(00:00:00) I (00:00:00) don't know whether you know this or not. I don't number one choose the title of the conference. I wanted you to know that. Number two, it has become tradition. However that the title of the conference is the title of the speech. I will give I just wanted you to know that. The title of this year's educators conference his myth history and Truth on stage apropos of nothing. I confess that I was puzzled by this title. I asked you a Livingston several times to explain it to me because I would simply find myself staring at it for inordinate periods of time. Pouring over it as though it would eventually reveal some mysterious meaning to me. After a while it actually began to look like a trick question on a quiz and I became suspicious of it Coy with it. I would change it around history or myth which is the truth or history: myth or truth. At one point as I stared at it it turned into one of those things. You see on Sesame Street where they show you several things and then ask you which one doesn't belong. That one was easier I throughout truth. Which one would you have throw now? It dawned on me after a while that my difficulty was springing from the fact that each of them history. Myth and Truth was sitting there on the page seeming to be some independent entity from the other two. Well for me, they didn't have any meaning separate from each other. They were all very relative to one another for me. So with this discovery, I stopped seeing it as a trick question and I proceeded to write thousands of words upon the topic most of which upon rereading our tires and Men of interest only to myself nevertheless fearlessly. I have managed to call a few of these words actually quite a few to share with you today. Up front. I'm going to warn you I have never successfully conquered the concept of outlining and The farthest I got in comprehending it was that you start with Roman numeral 1 introduction and you end with Roman numeral whatever conclusion. In between I don't get it. So I offer you today what could be called if one were generous Smorgasbord of thoughts on History myth and Truth on stage and off. So to those of you with orderly Virgo Minds who will real with dizziness at my total disregard for intellectual structure. I apologize in advance. Before going on I have some admissions to make and chief among them is that I am by no stretch of the imagination a scholar and I'm not an expert on history. While we were preparing the history plays for production. We asked several history Scholars to come and speak with us and I was struck with how historians specialized we had conversations with a specialist in medieval social history another historian who was an expert on Shakespeare's time who helped us, see how the historic period in which the play was set was quite different from the historical period in which the play was written. There are social historians. I am told political historians religious literary anthropological historians and so on Hmm this specialization really hit home for me when I'm going through a card catalog. I ran across a book entitled to the emergence of flatware in medieval, Scotland. It's became clear to me that historians. Admit that it's unwise for them to try to Encompass the entire history of our (00:04:57) species. (00:05:00) I don't share this fear with them. So I want to admit up front though. I want to admit up front. I'm no expert on History nor am I an expert on mythology. I happen at this moment to be preparing work for you repeat these Madea and so by coincidence I have maybe 20 books piled on my desk at home regarding quote the nature of myth. Each of them taking a more esoteric approach than that then the next as to what are the precise definitions of the word myth? Not books on mythology itself. You understand just books on what that might be should any of these authors decide to write such a book. So I'm not going to presume to be an expert on myth either and I'm not going to hide that fact by quoting too much Joseph Campbell further. I confess I'm not an expert on the truth that we artists usually argue to the contrary. Interestingly I have no books about the truth piled on my desk and it has never entered my mind to call in an expert on the subject. Who you going to call after all? So to misquote J Kenneth Galbraith, there are two kinds of people who talk about myth history and the truth those who know nothing about it and those who don't know they know nothing about it. I readily admit I know nothing about it, but like lady bracknell, I'm going to blithely disregard my like a credentials and proceeded to talk at length on the subject. So if there's even one scholar in the room and if there isn't we should all blush I asked her or his forgiveness for the blasphemies and gross generalizations and the utter factual errors, which I'm bound to other during the course of these comments. I also would just like to say at this point that I do not speak ex cathedra, like the pope gets to do though. My speech is here have an unnerving habit of turning into holy writ. I'd like to say that everything I will speak of today is my opinion at the moment and therefore I reserve the right to utterly renounce. Any one of them should the passage of time make me think differently or if someone should argue wisely and effectively that my opinions