Ben Cameron: The true power of the performing arts

76,756 views ・ 2010-09-10

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
I am a cultural omnivore,
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one whose daily commute is made possible by attachment to an iPod --
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an iPod that contains Wagner and Mozart,
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pop diva Christina Aguilera,
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country singer Josh Turner,
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gangsta rap artist Kirk Franklin,
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concerti, symphonies and more and more.
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I'm a voracious reader,
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a reader who deals with Ian McEwan down to Stephanie Meyer.
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I have read the Twilight tetralogy.
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And one who lives for my home theater,
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a home theater where I devour DVDs, video on demand
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and a lot of television.
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For me, "Law & Order: SVU," Tina Fey and "30 Rock"
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and "Judge Judy" --
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"The people are real, the cases are real, the rulings are final."
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(Laughter)
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Now, I'm convinced a lot of you probably share my passions,
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especially my passion for "Judge Judy,"
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and you'd fight anybody who attempted to take her away from us,
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but I'm a little less convinced that you share the central passion of my life,
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a passion for the live professional performing arts,
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performing arts that represent the orchestral repertoire, yes,
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but jazz as well, modern dance, opera,
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theater and more and more and more.
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Frankly, it's a sector that many of us who work in the field
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worry is being endangered and possibly dismantled by technology.
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While we initially heralded the Internet as the fantastic new marketing device
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that was going to solve all our problems,
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we now realize that the Internet is, if anything,
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too effective in that regard.
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Depending on who you read, an arts organization
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or an artist, who tries to attract the attention
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of a potential single ticket buyer,
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now competes with between three and 5,000 different marketing messages
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a typical citizen sees every single day.
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We now know, in fact,
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that technology is our biggest competitor for leisure time.
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Five years ago,
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Gen Xers spent 20.7 hours online and TV, the majority on TV.
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Gen Yers spent even more --
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23.8 hours, the majority online.
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And now, a typical university-entering student arrives at college
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already having spent 20,000 hours online
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and an additional 10,000 hours playing video games --
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a stark reminder that we operate in a cultural context
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where video games now outsell music and movie recordings combined.
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Moreover, we're afraid that technology
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has altered our very assumptions of cultural consumption.
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Thanks to the Internet,
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we believe we can get anything we want whenever we want it,
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delivered to our own doorstep.
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We can shop at three in the morning or eight at night,
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ordering jeans tailor-made for our unique body types.
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Expectations of personalization and customization
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that the live performing arts --
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which have set curtain times, set venues,
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attendant inconveniences of travel, parking and the like --
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simply cannot meet.
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And we're all acutely aware:
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what's it going to mean in the future
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when we ask someone to pay a hundred dollars
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for a symphony, opera or ballet ticket,
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when that cultural consumer is used to downloading on the internet
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24 hours a day for 99 cents a song or for free?
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These are enormous questions for those of us that work in this terrain.
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But as particular as they feel to us, we know we're not alone.
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All of us are engaged
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in a seismic, fundamental realignment of culture and communications,
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a realignment that is shaking and decimating the newspaper industry,
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the magazine industry, the book and publishing industry and more.
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Saddled in the performing arts as we are, by antiquated union agreements
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that inhibit and often prohibit mechanical reproduction and streaming,
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locked into large facilities that were designed to ossify
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the ideal relationship between artist and audience
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most appropriate to the 19th century
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and locked into a business model dependent on high ticket revenues,
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where we charge exorbitant prices.
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Many of us shudder in the wake of the collapse of Tower Records
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and ask ourselves, "Are we next?"
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Everyone I talk to in performing arts resonates to the words of Adrienne Rich,
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who, in "Dreams of a Common Language," wrote,
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"We are out in a country that has no language, no laws.
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Whatever we do together is pure invention.
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The maps they gave us are out of date by years."
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And for those of you who love the arts,
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aren't you glad you invited me here to brighten your day?
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Now, rather than saying that we're on the brink of our own annihilation,
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I prefer to believe that we are engaged in a fundamental reformation,
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a reformation like the religious Reformation of the 16th century.
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The arts reformation, like the religious Reformation,
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is spurred in part by technology,
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with indeed, the printing press really leading the charge
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on the religious Reformation.
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Both reformations were predicated on fractious discussion,
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internal self-doubt
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and massive realignment of antiquated business models.
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And at heart, both reformations, I think, were asking the questions:
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who's entitled to practice?
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How are they entitled to practice?
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And indeed, do we need anyone to intermediate for us
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in order to have an experience with a spiritual divine?
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Chris Anderson, someone I trust you all know,
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editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail,
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really was the first, for me, to nail a lot of this.
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He wrote a long time ago, you know,
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thanks to the invention of the Internet, web technology, minicams and more,
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the means of artistic production have been democratized
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for the first time in all of human history.
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In the 1930s, if any of you wanted to make a movie,
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you had to work for Warner Brothers or RKO,
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because who could afford a movie set
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and lighting equipment and editing equipment
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and scoring, and more?
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And now who in this room doesn't know a 14 year-old
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hard at work on her second, third, or fourth movie?
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(Laughter)
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Similarly, the means of artistic distribution
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have been democratized for the first time in human history.
