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CHARLIE ROSE:
Or Ted Turner, and, there are no neat categories here. We're going to do one of these about business and titans, as you'll see, somewhere around here. builders and titans. And therefore, you think of people like Disney, and you think about Turner is a builder and a Titan, and Paley is too, uh, but at the same time, within the general umbrella of television, those names come out, when you think about impact. Let me move to a clear arts and entertainment category, theater. We mentioned Olivier as a powerful acting force. Who else, in the world of theater? Robert.
ROBERT HUGHES:
Um...
CHARLIE ROSE:
Who's on your list?
ROBERT HUGHES:
Oh, very high on my list would be, we're talking about America, or the world?
CHARLIE ROSE:
The world.
ROB REINER:
World theater.
ROBERT HUGHES:
Um, what about a...
CHARLIE ROSE:
From now on, here forth, on this program, it's the world.
ROBERT HUGHES:
Okay, what about Jean Louis Beraud? What about uh, Welles? What
about um, uh, I mean you can certainly extend the category a lot in the
English theater, and in, you know, and of course on the American, again,
it is the problem of narrowing it down. I mean, if you want one
superbly achieved classical actor, you know, the person
who defined, the (Inaudible) at the same time enlarged, the conception
of classical English drama in its time, I think it's got to be Olivier.
You know, there is no American classical actor who quite comes up to
that, although there are, you know, extraordinary individual
performances, which none of us have seen, like, for instance, Robeson's
Othello, which I would have given my left arm to have seen. Um, but uh,
if you're going to pick one, I think it's got to be Olivier, but
then what about Gingold (?), what about, uh, you know, even extraordinary
actors like uh, say Finney, uh, you know that (Overlapping voices).
NORM PEARLSTINE:
....Ralph Richardson.
ROBERT HUGHES:
Ralph Richardson. What about Alec Guinness, my god. You know, the
CHARLIE ROSE:
who could literally do anything.
ROB REINER:
When I think of theater I think of the playwrights as having the most
impact, and I think about Eugene O'Neill, uh, uh, as maybe the most
impactful, George Bernard Shaw, uh, but then the American playwrights
have Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and those are the
people I think of, when I think of theater.
CHARLIE ROSE:
Who is the...?
ROBERT HUGHES:
You're forgetting Beckett.
ROB REINER:
And Beckett. And Samuel Beckett overall.
NORM PEARLSTINE:
Yeah.
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH:
Well we've also, in the theater, gone through a time of the great
directors, so, for example, we wouldn't, um, have uh, theater where
we're able to see the lights, if it hadn't been for Berthold Brecht,
I think he really turned it around so that we exposed more about what
was happening, and made us question realism in general. And also, Peter
Brook. My guess is, that kind of physicalization of theater, and new
story telling, was so innovative, that we probably wouldn't have Rent,
if it hadn't have been for Peter Brook, just that way of looking at
telling a story.
CHARLIE ROSE:
Do you think there are things we have lost in theater today, that we had
before? Uh, when we...
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH:
Because of television of film?
CHARLIE ROSE:
Because of, yeah, television and film. You mentioned political theater,
but, what have we lost in theater today, uh, when you, I hear all these
voices...
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH:
Audience.
CHARLIE ROSE:
Audience is one thing, yes. 20
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLIE ROSE:
I hear all these voices talk about...Wilson. Olivier.
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH:
I was talking to a Bosnian playwright who told me that people went
to the theater in Bosnia, kind of the way they went to the bakery, that
they really needed to go. And I think uh, that when I hear people talk
about the old, great Yiddish theater in New York, for example, I had
that feeling, and I think we've lost that about theater, somehow. The
feeling that, that we all need to be together, alive, telling a
story, largely because, there's so many other ways of telling stories
now.
CHARLIE ROSE:
I want to get at this question. In America, who is, if you look
at the most influential playwright, in America, I'm limiting it now,
just for, benefit of my own curiosity, is it Tennessee Williams?
ROBERT HUGHES:
Today?
CHARLIE ROSE:
Today. In America, in the last century.
ROBERT HUGHES:
Uh, I mean, there's certainly a long fallout from Williams' theatrical
achievement. I think probably in terms of the technique and
possibilities of writing for the stage, somebody like David Mamet would
be more influential on younger artists today, than Williams is. I think
that's possible, but I, I think we...
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH:
I think, I think we have to go back and look at the spillage from the
last century, and look at, for example, Anton Chekhov, who is still
writing in this century, because if, if there hadn't been that
investigation, of naturalism and realism, that Ibsen and Chekhov,
for example, um, did so well, we would not have the naturalistic play as
we know it.
ROBERT HUGHES:
Yeah, that's true.
NORM PEARLSTINE:
And what really...
ROBERT HUGHES:
And Beckett, too.
NORM PEARLSTINE:
....distinguishes the American theater in the twentieth century is the
musical, and the, it, I don't know if we're mixing categories, but I
don't know how you can ignore Rodgers and Hammerstein...(Overlapping
voices).
CHARLIE ROSE:
Don't worry about mixing categories. Let's talk about the American
musical.
NORM PEARLSTINE:
I would say that the American musical is really one of the things that
really defined this century from other centuries.
CHARLIE ROSE:
Yeah.