J. Michael Miller
Ken is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs and Vice-President for Global Centers at Columbia University. He has been the Dean of Graduate Faculty at The New School, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, President of The Social Science Research Council, Senior Vice-President of The Rockefeller Foundation, Director of The National Opinion Research Center and Professor at The University of Chicago. He’s had a Guggenheim, honorary degrees from Carnegie Mellon and SMU. He is a Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. So with more of an international perspective than we are used to in these pages. We thought he might have opinions and ideas about the viability of and the population’s reaction to and support of the concept of a National Theatre.
Ken Prewitt
Susan Vogel is a film-maker. Her documentaries are filmed in Africa with African crews – several co-produced with the Musee National du Mali. She has published many books and written a few, founded an art museum – that survived her departure – and directed two museums. She has a PhD in art history and is internationally recognized as a curator and African art expert. So, also a scholar but with an artist’s eye.
Susan Vogel
The conversation began on the stone terrace at dusk and ended on the screened porch with the moon high in the sky. The beauty of the surroundings took a back seat to the very considered conversation.
Both Ken and Susan wanted to know what was on Michael’s mind. What was the tent pole around which we might build a discussion?
Michael responded: For the last three years, I have been focused on developing a workable concept for a National Theatre. I am asking the National Endowment for the Arts to select four established non-profit theatres in major cities across the country, and designate them as National Theatres. The theatres would apply for this national status after they had gotten commitments from twelve to fourteen major actors for a four month season each year for five years. The actors would be paid $100,000 per season, and the theatre would have to have those salaries permanently endowed. The Endowment would then help coordinate those four month seasons to ensure that that there would be an exceptional acting company performing plays of substance at one of the four theatres at any given time. Most people have never seen a full cast of exceptional actors working together. Thus, they have no conception of what they are missing, and what we stand to lose as a society. What bothers me the most is that theatre is not only seen as part of the entertainment industry, but that it is always sold by our politicians as a way to resuscitate a fading downtown, rather than for its true purpose and true value. I am hoping you both can help me see more clearly the situation we are all in.
In playing back the conversation, I (Phil – I was manning the mic) was particularly struck with what an extraordinarily strong impression Michael had made on both Ken and Susan with the words “major actors” and “exceptional acting company” and “exceptional actors.” Who’s to say? Who’s to know? Who’s to judge? That point kept coming up over and over again.
Michael began with a question to Ken.
Michael: When you were wrapping up the 2000 census, I remember so clearly something you said that was quoted in the Times ten years ago. You said you were tired of all the ballyhoo about how the new figures will change the House or re-jigger Congressional Districts. You said everyone wants to talk about winning or losing but the new data brought tears to your eyes. You said that the 21st Century will be the century in which “we redefine ourselves as the first country in world history which is literally made up of every part of the world.” Could you talk a little about what you meant by that – since I cannot ever remember seeing you with tears in your eyes.
Ken: I am, in some complicated way, a numbers guy which is why the reference to Bertrand Russell – who said that the mark of a civilized man is that he can see a column of figures and cry. But what I meant by saying that is that the next century, this century, is where we can finally cross the race boundaries as well as the religious boundaries. I’m pretty sure we’re going to make it on race.
I feel as if I should make some sort of disclaimer about our involvement with theatre. We have a house in Mendocino [California] and there is the Mendocino Theater Company, in a little 60 seat theatre in town to which we go when we’re there. Religiously. They do Sam Shepard, Durrenmatt. Real theatre. And it’s never terrible. That is our National Theatre.
Susan: The tickets are only 25.
Ken: How are you going to get the money for this idea of yours, Michael? We have a culture called – Can you sell it to teenagers?
Susan: Even museums [when they are looking for money] have to pretend they are talking to kids.
Ken: Your concern is the commercialization of culture. We don’t want to sell art on the basis of mass appeal. On the other hand, mass appeal is the reason we have to have art.
Michael: Ben Cameron was responding to my concern about the future of artists in America. He believes that in the near future we won’t even be using the word artist in any elitist sense. They’ll be Citizen Artists and they will just be a part of the community. Now I’ve been working with actors all my life and I could put the artists in one hand, metaphorically speaking. And I think when we lose sight of that, I think we’ve lost something. Who does the artist speak to and how do we know who he is? All we’re doing now is selling pretty things or sensational things instead of really looking at human beings. Is it because we’re a nation of immigrants with disparate cultures? Or is it that we have lost our sense of what it means to see and feel more deeply?
