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Antonia Novello
Former Surgeon General of the United States
In my junior year in college, I had one of the biggest surgeries to correct the complications of the eighteenth birthday surgery. And some other kid would have said, "I'm sick. I'm going to take music appreciation, art." I took that semester -- as a denial -- calculus, trigonometry, quantitative chemistry, everything that made me believe that I was not sick. But the part was, that in those six months, I had to wear Pampers to go to college and no one ever knew because I was not about to show it. And I continued to laugh at this little incidental in my life while I was showing that my brain was still okay. So that taught me one thing which I think sometimes is useful and sometimes is not. I have this inability to feel for the ones who use disease to not do what they are supposed to do. Because, believe me, if I did it, then anyone can, because there will be the plugging of the microscope, the plugging of the heating pad and the every five minutes going to the bathroom because I had to, until I had my last surgery.
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Sir Trevor Nunn
Theatrical Director
When we did this huge derring-do stage production of Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, which was -- I mean, that was an absolute last throw of the dice for the RSC. We were in such terrible financial circumstance that I was employing a company of 50 actors, and I only had money for one production, and no play has been written that provides for 50 roles. And I had a whole company desperate for work, and I didn't want to get rid of anybody. And I suddenly had the idea that I could go to Dickens. And it suddenly occurred to me that Dickens was the greatest dramatist who never wrote a play. And I could take all of that material and make a stage work with this wonderful company of actors, and we did. And a colleague of mine, John Caird, co-directed the show with me. And we had this eight-and-a-half-hour show that become a kind of legend in London, and then we took it to Broadway and we won all the Tony Awards. And then we televised it and won the Emmy Award for it. So, it was evidence that things can be born of the most extreme desperation.
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Sir Trevor Nunn
Theatrical Director
Sir Trevor Nunn: I guess the same applies to the decision to do Les Miserables. I knew that there would be a lot of people writing for the serious press, or representing the serious media in England who would say, "But, it's outrageous that one of our premier subsidized theater companies should be doing something that is appropriate to the commercial sphere." I believe that, on the contrary, it was entirely appropriate for a classical theater company to say, "We are going to take a great 19th century novel -- a complex 19th century novel -- about justice and about faith, and we are going to make a musical the like of which hasn't previously occurred. I mean, it's going to have a seriousness and a moral complexity, and a political message that hasn't previously been in the musical theater." But again, you know, just before we got started, I remember feeling extreme pangs of terror, you know. The kind of "Maybe I should call this off." Maybe I shouldn't give those people in the media the chance to say, "You see, we told you that this was disgraceful and it shouldn't happen." But in each case, you go through that cold terror and you come out strengthened by it. Therefore, when I was asked recently, "Would you consider going back into the subsidized spectrum? Would you become the next director of The National Theater?" I experienced two things. Unquestionably, I experienced that feeling of, "That's where I can be sure of maintaining my integrity, so I want to do it." The second feeling was of absolute terror because wonderful people have done the job up until now. Its reputation is unparalleled. The expectation is extremely high. Why put yourself on the line? So that, in the end people will say, "He did okay for a while, but then he did the National Theatre and completely screwed up."
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Joyce Carol Oates
National Book Award
I was doing a book on boxing with a photographer. And I was very fascinated by the material. And I wanted to write the book very, very badly. So I was in a state of anxiety and tension about writing it. And it seemed that I could not even begin it. And I tried and tried for days to get a way into this book. And I had different openings. And I simply couldn't do it. And so I finally felt that I'd given up. And I was very disintegrating and very depressed. I thought it was the beginning of the end, that I would never be able to do anything again. So I went to bed, and all night long I was thinking about these distressing thoughts. And towards the morning, I started thinking, "Well, failure is actually what most people experience in boxing." Most athletes inhabit failure, but particularly boxers. And they're punished -- extremely punished -- for instance, for failure, or a little bit of carelessness. So I started writing about a boxing match I had seen in which somebody failed ignominiously, and the crowd in Madison Square Garden was vicious. And I thought, "There. I can identify with those two boxers." And I found a way to write about the whole sport by way of beginning with failure, with the image of failure.
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