really ultimately speaks to how anything moves within the arts.
That's a profound a moment and I think when we're lucky enough to
share in one of those, and I think more often than not we do.
Although I would say probably nine times out of ten theater events I go to
I'm really suffering to get through it, you know, but I keep going.
I keep going, because at one time out of 10, something magical happens and the
value that comes back to me and the sense of purpose, of home, of relevance as
one individual, is profound and it's just understood.
It's shared. And I think that's the ultimate goal, that you can make the difference.
You actually can and I think that's where the arts ultimately is optimistic,
and believes that, uh, that believes in the humanity and the message that we
have, in the potential we have, in sharing something together profound.
You know, there's all kinds of reasons why we can't do it, you know, and why we can't
move the ball forward, but you know, i'm looking at our first-year students here,
who have come from all over the place and against all odds are sitting in
these chairs, and each of them has a story to tell about how they got there
and they're gonna have a lot of stories to tell, from this point on, too. Each of us in the
room could speak to a moment where one individual -- that teacher, that person who you
collided with -- that has profoundly changed your life, and I think that's
what Katori's going after, I think that that's what Adam and Joanne and Joseph
and myself and everyone who's involved in the arts is really trying to attack,
is to believe in the possibility of something profound being shared and then
ultimately giving us a sense of why the hell we matter.
It's like the huge Greek questions: what are we here to do, you know, that to me
the only place I have found some sense of connection to that which is, you know,
like trying to wrangle a cloud, you know, is in the arts.
I mean that's the only thing that's kept me to keep
doing it, like, when I feel frustrated, you know, is
getting the feedback from the audience. Those little testimonials of -- I was
reading through some this morning actually, just reminded me, and these are a
few -- that's why I was like, "okay, this is why we do this."
This was -- I don't remember what show it was from but just an email we received
where somebody said, "I suffered a brain injury from my three tours in Iraq and I
thought the comedy set was very funny and wish the best of luck in all future sets.
Stay funny, stay alive. The set has given me a renewed vigor to continue to get better
and heal." So that, I was like, "oh yeah, okay.
I can keep doing this."