Susan: Among art historians, quality has become almost an anathema to talk about. Museums select on the basis of quality. But if all value systems and all cultures are now looked at as having equal merit, that undermines any discussion about quality. It’s very loaded because you set yourself up as a judge and you are judging somebody else’s cultural expression.
The market can only sell quality. In the 60’s, identity was the basis of art. And that has turned into any individual artist’s identity being a valid subject for art.
Ken: So we’ve got the commercialization of judgment. There is no way to say this is better than that. Quality is what the crowd decides it is. What constitutes quality and who gets to decide it? This is what the 60’s gave us and we all value the 60’s and we should.
Susan: For most of us, the 60’s happened in the 70’s.
(General laughter on this.)
Ken: In fairness, that should be attributed to Julian Barnes. [British writer – ed.]
The 60’s opened up the possibility that we could all argue with authority. But this also turned into a certain anti-elitism and the anti-elitism turned into: There is no truth out there. There is no aesthetic which you could agree is better than another aesthetic. So you get participatory democracy. You get this sense that multiple voices being heard will produce the right one. Out of that comes nervousness – which is really disastrous – about exercising judgment. So you’d better get a metric that allows you to form an opinion. The idea that you would have an elite who could decide that this is OK and that is not OK is not available to us today.
Susan: It’s considered profoundly anti-American. Michael is asking how do you find the better actors and make sure they have a livelihood? What’s the process by which this culture makes that judgment? And I’m asking what is the process where you can say this actor is better than that actor?
Michael: I’ve got to believe when I see something that really makes a difference to me that there’s something there.
Ken: The world isn’t going to say: Let’s get a gallery space and fill it with the best art. No, the world says let’s go out and crowd-source a judgment about what the best art is.
Michael: I read somewhere recently and I can’t get it out of my head: Our aesthetic guides our ethic. That means so much to me. If I know something that is beautiful about life, I should follow that and it will teach me something.
Ken: What I chose to believe matters tells me what I should or should not like. Not the opposite. Whether taste precedes belief and drives belief or the opposite depends on what I chose to believe.
Michael: Discovering what the theatre is and can be has been a life long pursuit for me. And it has changed me. But it has also taught me that not everybody can do it with deep affect. Few can, and we do not recognize them.
Susan: Lots of artists are good but screw themselves out of being recognized. In Africa, everybody is a dancer, a singer, a story-teller. The idea that anybody is not a dancer is a weird idea.
Michael: I like that. But I can’t believe that there aren’t master dancers.
Ken: If you’re a better dancer, then that’s your higher stature. And if everybody dances, there is a higher percentage of people who know what a good dancer is.
Susan: But being recognized as being good is dangerous. Jealousy, ill-will, rivalry.
There is no longer a consensus of what is good. We no longer have a homogenous culture and culture is remade with each generation. This goes to the heart of what you are talking about. Who’s going to say that video games are less good than theatre?
Ken: If the question is, we have lost the ability to say this is better than that – on the face of it – how do we create a culture and an economy where the best people can make a living. That’s what you’re trying to do, right?
Michael: Right, but I would put it differently. The actors I am talking about do make a living, but now we have to make it possible for them to work in the theatre.
Ken: Actors are out there risk taking, constantly putting themselves on the line, on public view.
Michael: Thank you. Because that is exactly what happens every night.
Susan: Will you agree that crowd-sourcing has some merit?
Ken: Yes, but at what point do you put some judgment into your decision? What Michael is asking is how do we create a culture in an economy that allows us to select some of the best in a given domain, say acting, so they can make a living?
In most professions, when a person says he’s the best, he gets rewarded because the work they produce is for their peers. And in most professions when the peers say this person is the best, that person gets a good job. That’s not the case with acting.
Susan: Scientists build their work on previous science. Art is not like that. When I was doing exhibitions, one of the things I did that was successful and made people pay attention was in a way tipping my hand. People talk about African art. You know the mask they bought on the sidewalk outside the Museum of Modern Art looks just as good to them as the one in the Met. I did one exhibition with mediocre things mixed in. They knew there were fakes but they didn’t know which ones. That show was very well received. One problem you’ve got is that the best acting is invisible. So you’re marketing something that’s not visible.
Ken: You are onto a most important and extremely difficult task.
Michael: I know. And in this political climate, issues of this kind, which I believe to be essential, have no place at the table. I need to be sufficiently clear headed in pursuing this or I’ll be written off. This evening has been a great help. Bless you both.