I'm going to talk about a very fundamental change that is going on in the very fabric of the modern economy.
And to talk about that, I'm going to go back to the beginning, because in the beginning were commodities.
Commodities are things that you grow in the ground, raise on the ground or pull out of the ground: basically, animal, mineral, vegetable.
And then you extract them out of the ground, and sell them on the open marketplace.
Commodities were the basis of the agrarian economy that lasted for millennia.
But then along came the industrial revolution, and then goods became the predominant economic offering, where we used commodities as a raw material to be able to make or manufacture goods.
So, we moved from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy.
Well, what then happened over the last 50 or 60 years, is that goods have become commoditized.
Commoditized: where they're treated like a commodity, where people don't care who makes them.
They just care about three things and three things only: price, price and price.
Now, there's an antidote to commoditization, and that is customization.
My first book was called "Mass Customization" -- it came up a couple of times yesterday -- and how I discovered this progression of economic value was realizing that customizing a good automatically turned it into a service, because it was done just for a particular person, because it wasn't inventoried, it was delivered on demand to that individual person.
So, we moved from an industrial economy to a service-based economy.
But over the past 10 or 20 years, what's happened is that services are being commoditized as well.
Long-distance telephone service sold on price, price, price; fast-food restaurants with all their value pricing; and even the Internet is commoditizing not just goods, but services as well.
What that means is that it's time to move to a new level of economic value.
Time to go beyond the goods and the services, and use, in that same heuristic, what happens when you customize a service?
What happens when you design a service that is so appropriate for a particular person -- that's exactly what they need at this moment in time?
Then you can't help but make them go "wow"; you can't help but turn it into a memorable event -- you can't help but turn it into an experience.
So we're shifting to an experience economy, where experiences are becoming the predominant economic offering.
Now most places that I talk to, when I talk about experience, I talk about Disney -- the world's premier experience-stager.
I talk about theme restaurants, and experiential retail, and boutique hotels, and Las Vegas -- the experience capital of the world.
But here, when you think about experiences, think about Thomas Dolby and his group, playing music.
Think about meaningful places.
Think about drinking wine, about a journey to the Clock of the Long Now.
Those are all experiences.
Think about TED itself.
The experience capital in the world of conferences.
All of these are experiences.
Now, over the last several years I spent a lot of time in Europe, and particularly in the Netherlands, and whenever I talk about the experience economy there, I'm always greeted at the end with one particular question, almost invariably.
And the question isn't really so much a question as an accusation.
And the Dutch, when they usually put it, it always starts with the same two words.
You know the words I mean?
You Americans.
They say, you Americans.
You like your fantasy environments, your fake, your Disneyland experiences.
They say, we Dutch, we like real, natural, authentic experiences.
So much has that happened that I've developed a fairly praticed response, which is: I point out that first of all, you have to understand that there is no such thing as an inauthentic experience.
Why?
Because the experience happens inside of us.
It's our reaction to the events that are staged in front of us.
So, as long as we are in any sense authentic human beings, then every experience we have is authentic.
Now, there may be more or less natural or artificial stimuli for the experience, but even that is a matter of degree, not kind.
And there's no such thing as a 100 percent natural experience.
Even if you go for a walk in the proverbial woods, there is a company that manufactured the car that delivered you to the edge of the woods; there's a company that manufactured the shoes that you have to protect yourself from the ground of the woods.
There's a company that provides a cell phone service you have in case you get lost in the woods.
Right?
All of those are man-made, artificiality brought into the woods by you, and by the very nature of being there.
And then I always finish off by talking about -- the thing that amazes me the most about this question, particularly coming from the Dutch, is that the Netherlands is every bit as manufactured as Disneyland.
(Laughter) And the Dutch, they always go ...
and they realize, I'm right!
There isn't a square meter of ground in the entire country that hasn't been reclaimed from the sea, or otherwise moved, modified and manicured to look as if it had always been there.
It's the only place you ever go for a walk in the woods and all the trees are lined up in rows.
(Laughter) But nonetheless, not just the Dutch, but everyone has this desire for the authentic.
And authenticity is therefore becoming the new consumer sensibility -- the buying criteria by which consumers are choosing who are they going to buy from, and what they're going to buy.
