All About Genesis Part 2 - May 2002

International Playwrights and Human Rights Watch

John Studzinski, May 2002

Introduction

John Studzinski is the founder of Genesis Foundation, the arts arm of the Studs Trust, and the founder and chairman of The Genesis Prizes for Opera, which was developed by Jonathan Reekie, Chief Executive of Aldeburgh Productions, with London's Almeida Opera as producers. Another major project of the Genesis Foundation is its involvement with the International Playwrights Season and its research and development phase at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

John Studzinski met with Mel Cooper recently to discuss the Genesis Foundation, its work and its purposes.

The Genesis Foundation commissions work at every stage and supports arts projects or an artist through a whole process in order to help create the classics of the future.

The latest International Playwrights Season at the Royal Court is developed and on the boards. The Genesis Prizes for Opera have reached the preparation stage, now, for presentations of work-in-progress for the nine semi-final teams in April 2002. We will keep bringing you the latest news on our Genesis web site.

John Studzinski began by talking about the development of the Foundation and the projects it supports - a process that has taken nearly a year since Genesis was officially launched.

Speaking About Genesis

MEL COOPER
You set up Genesis Foundation to "Find the great works of the future". With the Genesis Opera Prizes and also your theatre work with the Royal Court in London, you could be said to be doing it in the form of a kind of sponsorship. But it is not really a traditional sponsorship. It is more than just signing cheques as an enabler. You say that you are interested in being involved - helping and having influence more like one of the patrons of old. I believe that it is your aim that the Foundation should understand whom you are working with and why you are supporting these people.

JOHN STUDZINSKI
The job of the Foundation is not just to write cheques. The aim is to think about bringing together different groups of people who have a shared sense of purpose.

And by bringing them together you potentially create one plus one equals three and not two. And we are prepared to consider all kinds of ways of doing that in any and all the arts forms; though right at the moment we are focusing on making a couple of major projects come together properly.

What we're now doing besides the opera prizes is also giving thought to the International Playwrights Season at the Royal Court Theatre. As it happens, for this season we are pursuing our relationship with the Royal Court's International Playwrights Season in the context of some of the work I also do at Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch has an extraordinary group of professionals globally -- they are researchers all over the world who are very much up to date with the wide range of human rights law and humanitarian issues.

It just so happens that the Royal Court theatre through the wonderful Elyse Dodgson has a networks of young writers of plays who are in many cases in places in the world like Palestine , the Congo, the Ukraine, Germany, other parts of the Middle East, China, India, where the human rights issue is one of many issues but in fact an important and compelling issue.

So if you will, you have the potential to marry human rights questions to some of the work that the young playwrights are doing without tampering with it. Because art is fragile. You can't start tampering with young writers. You need to let them create at their own pace and out of their own issues. And at their own will with some mentoring.

Coupled with that Human Rights has an infrastructure globally and there may be some cross fertilization there. That was my thought. And the Foundation is trying to see where there could be some areas of possible collaboration that would strengthen some of the insights for the Royal Court Theatre and what their playwrights could be producing over the next several years, if they choose to write about Human Rights.

I think the Human Rights movement was one of the most important contemporary movements even before 11 September 2001. It seems to me that 11 September was clearly an attack on humanitarian values and human rights; no question about I. It was an attack on all of us.

Having said all that, the issues of Human Rights are best understood through a wide range of communication. I think the theatre is a very powerful way of understanding and seeing Human Rights. If you've seen Fugard's The Island you start to appreciate some of the issues in a very subtle way. I think it's particularly powerful for young people as part of their education as they go to the theatre to be exposed to the plays that deal with Human Rights violations, however subtle.

Human Rights gets into the whole question of Women's Rights, Children's Rights, Worker Rights, into a whole range of issues. In the US, for example, there has been a big movement that Human Rights Watch has been involved in in the high schools, starting in one of the big high schools in Los Angeles, of working to get rid of discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers.

The work involves learning how that is taking place and how people have to understand that as a trend; and how do you actually work to minimize or stop that kind of discrimination or harassment that is taking place.

And the theatre is a very powerful way of doing that. So if you will, the Human Rights Movement can benefit a lot from what young writers might write about in the theatre. And those young writers at the same time might benefit from some of the thinking that's going on globally.

