(no subject)
So Edward Albee (playwright, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is a spokesperson for the arts education nonprofit I work for. He spoke at an event we held recently, and since I just spent hours transcribing the video tape, I thought I'd make some us of it and post it. That, and it's worth a read...
Albee: "I was given a good education…and I’ve spent a lot of time ever since worrying about the nature and quality of the total education that kids in this country are given. And I find it deplorable. You know, you can have a totally educated society, everybody knows how to read, everybody knows how to write, you can have all of that. But unless you have a society that is aesthetically educated, you have a society of educated barbarians. And unfortunately more and more that what’s happening in this country.
The affliction of big business and commerce on the arts in the United States have made it infinitely more difficult for the arts to be heard the way they should. There are so many things kids should learn, they should learn how the United States happened, they should learn principles of the American revolution and they should have a history of the united states knowing how it has been trying to evolve as democracy. We don’t educate kids in the history of government, we don’t educate kids in the history of democracy in the US, and we certainly don’t educate in the responsibility and the deeds of the arts. Unless kids are educated in understanding what the arts are all about, why they are essential, why they are so important, dare we call ourselves a civilization? Unless we can give people this education, we will not be what we can refer to with any force as a civilization.
There is one thing that distinguishes us from all the other animals. For a long time it was thought we were the only animals who use tools. (If there are any creationists among you I apologize for referring to human beings as animals, but that’s the way it is.) Then it was realized that animals use tools also, as efficiently as we do. Very few animals use tools, however, as destructively as human beings do. There are, I remember reading somewhere, only 3 or four species of animals on this planet that kill their own kind for pleasure. We happen to be one of them. It was thought for a long time that we were the only animal capable of constructing a way of living with ourselves, governing ourselves, and creating a society, but as I look around I’ve discovered that bees, ants, termites and other creatures, fish, constructed civilizations and methods of self government at least as efficient as mainland China, probably less corrupt.
And it was thought for a long time that we were the only animal that possessed what is referred to as an inordinate soul. Well those of us who have lived many years with Irish wolf hounds know that that’s palpable nonsense. The late nineteenth century French capitalist novelist, on his deathbed, was reputed to say: “when I die, if I can not be with my dog in heaven, I will not go.” Let me give you what I believe is the one thing that does distinguish us from animals, and leads directly to why we are here today. We are the only animal that makes art. We are the only animal that has created art, that has created the metaphor to refer to ourselves, to examine ourselves, and our usefulness and our position. We are the only animal that makes art. I’m convinced that this is the art of the revolutionary process.
We all used to have a tail. Well, we don’t have one now. But at the base of your spine there’s a little jut bone called a coccyx, that is the vestigial remnant of your tail. All of use to have a collective tail, it was Jungian tail. To simplify just slightly, let me tell you what I think happened. Somewhere along the line, as part of the evolutionary process, our tails fell off and we grew art. There fore we grew the ability to examine ourselves, to hold a mirror up to ourselves, and to be totally conscious-- part of the evolutionary process and one of the glories of the so called progress of evolution. So how do we treat that in this democracy of ours? In this country struggling to remain a democracy in the face of fear and short-sightedness on the part of our government? How do we deal with the arts in this society of ours? One of the best ways, of course, is not to teach kids anything about the values of art, to exclude from their education arts education. To hell with political education, to hell with governmental education, but arts education? That’s subversive! Why do anything about that? I’ve sat in, over the years, on many senate and house committee meetings for the national endowment for the arts-should it be allowed to continue, should it not- and I’ve been appalled over the years by the majority distrust of the arts on the part of our representatives in the United States government. Oh of course there’ve been an awful lot of good ones, the ones that really care, but the majority feel that the arts are somehow subversive, somehow dangerous, somehow will do serious damage to our sense of well-being. You have to remind people that one of the responsibilities of the arts is to do serious damage-- to remind us that we are not perfect, we are evolving as a society in all directions and we need art to instruct us on how we are to instruct ourselves. But why teach young people in schools about the importance of the arts? That’s subversive, that’s dangerous. And there’s pressure in far too many homes to stop any from of arts education in our schools. It is dangerous, and shameful.
The United States has the national endowment for the arts. We give approximately 115 million dollars each year. We do. The government pretends it does, but we do. We give 115 million dollars a year in support of the arts. Sounds pretty good, eh? Great Britain gives four times that figure. And the federal republic of Germany gives six times that figure. And here’s the most shocking part of that figure- what percent of that 115 million dollars do you think goes to support creative artists directly? 5%. The rest of it goes to the Edifice Complex. A building named after senators and representatives, in which the arts, if they are permitted, can possibly be performed.