Becoming the basis of the economy.
In fact, you can look at how each of these economies developed, that each one has their own business imperative, matched with a consumer sensibility.
We're the agrarian economy, and we're supplying commodities.
It's about supply and availability.
Getting the commodities to market.
With the industrial economy, it is about controlling costs -- getting the costs down as low as possible so we can offer them to the masses.
With the service economy, it is about improving quality.
That has -- the whole quality movement has risen with the service economy over the past 20 or 30 years.
And now, with the experience economy, it's about rendering authenticity.
Rendering authenticity -- and the keyword is "rendering."
Right?
Rendering, because you have to get your consumers -- as business people -- to percieve your offerings as authentic.
Because there is a basic paradox: no one can have an inauthentic experience, but no business can supply one.
Because all businesses are man-made objects; all business is involved with money; all business is a matter of using machinery, and all those things make something inauthentic.
So, how do you render authenticity, is the question.
Are you rendering authenticity?
When you think about that, let me go back to what Lionel Trilling, in his seminal book on authenticity, "Sincerity and Authenticity" -- came out in 1960 -- points to as the seminal point at which authenticity entered the lexicon, if you will.
And that is, to no surprise, in Shakespeare, and in his play, Hamlet.
And there is one part in this play, Hamlet, where the most fake of all the characters in Hamlet, Polonius, says something profoundly real.
At the end of a laundry list of advice he's giving to his son, Laertes, he says this: And this above all: to thine own self be true.
And it doth follow, as night the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man.
And those three verses are the core of authenticity.
There are two dimensions to authenticity: one, being true to yourself, which is very self-directed.
Two, is other-directed: being what you say you are to others.
And I don't know about you, but whenever I encounter two dimensions, I immediately go, ahh, two-by-two!
All right?
Anybody else like that, no?
Well, if you think about that, you do, in fact, get a two-by-two.
Where, on one dimension it's a matter of being true to yourself.
As businesses, are the economic offerings you are providing -- are they true to themselves?
And the other dimension is: are they what they say they are to others?
If not, you have, "is not true to itself," and "is not what it says it is," yielding a two-by-two matrix.
And of course, if you are both true to yourself, and are what you say you are, then you're real real!
(Laughter) The opposite, of course, is -- fake fake.
All right, now, there is value for fake.
There will always be companies around to supply the fake, because there will always be desire for the fake.
Fact is, there's a general rule: if you don't like it, it's fake; if you do like it, it's faux.
(Laughter) Now, the other two sides of the coin are: being a real fake -- is what it says it is, but is not true to itself, or being a fake real: is true to itself, but not what it says it is.
You can think about those two -- you know, both of these better than being fake fake -- not quite as good as being real real.
You can contrast them by thinking about Universal City Walk versus Disney World, or Disneyland.
Universal City Walk is a real fake -- in fact, we got this very term from Ada Louise Huxtable's book, "The Unreal America."
A wonderful book, where she talks about Universal City Walk as -- you know, she decries the fake, but she says, at least that's a real fake, right, because you can see behind the facade, right?
It is what it says it is: It's Universal Studio; it's in the city of Los Angeles; you're going to walk a lot.
Right?
You don't tend to walk a lot in Los Angeles, well, here's a place where you are going to walk a lot, outside in this city.
But is it really true to itself?
Right?
Is it really in the city?
Is it -- you can see behind all of it, and see what is going on in the facades of it.
So she calls it a real fake.
Disney World, on the other hand, is a fake real, or a fake reality.
Right?
It's not what it says it is.
It's not really the magic kingdom.
(Laughter) But it is -- oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -- (Laughter) -- sorry.
We won't talk about Santa Claus then.
(Laughter) But Disney World is wonderfully true to itself.
Right?
Just wonderfully true to itself.
When you are there you are just immersed in this wonderful environment.
So, it's a fake real.
Now the easiest way to fall down in this, and not be real real, right, the easiest way not to be true to yourself is not to understand your heritage, and thereby repudiate that heritage.
Right, the key of being true to yourself is knowing who you are as a business.
Knowing where your heritage is: what you have done in the past.
And what you have done in the past limits what you can do, what you can get away with, essentially, in the future.
