Theater matters because democracy matters. Theater is the essential art form of democracy, and we know this because they were born in the same city.
剧院很重要,因为民主很重要。 剧院是民主根本的艺术形式, 而我们知道这一点, 是因为它们诞生于同一座城。
In the late 6th century BC, the idea of Western democracy was born. It was, of course, a very partial and flawed democracy, but the idea that power should stem from the consent of the governed, that power should flow from below to above, not the other way around, was born in that decade. And in that same decade, somebody -- legend has it, somebody named Thespis -- invented the idea of dialogue.
在公元前六世纪下半叶, 西方民主思想诞生了。 当然,它仍是 一种非常局限和有瑕疵的民主, 但权力应源自于被统治者的同意, 以及权力的流动方向应自下而上, 而非由上而下, 这种观念就在那十年里诞生。 就在这十年里,某人—— 传说,他叫泰斯庇斯(Thespis)—— 发明了 “对话” 这一概念。
What does that mean, to invent dialogue? Well, we know that the Festival of Dionysus gathered the entire citizenry of Athens on the side of the Acropolis, and they would listen to music, they would watch dancing, and they would have stories told as part of the Festival of Dionysus. And storytelling is much like what's happening right now: I'm standing up here, the unitary authority, and I am talking to you. And you are sitting back, and you are receiving what I have to say. And you may disagree with it, you may think I'm an insufferable fool, you may be bored to death, but that dialogue is mostly taking place inside your own head.
“发明对话”是什么意思呢? 大家知道,在酒神节庆典那天 雅典城所有公民都会聚集在 卫城的一侧, 他们会听音乐,看舞蹈, 他们还会讲故事, 这也是酒神节的一部分。 讲故事和此刻的情形如出一辙: 我站在这里, 权威聚焦于我, 我在对你们说话。 你们坐着,接收我要说的内容。 你或许不同意我说的内容, 可能你觉得我是十足的笨蛋, 你可能觉得无聊透顶, 这种对话大部分都是 只发生在你的脑海中。
But what happens if, instead of me talking to you -- and Thespis thought of this -- I just shift 90 degrees to the left, and I talk to another person onstage with me? Everything changes, because at that moment, I'm not the possessor of truth; I'm a guy with an opinion. And I'm talking to somebody else. And you know what? That other person has an opinion too, and it's drama, remember, conflict -- they disagree with me. There's a conflict between two points of view. And the thesis of that is that the truth can only emerge in the conflict of different points of view. It's not the possession of any one person. And if you believe in democracy, you have to believe that. If you don't believe that, you're an autocrat who is putting up with democracy. But that's the basic thesis of democracy, that the conflict of different points of views leads to the truth.
但如果不是我说你听,会发生什么? 这就是泰斯庇斯想出来的—— 我只要左转 90 度, 我对台上的另一个人讲话? 一切就改变了, 因为就在那一刻,我不是真理持有者; 我只是一个有自己主张的人。 我正在和其他人对话。 你知道吗? 另一个人也有他自己的观点, 这就是戏剧,记住, 冲突——他们意见与我相左。 两种观点之间有碰撞。 观点碰撞的要义在于真理只能在 不同观点的碰撞中产生。 真理不属于任何一个人。 如果你相信民主,你就必须相信这点。 如果你不相信民主,你就是一个 正在忍受民主的独裁者。 但那是民主的基本论点, 不同观点的冲突会带来真相。
What's the other thing that's happening? I'm not asking you to sit back and listen to me. I'm asking you to lean forward and imagine my point of view -- what this looks like and feels like to me as a character. And then I'm asking you to switch your mind and imagine what it feels like to the other person talking. I'm asking you to exercise empathy. And the idea that truth comes from the collision of different ideas and the emotional muscle of empathy are the necessary tools for democratic citizenship.
还发生了什么事情呢? 我并没有让你们坐着听我说。 我想让你们身体前倾, 想象我的观点—— 当我是个角色的时候, 看起来以及感觉起来就是如此。 然后请你转变视角, 去想象和另一个人说话时的感受。 我请你们调动同理心。 真理来自不同想法碰撞的观念 以及同理情感肌 都是民主公民权所必要的工具。
What else happens? The third thing really is you, is the community itself, is the audience. And you know from personal experience that when you go to the movies, you walk into a movie theater, and if it's empty, you're delighted, because nothing's going to be between you and the movie. You can spread out, put your legs over the top of the stadium seats, eat your popcorn and just enjoy it. But if you walk into a live theater and you see that the theater is half full, your heart sinks. You're disappointed immediately, because whether you knew it or not, you were coming to that theater to be part of an audience. You were coming to have the collective experience of laughing together, crying together, holding your breath together to see what's going to happen next. You may have walked into that theater as an individual consumer, but if the theater does its job, you've walked out with a sense of yourself as part of a whole, as part of a community. That's built into the DNA of my art form.