We do not as a government trust our people to express themselves in the arts. We do not have censorship of the arts in the united sates yet, thought there are movements in that direction. The indifferences that our educational structure and our parents of the kids at home pay to the importance of arts education in this country, is shocking, and that can lead nowhere except very very serious problems. I’ve been a playwright, for what? Fifty years now? I’ve spent a lot of my time working with young playwrights, because things are not easy for young creative artists. I started coming to Deborah’s organization 22 years ago, and I’ve been privileged to talk to young writers and tell them how they can be more efficient in what they do, what to do to reach more people without compromising themselves. Because unless the arts continue, unless we have a society that cares about the arts, we will not remain.
When I began my own career as a playwright in 1960, in New York, we had hundreds of little tiny theaters all over the city, it was called off-off Broadway, and people did plays for nothing or for a couple of dollars. And you saw wonderful work, I remember growing up and seeing plays of Ionesco and Genet and all of the avant-garde European playwrights, and I was receiving and extraordinary dramatic education. Nobody was famous yet, nobody had agents, nobody was worried about anything, and everybody worked very very diligently and everybody had an absolutely wonderful time.
When we did of a production of my play The Zoo Story on a double bill with Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape, in New York City at Provincetown Playhouse in 1960, the total cost of doing that production was $2,100. The last production of that double bill in New York City, off Broadway, cost $600,000. The intrusion of economics upon theatre has made the educational use of theater infinitely more difficult. Then we paid a dollar, two dollars, to get into the theater, now the off-Broadway ticket is $60. We are turning off anybody under 60 years old, practically, from going to the theater. We are turning off an entire generation of people under 40 from participating in so many of the arts. In part because we are told that getting rich and being safe is infinitely more important than getting an arts education and living fully and dangerously.
The interesting thing about a democracy is that you can have anything you want, you can any kind of social structure that you want, any kind of aesthetic situation that you want, but one of the real problems of democracy is, while we can have anything we want, we get exactly what we deserve. And one of the problems we’re facing more and more in this country is the reluctance on the part of more and more people to participate in the liberating and sometimes dangerous adventure of the creative arts in our society. The arts are there to hold a mirror up to us, to say “Hey, look, this is who you are. If you don’t like it why don’t you change?” However, the most popular plays, the most popular novels, the most popular poems, although poems are not popular, the most popular of all forms of literature don’t do that. They do not hold a mirror up to us and say hey look this is who you are, why don’t you change. The most popular work is that which does not raise those questions, which congratulates us on how wonderful we are, and doesn’t tell us that perfectibility is way off somewhere, and we had better look very very hard at how we are educating our civilization. We could have any kind of structure in our society that we want, we could have the most glorious aesthetic education of all of our kids and ultimately our grownups of any society that ever existed, we could have it.
Why is it that the people who control our extended knowledge are infinitely more interested in making a quick monetary profit than making a profit by educating people in understanding that the serious arts are more important than the frivolous arts? Why are most of our arts controlled by commerce rather than by aesthetics? I have no answers to any of these problems. It may be the way this country is going. It may be one of those societies that’s on its way downhill without ever having reached its zenith. The late great Max learner, a great political social writer, wrote a book in which he referred to America as a civilization. Believe me, the way we are treating ourselves and our society, fewer and fewer people are referring to America anymore as a civilization. Because a civilization depends on a full spectrum of participation and information on the part of its people. We are not educating people into comprehending their responsibilities toward the arts. Because without comprehension of the arts, without education of the arts, we will be exactly what I said before-- proudly educated barbarians.
So that’s why I go around and shoot my mouth off. I do it because I wish to live in a society where the arts are respected, and where people are informed about their true nature. So I go around, trying to do as much damage as I possibly can, because I consider it my responsibility to make it, not easier, but at least possible, to have something equivalent to the easy ride that I had. I didn’t have to face most of the problems that I’m talking about. Our involvement with the arts was much more profound and much more democratic than it is now. The economics of our arts was not as corrupt as it is now, the arts education was more profound, and our willingness to participate in the wonders and the dangers of the arts was much greater than it is now. I guess we all want to be safe. But I don’t really know what the point of being safe is, if the place in which we have to reside in order to be safe is a place without the arts."