So, you have to understand that past.
Think about Disney again.
Disney, 10 or 15 years ago, right, the Disney -- the company that is probably best-known for family values out there, Disney bought the ABC network.
The ABC network, affectionately known in the trade as the T&amp;A network, right -- that's not too much jargon, is it?
Right, the T&amp;A network.
Then it bought Miramax, known for its NC-17 fare, and all of a sudden, families everywhere couldn't really trust what they were getting from Disney.
It was no longer true to its heritage; no longer true to Walt Disney.
That's one of the reasons why they're having such trouble today, and why Roy Disney is out to get Michael Eisner.
Because it is no longer true to itself.
So, understand what -- your past limits what you can do in the future.
When it comes to being what you say you are, the easiest mistake that companies make is that they advertise things that they are not.
That's when you're perceived as fake, as a phony company -- advertizing things that you're not.
Think about any hotel, any airline, any hospital.
Right, if you could check into the ads, you'd have a great experience.
(Laughter) But unfortunately, you have to experience the actual hotel, airline and hospital, and then you have that disconnect.
Then you have that perception that you are phony.
So, the number one thing to do when it comes to being what you say you are, is to provide places for people to experience who you are.
For people to experience who you are.
Right, it's not advertising does it.
That's why you have companies like Starbucks, right, that doesn't housetimothy@example.com.
They said, you want to know who we are, you have to come experience us.
And think about the economic value they have provided by that experience.
Right?
Coffee, at its core, is what?
Right?
It's beans; right?
It's coffee beans.
You know how much coffee is worth, when treated as a commodity as a bean?
Two or three cents per cup -- that's what coffee is worth.
But grind it, roast it, package it, put it on a grocery store shelf, and now it'll cost five, 10, 15 cents, when you treat it as a good.
Take that same good, and perform the service of actually brewing it for a customer, in a corner diner, in a bodega, a kiosk somewhere, you get 50 cents, maybe a buck per cup of coffee.
But surround the brewing of that coffee with the ambiance of a Starbucks, with the authentic cedar that goes inside of there, and now, because of that authentic experience, you can charge two, three, four, five dollars for a cup of coffee.
So, authenticity is becoming the new consumer sensibility.
Let me summarize it, for the business people in the audience, with three rules, three basic rules.
One, don't say you're authentic unless you really are authentic.
Two, it's easier to be authentic if you don't say you're authentic.
And three, if you say you're authentic, you better be authentic.
And then for the consumers, for everyone else in the audience, let me simply summarize it by saying, increasingly, what we -- what will make us happy, is spending our time and our money satisfying the desire for authenticity.
Thank you.
I was only nine when my grandfather first described to me the horrors he witnessed six years earlier when human stampedes killed 39 people in our hometown of Nashik, India.
It was during the 2003 Nashik Kumbh Mela, one of the world's largest religious gatherings.
Every 12 years, over 30 million Hindu worshippers descend upon our city -- which is built only for 1.5 million people -- and stay for 45 days.
The main purpose is to wash away all their sins by bathing in the river Godavari.
And stampedes may easily happen because a high-density crowd moves at a slow pace.
Apart from Nashik, this event happens in three other places in India, with varying frequency, and between 2001 and 2014, over 2,400 lives have been lost in stampedes at these events.
What saddened me the most is seeing people around me resigning to the city's fate in witnessing the seemingly inevitable deaths of dozens at every Kumbh Mela.
I sought to change this, and I thought, why can't I try to find a solution to this?
Because I knew it is wrong.
Having learned coding at an early age and being a maker, I considered the wild idea -- (Laughter) [Makers always find a way] I considered the wild idea of building a system that would help regulate the flow of people and use it in the next Kumbh Mela in 2015, to have fewer stampedes and, hopefully, fewer deaths.
It seemed like a mission impossible, a dream too big, especially for a 15-year-old, yet that dream came true in 2015, when not only did we succeed in reducing the stampedes and their intensity, but we marked 2015 as the first Nashik Kumbh Mela to have zero stampedes.
(Applause) It was the first time in recorded history that this event passed without any casualties.
How did we do it?
It all started when I joined an innovation workshop by MIT Media Lab in 2014 called the Kumbhathon that aimed at solving challenges faced at the grand scale of Kumbh Mela.
