Why Go Live?

CDs, DVDs, MP3s, Web radio...

These days, pre-recorded and portable options for experiencing the arts are more readily available than ever before. With all these electronic opportunities at our collective fingertips,

WHY GO LIVE?

That is to say, in this day and age—and in this challenging economic climate—why make the extra effort to experience music, dance, and other performing arts in person, as part of an audience?

A number of Lively Arts supporters, including performing artists and Stanford scholars, have taken up this question throughout our 2008-09 season. We invite you to explore their responses in the statements and video interviews on this page.

Join in the discussion!

We’d love to hear why you “go live” as a Lively Arts patron. Please share your thoughts by emailing us today. whygolive@stanford.edu

Please include your city of residence, and if you are a Stanford alumnus/a or a current student, your graduation year.

Note: All submissions will become the property of Stanford Lively Arts and may be made public either whole or in part.

What People Are Saying

Jenny Bilfield
Artistic & Executive Director
Stanford Lively Arts

“Why go live?” is a question we’ve been asking throughout our 2008-09 season.  That is, with all the other ways to spend your free time, why should you choose to attend the music, dance, and other performing arts events presented by Stanford Lively Arts? The answers contributed by artists and audiences have been varied, and passionate.

But with the economy in turmoil, the question takes on a new and urgent meaning: Why take part in Lively Arts now, at a time when all resources are so much more precious? I offer these thoughts: 

• Because, like us, our artists are determined to look forward, respond to the world around us, and to find  communicative and expressive outlets in their work.  They need your your eyes and ears, your support and feedback, your intellect and heart.
• Live performance equals community, and collaboration with students and faculty is key to our mission.  If you've been to one of our shows, this will resonate with you.
• Because, to be creative is to be optimistic—that there is a future, an audience, and a place for art. We all have a role in this.  Which is why Lively Arts brings new work, creators,  emerging artists, and master performers to our stages.
• Because the arts help us see, hear, and think in new ways.  
• Because Stanford Lively Arts, in particular, brings these vital experiences here to campus, and to those in our community who could not otherwise afford them.

I encourage you to take a few moments to read others’ responses to the “Why Go Live?” question herein—and to contribute your own thoughts as well. And I look forward to welcoming you to our events as we continue what has already been a very exciting and inspiring 2008-09 season.

Tobias Wolff
PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author
Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English, Stanford University

The sound of a human voice, or a cello, unmediated by technology, has a way of entering not only the ear but the very body; it’s a physical experience of a kind the stereo in your living room can’t give. There is also the underlying possibility of imperfection, even of outright failure, which gives a thrilling uncertainty to the live experience. Finally, the performance of music and drama is by nature ephemeral—essentially of that moment, a moment which can never be repeated, and the sense of that moment and its music passing forever even as you are immersed in it gives it a depth and poignancy that no recording or movie can ever achieve.

Katharine Hawthorne
Physics and Dance
Stanford Class of 2010

Live art pulls us out of ourselves. It challenges us and our ideas about the world. It involves and implicates us. Performance art is about the act of being seen and heard and felt, and in these moments of great transparency, we reevaluate and rediscover our humanity.

While studying abroad in Beijing, China, I attended a performance of Hamlet by a British theater company on the Peking University campus. You can read Hamlet, you can watch Lawrence Olivier’s or any number of film adaptations, but none of these representations adequately convey the experience of Hamlet performed live. They cannot impart you with the feeling of sitting in a packed university auditorium, witnessing thousands of Chinese students’ first exposure to live Shakespeare performance. You would never know that “To be or not to be…” elicited the Chinese audience’s slightly delayed laughter, as the translation of Shakespeare’s arcane English appeared projected in Chinese characters above the stage. This laughter was real and it was human; it was an experience only accessible via live performance.

Diane Frank
Lecturer, Dance
Stanford University

For me, live performance is a synaptic experience.  I go to live art to witness, to connect.   I experience immediacy  and vitality, and sometimes it is transformative.  Live performance has risk:  I go to experience risk:  How, exactly, will it unfold this unique time, place, circumstance, with this particular audience assembled and focused on this particular moment?  I like not only the connection to the artists but the sense of myself as part of the collective  and unique audience of a given event.   There is an alertness to the moment -- as artist and audience join through together -- that has vitality like nothing else.  Live performance feeds my senses, connects me to the artist, the art work, the others in the audience.  I hope for that kind of experience each and every time I participate in live art.

Kate Chesley
Associate Director, University Communications

My response is simply “passion.” Live performance stirs feelings and emotions that recorded music never can. You hear and feel the performance with your entire being when you are there live. And, when you have the chance to actually interact with the artists—say a small gathering with the St. Lawrence String Quartet—then you can also live the music or the performance by sharing the experience with the artists and with the rest of the audience. Nothing else like it in the world.

Robert J. Flanagan
Konosuke Matsushita Professor in the Graduate School of Business, Emeritus, Stanford University

As an occasional performer and relentless listener, I know that live performances always have the potential to be superior performances, and the potential is more likely to be realized when audiences are relatively large. This applies to symphonic performances as well as jazz and pop performances. Audiences and performers can feed on each other.

Patience Young
Curator for Education
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts
Stanford University

There is no substitute for the joy, and sometimes downright thrill, of experiencing art first-hand.  That goes for live performances of all types as well as for seeing the actual painting.  The pleasures of live performance include the immediacy of the moment, every moment, shared among those on the stage and those in the audience, a dynamic synergy. There is also the serendipity of fresh ideas emerging from sounds and images that saturate one's senses.  An evening in the theatre or concert hall, like an afternoon at the art museum, can be exciting and assuring, sobering and inspiring.  What better way to enrich one's life than to experience the arts live?

Matthew Tiews, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Stanford Humanities Center

1. Live is about events that have the quality of events: in other words, they are experiences that are unique—and also ephemeral; if you miss it, the moment slips irrevocably into the past.

2. Live is also about a social experience: the crowds, the champagne entr'acte, the backstage visits, the whole froth that turns a performance into a world.

Performing artists and scholars discuss Lively Arts programs, "Why Go Live?" and more.