Spending Friday night @stratfest watching a LIVE reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The arts play a central role in distracting & delighting us as we stay home; the arts also provide us with imaginative paths forward into a world that has irrevocably changed. A thread. 1/9

A thriving arts culture is essential to a healthy democracy. Our deep engagement – as spectators, learners and patrons – is essential to the production of meaning, whether that is in the theatre, the classroom, or society more generally. 2/9

Shakespeare frequently reminds us that audience members are key participants and crucial collaborators in the play, not merely passive consumers. In Henry V, the Chorus demands that the audience harnesses their imaginations if the play has any chance of succeeding: 3/9

“Can this cock-pit hold/The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram / Within this wooden O the very casques / That did affright the air at Agincourt?” (Prologue, 11-14). The Chorus asks the audience to compensate for the actors’ “imperfections” by employing their imaginations 4/9

This model of collaborative engagement is essential to maintaining a civil and just society. John Dewey, American philosopher and educator, coined the term “creative democracy” in a speech he delivered in 1939 in response to the rise of fascism. 5/9

He posits that democracy is a moral ideal continually constructed through effort by people; he argues that “the present crisis is due in considerable part to the fact that for a long period we acted as if our democracy were something that perpetuated itself automatically.” 6/9

Writing in 1939, Dewey’s insights are shockingly relevant to our current global climate. Dewey concludes, “Since it is one that can have no end till experience itself comes to an end, the task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience." 7/9

Whether it is the theatre, or the classroom, or democracy, nothing can be created alone or in isolation. Each of these institutions is in perpetual motion, always in the act of becoming, and co-created through individual effort and collaborative spirit. 8/9

Shakespeare doesn't teach us WHAT TO DO but rather HOW TO BE in the world. The theatre encourages us to engage in “inventive effort and creative activity” that Dewey believes is required to tackle the “critical and complex conditions of today.” We must be patrons & champions 9/9