are misguided and (00:07:52) foolish (00:07:54) with those caveats out of the way. Let's go It would make me uncomfortable to speak of such enormous Concepts as history myth and the truth without first defining the terms as I see them or as I will use them. As Mussolini wants report was once reported to say you don't have to know what we're talking about. You just have to know what I'm talking about. so history first simply put let's say history. Is it record of actual provable events? Let's call history the facts. As such we might say history is prosaic and example on a fields near Agincourt on such and such a day in such and such a year the French were defeated in battle by a much smaller English (00:08:52) army. Next (00:08:56) let's say that myth is the story of an event and the people's lives within that event the idea of the event if you will. Myth goes one step further than history. It characterizes the event. It gives it qualities and in some cases it elevates it into a (00:09:19) lesson. (00:09:21) Myth is poetic an (00:09:24) example (00:09:26) on a field near Agincourt a young inexperienced Henry V. Let his humble band of sick and weary soldiers to conquer the mighty French army in one of the most glorious Miracles which God ever visited upon a faithful (00:09:42) people. (00:09:45) The moral of that myth God is on the side side of the right and or Pride goeth before the (00:09:53) fall. (00:09:56) So simple analogy of the difference between history and myth would be the historic Henry V versus Shakespeare's Henry. The fifth one is written by historian and the other by a poet. back to definitions truth Now to me truth is one of the cheapest words in our language as well as one of the most relative as in I'm always true to you darling in my fashion. So I'm loathe to make an easy definition here. For an accurate definition of truth from my point of view. I would simply refer you to appear in yellow play which is sometimes called right you are if you think you are for an accurate definition of the truth my point of view notwithstanding, I would simply refer you to the combined writings of every philosopher who ever lived. Let me just say this if it were possible that we could locate the truth. I think there are two things that would seem to characterize (00:11:15) it (00:11:17) one. It has no professed intention to mislead. It doesn't lie. Example the truth is the small English. Army did defeat the French at Agincourt. That's no lie. On the other hand is not necessarily true that God's hand was responsible for the victory. A second characteristic of Truth is that it has a personal meaning separate from the events. So while I may not believe that God fought for the English at Agincourt, I know it is true that faith can make unlikely things (00:12:09) happen. (00:12:14) To repeat truth has no intention to lie, and it has a personal meaning. That's what makes it so (00:12:22) relative. So (00:12:27) history is fact. I reminded one of the great pundits of our time Indiana Jones talking about archaeologists saying Archaeology is the search for fact never to be confused with the truth. History, we receive we collated much as the computer receives data. We read it. Myth, we receive more through the senses. We feel it. We sense its nearness. It's a poetic meditation arising out of the facts. We wonder (00:13:07) about it or at it. (00:13:12) And when we personalize history and myth we arrive at the truth. Truth is the meaning that we take from both of them. We don't read the truth and we don't sense it the truth oddly enough we know. It's important to state that we learn from that we are enlightened by both (00:13:39) history and myth, (00:13:42) but with all the prejudices of an artist, I contend that if you're looking for a road to the truth myth will get you there quicker. So even though we may learn a lot from historian who says this giant oak tree you see before he was 51 feet tall. It was planted on July 4th 43 years ago by mrs. Gilday Matthew moon. It's been cared for in perpetuity by the Ladies Auxiliary of the Bethel Baptist Church. It is pruned each Fall by the volunteer fire brigade number 12, even though you may learn much from that. I contend that the poet has an edge up who says only God can make a (00:14:27) tree. (00:14:30) I acknowledge that. This is a personal bias, but it is true for me Pushkin seem to share the same bias. When he insisted the history of a Nation belongs only to the poet for me viewing history without myth is a dry and is somewhat useless Endeavor. I'm comforted by the fact actually the most historians seem to agree and they would consider any examination of historical time or place in complete without a parallel examination of its art its myths Certainly, no historical Anthropologist would deem a study of our ancient ancestors complete which only looked at the skeletons left buried in the Rocks. The paintings on the wall of the cave have an equal importance the paintings tell us not only the history history such as the hunter seems to have hunted water. Buffalo the cave people were proficient with figurative (00:15:40) representation, (00:15:42) but the paintings tell us the other the elegant story of the all and Grace with which the cave painter saw the Buffalo we can See his fear his respect for the animal there is truth in both the skeleton