To all persons interested in law and the performing arts:

The University of Texas Law School and the University of Texas College of Fine Arts, with the cooperation of the Harry Ransom Center, will join in sponsoring a symposium, entitled "From Text to Performance: Law and Other Performing Arts," February 28-March 9, 2002. As its week-long duration indicates, the plans are indeed ambitious. The organizers hope to capture the interest and attention not only of all parts of the University, but also of wider audiences in Austin and elsewhere throughout the United States.

The basic "theory" underlying this symposium is that law, music, and drama (and other practices as well, such as dance) are similar (and worth comparing) insofar as they all involve the transformation of ink on a page-call it a statute, a score, or a script-into a complex social action. A judge interpreting a statute or the Constitution not only brings to that task one or another general approach to interpreting texts; he or she must also take into account the full context of the decision, which, for starters, might include the fact that the losers in a particular case may be unhappy with the outcome and reluctant to change their behavior in desired directions. Those about whom the judge must be concerned are not confined to litigants or other similarly situated persons; they can also include other participants within the legal system itself, such as "inferior" judges below them in the judicial hierarchy or bureaucrats, including the police, who will called on to further interpret and enforce the higher court's decisions. On occasion, judges must worry as well about the responses of "reviewers," such as legal academics writing in law reviews or editorial writers of major newspapers (not to mention, these days, Internet "chatters").

Similarly, conductors of symphony orchestras begin with the score, but, in addition to their varying interpretive approaches, they must also concern themselves with the skills of the musicians they have to work with and the expectations of their audiences, boards of directors of the orchestra in question, and reviewers. And directors of plays or operas face similar challenges, including, of course, making "old" plays or operas acceptable to later audiences, who may be unfamiliar with the language used, say, in 17th century England or, perhaps even more to the point, confronting features of texts that, acceptable in their own time, now are "offensive" to contemporary audiences. Consider the portrayal of American Indians in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun or, to move to the highest of high culture, the portrayal of Jews in The Merchant of Venice or Bach's Passion According to St. John. To what degree does one have a "duty" to present unvarnished, "warts and all" versions of past works, including law, as against making changes that will, perhaps, allow them remain a vital part of the ongoing culture?

University of California Professor Richard Taruskin, one of the world's leading musicologists, not only will be one of the keynote speakers; he will also be presenting a tape that he has prepared over the years on "offensive" or "censored" music, which will, no doubt, be the linchpin of a panel on "offensive texts," which can certainly draw on examples from music, drama, and the law. An afternoon panel following the morning program will examine various legal responses to ostensibly "offensive texts," ranging from outright punishment to exclusion from modes of mass communications, including the internet, to ineligibility for public funding. That panel will include Robert Post, Frederick Schauer, Jack M. Balkin, and Lucas Powe, all nationally recognized authorities on the First Amendment.

The conference as envisioned has a "triadic" structure. The first, as already suggested, involves close looks at the theoretical and practical issues surrounding performance, whether of law, music, or drama. This inquiry will involve not only standard-form panels of eminent academics and practitioners, but also performances themselves that will "illustrate" some of the issues under discussion. For example, Russell Sherman, who teaches at the New England Conservatory and is a major performing pianist as well, and Malcolm Bilson, one of the leading practitioners of ostensible "authentic performance" of classical music, have already agreed to give concerts on March 3, 4, and 6. We also intend to offer a number of competing versions of the courtroom scene from The Merchant of Venice, with accompanying commentary from some of the eminent directors whom we hope to lure to Austin for the symposium. For example, Jonathan Miller, another keynote speaker, has, among his many other accomplishments, the direction of a version of "Merchant" in which Laurence Olivier played Shylock, will be on campus for the entire week of the symposium and will be participating in a number of different events. (Among the things we will do throughout the symposium is present various filmed versions of "Merchant.") And we are working closely with the School of Music's Opera Theatre with regard to their spring presentation, the world premier (as a fully-staged opera rather than concert) of Carl Orff's Antigonae. There will be a panel on various aspects of the opera, ranging from issues involved in translating the ancient Greek text, to the difference it makes whether one is staging the Antigone as a drama or an opera.

