Response

To the Editors of The Crimson:

In an article on audience reaction to "the CIVIL warS" in Tuesday's edition I was quoted as saying that the number of spectators walking out during previews "comes as no great surprise since this is an intellectually challenging play for the audience." I believe that I was misquoted, here as elsewhere in the article; if I actually used the word "intellectually," then I wasn't using my own intellect.

ART audiences do not flee when they are challenged intellectually; on the contrary, they are fully prepared to grapple with just about any intellect we send their way.

"The CIVIL warS" is indeed a challenging work, but its challenge is not intellectual; the inherent intellectual content is, by design, minimal The challenge, rather, is for the audience to suspend its accustomed intellectual response to drama, to treat the text more as music than as literature, and to respond to the visual and aural stimuli of the work as they would to a dreams viscerally, emotionally, or even intellectually, according to their own lights.

There is no correct response, no incorrect response to this work of art, no intellectual construct to decode. The challenge is simply to experience it and to respond. Jonathan Marks   Literary Director   American Repertory Theatre