From the Executive Director

Talk To Me
by Ben Cameron

Now that the election is behind us, many of us are trying to decipher the deeper meaning behind the election results.

I'm talking not about who won or lost, but about what the results say for the way we think and hear one another. Indeed, since our theatre field is a truly bipartisan one, there are probably wildly divergent reactions to the results themselves. Those who take pride in liberal political viewpoints should be acutely aware of the positive financial impact on our organizations from conservative board members and organizations: The NEA, for example, has experienced its greatest growth during Republican, rather than Democratic, administrations. Some of the deepest, most passionate, most intelligent critiques of our work have come from those who sit on the other side of the proverbial aisle from where I sit. Passion, curiosity and intelligence are not the sole prerogative of either party.

That said, for those of us who give our lives to an art form predicated on conversation, exchange of ideas and true dialogue, it is hard to imagine anyone taking pride in the election spectacle itself. We saw a presidential debate format in which candidates were not allowed to address each other but instead traded pre-written sound bites with more polish and less substance; we witnessed an explosion of media coverage designed for venting and ranting, rather than for disseminating news; and we were assailed by polarizing slogans, character assassination and distortion of fact. Dissent was demonized and linked—subtly or not—to treasonous perspectives—and, in case you missed the danger of disagreement in the election race itself, the post-election threat to revoke the NAACP's not-for-profit status in the wake of unflattering comments about the administration should be a chilling wake-up call. (Funny, however, that we've heard nothing about comparable challenges to the status of the Colorado Catholic diocese whose bishop refused communion to John Kerry voters....)

I remember being dismayed when, at a roundtable in 1999, one of our managing directors said, "I find audiences less willing now to visit stories that are not their own than at any other time in my 40 years in this field"—little did I foresee that this unwillingness would expand and entrench with the passage of time. Have our civic dialogue and our taste for diverse ideas—indeed, our capacity for substantive discourse—ever sunk so low?

At a recent TCG gathering, Susan Booth of Atlanta's Alliance Theatre asked, "Even while we know how to preach to the choir, how do we talk to the tone deaf?" If we cannot converse—rather than shout—across the divides that separate us, how can we ever hope to create a collaborative society rather than a divided one, a world that values leadership through agreement rather than will imposed?

On the most mundane level, this sense of division is reinforced for me on a daily basis. As a New Jersey-ite, I depend on daily commuter trains and subways; and I find myself in airports some 10 to 15 days each month. In each of these settings, I am reminded of new messages—of alert levels raised or lowered; of onerous security procedures more designed for intimidation and humiliation than for effectiveness; of the endless repetition of "Ladies and gentlemen, please report any suspicious behavior immediately to the authorities." I am, in essence, being told repeatedly to view my fellow human beings with suspicion and hostility.

The theatre invites us to see our fellow beings with generosity and curiosity. To commit to the theatre in these times is to commit to conversation. To commit to the value of hearing one another. To commit to the collective imagination—that precious wellspring of renewal without which no movement forward is possible. To keep alive a vision of life other than as it is being lived.

Indeed—unlike sports and religion, which urge us to follow the rules at all costs—theatre tests our very humanity by seeing the rules broken. Oedipus, Hamlet, Medea—all the great figures of world theatre—break the rules. And the artist who breaks them most openly (like Picasso in painting, Elizabeth Streb in dance, Tony Kushner and Elizabeth LeCompte and Richard Foreman and more in our own field) can excite our imagination in unprecedented ways. Especially in a time when we are increasingly pushed toward lockstep conformity and homogeneity, we need these rule-breakers more desperately than ever.

The times call on us to model the behavior we desire—to show respect, to listen as well as speak, to focus on true substance while moving past misleading rhetoric or spin—even while we must repeatedly say what we believe. The work will be harder, not easier, for the foreseeable future. But we know the future of a safer world will require us to free ourselves from obsessing over weapons of mass destruction in order to nurture true instruments of mass salvation-instruments that foster understanding, cooperation, caring and responsibility, trust and openness. Instruments like the arts.

It is going to be a long battle for the heart and soul of this nation, but we have no choice but to fight it. Gird your loins now. Don't give up hope. And don't give up the fight.