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.
戲院很重要是因為民主很重要。 戲院是民主的根本藝術形式, 我們知道這一點, 是因為它們在同一個城市誕生。
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.
在西元六世紀末期, 西方民主的想法誕生了。 當然,在那時, 它只是個很不完全、 有瑕疵的民主, 但,權力應該來自於 被治理者的同意, 權力的流動方向應該是由下而上, 而非由上而下, 此想法在那十年中誕生。 在同樣那十年某個人—— 據傳說,他叫做狄斯比斯—— 發明了關於對話的想法。
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.
發明對話,那是什麼意思? 嗯,我們知道,在戴歐尼修斯節, 雅典所有的市民 會聚集在雅典衛城旁, 他們會聽音樂,他們會看舞蹈, 他們會說故事, 這都是戴歐尼修斯節的一部分。 說故事就很像現在的情境: 我站在台上這裡, 我是單一的權威, 我在對你們說話。 你們只是坐著,接收我要說的內容。 你們可能會不同意我說的, 可能會認為我是個惱人的傻子, 你們可能無聊到極點, 但那對話大部分都是 發生在你們自己的腦袋裡。
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,如果改一下, 不再是由我對你們說話—— 這是狄斯比斯想出來的—— 我只要向左轉九十度, 我對台上的另一個人說話,會如何? 一切都改變了, 因為在那時刻, 我就不是「真相擁有者」; 我只是個有意見的人。 我是在跟別人說話。 你們知道嗎? 那個「別人」也有他自己的意見, 這是戲劇,記得要有衝突—— 他們不認同我說的。 在兩種觀點之間有衝突存在。 而那麼做的論點在於, 唯一會有真相浮現的地方, 就是兩種不同觀點衝突的地方。 真相並非任何人所擁有的。 如果你相信民主,你就會相信這點。 如果你不相信這點,你就是獨裁者, 只是在忍受民主。 但那就是民主的基本論點, 不同觀點的衝突會導出真相。
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.
另外,還會發生另一件事。 我並沒有請你們坐好聽我說。 我是在請你們向前傾, 想像我的觀點—— 當我是個「角色」的時候, 看起來跟感覺起來就是這樣子的。 接著我會請你們轉換一下頭腦, 想像一下身為另一位 在說話的人,感覺是什麼。 我是在請你們行使「同理心」。 「真相來自不同想法的碰撞」 這個概念, 以及同理心的情緒肌肉, 都是民主公民權所必要的工具。
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.
還會發生什麼? 會發生的第三件事其實就是你, 是共同體本身,是觀眾。 你們從自己的個人經驗 都知道,去看電影時, 當走進電影戲院, 發現影廳中都沒人,你會很開心, 因為你和電影之間不會有任何阻礙。 你可以大方伸展開來, 把腳放到前排的椅子上, 吃你的爆米花,好好享受。 但當你走入現場演出的戲院, 看到觀眾席已經半滿, 你的心會沉下來。 你馬上會感到失望, 因為不論你是否知道, 你去到那間戲院, 就是成為觀眾的一部分。 你是來取得集體經驗的, 大家一起笑、一起哭、一起摒息, 等著看接下來會發生什麼。 你走入那間戲院時, 或許只是一個個體的客人, 但如果戲院有做好它的工作, 當你走出戲院時, 你會覺得你自己是整體的一部分, 共同體的一部分, 內建在我藝術形式的 DNA 當中。
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 年後,約瑟夫帕普決定, 文化應該屬於美國的每一個人, 而他的工作就是要實現這項承諾。 他創建了「公園中的 免費莎士比亞」戲院。 「公園中的免費莎士比亞」 根據很簡單的想法, 這個想法就是:最好的戲院, 我們所能產出最好的藝術, 應該要接觸到每個人, 應該屬於每個人, 而至今, 在中央公園,每個夏日晚上, 會有 2000 人排隊, 要看我們能提供的最好的戲劇。 那不是商業交易。
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,在他想通了 這件事的 13 年後, 他又想通了另一件事, 那就是,只把經典給予人民, 還不夠讓民主圓圈變完整。 我們得要真正讓人民 去創作他們自己的經典, 站上舞台。 所以,在 1967 年, 喬瑟夫在阿斯托廣場鬧區 開了一間公眾劇院, 他所製作的第一場演出, 就是《毛髮》的首演。 這也是他第一次做 不是莎士比亞的戲劇。 《紐約時報》的克萊夫巴恩斯說, 那彷彿就是帕普拿了一支掃帚, 把東村街道上的 所有拒絕,通通掃到 公眾劇院的舞台上。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
He didn't mean it complimentarily, but Joe put it up in the lobby, he was so proud of it.
他並沒有讚美的意思, 但喬瑟夫把這篇報導 陳列在大廳,他感到好驕傲。
(Laughter) (Applause)
(笑聲)(掌聲)
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.
在接下來的幾年, 公眾劇院有許多出色的節目, 像是《給那些當彩虹出現, 就要考慮自殺的有色女孩》、 《歌舞線上》, 以及——這是我所能想出 最不凡的例子: 拉里克萊默出於愛滋病的憤怒 而發出野性吶喊的作品, 《血熱之心》。 因為當喬瑟夫在 1985 年 製作那齣劇作的時候, 在《紐約時報》上 法蘭克瑞奇的評論中, 關於愛滋病的資訊量比《紐約時報》 前四年所出版的所有資訊 加起來都還要多。 拉里透過撰寫這部作品的方式, 來改變關於愛滋病的對話, 而喬瑟夫是製作人。 我很有福氣,受到委任做了 東尼庫許納的《天使在美國》, 在做那齣戲和《血熱之心》的時候, 我們可以看出,文化真的在轉變, 並不是由戲院所造成的, 但戲院有扮演好它的角色, 改變了在美國被認為很娘的定義。 對此我感到非常驕傲。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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.
