Playwright Stoppard: Interpretation is Relative

The interpretation of artwork is relative, playwright Tom Stoppard told a standing-room only crowd at the Science Center last night.

Stoppard, the author of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and "The Real Thing," delivered the John M. Olin Lecture in Science Center C as part of the Distiguished Lecturer Series. In the past two years, the series has hosted Richard Rodriguez and Miss Manners.

In his lecture, entitled "The Event and The Text," Stoppard who wrote the script for the movie "Brazil," contrasted opinion and taste and spoke about meaning in artwork.

He also read excerpts from a new play he finished New Year's Day called "Hapgood." The play's main characters are a spy-catcher and a Russian partical physicist who is also a double agent. "Einstein did not believe in a God who threw dice," the Russian says.

Stoppard said that taste and opinion become indistiguishable as a result of the constant effects of one's environment.

Frequently using analogies to explain his thinking, the 50-year-old artist told the crowd that when he envisions the audience reading his plays, he imagines they are holding the other half of a $10 bill that he holds in his hand. The value of the artwork is in the joining of the two halves.

"There is indeed some kind of relativistic thing going on with works of art," he said. "The associations of words, I think, are at least half the value of the currency of language."

In describing the meaning of his plays, Stoppard told the audience he feels like the traveller caught in customs with illegal contraband he didn't remember packing. "Most students are about as skeptical as most customs men," he said.

In response to a question about his political affiliation, Stoppard said, "I think I've ended up with middle class values, and I'm not going to chuck them because they are shared by a lot of people that I wouldn't be seen dead with."

Stoppard also commented about the law school. "I believe radical law is quite big here," he said. "Radical law embraces the proposition that it is difficult and misguided to pin down in absolute terms what the law says."

Stoppard's speech received frequent bursts of laughter and applause from the audience in the packed lecture hall.

"I think he's the wittiest man alive," said Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield, who runs the series.

"He's brilliant," said Kim I. Gutschow '88. But she added, "He wears a fur coat. I didn't think he'd have bad taste."

William W. Provost '88, who has directed several productions at Harvard, said he enjoyed the lecture because, "If an author doesn't know everything that is written into a text, then a director has the right to drag something out of the text that no one else has seen."