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The crucial feature of human fife is its fundamentally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.... [W]e learn these modes of expression through exchanges with others.
Charles Taylor, The Politics of Recognition
The "dialogical character" described by political philosopher Charles Taylor was never more evident than in New York's Town Hall on the evening of Jan. 27, when August Wilson and Robert Brustein, after spending months debating the issues of race, funding and multiculturalism in the pages of this magazine, faced off in person in a discussion moderated by Anna Deveare Smith.
The American Theatre-sponsored event was entitled "On Cultural Power," although the venerable cultural critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. was quoted in The Boston Globe as calling it "the thrilla in Manilla" (a reference to the 1975 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier). Others likened the electric atmosphere to the 1971 standoff on the same stage between Germaine Greer and Norman Mailer on issues of sexual pol itics. The rowdy scene outside the 1,500-seat Town Hall before the event reflected those antagonistic expectations: A wildly diverse combination of theatre folk, intellectuals, celebrities and information-hungry New Yorkers pushed and elbowed ticket scalpers, the media paparazzi, leafleting members of the Revolutionary Workers Party and each other in order to get tickets. (The Public Theater's George C. Wolfe, ever the producer, glanced into the packed hall and remarked to no one in particular, "This is fabulous")
Inside, thanks largely to Smith's evenkeeled arbitration. the festivities were somewhat more subdued, at least in tone if not in substance. (Indeed, Smith reprimanded the audience on more than one occasion for cat-calling and heckling.) Smith's moderating technique reflected the postmodern approach she takes to her own work; she made it clear from the start that she was there only as a medium for the ideas and the discussion between the two men.
Brustein, who gave the appearance of the hip elder intellectual statesman in a tweed blazer and red turtleneck, claimed in his introductory remarks that what was about to ensue was not a real debate. The American Repertory Theatre artistic director and theatre critic for The New...