International Workshops

MEL COOPER
What interests me is that you don't support just the season. Genesis is also giving funds to support the research, the process of going out to Uganda or Brazil or India or the Ukraine and doing the work-shopping and all the things that have to be done to help those writers emerge. You do see it as an ongoing thing.

JOHN STUDZINSKI
We're big at process. The Genesis Prize for Opera also has a very structured process. The thing that has always impressed me about the Royal Court and Elyse Dodgson is that they are starting with the grass roots internationally, looking for the young, fresh playwrights.

And that's very much in line with the whole ethos of the Genesis Foundation. We're out there in the grass with the rake looking for everything that can possibly produce interesting work - potentially classics of the future.

So the Royal Court Theatre has always been very dear to my heart. But what attracted me in particular is how they go about their young writers programme both domestically and internationally. This is very, very impressive.

The English culture is a culture that is driven by the spoken word. Mr Shakespeare made that point clear and we've all followed in lock step since then.

The Royal Court Theatre as a source of new writing for the international, English speaking stage has really been at the forefront for the last 100 years. And to be part of that now and have this Foundation be part of that vis-a -vis sponsorship and also real collaboration, is exactly at the core of what we are about.

The thing about Ian Rickson, the Artistic director of the Royal Court, and his people is that they are down to earth, open-minded, great team players and great collaborators. And I think that's why so many young writers like to work with them. They don't approach anything with a preset notion -- they look at the raw material and they think, well, how can we encourage this to become something.

And that's the way you encourage young talent. You encourage it, you mentor it, but you don't necessarily batter it too much early on or put it in a box. You put It in an open field and hope it develops at its own pace.

A Foundation for all the Arts: Partners

MEL COOPER
Do you envision that slowly you will make contributions to other art forms - visual arts, dance, whatever?

JOHN STUDZINSKI
I think one wants to be open-minded about as many forms of art as possible. But I think the Foundation will always have a major involvement with anything it does. It is not going to support one-off donations. Its purpose is to play a management and organization role. Or perhaps calling it a collaborative role is the better word. When we choose to get involved, there will be real collaboration between Genesis and certain arts organizations.

Those who want just a a cheque and say, "Put a bag over your head and come to the opening night and I don't need to see you any more", that type of patronizing behaviour I don't need. I've had enough experience of that.

What I really want is people who are interested in working with us in a collaborative way. People who treat the Foundation as partners and not just as a source of financial support. The thing about the arts is that a lot of arts organizations don't have strategies. They exist from one cash flow short fall to the next.

I think the impressive thing about the Royal Court Theatre is that they do have a strategy and are diligent to their strategy. Elyse Dodgson runs a good shop. She knows what she's doing. These playwrights have enormous respect for her. She'll go off and sit in the Ukraine for two or three weeks and she'll run workshops and things in conditions that a lot of people wouldn't tolerate; but she's there on the ground developing it.

That's why the Royal Court Theatre is so impressive, and her entire team and the support she gets from the whole building full of committed people.

A lot of other organizations are just coming to grips with what is needed: which is a three to five year strategy.

The Genesis Prizes for Opera has a strategy as well but that strategy is in a constant state of reassessment. And it will be over the next several years as we figure out where we go from here.

We are constantly looking at - and looking out for - projects that will carry on.

Why the Arts?

MEL COOPER
Can I ask you: why the arts? A lot of people see them as a waste of time, of money. The current fashion seems to be debates about are they really necessary; are they education. Why do you as a banker, as a person in business, appreciate and see the need to invest in the future of the arts?

JOHN STUDZINSKI
You're asking a question that requires a long answer. The arts - we're all very anxious to understand ourselves better. The arts give us the best insight into the soul.

And into why we're here on the planet. Whether it's past lives or future lives that we examine.
I think the arts also is the one area that has a chance to provide a real legacy to one's human brothers and sisters. When you think that today someone can write something that will exist in 500 years - small chance, but it might exist in 500 years and influence other people, educate other people.

One of the things that the government has to come to grips with is acknowledging once and for all that the arts are a fundamental part of education. They are not sitting over there on top of an elitist Mount Olympus -- they are very much part of anyone's rounded education and in many cases a practical part too.