"I have believed in love and work, and their linkage. I have believed that we are neither angels nor devils, but humans, with clusters of potentials in both directions. I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a possibilist." - Max Lerner
Albee: "I was given a good education…and I’ve spent a lot of time ever since worrying about the nature and quality of the total education that kids in this country are given. And I find it deplorable. You know, you can have a totally educated society, everybody knows how to read, everybody knows how to write, you can have all of that. But unless you have a society that is aesthetically educated, you have a society of educated barbarians. And unfortunately more and more that what’s happening in this country.
The affliction of big business and commerce on the arts in the United States have made it infinitely more difficult for the arts to be heard the way they should. There are so many things kids should learn, they should learn how the United States happened, they should learn principles of the American revolution and they should have a history of the united states knowing how it has been trying to evolve as democracy. We don’t educate kids in the history of government, we don’t educate kids in the history of democracy in the US, and we certainly don’t educate in the responsibility and the deeds of the arts. Unless kids are educated in understanding what the arts are all about, why they are essential, why they are so important, dare we call ourselves a civilization? Unless we can give people this education, we will not be what we can refer to with any force as a civilization.
There is one thing that distinguishes us from all the other animals. For a long time it was thought we were the only animals who use tools. (If there are any creationists among you I apologize for referring to human beings as animals, but that’s the way it is.) Then it was realized that animals use tools also, as efficiently as we do. Very few animals use tools, however, as destructively as human beings do. There are, I remember reading somewhere, only 3 or four species of animals on this planet that kill their own kind for pleasure. We happen to be one of them. It was thought for a long time that we were the only animal capable of constructing a way of living with ourselves, governing ourselves, and creating a society, but as I look around I’ve discovered that bees, ants, termites and other creatures, fish, constructed civilizations and methods of self government at least as efficient as mainland China, probably less corrupt.
And it was thought for a long time that we were the only animal that possessed what is referred to as an inordinate soul. Well those of us who have lived many years with Irish wolf hounds know that that’s palpable nonsense. The late nineteenth century French capitalist novelist, on his deathbed, was reputed to say: “when I die, if I can not be with my dog in heaven, I will not go.” Let me give you what I believe is the one thing that does distinguish us from animals, and leads directly to why we are here today. We are the only animal that makes art. We are the only animal that has created art, that has created the metaphor to refer to ourselves, to examine ourselves, and our usefulness and our position. We are the only animal that makes art. I’m convinced that this is the art of the revolutionary process.
We all used to have a tail. Well, we don’t have one now. But at the base of your spine there’s a little jut bone called a coccyx, that is the vestigial remnant of your tail. All of use to have a collective tail, it was Jungian tail. To simplify just slightly, let me tell you what I think happened. Somewhere along the line, as part of the evolutionary process, our tails fell off and we grew art. There fore we grew the ability to examine ourselves, to hold a mirror up to ourselves, and to be totally conscious-- part of the evolutionary process and one of the glories of the so called progress of evolution. So how do we treat that in this democracy of ours? In this country struggling to remain a democracy in the face of fear and short-sightedness on the part of our government? How do we deal with the arts in this society of ours? One of the best ways, of course, is not to teach kids anything about the values of art, to exclude from their education arts education. To hell with political education, to hell with governmental education, but arts education? That’s subversive! Why do anything about that? I’ve sat in, over the years, on many senate and house committee meetings for the national endowment for the arts-should it be allowed to continue, should it not- and I’ve been appalled over the years by the majority distrust of the arts on the part of our representatives in the United States government. Oh of course there’ve been an awful lot of good ones, the ones that really care, but the majority feel that the arts are somehow subversive, somehow dangerous, somehow will do serious damage to our sense of well-being. You have to remind people that one of the responsibilities of the arts is to do serious damage-- to remind us that we are not perfect, we are evolving as a society in all directions and we need art to instruct us on how we are to instruct ourselves. But why teach young people in schools about the importance of the arts? That’s subversive, that’s dangerous. And there’s pressure in far too many homes to stop any from of arts education in our schools. It is dangerous, and shameful.
The United States has the national endowment for the arts. We give approximately 115 million dollars each year. We do. The government pretends it does, but we do. We give 115 million dollars a year in support of the arts. Sounds pretty good, eh? Great Britain gives four times that figure. And the federal republic of Germany gives six times that figure. And here’s the most shocking part of that figure- what percent of that 115 million dollars do you think goes to support creative artists directly? 5%. The rest of it goes to the Edifice Complex. A building named after senators and representatives, in which the arts, if they are permitted, can possibly be performed.