Now, we figured out to solve the stampede problem, we wanted to know only three things: the number of people, the location, and the rate of the flow of people per minute.
So we started to look for technologies that would help us get these three things.
Can we distribute radio-frequency tokens to identify people?
We figured out that it would be too expensive and impractical to distribute 30 million tags.
Can you use CCTV cameras with image-processing techniques?
Again, too expensive for that scale, along with the disadvantages of being non-portable and being completely useless in the case of rain, which is a common thing to happen in Kumbh Mela.
Can we use cell phone tower data?
It sounds like the perfect solution, but the funny part is, most of the people do not carry cell phones in events like Kumbh Mela.
Also, the data wouldn't have been granular enough for us.
So we wanted something that was real-time, low-cost, sturdy and waterproof, and it was easy to get the data for processing.
So we built Ashioto, meaning "footstep" in Japanese, as it consists of a portable mat which has pressure sensors which can count the number of people walking on it, and sends the data over the internet to the advanced data analysis software we created.
The possible errors, like overcounting or double-stepping, were overcome using design interventions.
The optimum breadth of the mat was determined to be 18 inches, after we tested many different versions and observed the average stride length of a person.
Otherwise, people might step over the sensor.
We started with a proof of concept built in three days, made out of cardboard and aluminum foil.
(Laughter) It worked, for real.
We built another one with aluminum composite panels and piezoelectric plates, which are plates that generate a small pulse of electricity under pressure.
We tested this at 30 different pilots in public, in crowded restaurants, in malls, in temples, etc., to see how people reacted.
And people let us run these pilots because they were excited to see localites work on problems for the city.
I was 15 and my team members were in their early 20s.
When the sensors were colored, people would get scared and would ask us questions like, "Will I get electrocuted if I step on this?"
(Laughter) Or, if it was very obvious that it was an electronic sensor on the ground, they would just jump over it.
(Laughter) So we decided to design a cover for the sensor so that people don't have to worry what it is on the ground.
So after some experimentation, we decided to use an industrial sensor, used as a safety trigger in hazardous areas as the sensor, and a black neoprene rubber sheet as the cover.
Now, another added benefit of using black rubber was that dust naturally accumulates over the surface, eventually camouflaging it with the ground.
We also had to make sure that the sensor is no higher than 12 millimeters.
Otherwise, people might trip over it, which in itself would cause stampedes.
(Laughter) We don't want that.
(Laughter) So we were able to design a sensor which was only 10 millimeters thick.
Now the data is sent to the server in real time, and a heat map is plotted, taking into account all the active devices on the ground.
The authorities could be alerted if the crowd movement slowed down or if the crowd density moved beyond a desired threshold.
We installed five of these mats in the Nashik Kumbh Mela 2015, and counted over half a million people in 18 hours, ensuring that the data was available in real time at various checkpoints, ensuring a safe flow of people.
Now, this system, eventually, with other innovations, is what helped prevent stampedes altogether at that festival.
The code used by Ashioto during Kumbh Mela will soon be made publicly available, free to use for anyone.
I would be glad if someone used this code to make many more gatherings safer.
Having succeeded at Kumbh Mela has inspired me to help others who may also suffer from stampedes.
The design of the system makes it adaptable to pretty much any event that involves an organized gathering of people.
And my new dream is to improve, adapt and deploy the system all over the world to prevent loss of life and ensure a safe flow of people, because every human soul is precious, whether at concerts or sporting events, the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the Hajj in Mecca, the Shia procession to Karbala or at the Vatican City.
So what do you all think, can we do it?
(Audience) Yes!
Thank you.
(Cheers) (Applause)
Before the world of humans began, there was the world of the gods, made of fields, plains and gardens.
Four brothers wandered this celestial realm.
They had no family other than each other— they didn’t even know who their parents were.
One of the brothers, Deminan, looked different from the others.
His skin was covered in painful scabs, and he wondered why he alone had been marked with this affliction.
One day, while the supreme spirit Yaya was out in his gardens, Deminan and his brothers snuck into Yaya’s house.
After feasting and exploring, they spotted a giant gourd hanging in the corner.