and the painting but neither must meet must be neglected or forsaken for the other. Parenthetically and I told you I couldn't outline so one of the reasons I'm inclined to myth as a surer way to the truth is that I feel we are very willful about history. We insist we know it when it's clear. We don't and we seem to find it too much trouble to step inside it so that we can see it properly the purest example of this for me. Is how many people keep telling me that the theater should stop messing around with this interpretation stuff and do the plays the way they were done in Shakespeare's time? Psy in the first place. This would be impossible. We just don't have enough information to do it. No history of performance is accurate enough to credit and I confess that I am finding myself giggling somewhat maliciously as they slowly Unearthed the newly found remains of the Elizabethan Rose Theater in London and are discovering that all the assumptions in the history books about the Elizabethan stage proportions. And therefore production are going to have to be entirely rethought. You'll forgive me. I'm on a tirade nonetheless in the second place. It's my contention that if we could all get in a time machine and go back to a performance of Henry the fifth at the globe or or wherever it may have been performed. I contend we would be shocked in the face of this event. I suspect it would seem a totally surreal avant-garde experience for all of us. Because we have the wrong eyes to see it with to see it for what it was our eyes are the eyes of people who have been trained by years of realistic acting that's part of our (00:18:27) history. (00:18:29) That's part of our (00:18:30) history. (00:18:33) Our eyes trained in pictorial thinking couldn't see what that audience was seeing nor could I ears hear what there is we're hearing we lack the references the experience by which to participate it would be meaningless. And yet we dogged Lee insist. It's what we want. So I say again, we are willful about history. And we don't take the time to really look into it to see into it. If I asked you all right now to close your eyes and think of a picture of Mary Mother of Jesus. Do you know what she'd be wearing? Do you know why? Well, it's from the Renaissance paintings, of course, but the Renaissance painters dressed her in the close of their own time that says something about how they saw themselves and their relationship to history. Think about it. Could we see the Madonna dressed like us Heavens? No. And I think that says something about how we see ourselves. We've removed her from our tawdry realm and placed her into some idealized World in history, which we are knowingly and the wildering we specify as the Italian Renaissance. go figure That's the end of my parentheses. Sorry. Sometimes I just wonder off like this. So let's talk about some talk some about how the poet uses (00:20:17) history. (00:20:20) Here at the Guthrie. We have an ongoing dialogue with history. The majority of our repertoire is dedicated to plays and to literature from times past. Excuse me. You may be unaware that we spend many months in some cases many years in preparation for production. We spend time reading about the history of the country where the play was written the times in which it was written. As I said, we sometimes call in Scholars who help us better understand the specific cultural and political realities which combine to make the playwrights (00:21:01) world. (00:21:03) With Shakespeare's history plays for example, we had several layers of historical reality to sift through. first there's the historical World in which the play took place in this case the late 14th and early 15 Century in England and France. Second the world in which Shakespeare wrote the plays some 200 years later. A third layer required us to analyze the differences between the Real historic events and the events as mythologized by Shakespeare. And the last most maddening layer one of total surmise was the one where we had to determine whether these differences were deliberate choices of the rider where they Inspirations or were they merely the result of inadequate research available to him. for example It is a historic fact that Richard II had no children. No and no heir to the throne was a political reality. But in medieval England posed a very real threat to the security of the state this fact, of course becomes more potent, when you jump to the second layer of historic reality Shakespeare's time and their one locates the same state of affairs with Queen Elizabeth, no heir to her throne and no prospects kept her crown in constant Danger. the poet uses the consciousness of his own audience to heighten and accentuate the historic facts of his drama the anxieties which is audience had in relation to their childless Queen are mirrored in the anxieties of the characters who surround Richards childless Court, and the removal of the crown from this king's head becomes an almost terrifying possibility therefore for the Elizabethan audience with real mythological resonance and by that I mean personal meaning And it's no wonder that Elizabeth refused permission for the deposition scene the scene in which the crown is removed from Richards hands to be played at her Court. I am (00:23:40) Richard (00:23:41) she is reported to have (00:23:43) said (00:23:46) Another example Richard II was married twice. His first marriage was by all accounts that we have a real Affair of the heart. And when his queen died he was inconsolable. He soon after remarried a very young prince's from France. In the historic period which Shakespeare's play covers he would have been married to this second wife and his wife would have been historically about 12 years old. Shakespeare disregards that historical fact and gives her the character of a much more mature. They're still young woman. Why is that two reasons? I (00:24:36) suspect (00:24:38) one though. He doesn't completely skirt. This issue. Shakespeare doesn't dwell on the possibility of Richard's homosexuality a theory which most Scholars today dispute by the way, but which is inferred in some of the source material to which Shakespeare would have had access. Our young sexless child for a queen would therefore probably have nearly accentuated Richards androgyny and shielded obvious skated a fundamental point that Shakespeare was trying to make and that was that Richard was not merely a bad boy. He was an unprincipled and ineffectual (00:25:23) King. (00:25:26) For me, there's a second reason for making the queen a woman instead of a child and it's a very subtle one. How much does a player Richard has dizzying mood swings and really can only see two possible states of existence either Glory or death? And these after the really astonishing deposition scene, he's taken to the Tower. At this penultimate moment. He meets his wife and I think Shakespeare has sensed the necessity for this meeting. It had to be a meeting between a young husband and wife both sexually alive brimming with the possible a traditional symbol of Rebirth of the species man and wife. Yet by fate or choice this symbol now Baron and cut off forever. It's a critical image for Richard to take with him into the prison. Where he discovers a new possible state of existence which he reveals in the chilling line? What are IB nor I nor any man, but that but that but man is with nothing shall be pleased till he be pleased with being nothing. Pure existentialism predating Samuel Beckett by 350 years. So Shakespeare in this case chooses to disregard history. to make the mythological point when one adds to this the historic layer that Shakespeare's in Shakespeare's theater the role of the queen was probably played by a child actor who might well have been close to 12 years old and male to boot you begin to have an extraordinary fascinating Hall of Mirrors through which to wander. Another historic fact that Shakespeare could have had access to but didn't choose to pursue. Is that Richard? Virtually served as surrogate father to bolingbroke's son. How later becomes Henry V. It was common at the time for Nobles Sons to be brought up in the homes of other Nobles who could benefit the children But the irony of Hal being reared by Richard II is delicious to me there's evidence which suggests that how was on The Voyage to Ireland that Richard II took during which time his father was sweeping through England to the ultimate Devastation of Richard's rain. I kept asking what imagining what a fascinating scene. It might have been for Richard to disembark from Ireland and walk out on the parapet of Flint Castle to face Bolingbroke. With bolingbroke's young son at his side. here, of course Shakespeare was right as he so often and maddeningly is Had he followed this fascinating red herring. It's clear. He would have in effect been writing the prologue of Henry the fourth and not the climax of Richard II. Sometimes the poet is better than the historian in clarifying the (00:29:19) point. (00:29:23) At the time Shakespeare wrote Henry V. There was a great surge of nationalism in England and the defeat of the Invincible Spanish Armada by the scrappy outclassed English Navy had already grown to mythological proportions medieval historians point out as that nationalism wasn't even a concept of medieval England. It only appeared in Elizabethan times. And it's sprang from this new sense of potency of the underdog. So in the Vogue of the Patriotic Ballads of the day Shakespeare fashioned the virtual Anthem to the little fellow. No other historical drama that I know that he wrote is so peopled by major characters who are not members of the nobility and at the top of the pecking order of course is Young Henry the fifth whom Shakespeare had so carefully drawn not as a product of the courts, but a product of the streets a common man a sinner the underappreciated son who knew how the other half lived because he counted himself among them. Shakespeare in wanting to draw a portrait of a spunky Nation overcoming adversity ignores the rather Machiavellian young man. We read about in the history books. Who was the real how And he paints a portrait of a dyed-in-the-wool folk hero. An Anthem springing out of his own time. Having said that and Shakespeare being a genius it's possible to do so. I'd like to point out that there Shakespeare doesn't stress these less attractive qualities in hell. He doesn't eliminate them for me. It's chilling to see how acquiesce to the hanging of his old friend bardolph for the sake of policy. And to watch how justify his French invasion through a rigorous examination of (00:31:36) technicalities (00:31:39) and the contradictions become most clear