We do not as a government trust our people to express themselves in the arts. We do not have censorship of the arts in the united sates yet, thought there are movements in that direction. The indifferences that our educational structure and our parents of the kids at home pay to the importance of arts education in this country, is shocking, and that can lead nowhere except very very serious problems. I’ve been a playwright, for what? Fifty years now? I’ve spent a lot of my time working with young playwrights, because things are not easy for young creative artists. I started coming to Deborah’s organization 22 years ago, and I’ve been privileged to talk to young writers and tell them how they can be more efficient in what they do, what to do to reach more people without compromising themselves. Because unless the arts continue, unless we have a society that cares about the arts, we will not remain.
When I began my own career as a playwright in 1960, in New York, we had hundreds of little tiny theaters all over the city, it was called off-off Broadway, and people did plays for nothing or for a couple of dollars. And you saw wonderful work, I remember growing up and seeing plays of Ionesco and Genet and all of the avant-garde European playwrights, and I was receiving and extraordinary dramatic education. Nobody was famous yet, nobody had agents, nobody was worried about anything, and everybody worked very very diligently and everybody had an absolutely wonderful time.
When we did of a production of my play The Zoo Story on a double bill with Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape, in New York City at Provincetown Playhouse in 1960, the total cost of doing that production was $2,100. The last production of that double bill in New York City, off Broadway, cost $600,000. The intrusion of economics upon theatre has made the educational use of theater infinitely more difficult. Then we paid a dollar, two dollars, to get into the theater, now the off-Broadway ticket is $60. We are turning off anybody under 60 years old, practically, from going to the theater. We are turning off an entire generation of people under 40 from participating in so many of the arts. In part because we are told that getting rich and being safe is infinitely more important than getting an arts education and living fully and dangerously.
The interesting thing about a democracy is that you can have anything you want, you can any kind of social structure that you want, any kind of aesthetic situation that you want, but one of the real problems of democracy is, while we can have anything we want, we get exactly what we deserve. And one of the problems we’re facing more and more in this country is the reluctance on the part of more and more people to participate in the liberating and sometimes dangerous adventure of the creative arts in our society. The arts are there to hold a mirror up to us, to say “Hey, look, this is who you are. If you don’t like it why don’t you change?” However, the most popular plays, the most popular novels, the most popular poems, although poems are not popular, the most popular of all forms of literature don’t do that. They do not hold a mirror up to us and say hey look this is who you are, why don’t you change. The most popular work is that which does not raise those questions, which congratulates us on how wonderful we are, and doesn’t tell us that perfectibility is way off somewhere, and we had better look very very hard at how we are educating our civilization. We could have any kind of structure in our society that we want, we could have the most glorious aesthetic education of all of our kids and ultimately our grownups of any society that ever existed, we could have it.
Why is it that the people who control our extended knowledge are infinitely more interested in making a quick monetary profit than making a profit by educating people in understanding that the serious arts are more important than the frivolous arts? Why are most of our arts controlled by commerce rather than by aesthetics? I have no answers to any of these problems. It may be the way this country is going. It may be one of those societies that’s on its way downhill without ever having reached its zenith. The late great Max learner, a great political social writer, wrote a book in which he referred to America as a civilization. Believe me, the way we are treating ourselves and our society, fewer and fewer people are referring to America anymore as a civilization. Because a civilization depends on a full spectrum of participation and information on the part of its people. We are not educating people into comprehending their responsibilities toward the arts. Because without comprehension of the arts, without education of the arts, we will be exactly what I said before-- proudly educated barbarians.
So that’s why I go around and shoot my mouth off. I do it because I wish to live in a society where the arts are respected, and where people are informed about their true nature. So I go around, trying to do as much damage as I possibly can, because I consider it my responsibility to make it, not easier, but at least possible, to have something equivalent to the easy ride that I had. I didn’t have to face most of the problems that I’m talking about. Our involvement with the arts was much more profound and much more democratic than it is now. The economics of our arts was not as corrupt as it is now, the arts education was more profound, and our willingness to participate in the wonders and the dangers of the arts was much greater than it is now. I guess we all want to be safe. But I don’t really know what the point of being safe is, if the place in which we have to reside in order to be safe is a place without the arts."
"I have believed in love and work, and their linkage. I have believed that we are neither angels nor devils, but humans, with clusters of potentials in both directions. I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a possibilist." - Max Lerner