Let me tell you, as a little girl growing up
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, everyday life was full of spectacle. In the months leading up to Mardi Gras, people from all over our community
knit beads into dresses, stirred steaming pots of gumbo, shaped chicken wire
into grand, majestic carriages stuffed with brightly
colored tissue paper. On the day of the parades, grownups would walk out of their homes
as mermaids and alligators and kings and queens. You could see your second grade teacher suddenly a peacock
with beautiful sparkly feathers. We would paint our faces
and flow into the street where all day long,
the city sang and danced together. Regular people of all ages,
races, and classes who stepped outside of their daily life and into a collective radiance. In my world, pageantry
was not just reserved for Mardi Gras. Every Sunday at church,
voices lifted together

inviting the holy down into daily life. Our church staged epic
annual Christmas pageants, complete with real, smelly sheep. And down the road at LSU
football games on Saturdays, the stomp of the roaring crowd, led by the marching band
and the color guard, registered as an official earthquake
on the Richter scale when I was eight years old. Big surprise, I became a theater director. I did so with the belief that these
spectacles were more than just fun, that something profound was happening when our community came together
in the realm of the imagination. Pageantry and spectacle
are in fact ancient, universal aspects of human experience. Going back as far as we can trace
the presence of humans on this planet. Religious ritual
and celebration, or carnival, provided our ancestors much-needed joy, and the unique kind of group bonding necessary for facing
their daily challenge of survival. The question is, what do these spectacles mean in our day?

when the interconnectedness
of our survival is less immediately visible, and technology offers the constant
opportunity for isolation? As a theater director, I search for what a communal gathering
in the realm of the imagination can mean in our time. And that quest led me to wonder, inspired by the Mardi Gras
of my childhood, would it be possible to create the feeling of a whole city on stage together? Well, what better way to try
than to stage a production of The Odyssey with 181 people in the cast,
drawn from all over San Diego? I chose The Odyssey because as an epic
story of a journey towards home, it felt large enough for us
to all find ourselves inside of it. As I wandered around San Diego,
I started to wonder, what if that amazing gospel choir
played the goddess Athena, and those salsa dancers. What if they created Cersei's lair and that amazing high school drumline? What if they took care of the big archery
contest that saves Odysseus at the end?

Sort of like medieval passion plays when it was like, Bakers,
you take the Last Supper. Butchers, you do the crucifixion. When The Odyssey opened
in 2011 at the Old Globe, even I was not prepared
for the wave of joy it unleashed. Look, I'm not a social worker. I'm an artist. But the show surprised me. I did the show thinking
it would be beautiful, but it was so much more than that. People were overcoming the challenges
of fear and self-doubt in the imaginary process, and somehow it was making
them feel equipped to face the challenges in their real life. After the show, we stayed in touch, and I started hearing anecdotally what I would later learn scientifically. Students who had been part of the show
were doing better in school. Some of our elders experienced
noticeable health benefits like better blood flow
and increased mobility. A remarkable man in his early 50s

who had come to us
through a homeless shelter, got a job, a steady job, for the first time in his adult
life after the show. And ten years later,
he was still employed. He traced it back
to performing in The Odyssey. Why? I asked him, and his answer was simple. He said being part of the show
reminded him that he had value, and he knew that if other people
were counting on him, he could show up. Well, the Public Theater in New York was willing to give me
a home for this work. And in 2012, I started Public Works, a program that brings together community
members from all over New York City, including children and senior citizens, domestic workers, military veterans, men and women rebuilding
their lives after prison, and Broadway stars, all to create 200-person pageants annually at the Delacorte
Theater in Central Park. (Applause)

I want to share with you for fun the quick math of how
we put a city on stage through Public Works. In, for example, our production
of The Winter's Tale, we had 107 community ensemble members, ages 2 to 92, 34 choir singers, 16 bhangra dancers, 12 ballerinas, seven Sesame Street characters, six stilt walkers, five Broadway actors, four Capoeiristas, three park rangers, two Chinese lions, one bear puppet, and one Big Bird. (Laughter) And that's how we made a city. (Applause) But why stop there? This July, 18 cities and towns across America will simultaneously premiere their own
large-scale public artwork, responding to the theme
No Place Like Home. Local artists partnering
with their municipality and their local community health centers to manifest what is possible
when the arts belong to everybody. (Applause) The beauty of this type of art-making

is that people who might
not encounter each other in any other aspect of life,
except jury duty, gather together around life's
deepest questions. This collaboration reinforces
that we all deal with the same emotions. We have all known love, fear, frustration, joy. And because we meet as equals
in the realm of the imagination, something is possible that's often not
when we're separated and boxed into our social roles. Whereas in San Diego, my observations
about transformation were anecdotal, with Public Works, we brought on
a linguistic anthropologist from the very beginning to trace the impact
of the work over many years. And the results were the same. In my now 20 years of directing theater, everywhere from prisons
and shelters to Broadway, I have seen seniors recover
from strokes and surgery more quickly than their
doctors said was possible. I've seen children diagnosed with autism who had been told higher education
was not an option.

go on to thrive in college and graduate. I've seen a homeless man in Philadelphia suffering from severe
AIDS-related complications, show up at our rehearsal immediately
after leaving his hospital bed because he wanted to dance in our production
of Don Quixote that night. So after all of this, I am not surprised to learn that the World Health Organization
pooled 3,000 studies on the relationship
between arts and health, and found that arts interventions
have a significant role to play in the reduction of ill health, the promotion of good health, and the management
and treatment of disease. The good news is that this type of health benefit
comes from things as simple as joining a choir, going to a museum, being part of a weekly drawing class. Loneliness is now
an epidemic in our world, and the growing belief
that we have nothing in common with people who believe
differently from us, politically or religiously.

is tearing our social fabric apart. Participating in something
much bigger than yourself, working hard towards a shared good, this restores our sense of connection. And in the realm of the imagination, perhaps even behind feathers and sequins, what becomes visible is the divine
spark in every human being and in our one collective humanity. Friends, the sociologist Emile Durkheim
says something I love and believe in. They find a remedy
because they seek it together. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. It was so fun to talk
to you all about that. But now I want to give you
a little taste of it. So I do notice an unused piano here. That's never right. I want to bring to the stage now,
my good friends, Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell and Todd Almond, my frequent collaborator on many
of the things you saw on that screen. (Applause) (Piano music starts) Brian Stokes Mitchell: (Singing)
To dream the impossible dream /

To fight the unbeatable foe. To bear with unbearable sorrow. To run where the brave dare not go. To right the unrightable wrong. To love pure and chaste from afar. To try when your arms are too weary. To reach the unreachable star. This is my quest. To follow that star. No matter how hopeless. No matter how far. To fight for the right. Without question or pause. To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause. And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest. That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest. And the world will be better for this. That one man, scorned and covered with scars. Still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars. This is my quest! Audience member: This is my quest! BSM: To follow that star! Audience members: To follow that star!

BSM: No matter how hopeless! Audience members:
No matter how hopeless! BSM: No matter how far! Audience members:
No matter how far! BSM: To fight for the rights! Audience members:
To fight for the rights! BSM: Without question or pause! Audience members: 
Without question or pause! BSM: To be willing to march into hell / For a heavenly cause / (Marching band starts) And I know if I'll only be true
to this glorious quest / That my heart will lie peaceful and calm / when I'm laid to my rest / And the world / Will be better for this / That one man,  Scorned and covered with scars / Still strove with his last
ounce of courage / To reach / The unreachable / Stars! (Music ends) (Cheers and applause)

What’s Possible When the Arts Belong to Everybody | Lear deBessonet with Brian Stokes Mitchell | TED

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