A Cast of Leaders

Elias asks him how he has been personally challenged by the production of Iceman, and Spacey admits that the experience has been somewhat terrifying: "I was out of my mind to think I could tackle this play. But I don't usually do anything that doesn't scare me on some level. Sometimes, that's because it's a genre that I've never done, but most things I do because I'm daunted by them."

Hollywood, he says, is filled with people no less self-deluded than the denizens of Harry's bar. "I know a lot of actors in the movie business," he tells the students, "and I've heard a lot of them in the past seven years or so say they want to come back and do a play. And I believed that seven years ago. I don't believe it anymore. But they keep talking about it. Part of the reason they talk about it is to convince themselves that they're still in touch with what's important, that they haven't lost touch with who they were when they first started out in the theater. But they have lost touch. In fact, they don't really want it, but they're not willing to admit it. If what you want is lots of money and to be a movie star, then do it. Dedicate yourself to that. But don’t do that and at the same time say that what you really want is something else. Because that's bullshit. That to me is a pipe dream.

"Actors are always asking me questions about offers that they get: 'Should I do this?' They're conflicted about it. My answer is always 'You're conflicted because you know exactly what the right thing to do is, and you're being pulled by things that are not the right things.'"

Spacey has eyes that could peer through lead. He looks at each student as if he were taking a quick inventory of his or her soul: "The issue for you is, Are you going to do the right thing?"

This actor, who has kept an audience spellbound for more than four hours with one of the most talkative plays in the American theater (including one speech that lasts more than 19 minutes), has just three more words for the students from Duke: "Follow your heart."

Act Five: Exit Center Stage

The swans have returned. The semester ends as it began, with a production of Swan Lake. This time, the production is by the New York City Ballet. These swans are ballerinas. These swans wear tutus.

At the end of every play, there comes a moment when all of the subplots are resolved and the author reveals how each character has been transformed. Such a moment, foreshortened as it is in time, is a conceit -- a playwright's fabrication for the purpose of dramatic necessity. Like all changes in life, the transformations that these students undergo will happen offstage, in the months and years to come.

In countless MGM musicals of the 1930s and 1940s, such as Busby Berkeley's Babes on Broadway (1941), struggling teenagers-with-talent (usually played by Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland) turn to their fellow struggling teenagers-with-talent and shout, "Hey, my uncle has a barn. Let's put on a show!" The time has come for the Duke students to get out onstage and to put on their show.

"This program is about more than just teaching people to 'think out of the box,'" says Elias. "It's about applying that habit to everything you do -- to start afresh consistently. The aesthetic experience is often described as 'seeing everything through the eyes of a child.' If you can take the curiosity that you exhibit when you see a play or a painting, and apply it to management practices or to budgeting or to the design of a company, then you are the ideal kind of leader for a modern business. Not just a business, but a country: You are what Plato called a 'philosopher-king.'"

Alissa Perine, an African-American from St. Louis, is not quite sure why she came here, but she knows exactly where she has come from. "My high school was 90% black," she says. "One in five girls either was or had been pregnant. Only 30% of people went to college. Duke was a struggle for me. I spent the first year and a half just hating it. I didn't fit in socially. It was like living in a J. Crew catalog."

She joined the program to expose herself to the city, to the theater, to the opera, and to a whole bunch of white kids. "I called my mom and told her that I'm so happy, but she still doesn't know why I'm here," Alissa says. "Neither do I. I still can't put it into words."

Katie Murphy has endured her last entertainment-law class. After she had expressed what she felt was a fairly reasonable opinion on an aspect of copyright law, the attorney who teaches the course had embarrassed her in front of the entire class. "Does anybody here agree with Katie's pedantic drivel?" he asked.

"For a minute, I was totally flabbergasted," she says. This is a girl who was brought up by a good St. Louis family to be polite. This is also a girl who has not spent four months in New York City for nothing. "But then I called him a son-of-a-bitch," she says, beaming with pride.