还会发生什么? 会发生的第三件事其实就是你, 是共同体本身,是观众。 就个人经验而言,当你去看电影时, 走进影院,发现影厅中没人, 你会很欣喜, 因为在你和电影之间没有任何阻隔。 你可以全身舒展开来、 把腿放到前排座位靠背上, 吃着你的爆米花,好好享受。 但如果你走进一个现场演出的剧院, 而且你看到观众席已坐满了大半, 你的心会沉下来, 你立马就有点失望, 因为不管你意识到与否, 你去到了那间剧场 成为观众的一员。 你是来获得一个集体的体验, 大家一起欢笑,一起哭泣, 一起屏气凝神 期待着接下来会发生什么。 你走进剧场时是一个独立的个体, 但如果剧院有做好它的工作, 当你走出剧院时, 你会觉得自己就是整体的一部分, 共同体的一部分。 这是内建在我艺术形式的基因中。
Twenty-five hundred years later, Joe Papp decided that the culture should belong to everybody in the United States of America, and that it was his job to try to deliver on that promise. He created Free Shakespeare in the Park. And Free Shakespeare in the Park is based on a very simple idea, the idea that the best theater, the best art that we can produce, should go to everybody and belong to everybody, and to this day, every summer night in Central Park, 2,000 people are lining up to see the best theater we can provide for free. It's not a commercial transaction.
2500 年后, 乔·帕普(Joe Papp) 决定, 文化应当属于美国的每一个人, 而他的使命是实现这个承诺。 他创建了中央公园莎士比亚剧院。 公园里的免费莎士比亚剧院 基于一个简单的想法, 这个想法就是:最好的剧院, 我们可以创作的最好艺术, 应当走近每一个人, 并且属于每一个人。 直至今天, 在中央公园的每个夏日夜晚, 会有 2000 人排队, 去看我们免费提供的最好的戏剧。 这并不是某种商业演出。
In 1967, 13 years after he figured that out, he figured out something else, which is that the democratic circle was not complete by just giving the people the classics. We had to actually let the people create their own classics and take the stage. And so in 1967, Joe opened the Public Theater downtown on Astor Place, and the first show he ever produced was the world premiere of "Hair." That's the first thing he ever did that wasn't Shakespeare. Clive Barnes in The Times said that it was as if Mr. Papp took a broom and swept up all the refuse from the East Village streets onto the stage at the Public.
1967 年,在他想出 免费戏剧表演的 13 年之后, 他感悟到一些别的东西, 那就是只把经典赋予人们, 还不足以让民主圆圈完整。 我们必须要让人民创造他们自己的经典, 并呈现到舞台上。 所以,在 1967 年, 乔在市中心阿斯托广场 开设了一家公共剧院, 他创作的首场演出是 《毛发》的全球首演。 这也是他第一次做 莎士比亚戏剧以外的剧作。 《纽约时报》的克莱夫·巴恩斯 (Clive Barnes)报道称, 这就好像帕普拿着扫帚 把所有拒绝从东村街道 统统扫到公共剧院的舞台。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
He didn't mean it complimentarily, but Joe put it up in the lobby, he was so proud of it.
他这话并非赞美, 但是乔把这篇报道陈列在大厅, 并为之自豪
(Laughter) (Applause)
(笑声)(掌声)
And what the Public Theater did over the next years with amazing shows like "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf," "A Chorus Line," and -- here's the most extraordinary example I can think of: Larry Kramer's savage cry of rage about the AIDS crisis, "The Normal Heart." Because when Joe produced that play in 1985, there was more information about AIDS in Frank Rich's review in the New York Times than the New York Times had published in the previous four years. Larry was actually changing the dialogue about AIDS through writing this play, and Joe was by producing it. I was blessed to commission and work on Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," and when doing that play and along with "Normal Heart," we could see that the culture was actually shifting, and it wasn't caused by the theater, but the theater was doing its part to change what it meant to be gay in the United States. And I'm incredibly proud of that.
