Keynote Speaker Peter Sellars

The actual conference programme started this morning with the keynote speaker Peter Sellars, professor of World Arts and Culture at UCLA and one of the world's leading theatre directors. I found his speech absolutely brilliant! He started off by saying "Thank God I am an artist and not a banker", with the recent economical collapse in mind. Sellars predicted a "depression era art" and stressed that students have to be taught to play a useful role in society. In UCLA he is giving the courses "Art as social action" and "Art as moral action" to students from all kinds of disciplines. The audience was captured by Sellars associative presentation, which seemed improvisational but of course was very well staged. For me his firm belief in the importance, even in a practical sense, of culture was truly inspirational.