Chairman Kovner, President Polisi, Fellow Honorees, Distinguished Guests, Esteemed Faculty,
proud parents, family and friends of those whose day has come.
Hail to thee, The Juilliard School graduates of the Class of 2017.
[applause]
I am honored and humbled by the invitation to speak to you, to address you today.
Honored, because, of course, this great conservatory is
among the most prestigious nurturers of performing
artists in the world.
And, humbled, frankly, because it has taken me 49 years to get a degree from this sucker.
[laughter and applause]
For those of you who have achieved your credentials in a more traditional time frame,
[laughter] I salute you.
You are joining an honorable body of alumni who welcome you for what you have endured,
absorbed, and mastered.
It is a near impossible feat to make some meaningful addition to this day, as if
your singular acheivement were not enough.
However, some day someone might ask you, “Where did they get that speaker from?
Who was that, and did he...did he say anything that as of value?"
Now, uh, someone will probably answer and say, “Well, he wasn’t a star or
anything, he was just an actor from the Drama
Division’s Group 1.”
Let me get this straight with you brilliant musicians.
I know you know that The Juilliard School was founded in 1905.
I am not...[laughter]
I am not an oboist from that particular first group. But as.....
As perhaps some of the brilliant drama students
who I have had the great pleasure of playing with in their third years,
they might say, “Well, we do know who that guy is and we remember that he probably
told that story about when he decided to quit acting.”
They may not even remember it, but I must tell you, I am going to tell that story.
[laughter]
However, as the great actor, Roscoe Lee Browne was known to say, “You can talk a thing to death.
But you cannot talk it to life.”
With that in mind, I will not be overlong, however I do hope that my brevity won't be the
only thing you remember from my remarks.
I will begin with a unifying memory for all performing artists who pass this way.
Do you know students have to audition to be accepted here? You remember that, don't you?
Yes, uh, being....auditioning for The Juilliard School
is rather like trying a case before the Supreme Court
without the benefit of going to law school. [laughter]
Not only are the impartial, unbiased judges very intimidating;
uh, but...all the teachers, family, and friends who
always believed in you suddenly become a burden.
Because, ah, disappointing everyone is suddenly a frightening possibility.
You manage to get through the audition without completely embarrassing yourself…and then
the interminable wait to see if you were deemed to be worthy of further study.
Now whether this is a matter of weeks or days or hours,
it's like a life sentence hanging over your head.
And then finally, there's that phone call or official letter that changes the trajectory of your
little life.
Now it is fitting you recall that validation today.
The ecstatic exhilaration shared with everyone who believes in you back then, is back again.
That successful audition was an inciting incident that helped power you through the
countless crisis moments of your Juilliard years.
The exacting rigor of your performance training was no doubt nerve-wracking and entirely unpredictable.
But you loved it, I know you did. [laughter]
I know I did.
I mean, I enjoy acting now but in 1968, I loved acting.
Yes, uh...I loved the challenges from the teachers,
I loved my fellow classmates, I loved the building.
And I am not talking about this beautiful
edifice here at Lincoln Center, or before the last renovation, or the even the historic stone
building Uptown where the subway comes out of the
ground on Broadway at the mouth of Harlem.
But before I walk down that memory lane, I'd like to read you something here.
This is the reason I confide in you that I am proud
to place my imprimatur on this day.
The first goal of the current Juilliard Mission reads:
Juilliard will identify and attract the most talented young performing artists from around
the world and will strive to ensure that financial considerations are not a deterrent to their
enrollment.
Now, the entire Mission Statement and all the seven goals
are cogent and laudatory, but this first
tenet, this first tenet was hard earned.
It demands continued dedication throughout our nation's changing political and economic
forecasts. Now, back to 1968.
The drama division was a temporary resident of the International House uptown on
Claremont Avenue.
My dear friend Mike Darden and I had the job
of setting up the chairs before classes each day.
And we came in extra early for a while, so no one saw us execute these duties.
After a while, though, we realized a few other students
had to work for tuition assistance also, but
they had less visible jobs, performed after the class day ended or on weekends.
But any work job...any work/study job was worth it
to be part of that inaugural class.
Nevertheless, no amount of work-study could augment the drop in financial support of
the Drama Division as the second-year students were accepted.
A number of talented students were cut at the end of
the first year and midway through the second year.
Cuts due to poor evaluations existed in all of the
other disciplines, of course, but the financial need
plagued each subsequent group in the Drama Division.
Difficult as it may be to believe, some students actually left of their own accord;
victims, if you will, of the late 60’s idealism, survivor’s remorse, and radical politics.
I know founding director John Houseman struggled with this reality.
I cherish his memory and that of the Drama Division’s most recent director, Mr. James Houghton.
[applause]
Because of Jim, President Polisi and ongoing contributors,
that first goal of the mission statement is now a possibility for all.
Now when an institution welcomes a diverse population of gifted artists,
inevitably, socioeconomic and cultural experiences
surface in challenging ways.
But the benefits to our arts community and to our nation identity justifies all the
awkwardness as we stumble forward.
[applause]
Great life lessons emerge.
We learn character is not defined by the hardship or the privilege of one’s upbringing.
No one brings gifts to Juilliard to strut around and show them off.
Well….. wait a minute… [laughter]
let me amend that statement.
No one should bring their gift to
Juilliard merely to strut around and show it off.
This is where you come to expand and elevate your gift; to deepen and enrich it.
And in the process your humanity is enriched as well.
These young artists encounter great compositions, choreography and dramatic literature and
are opened by it.