公共剧场在接下来几年上演的好剧有 《为考虑自杀的有色女孩 / 彩虹艳尽半边天》 《歌舞线上》, 以及我能想到的最非凡的剧目: 拉里·克雷默(Larry Kramer) 对艾滋病危机的愤怒之声, 《平常心》。 因为在 1985 年,当乔制作那部剧时, 《纽约时报》的弗兰克·瑞奇 (Frank Rich)评论文章中 有关艾滋病的信息, 比《纽约时报》 前四年的报道总和还要多。 拉里其实是通过写剧本改变了 有关艾滋病的对话, 而乔则是制作人。 我有幸受托尼·库什纳(Tony Kushner) 委托为《天使在美国》工作, 而在做那部剧以及创作《平常心》时, 我们可以看到文化其实正在转变, 它并不是由剧院所引起, 但剧院在其中发挥了应有作用 改变了美国同性恋带来的文化冲突。 我为此深感自豪。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
When I took over Joe's old job at the Public in 2005, I realized one of the problems we had was a victim of our own success, which is: Shakespeare in the Park had been founded as a program for access, and it was now the hardest ticket to get in New York City. People slept out for two nights to get those tickets. What was that doing? That was eliminating 98 percent of the population from even considering going to it. So we refounded the mobile unit and took Shakespeare to prisons, to homeless shelters, to community centers in all five boroughs and even in New Jersey and Westchester County. And that program proved something to us that we knew intuitively: people's need for theater is as powerful as their desire for food or for drink. It's been an extraordinary success, and we've continued it.
在 2005 年,当我接替乔 在公共剧院的工作时, 我意识到其中有个问题是 我们是自己成功的牺牲品, 那就是:中央公园莎士比亚戏剧 本是为让人们接近戏剧而建立的, 现在却成为纽约城最难买到的票。 人们风餐露宿两天只为买到门票。 意义何在? 这就会让剩下 98% 的人群没有机会 考虑去观看。 所以我们重建了一个行动小组, 把莎士比亚戏剧带到监狱, 带到游民收容所, 所有五个区的社区中心, 甚至到了新泽西,还有威斯切斯特县。 这个项目证实了我们的直觉: 人们对剧院的需求简直如逢甘霖、 如饥似渴。 这个计划获得了极大的成功, 我们也将继续下去。
And then there was yet another barrier that we realized we weren't crossing, which is a barrier of participation. And the idea, we said, is: How can we turn theater from being a commodity, an object, back into what it really is -- a set of relationships among people? And under the guidance of the amazing Lear deBessonet, we started the Public Works program, which now every summer produces these immense Shakespearean musical pageants, where Tony Award-winning actors and musicians are side by side with nannies and domestic workers and military veterans and recently incarcerated prisoners, amateurs and professionals, performing together on the same stage. And it's not just a great social program, it's the best art that we do. And the thesis of it is that artistry is not something that is the possession of a few. Artistry is inherent in being a human being. Some of us just get to spend a lot more of our lives practicing it. And then occasionally --
然而,我们发现还有 另一个障碍没有跨越, 这个障碍就是参与度。 我们的想法就是: 我们如何能把戏剧从商品、物品 还原回其本质—— 一组人与人之间的关系? 在里尔·德贝森内特(Lear deBessonet) 了不起的指导下, 我们开启了《公共作品》项目, 现在,每年夏天都会上演 莎士比亚的音乐剧盛会, 在盛会上,托尼奖获奖演员和音乐家 会与保姆和当地的工人, 退伍军人和刚出狱的囚犯, 业余爱好者和专业人士, 一起同台演出。 这不仅仅是一个伟大的社会项目, 这还是我们做过的最佳的艺术。 其核心要义是艺术性 不是少数人的专利。 艺术性人类与生俱来。 有些人只是花费更多的时间 在练习它们而已。 然后,机缘巧合——
(Applause)
(掌声)
you get a miracle like "Hamilton," Lin-Manuel's extraordinary retelling of the foundational story of this country through the eyes of the only Founding Father who was a bastard immigrant orphan from the West Indies. And what Lin was doing is exactly what Shakespeare was doing. He was taking the voice of the people, the language of the people, elevating it into verse, and by doing so, ennobling the language and ennobling the people who spoke the language. And by casting that show entirely with a cast of black and brown people, what Lin was saying to us, he was reviving in us our greatest aspirations for the United States, our better angels of America, our sense of what this country could be, the inclusion that was at the heart of the American Dream. And it unleashed a wave of patriotism in me and in our audience, the appetite for which is proving to be insatiable.
就会出现奇迹,像是《汉密尔顿》, 林-马努埃尔(Lin-Manuel) 对这个国家建国故事的非凡讲述, 通过开国先驱的视角来呈现, 而他是来自西印度群岛的孤儿 是一位移民的私生子。 而林所做的事情, 也正是莎士比亚所做的事情。 他是在用人民的声音,人民的语言, 提炼升华成诗, 这样做, 让语言变得高贵, 让语言使用者变得高贵。 让黑人和棕色皮肤表演此剧, 林要告诉我们的是, 他正在激发我们, 对美国最热忱的期望, 我们更好的美国天使, 这个国家成就的自豪感, 也包括美国梦的核心。 它激起了我和观众们的 爱国热情, 可以证明人们的口味永远难以满足。
But there was another side to that, and it's where I want to end, and it's the last story I want to talk about. Some of you may have heard that Vice President-elect Pence came to see "Hamilton" in New York. And when he came in, some of my fellow New Yorkers booed him. And beautifully, he said, "That's what freedom sounds like."