But as they tried to look inside the gourd, they dropped it.
The gourd broke apart, releasing a deluge that swept the brothers away, separating them from the celestial lands forever.
The waters from the gourd formed a new world.
This realm was covered in seas, which didn’t exist in the gods’ world.
The waters were full of fish and other creatures, and dotted with islands and caves.
This world of seas was also cut off completely from the celestial realm, and the brothers wandered aimlessly, even more lost than they had been before.
One day, three of the brothers stumbled upon a house.
In the house lived an elder named Bayamanacao, and he invited them in.
When Deminan caught up slightly later, he followed them into the house.
Bayamanacao told the brothers he was their grandfather and gave them a gift of special cassava bread.
He revealed their family lineage to them: their mother had been the Earth Mother Goddess Itibi Cahubaba and had died when they were born.
The brothers were grateful for his hospitality and insight into their past.
But then Bayamanacao turned on Deminan, blowing tobacco spittle from his nose onto Deminan’s back.
The spot where the spittle landed immediately began to swell and sting.
Soon Deminan was delirious and his back was so swollen his brothers feared he would die.
Not knowing what else to do, they cut open the welt.
A turtle emerged from the wound and swam away, alternating easily between sea and land as she went.
When Deminan recovered from his delirium, he finally understood what the curse of his disease meant: he was a caracaracol, able to communicate with the gods.
He was the link between the celestial realm and the earthly realm.
Deminan was the first in a long lineage of caracaracols.
The world of seas he and his brothers had created when they dropped the gourd became the world of humans, where the caracaracols who followed Deminan maintained the delicate balance between people and gods.
But their unique power came at a price: Deminan and all the caracaracols who followed him continued to suffer from the illness that had first marked Deminan as special.
Represented in Taino carvings and figurines with a swollen back and emaciated arms, the caracaracol is both cursed and blessed to be a conduit between worlds.
(Music) ["Oedipus Rex"] ["The Lion King"] ["Titus"] ["Frida"] ["The Magic Flute"] ["Across The Universe"] (Applause) Julie Taymor: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
That's a few samples of the theater, opera and films that I have done over the last 20 years.
But what I'd like to begin with right now is to take you back to a moment that I went through in Indonesia, which is a seminal moment in my life and, like all myths, these stories need to be retold and told, lest we forget them.
And when I'm in the turbulent times, as we know, that I am right now, through the crucible and the fire of transformation, which is what all of you do, actually.
Anybody who creates knows there's that point where it hasn't quite become the phoenix or the burnt char.
(Laughter) And I am right there on the edge, which I'll tell you about, another story.
I want to go back to Indonesia where I was about 21, 22 years, a long time ago, on a fellowship.
And I found myself, after two years there and performing and learning, on the island of Bali, on the edge of a crater, Gunung Batur.
And I was in a village where there was an initiation ceremony for the young men, a rite of passage.
Little did I know that it was mine as well.
And as I sat in this temple square under this gigantic beringin banyan tree, in the dark, there was no electricity, just the full moon, down in this empty square, and I heard the most beautiful sounds, like a Charles Ives concert as I listened to the gamelan music from all the different villagers that came for this once-every-five-years ceremony.
And I thought I was alone in the dark under this tree.
And all of a sudden, out of the dark, from the other end of the square, I saw the glint of mirrors lit by the moon.
And these 20 old men who I'd seen before all of a sudden stood up in these full warrior costumes with the headdress and the spears, and no one was in the square, and I was hidden in the shadows.
No one was there, and they came out, and they did this incredible dance.
"Huhuhuhuhuhuhuhahahahaha."
And they moved their bodies and they came forward, and the lights bounced off these costumes.
And I've been in theater since I was 11 years old, and performing, creating, and I went, "Who are they performing for with these elaborate costumes, these extraordinary headdresses?"
And I realized that they were performing for God, whatever that means.
But somehow, it didn't matter about the publicity.
There was no money involved.
It wasn't going to be written down.
It was no news.
And there were these incredible artists that felt for me like an eternity as they performed.
The next moment, as soon as they finished and disappeared into the shadows, a young man with a propane lantern came on, hung it up on a tree, set up a curtain.
The village square was filled with hundreds of people.
