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A Ruckus and a Noise: The Dedication of the Goodman Theatre
On November 9, 2000, August Wilson delivered one of his most memorable addresses, the inaugural address at the dedication of the new Goodman Theatre facility on Randolph and Dearborn streets. Below are excerpts from that speech:
Today is a glorious and historic day for the arts in Chicago... We have gathered to dedicate this building to the continued work of the Goodman Theatre.
That I am standing here now on the eve of my play King Hedley II being the inaugural production of the new Goodman Theatre says much about all the places where we as a society shine with virtue, and speaks to our learned ability to embrace a common humanity that instructs in its exaltation of the one life any of us is going to lead...
We who work in the American theater are heirs to a spiritual wealth that has taught us that theater is architecture of the human spirit that ennobles and empowers if it is honest and full of grace, and that its eloquence can only be fashioned out of uncompromising truth... We who work in the theater are privileged to stand at the cutting edge of an art going all the way back to the ancient Greeks. It is a fearsome place to stand. To be gifted with the triumphs and failures of countless playwrights down through the ages who have, through will and daring, found within the turbulent history of the human race a means of measuring the condition of human possibility, who have found within human thought and action a conduct of high and exalting purpose. It is a cascade of blessing of which we struggle to be worthy...
If we do not squander our inheritance we can add to our storehouse of heroics a fierce will and purpose.
If we in the theater become secure enough in our history and the common tools we possess, we can make a stronger noise... a noise that is raised out of the ruckus and embattled conditions of modern life with all of its coils and trappings its color and dine, its calamities and its beauteous triumphs.
Until that noise is raised it cannot be shaped.
Until it believes in its right and its reason to exist it cannot be raised.
It is theaters like the Goodman that insure a robust future for the American theater. For they have long trusted the presence of its playwrights and believed in their ability to make bountiful music... The actors will walk across the stage, they will howl, they will conspire with and struggle to gain truth, the sum total of our collective experience, and to hold the mirror as it were up to nature.
From this stage will be raised a ruckus and a noise that will echo in the whirlwind.
Long after you and I have spent our last night of the universe, footsteps will echo across this stage and, in a language that is universal, will announce their presence with song and surety. Embodied in them will be the duty of remembrance and celebration. The duty of exploration and preservation.
Speaking for this generation of theater artists we accept the challenge and the invitation this building exemplifies... We are prepared to answer the call to our duty and step forward with the bold and imaginative work of which we know we are capable and to which the American theater with its long and fruitful history deserves.