但另一方面与此相反, 我也想就此作为结束, 最后我想说一个故事。 你们有些人可能听说 要当选副总统的彭斯 来纽约看《汉密尔顿》。 当他进来的时候, 我们一些纽约人对他发出嘘声。 他却漂亮地回应到: “那就是自由的声音”。
And at the end of the show, we read what I feel was a very respectful statement from the stage, and Vice President-elect Pence listened to it, but it sparked a certain amount of outrage, a tweetstorm, and also an internet boycott of "Hamilton" from outraged people who had felt we had treated him with disrespect. I looked at that boycott and I said, we're getting something wrong here. All of these people who have signed this boycott petition, they were never going to see "Hamilton" anyway. It was never going to come to a city near them. If it could come, they couldn't afford a ticket, and if they could afford a ticket, they didn't have the connections to get that ticket. They weren't boycotting us; we had boycotted them. And if you look at the red and blue electoral map of the United States, and if I were to tell you, "Oh, the blue is what designates all of the major nonprofit cultural institutions," I'd be telling you the truth. You'd believe me. We in the culture have done exactly what the economy, what the educational system, what technology has done, which is turn our back on a large part of the country.
在演出结束后, 我们读到了我认为是 非常值得尊敬的一番陈述, 而副总统彭斯也在场听了它, 但却引发了某些愤怒,一场推特风暴, 还有一场针对《汉密尔顿》的 网络抵制活动, 发起者是愤怒的群众, 他们认为我们不够尊重他。 我审视着那次抵制并表示,我说, 我们一定有什么地方出了差错。 所有签署抵制请愿书的人, 反正他们从未想过去看《汉密尔顿》。 该剧也从来没有前往 他们邻近城市去演出。 就算有,他们也买不起票, 即便买得起票,他们也没有渠道 获取相应门票。 不是他们抵制我们; 而是我们先抵制了他们。 如果你看一下美国的红蓝选举地图, 如果我告诉你们, “哦,蓝色部分标识出 所有的主要非盈利文化机构”, 我告诉大家真相。 大家要相信我。 我们在文化中所做的正如经济, 教育系统,科技所做的那样, 那就是背弃了这个国家中的大多数人。
So this idea of inclusion, it has to keep going. Next fall, we are sending out on tour a production of Lynn Nottage's brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Sweat." Years of research in Redding, Pennsylvania led her to write this play about the deindustrialization of Pennsylvania: what happened when steel left, the rage that was unleashed, the tensions that were unleashed, the racism that was unleashed by the loss of jobs. We're taking that play and we're touring it to rural counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. We're partnering with community organizations there to try and make sure not only that we reach the people that we're trying to reach, but that we find ways to listen to them back and say, "The culture is here for you, too." Because --
因此包容的概念,需要继续。 明年秋天,我们想要展开一场巡演, 才华横溢的林恩·诺塔奇(Lynn Nottage) 普利策奖的获奖作品《汗水》。 她花了数年时间 在宾夕法尼亚州的雷丁市做研究, 写下了有关宾州去工业化的戏剧: 当钢铁工业没落会发生什么, 愤怒情绪被释放, 局势因此变得紧张, 种族主义开始抬头。 均由失业所导致。 我们带着那部戏剧巡演至 宾夕法尼亚州的偏远乡村, 俄亥俄州、密歇根州, 明尼苏达州和威斯康星州。 我们与当地的社区组织合作, 以确保我们不仅能够触及 我们想要触及的人群, 同时,也能找到方法倾听他们的声音, 对他们说:“文化也为你而来”。 因为——
(Applause)
(掌声)
we in the culture industry, we in the theater, have no right to say that we don't know what our job is. It's in the DNA of our art form. Our job "... is to hold up, as 'twere, a mirror to nature; to show scorn her image, to show virtue her appearance, and the very age its form and pressure." Our job is to try to hold up a vision to America that shows not only who all of us are individually, but that welds us back into the commonality that we need to be, the sense of unity, the sense of whole, the sense of who we are as a country. That's what the theater is supposed to do, and that's what we need to try to do as well as we can.
我们这些在文化产业的人, 我们在剧院内部的人, 没权利说我们不知道我们的职责。 它深植在我们艺术形式的基因中。 我们的职责:“是持镜照自然。 让忽视看见她的形象, 让美德看见她的外表, 让这个时代见证她的形式和压力“。 我们的职责是撑起美国的愿景, 这个愿景呈现的不仅是 我们每个独立的个体, 同时,它将我们重新融入了 我们需要的共同体中, 团结感, 集体感, 我们身为一个国家的感受, 那是剧院应当要做的事情, 那些都是我们应尽力而为, 且力所能及的事。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢大家。
(Applause)
(掌声)