And they put on an opera all night long.
Human beings needed the light.
They needed the light to see.
So what I gained and gathered from this incredible, seminal moment in my life as a young artist was that you must be true to what you believe as an artist all the way through, but you also have to be aware that the audience is out there in our lives at this time, and they also need the light.
And it's this incredible balance that I think that we walk when we are creating something that is breaking ground, that's trying to do something you've never seen before, that imaginary world where you actually don't know where you're going to end up, that's the fine line on the edge of a crater that I have walked my whole life.
What I would like to do now is to tell you a little bit about how I work.
Let's take "The Lion King."
You saw many examples of my work up there, but it's one that people know.
I start with the notion of the ideograph.
An ideograph is like a brush painting, a Japanese brush painting.
Three strokes, you get the whole bamboo forest.
I go to the concept of "The Lion King" and I say, "What is the essence of it?
What is the abstraction?
If I were to reduce this entire story into one image, what would it be?"
The circle.
The circle.
It's so obvious.
The circle of life.
The circle of Mufasa's mask.
The circle that, when we come to Act II and there's a drought, how do you express drought?
It's a circle of silk on the floor that disappears into the hole in the stage floor.
The circle of life comes in the wheels of the gazelles that leap.
And you see the mechanics.
And being a theater person, what I know and love about the theater is that when the audience comes in and they suspend their disbelief, when you see men walking or women walking with a platter of grass on their heads, you know it's the savanna.
You don't question that.
I love the apparent truth of theater.
I love that people are willing to fill in the blanks.
The audience is willing to say, "Oh, I know that's not a real sun.
You took pieces of sticks.
You added silk to the bottom.
You suspended these pieces.
You let it fall flat on the floor.
And as it rises with the strings, I see that it's a sun.
But the beauty of it is that it's just silk and sticks.
And in a way, that is what makes it spiritual.
That's what moves you.
It's not the actual literal sunrise that's coming.
It's the art of it.
So in the theater, as much as the story is critical and the book and the language, the telling of the story, how it's told, the mechanics, the methods that you use, is equal to the story itself.
And I'm one who loves high tech and low tech.
So I could go from -- For instance, I'll show you some "Spider-Man" later, these incredible machines that move people along.
But the fact is, without the dancer who knows how to use his body and swing on those wires, it's nothing.
So now I'm going to show you some clips from the other big project of my life this year, "The Tempest."
It's a movie.
I did "The Tempest" on a stage three times in the theater since 1984, '86, and I love the play.
I did it always with a male Prospero.
And all of a sudden, I thought, "Well, who am I gonna get to play Prospero?
Why not Helen Mirren?
She's a great actor.
Why not?"
And this material really did work for a woman equally as well.
So now, let's take a look at some of the images from "The Tempest."
(Music) (Video) Prospera: Hast thou, spirit, performed to the point the tempest that I bade thee?
Ariel: I boarded the king's ship.
In every cabin, I flamed amazement.
Prospera: At first sight, they have changed eyes.
Miranda: Do you love me?
Ferdinand: Beyond all limit.
HM: They are both in either's powers.
Trinculo: Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
(Music) Looking for business, governor?
Caliban: Hast thou not dropped from heaven?
Stephano: Out of the moon, I do assure thee.
Prospera: Caliban!
Caliban: This island is mine.
Prospera: For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps.
Antonio: Here lies your brother no better than the earth he lies upon.
Sebastian: Draw thy sword.
And I, the king, shall love thee.
Prospera: I will plague them all, even to roaring.
Ariel: I have made you mad.
Prospera: We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
(Music) JT: Okay.
(Applause) So I went from theater, doing "The Tempest" on the stage in a very low-budget production many years ago, and I love the play, and I also think it's Shakespeare's last play, and it really lends itself, as you can see, to cinema.
But I'm just going to give you a little example about how one stages it in theater and then how one takes that same idea or story and moves it into cinema.
The ideograph that I talked to you about before, what is it for "The Tempest"?
What, if I were to boil it down, would be the one image that I could hang my hat on for this?
And it was the sand castle, the idea of nurture versus nature, that we build these civilizations -- she speaks about it at the end, Helen Mirren's Prospera -- we build them, but under nature, under the grand tempest, these cloud-capped towers, these gorgeous palaces will fade and there will -- leave not a rack behind.