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Again, in the '30s, Warner Brothers, RKO did that for you.
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Now, go to YouTube, Facebook;
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you have worldwide distribution
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without leaving the privacy of your own bedroom.
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This double impact is occasioning
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a massive redefinition of the cultural market,
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a time when anyone is a potential author.
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Frankly, what we're seeing now in this environment
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is a massive time, when the entire world is changing
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as we move from a time when audience numbers are plummeting.
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But the number of arts participants,
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people who write poetry, who sing songs, who perform in church choirs,
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is exploding beyond our wildest imaginations.
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This group, others have called the pro-ams,
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amateur artists doing work at a professional level.
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You see them on YouTube, in dance competitions,
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film festivals and more.
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They are radically expanding
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our notions of the potential of an aesthetic vocabulary,
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while they are challenging and undermining
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the cultural autonomy of our traditional institutions.
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Ultimately, we now live in a world defined not by consumption,
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but by participation.
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But I want to be clear,
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just as the religious Reformation did not spell the end
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to the formal Church or to the priesthood;
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I believe that our artistic institutions will continue to have importance.
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They currently are the best opportunities
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for artists to have lives of economic dignity --
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not opulence, of dignity.
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And they are the places where artists
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who deserve and want to work at a certain scale of resources
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will find a home.
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But to view them as synonymous with the entirety of the arts community
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is, by far, too shortsighted.
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And indeed, while we've tended to polarize the amateur from the professional,
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the single most exciting development in the last five to 10 years
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has been the rise of the professional hybrid artist,
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the professional artist who works,
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not primarily in the concert hall or on the stage;
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but most frequently around women's rights, or human rights,
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or on global warming issues or AIDS relief for more --
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not out of economic necessity,
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but out of a deep, organic conviction
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that the work that she or he is called to do
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cannot be accomplished in the traditional hermetic arts environment.
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Today's dance world is not defined solely
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by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet or the National Ballet of Canada,
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but by Liz Lerman's Dance Exchange --
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a multi-generational, professional dance company,
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whose dancers range in age from 18 to 82,
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and who work with genomic scientists to embody the DNA strand
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and with nuclear physicists at CERN.
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Today's professional theater community
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is defined, not only the Shaw and Stratford Festivals,
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but by the Cornerstone Theater of Los Angeles --
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a collective of artists that after 9/11,
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brought together 10 different religious communities --
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the Baha'i, the Catholic,
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the Muslim, the Jewish,
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even the Native American
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and the gay and lesbian communities of faith,
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helping them create their own individual plays
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and one massive play,
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where they explored the differences in their faith
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and found commonality
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as an important first step toward cross-community healing.
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Today's performers, like Rhodessa Jones, work in women's prisons,
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helping women prisoners articulate the pain of incarceration,
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while today's playwrights and directors work with youth gangs
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to find alternate channels to violence and more and more and more.
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And indeed, I think, rather than being annihilated,
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the performing arts are poised on the brink of a time
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when we will be more important than we have ever been.
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You know, we've said for a long time,
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we are critical to the health of the economic communities in your town.
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And absolutely --
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I hope you know that every dollar spent on a performing arts ticket in a community
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generates five to seven additional dollars for the local economy,
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dollars spent in restaurants or on parking,
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at the fabric stores where we buy fabric for costumes,
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the piano tuner who tunes the instruments, and more.
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But the arts are going to be more important to economies as we go forward,
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especially in industries we can't even imagine yet,
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just as they have been central to the iPod and the computer game industries,
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which few, if any of us, could have foreseen 10 to 15 years ago.
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Business leadership will depend more and more on emotional intelligence,
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the ability to listen deeply,
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to have empathy,
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to articulate change, to motivate others --
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the very capacities that the arts cultivate with every encounter.
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Especially now,
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as we all must confront the fallacy of a market-only orientation,
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uninformed by social conscience;
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we must seize and celebrate the power of the arts
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to shape our individual and national characters,
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and especially characters of the young people,
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who all too often are subjected to bombardment of sensation,
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rather than digested experience.
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Ultimately, especially now in this world,
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where we live in a context of regressive and onerous immigration laws,
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in reality TV that thrives on humiliation,
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and in a context of analysis,
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where the thing we hear most repeatedly, day in, day out in the United States,
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in every train station, every bus station, every plane station is,
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"Ladies and gentlemen,
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please report any suspicious behavior or suspicious individuals
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to the authorities nearest to you,"
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when all of these ways we are encouraged
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to view our fellow human being with hostility and fear
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and contempt and suspicion.
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The arts, whatever they do, whenever they call us together,
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invite us to look at our fellow human being with generosity and curiosity.
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God knows, if we ever needed that capacity in human history,
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we need it now.
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You know, we're bound together,
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not, I think by technology, entertainment and design,
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but by common cause.
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We work to promote healthy vibrant societies,
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to ameliorate human suffering,
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to promote a more thoughtful, substantive, empathic world order.
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I salute all of you as activists in that quest
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and urge you to embrace and hold dear the arts in your work,
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whatever your purpose may be.
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I promise you the hand of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
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is stretched out in friendship for now and years to come.
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And I thank you for your kindness and your patience
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in listening to me this afternoon.
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Thank you, and Godspeed.
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