I was a biochemistry major, but I also did an art history major. I still remember the genetic sequence and understand the genome. I studied that 25 years ago and that stuck with me. But also, had I not read Shakespeare and studied the tragedies when I was 14 years old and then re-read them ten years later and then ten years later, I would not really have understood many things about human life, relationships, living.

I have sort of grown up with the Shakespeare tragedies. And you learn about yourself as you grow up with Shakespeare. And you learn about yourself the same way with a lot of other writers.

The arts give us possible road maps to better understand ourselves. I think strongly that there are so many different ways as you look at the human condition.

Very powerful art actually allows you to be honest about yourself.

Honesty and Elitism

JOHN STUDZINSKI
The media today and contemporary society have evolved lots of ways to be dishonest about yourself. You can buy this amazing hair cream or beauty cream and pretend you look like the most handsome man or woman in the world.

But if you go to a very tough play that starts to get to vulnerability or death or descent into Alzheimer's or something like that, in some respects that cuts much closer to reality and it makes you feel at the end of the day that you'd better understand yourself and what you are all about. And it is inspiring, the way a tragedy like King Lear or Hamlet or Othello can inspire. And I do not think that great art is elitist.

This word elitist drives me crazy. This has to do more with the income group that has that taste or that fashion at that point in time. And therefore just because someone is 50 years old and can afford an opera ticket, that is deemed to be elitist.

If someone was 20 years old and could afford that opera ticket because of their station in life, that wouldn't be all of a sudden elitist; but it is considered so by contemporary media in the English-speaking world. It's funny how in Italy opera is not elitist - it is still popular taste and you can fill the Verona Arena with 25,000 men, women and children every night, all having a terrific time.

Let's not judge just because something is young and emerging doesn't mean that it's not elitist.

But it's very simple that it is elitist to spend £175 a ticket to go see Tosca at Covent Garden. Maybe it's expensive, because the way it is subsidized in the UK has not been carefully clarified - that's different from whether it's elitist or not. I think that elitist almost implies inaccessible intellectually or almost esoteric, to the point of being intellectually esoteric.

"Oh, there are ten people who can read this book and understand it." That to me is elitist. As opposed to "If someone comes up with the money and they want to go to the opera, fine!" Whether the opera is worth £175 a ticket we can debate that. One of the purposes of The Genesis Prizes for Opera is to take things like opera and put them back in a more accessible mainstream.

Since opera has been challenged over its costliness, hopefully cost can be revisited if you can put it in different types of venues and have more straightforward, simpler productions. Mozart wasn't elitist in his own day. What he produced was even music hall some of the time. What we're trying to do in this case is make opera more accessible.

One of the early profound experiences I had with the Genesis Foundation was when we were commissioning Roxanna Panufnik's Westminster Mass for Cardinal Hume for his 75th birthday. He was talking to Roxanna and was very relaxed how it was going to work; and said he just had one thing to say. "I want to make sure that you score it not just for orchestra but for organ. I know that if it's scored for organ many more churches and many more choirs will put it on because it will be easier, less expensive... and more accessible."

And that has become one of the cornerstones of what we are trying to be - more accessible. And Cardinal Hume, with that request, rightly got to the point. Roxanna's music could be seen as elitist.

But that is not the issue.

To me the issue is: Is her music going to be available through a number of different channels, different networks - to different audiences?

We are trying to make sure that this whole network and process that we are implementing with The Genesis Prizes will force the opera world to start rethinking how they commission, how they present and represent young artists so that they have a chance to be seen in a much broader range of performing environments.

That really gets to the heart of what we are doing. We can tamper and toy with the idea of what elitist is. But elitist is avoiding the sense of making something too esoteric. Elitist is when we cannot make something sufficiently accessible. And the other point of accessibility is not just physical accessibility but not to take your work of art to the point where it is intimidating.

Some art is intimidating. People don't have a clue how to understand some things, so rather than try to understand it they just go back to My Fair Lady - and that's all fine. Because My Fair Lady is beautiful, and amusing and witty and entertaining user-friendly.

But we've got to find ways of encouraging people not to be daunted by contemporary art. Contemporary art is there to be discussed, appreciated and debated as always; And it will be debated for a long time before anyone knows what's important.