So in the theater, I started the play, it was a black sand rake, white cyc, and there was a little girl, Miranda, on the horizon, building a drip castle, a sand castle.
And as she was there on the edge of that stage, two stagehands all in black with watering cans ran along the top and started to pour water on the sand castle, and the sand castle started to drip and sink, but before it did, the audience saw the black-clad stagehands.
The medium was apparent.
It was banal.
We saw it.
But as they started to pour the water, the light changed from showing you the black-clad stagehands to focusing, this rough magic that we do in theater, it focused right on the water itself.
And all of a sudden, the audience's perspective changes.
It becomes something magically large.
It becomes the rainstorm.
The masked actors, the puppeteers, they disappear, and the audience makes that leap into this world, into this imaginary world of "The Tempest" actually happening.
Now the difference when I went and did it in the cinema, I started the actual movie with a close-up of a sand castle, a black sand castle, and what cinema can do is, by using camera, perspective, and also long shots and close-ups, it started on a close-up of the sand castle, and as it pulled away, you saw that it was a miniature sitting in the palm of the girl's hands.
And so I could play with the medium, and why I move from one medium to another is to be able to do this.
Now I'm going to take you to "Spider-Man."
(Music) (Video) Peter Parker: ♪ Standing on the precipice, I can soar away from this. ♪ JT: We're trying to do everything in live theater that you can't do in two dimensions in film and television.
PP: ♪ Rise above yourself and take control. ♪ George Tsypin: We're looking at New York from a Spider-Man point of view.
Spider Man is not bound by gravity.
Manhattan in the show is not bound by gravity either.
PP: ♪ Be yourself and rise above it all. ♪ Ensemble: ♪ Sock!
Pow! ♪ ♪ Slam!
Scratch! ♪ Danny Ezralow: I don't want you to even think there's a choreographer.
It's real, what's happening.
I prefer you to see people moving, and you're going, "Whoa, what was that?"
(Music) JT: If I give enough movement in the sculpture, and the actor moves their head, you feel like it's alive.
It's really comic book live.
It's a comic book coming alive.
(Music) Bono: They're mythologies.
They're modern myths, these comic book heroes.
PP: ♪ They believe. ♪ (Screams) (Music) (Applause) JT: Ohhhh.
What was that?
Circus, rock 'n' roll, drama.
What the hell are we doing up there on that stage?
Well, one last story, very quickly.
After I was in that village, I crossed the lake, and I saw that the volcano was erupting on the other side, Gunung Batur, and there was a dead volcano next to the live volcano.
I didn't think I'd be swallowed by the volcano, and I am here.
But it's very easy to climb up, is it not?
You hold on to the roots, you put your foot in the little rocks and climb up there, and you get to the top, and I was with a good friend who was an actor, and we said, "Let's go up there.
Let's see if we can come close to the edge of that live volcano."
And we climbed up and we got to the very top, and we're on the edge, on this precipice, Roland disappears into the sulfur smoke at the volcano at the other end, and I'm up there alone on this incredible precipice.
Did you hear the lyrics?
I'm on the precipice looking down into a dead volcano to my left.
To my right is sheer shale.
It's coming off.
I'm in thongs and sarongs.
It was many years ago.
And no hiking boots.
And he's disappeared, this mad French gypsy actor, off in the smoke, and I realize, I can't go back the way that I've come.
I can't.
So I throw away my camera.
I throw away my thongs, and I looked at the line straight in front of me, and I got down on all fours like a cat, and I held with my knees to either side of this line in front of me, for 30 yards or 30 feet, I don't know.
The wind was massively blowing, and the only way I could get to the other side was to look at the line straight in front of me.
I know you've all been there.
I'm in the crucible right now.
It's my trial by fire.
It's my company's trials by fire.
We survive because our theme song is "Rise Above."
Boy falls from the sky, rise above.
It's right there in the palm of both of our hands, of all of my company's hands.
I have beautiful collaborators, and we as creators only get there all together.
I know you understand that.
And you just stay going forward, and then you see this extraordinary thing in front of your eyes.
Thank you.
(Applause)