One could go on literally for pages suggesting different panels, which will, of course, be a function of who is available to participate in the symposium. Friday afternoon will feature a panel on "performing law" that will include Tom Phillips, the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, and Walter Dellinger, who was Assistant Attorney General heading the Office of Legal Counsel during the first Clinton Administration and then Acting Solicitor General of the United States for two years thereafter, as well as, we hope, other similarly eminent public officials. All will address, from their unique perspectives, the phenomenology of judging, of translating the law on the page into law in action.

Another panel, moderated by Prof. Oscar Brockett, the most eminent living historian of the theater, will examine some of the issues raised by "reviving" or "adapting" existing dramatic or operative productions. Confirmed participants include Jonathan Miller (London, England), Michael Bloom (University of Texas at Austin), Joseph McClain (Austin Lyric Opera), and Ann Ciccolella, (Zachary Scott Theatre Center).

A decidedly non-exhaustive list of issues that will be examined during the symposium includes:

a) How are "authoritative" texts created? Harvard Professor Lewis Lockwood, a world authority on Beethoven, will discuss the difficulties that editors confront when trying to organize a complex set of materials into a "definitive" edition (and, of course, it is an independent question whether such editions truly "define" what a performer must do). A similar question, from another of the performing arts, is how dancers learn about, and then perform, works done in the past? That is, the central notion that links law, music, and drama together is the idea of the text. To what extent are there genuine choreographic texts, in "Labanotation" or some other system of writing, that dancers can work from, or are they dependent on other forms of transmission from the past, such as direct teaching by past performers relying on their memories or filmed performances?

b) What is the relationship between living dramatists or composers and the directors of their plays or conductors of their music? Ideally, we would have the opportunity to hear some eminent writers discuss the degree to which they attempt to control performances of their work, just as it would be very illuminating to hear directors or conductors, or individual performers offer their views of what, if anything, they want to hear from writers or composers. The eminent British dramatist Arnold Wesker is a confirmed participant, and we anticipate the participation of other playwrights as well. It is also possible that we will be able to draw on the increasingly prominent community of Austin screenwriters for their insights into the process by which texts become transformed into films and how the role of the screenwriter might be considerably different from that of the playwright.

c) What is the role of critics (or legal academics, who sometimes play similar roles) in "presenting" the works of performers to wider audiences through the aegis of the review? And how well are critics (or legal academics) performing their roles (and from whose perspective does one answer such a question)? At the end of the day, how much do, or should, performers, including judges, genuinely care about reviews? An important contemporary example with regard to the law is whether the majority of the Supreme Court should regard as significant the fact that their decision in Bush v. Gore has been condemned by hundreds of legal academics and defended by far fewer.

d) What underlies the apparent need to "adapt" classic texts for contemporary audiences? And what counts as the successful "translation" or "adaptation" of a text? The Austin community, of course, includes quite a few people who have translated works from foreign languages or otherwise adapted old works.

As already suggested, perhaps, by reference to The Merchant of Venice, a second theme will be the treatment of law within the performing arts, especially drama, film, and opera. Trial scenes are probably one of the most common staples of the dramatic arts, though, of course, there are also memorable treatments of the many ethical or moral dilemmas facing lawyers, litigants, and other participants within a legal system. Thus the panel earlier mentioned on Antigone, which will include Dean William Powers of the Law School and University of Texas Professor of Philosophy Paul Woodruff, will discuss, among other topics, the jurisprudential issues presented by the struggle between Antigone and Creon.

The final leg involves the contemporary law of the performing arts. New technologies have called forth new and often very perplexing questions about copyright, to mention only the most obvious example of the interaction of law with the performing arts. The law school will bring together some of the leading practitioners and legal academics in a program directed especially at professionals, both within Austin and elsewhere, involved in one or another of the performing arts. Already confirmed is Stanford Professor of Law Lawrence Lessig, perhaps the most prominent legal academic today writing on the complex issues posed by the Internet.

I can be reached at 512-232-1351 (office) or 512-477-6445 (home); by fax at 512-471-6988 or 512-477-6458; and by email at slevinson@mail.law.utexas.edu. Suzanne Hassler, who is in charge of the specific arrangements for the symposium, can be reached at 512-232-1100 or by email at shassler@mail.law.utexas.edu.