2005 年,我接下了 喬瑟夫在公眾劇院的工作, 我了解到我們的問題之一, 其實是由我們自己的成功所造成, 就是:公園中的莎士比亞成立時 是要成為大家都可使用的計畫, 而它現在是紐約市中最難取得的票。 大家要在門外過夜排隊 兩個晚上,才能買到票。 那是怎麼回事? 那會讓 98% 的人 完全不考慮要去那裡了。 所以我們重新成立了一個行動組, 把莎士比亞帶到監獄、遊民收容所、 所有五個行政區,甚至紐澤西 和威斯特徹斯特郡的社區中心。 該計畫向我們證明了一件事, 和我們本來的直覺相符: 大家對於戲院的需求, 和他們對食物或飲水的慾望 一樣強大。 這計畫一直非常成功, 我們還在持繼進行。
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 --
接著,還有一個障礙, 我們一直都還沒跨越, 那就是參與的障礙。 我們說,這個想法是: 我們要如何將戲院 從一種商品、一個物體, 轉變回它真正的本質—— 人之間的一組關係? 在李爾戴本森奈特 很了不起的指導之下, 我們開始了「公眾作品」計畫, 現在,每年夏天,這個計畫 都會製作這些超棒的音樂盛會, 在盛會中,得過東尼獎的演員 和音樂家會與褓姆、 國內的工人、退伍軍人、 剛出獄的犯人、 業餘玩家,以及職業專家 肩並肩攜手合作, 一起同台演出。 它不只是個很棒的社會計畫, 它是我們所能做出最棒的藝術。 它的論點是:藝術才能並不是 少數人所擁有的。 身為人,天生就有藝術才能。 只是我們當中有些人 花了更多時間在練習它。 然後,偶爾——
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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.
就會出現奇蹟,像《漢密爾頓》, 林曼努爾重新訴說這個國家 開國故事的不凡之作, 透過開國先驅的視角來呈現, 而他是來自西印度群島的 私生子移民孤兒。 林所做的, 就是莎士比亞所做的。 他將人民的聲音、人民的語言 提升成為詩節, 藉由這麼做, 讓那語言變得更尊貴, 也讓說那語言的人民變得更尊貴。 全劇的卡司用的 全部都是黑色和褐色皮膚的人, 林想要對我們說的是, 他要喚醒我們心中 美國最偉大的熱望, 我們更好的美國天使, 我們對於這個國家 能夠成為什麼樣子的看法, 位在美國夢核心位置的包容。 它在我體內、我們觀眾體內, 釋放出一波愛國主義, 已經證明,對此的胃口 是不會被滿足的。
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."
但還有另一個面向, 我想用這個面向來作結, 這是我想要談的最後一個故事。 在座有些人可能聽過 當選而尚未就任的副總統彭斯 來紐約看《漢密爾頓》。 當他進來時,一些紐約人 對他發出噓聲。 他說了句很棒的話: 「那就是自由的聲音。」
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.
在節目的最後, 我們在舞台上讀了 我認為非常有敬意的聲明, 而彭斯副總統聽了它, 但它點燃了某些怒火和推特風暴, 還有針對《漢密爾頓》的 一項網路抵制活動, 發動者是憤怒的人, 他們覺得我們不尊重他。 我看著那抵制,我說, 我們有什麼地方出了差錯。 所有這些簽署了抵制請願的人, 反正他們永遠不會去看《漢密爾頓》。 該劇永遠不會到 他們鄰近的城市演出。 就算有,他們也買不起票, 就算買得起票,他們也沒有人脈 可以取得票。 他們不是在抵制我們; 我們已經先抵制了他們。 如果你看看標上藍色 和紅色的美國選舉地圖, 如果我告訴你: 「喔,藍色標記代表 所有主要的非營利文化機構。」 那我告訴你的是真相。 你會相信我。 在文化上,我們所做的事, 完全和在經濟上、 教育體制上、科技上所做的一樣, 那就是背棄了這個國家大部分的人。
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 --
所以,這個包容的概念 得要持續下去。 明年秋天,我們有一場巡迴演出, 演出作品是讓林恩諾塔吉得了 普立茲獎的出色劇作《汗水》。 她花了數年時間 在賓州的雷丁做研究, 寫下這齣關於賓州去工業化的劇作: 如果鋼鐵工業外移會是怎樣的情況, 被釋放出來的怒火, 被釋放出來的壓力, 被釋放出來的種族主義, 都會因失業而起。 我們巡迴演出這齣劇的地點 是較偏鄉的郡,在包括賓州、 俄亥俄州、密西根州、 明尼蘇達州,和威斯康辛州。 我們和當地社區組織合作, 以確保我們不僅能觸及到 我們試圖觸及的族群, 同時也能有方法 反過來傾聽他們的聲音, 並說:「文化也到這裡來見你了。」 因為——
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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.
我們這些在文化產業的人, 我們這些在戲院的人, 沒有權利說我們不知道 我們的職責是什麼。 它內建在我們 藝術形式的 DNA 當中。 我們的職責是 「彷彿要舉起大自然的鏡子, 讓輕蔑看見她的影像, 讓美德看見她的外表, 讓這個時代看到它的形式和壓力。」 我們的職責是要支撐著美國的遠景, 這個遠景呈現的不只是 我們每個人各別的身份, 還有它將我們結合起來, 重新成為我們需要成為的共性, 一體的感受, 整體的感受, 我們身為一個國家的感受。 那是戲院應該要做的事, 那是我們應該盡力而為 試著去做的事。
Thank you very much.
非常謝謝各位。
(Applause)
(掌聲)