to me in Act five where he'll is ruthless in his negotiation with the French King. He simply exercises his prerogative as the military Victor and yet when he negotiates with his future bride the young Princess Catherine of France, he is so desperately in need of her real approval. It is clear. However that the mythological figure of Henry the fifth is a hero pure and simple so the poet makes choices the historian usually insists he or she does not. Which is more true. To examine that question. I'd like to use myself as a guinea pig my history my mythology my truth. as for my history one kind of history about me will say things like he was born in 1946 in Midland, Texas. It will tell where I went to college. It will list some credits for my early professional career. It will probably mention that in 1986. I became artistic director of the Guthrie Theater and held that post for X number of years if I am extremely lucky. They were maybe mention of certain artworks I created which may be deemed to have some historic significance to my field. That would all be true. But it wouldn't be complete. It would be a history derived from secondary (00:33:28) sources. (00:33:31) A completely different kind of history of me also from a secondary source could be recorded by watching the home movies that belong to my family. This history would say things like in 1957 his parents apparently purchased a pink Oldsmobile. Footage of him and his sister his father and his mother shows them in this automobile in Tucson, Arizona in Hollywood and in Disneyland as well as at their home in, Midland, Texas. The Home Movies will seem to indicate that the family was together often for graduations and for family reunions and that they seem to wave goodbye to an excessive number of cars driving out of the driveway of their home. This history would also be true. But it doesn't record the things of the hugest significance to me. Things the poet might see but the historian would dismiss as irrelevant details. Mmm, the poet would see for instance that in the movies. My mother is always waving at the departing cars with her left hand instead of a right hand, even though the movies also show that she wrote right-handed. To unravel that mystery one would need to know that she had had a mastectomy at the age 46 and thereafter found it very painful to raise her right arm. The poet will notice is the historian probably wouldn't and even I didn't until I viewed these movies some twenty years later that she my mother always stood discreetly to the side of my sister and I she was rarely in the center of the frame. The poet would certainly noticed that when my brother is in the picture my father otherwise absent from these movies has handed the camera to someone else and it suddenly they're within the frame. The poet who grasped these details can write a myth for me. One that could create the bridge between the facts. And a truth that I would (00:36:09) recognize (00:36:11) now, I know what you're thinking you're thinking. He's not talking about a poet. He's talking about a psychiatrist and in a way you're right and I think that's a useful point. Maybe poets are the psychiatrists for history. Maybe they try to help it understand its aggressions. Its fears. It's confusing contradictions to pursue it further to pursue that for a moment, isn't it? Interesting? (00:36:42) That (00:36:43) when Freud sought references for the innermost workings of the human psyche. He found those references not in the history books, but in the Greek myths Oedipus Electra, but I'm off the subject again. I was saying that the important details of my life history would be necessary for the poet to write the myth of me. And it's at this point that we reach the first of the two hardest questions to ask about history and myth. Which is what is important to record and what (00:37:22) isn't? (00:37:25) Is the historians overview of my life the one that describes my biography from a distance drawn from pivotal events in my career. Is that one less accurate than the myth that this poet might write out of these seemingly irrelevant insignificant details. No is the answer to that certainly not. Is one more true than the other. Perhaps but I think it's probably true and I use that word advisedly to say that no real understanding. No pure truth would be possible without both of them. History and myth combined to give us the fullest understanding of ourselves. And while it's true that for some of the poetic is suspect and for others the prosaic is equally suspect ultimately such suspicions are immaterial. If one is Seeking a personal meaning (00:38:37) or truth (00:38:39) And the pretensions of us poets and US historians hopefully vanish when the child asks, did Jesus have black skin like mine. The only value of either history or myth is whether we can find ourselves in (00:39:00) them. (00:39:02) And if we can't they have no Truth for us and they are not only meaningless. They are useless. And that brings me to the second of the two hardest points to ask about history and myth. It is who recorded it. This is for me a very critical issue because I think we think of history as the record of (00:39:29) things. (00:39:31) It's also true to say that it's the Erasure of other things. There are silences. That should be noted when one reads history. What is being recorded