They are opened to an international, multicultural, interdenominational, and ultra-gendered cacophony.
Even with all those vibrant, noisy differences there are moments when the corridors are silent.
Like a secular monastery.
At times, the look of monks overtakes these young artists.
Yes, they all begin to look like monks after awhile.
There is a reverence at the core of the verve.
These students with innate ability struggle arduously with
challenging techniques and approaches.
Eventually, victoriously, those skills become second nature for them.
Instructors here have the great joy of encouraging those born for flight to soar.
You have been prepared to soar.
Your post-Juilliard life commences today, but the training goes on through adventures you
cannot fathom or predict.
And, believe me, this conservatory will never let you go.
No, it will have a presence wherever you ply your art in the English-speaking world and beyond.
I tried to escape it years ago before you were born and look where it got me?
[laughter]
I wandered south to the North Carolina School of the Arts and saw a brilliant performance
of Jose Limon’s, The Moor’s Pavane, being passed forward by Juilliard’s Dance alumnus,
Edward De Soto.
At Notre Dame I witnessed the Acting Company’s production of Brecht’s Mother Courage led
by Mary Lou Rosato.
My contemporaries inspired me to continue struggling.
Amazing women and men who have preceded you on this path are contributing to the cultural
life of the world.
Juilliard’s excellence is visible from Cleveland to London, from Denver to Dublin.
As professors and performers, you follow alumni who are giving service to the world in the arts.
Whatever the venue, their standard is excellence.
If you have a different way to perform on Broadway than you do in Boise,
you don't deserve to work either place. [applause]
I recall working Purdue Summer Theatre in Indiana following my graduate work there.
I had worked many seasons there while I was in school,
though I thought those days were far behind me, but it was
welcome employment when the work in regional theater was a little thin.
Now of the four plays offered that particular season, one was a musical,
called "Dames at Sea."
Now this show had a strange little fantasy play within it involving a dragon.
I was cast primarily to play the hind part of the dragon...[laughter]
Yeah, uh....I was encased inside a very heavy costume with my head firmly
up against the actual hind part of the other actor.
His name was George Novotny. You can imagine I'll never forget him. [laughter]
Now, after a Saturday matinee, the cast went for a meal.
I didn’t notice when George ordered a chili dog with an added side of chili. [laughter]
Now who does that?
And he ate it all. [laughter]
Now, that evening show during the dragon’s big dance number…well…first it was just a soundless,
almost harmless release.
However, as our synchronized four-legged choreography continued,
an explosion occurred inside that hermetically sealed costume.
The more I held my breath, the more hellish was the next inhalation. [laughter]
When the segment concluded, we removed the costume and bowed.
While I was inside that horror chamber, I had a revelation.
[laughter]
I had fallen far below the promise of my Juilliard years.
[laughter and applause]
Here I was back in the Midwest doing summer stock on an Equity waiver contract.
It was time to look for a real job and trash my makeup kit.
I had been a math and political science major...double major at
Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. Historically black school.
And I figured that I could find some employment, some honorable work back there
or back in Kansas City, where I grew up.
So at the end of the night as I made my way past
the audience members who were fawning over the ingénues, an attractive older woman called
to me, “Mr. Henderson?” Now I was in my late 20s/early 30s.
I hadn't been called Mr. Henderson very much at that time.
So I stopped, and, uh, she said,
“My husband is bringing the car around; he’d like to speak to you if you don’t mind.”
Her husband was a surgeon.
They had been season ticket holders for years.
He said he was a fan of my dramatic work when I was there in grad school,
and he hadn’t seen me in a while.
His wife begged him to come to the theatre with her that evening to get his mind off
the patient he lost that day.
The doctor said that he was sitting there watching the show
but his mind was miles away until,
he said, “There was something about the expression on your face when you came out
of that dragon costume." [laughter]
He said, he said, "There's something about that expression," he said, "that made me laugh."
[laughter]
And uh....and he simply wished me well, and she thanked me because she was glad that he had gotten his laugh out.
They thanked me for that laugh. You know, uh...
Mark Twain wrote, “The most...the two most important days of your life is the day you were born
and the day when you find out why.”
You have only one birthday but if you are fortunate, there are character-defining events
throughout your journey, which validate your struggles.
Poet/playwright/polemist Amiri Baraka told me in 2011 that he had arrived at Revolutionary
Optimism.
In times such as these he said, optimism is a revolutionary act.
All the arts are as essential as oxygen.
Music is magical. It's invisible, and yet it surrounds you. It moves you.
In times such as these, optimism is a revolutionary act.
The only reason the 60’s is associated with “Love and Peace” is
because the musicians were crying out for it.
There was actually less love and less peace than at any time in our nation’s history,
except perhaps the Revolutionary War or the Civil War.
I suggest that in these conflicted polarizing times we require performing artists with fearless
revolutionary optimism.
[applause]
More than ever you must be freed by technique to discover and innovate,
balancing precision and passion.
Don’t get it right, get it true. [applause]
Support the arts and encourage other artists.
Encourage everyone in the earnest pursuit of his or her dreams, even lawyers.
[laughter]
And remember that reviews and fan mail are not must reading.
Finally, I will take a leaf from the page of one of my most cherished mentors.
He taught here in the Drama Division briefly in his retirement from Yale University after
making a legendary contribution to the American Theatre for over forty years.
In his final years of teaching when the semester ended, on the final day of class Lloyd Richards
would say, “Well, friends of culture, the time has come to gather your belongings.
Pack what you can, put the rest in your heart, and go.
The world is waiting for you.” Thank you.
[applause and cheers]