in the silences? If one read history without that awareness one might for example come to the Absurd and reprehensible conclusion that there was no Afro American history in our country until the Civil War. The experience of the Afro-American goes unrecorded why of course illiteracy among the Afro American population was a contributing factor, but surely and I think this is where we have to be careful. There is a value judgment in the history books as well. Those experiences just weren't deemed to be as (00:40:25) important. (00:40:29) And certainly if you didn't think read between the lines you can include that women had virtually no part in the creation of the Civilized World until the late 18th century when they appeared in (00:40:40) print (00:40:42) and while working on the history plays it was a real struggle. to finally admit that Shakespeare who wrote some of the most complex vibrant and Independent Women characters in all of literature when it came to writing the history plays joined with the majority vote of his time that concluded their part was minimal and this great great Arc of his country's history. Though each of the women in these plays is strong and certainly each of them is gorgeously written not one of them makes a choice or decision that has an effect on the outcome of the events of these plays. They are silenced in a way that we must be careful to here. So I repeat who writes the history has an impact on its truth. Finally today and I told you actually it was going to be a lot of words. So I'm two Roman numeral last conclusion. I want to speak of something which is of the greatest concern to me and here I'm going to take the guise of social critic another area in which I am not expert but I exercise my right to make these judgments based on the fact that every other member amateur. Mm member of our population feels free to do so as well. So my concern is this I seem to be perceiving that we as a people seem less and less interested in history in myth and in the truth and this alarms me. I keep asking myself. Am I imagining this, but I don't think (00:42:41) so. (00:42:44) So it makes me wonder is it merely an eccentricity of our species that a lesson taught is not always a lesson (00:42:51) learned (00:42:53) when I was writing down these thoughts. I tried to resist using the cliched santiana quote those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, but it is a true thought and it's a useful one. History shows us the path traveled. Myth teaches us the lesson of the journey and hopefully combined they give us the truth by which we can guide ourselves forward. I'm very proud that artists. It's who are numbered among our mythmakers have recorded the stories and truths of their time. They making important contributions to history by having done. So. Conversely I am pained that some of their myths haven't become obsolete. I'm proud to count myself a member of a profession that gave us two great American myths the front page and the skin of our teeth plays that we are currently in rehearsal for here at the Guthrie Theater. on the other hand I am disturbed that the picture of manipulative racist sexist and whatever is behavior of the characters in the front page is still a topic of importance. Or that the warnings in the skin of our teeth still go unheeded. Perhaps the truth is this history and myth don't interest us enough for them to be useful and maybe this is something we need to work (00:44:45) on. (00:44:47) We must have a memory. (00:44:50) It's imperative. (00:44:52) We must always remember where we've come from so that we can remain Vigilant in the present and so we can see how far we have yet to (00:45:01) go. (00:45:03) We in the theater are presently in the midst of a real fight for what we deem to be our fundamental rights of free (00:45:10) expression. (00:45:13) We have to remember that McCarthyism was a real phenomenon that the WPA theater program the first regional theater movement in America was canceled by our government as subversive and communist. We we must remember that the theaters were closed in England. And directors have been imprisoned for making their art. And likewise people of color and ethnicity. I must see the reason step backwards to erase historic steps forward. We have taken as a people in the last half-century. Cross burnings in Saint Paul, Minnesota swastikas swab done doorways and st. Louis Park and the growing he's with jokes about the Japanese. We must remember that we have a history to show us where these things lead. If they go on looked to we have made mythologies to keep these lessons alive and to expose the pain and anger of their innermost meanings. And if we really seek for the truth and a road forward we can't do so without a keen awareness of and a passion for our history and our mythology. It's important to remind ourselves that though we make our own myths. We also make our own history. And yes, that is a great and a burdensome (00:46:55) responsibility. (00:46:58) But history is going to judge us. By how well we shouldered such a responsibility. I beg of you (00:47:08) I beg of us (00:47:10) not to think of these things as dry useless irrelevant intellectual homework, but is vital components to our well-being. We have to seek the truth out. For as they say only if we know the truth, can it set us free?