In the past few years Greg Carr, of Cambridge, MA, has emerged as one of the country's most interesting entrepreneur-philanthropists, having founded Boston Technology and developed the technology behind Prodigy Internet while endowing the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. His latest project is the founding of the Market Theater near Harvard Square. Since its opening last spring, it's been shaking up the staid Boston theater scene with productions of some very adventurous theatrical, musical and literary performances. I spoke with Carr at the Market during a recent visit to Cambridge.
You grew up in Idaho, right? Can you tell me something about your childhood?
I lived in the country just outside this small town called Idaho Falls, at the tail end of the post-World War II baby boom. I was the youngest of seven children, and we all had this prototypical barefoot-summer childhood, where all the neighborhood parents kept an eye on all the kids. We made forts in haystacks and swam in irrigation canals. It was the 60s, and my awareness of the rest of the world came through watching black-and-white tv. Every night as a small boy I'd watch Walter Cronkite announce the new death toll for Americans in Vietnam. I saw big cities as mysterious places of protests, hippies and LSD.
You started Boston Technology while you were still a student at Harvard's Kennedy School. Can you tell me about that?
When I was in graduate school I didn't feel that I had any useful skills that an employer would want. And I couldn't imagine that I'd be able to fit in within someone else's organization; I was too disorganized and neurotic. I really only had one choice, and that was to start my own company. So I formed this "entrepreneurs club" with a bunch of smart folks around Cambridge, people from Harvard, the business world and labs at MIT. We'd toss around ideas for companies. One was a brain-mapping pillow alarm clock that would monitor your brain when you slept and supposedly know exactly the best moment to wake you?right at the end of a dream, for instance. We thought everybody would be in a better mood if they were awakened in this way, and that would make a better world. Needless to say, we didn't pursue this. Eventually I teamed up with one of the MIT engineers, Scott Jones, and we started Boston Technology. We designed and sold telecommunications devices to the world's phone companies. Today that company has gone through a merger and a name change, and it has thousands of employees and over a billion dollars in annual sales. I'm still a shareholder, but I'm no longer involved in managing it.
What about your subsequent business ventures?
In 1995 I became intrigued with the explosion of the Internet and decided to bring Internet service to developing countries, partly as a business opportunity and partly for humanitarian purposes. I felt that the Internet would help improve their economies, education, healthcare and so forth. I teamed with some Kenyans and developed Africa Online, which now operates in about a dozen African countries. We also began Internet service in China as the first non-Chinese operators. In 1996 we entered the Internet business in the U.S. when we purchased Prodigy, one of the first online services. Because it was started before the Internet became a phenomenon, it wasn't compatible with the Internet, and so we had to redesign the technology and relaunch the company as Prodigy Internet. It's now one of the top five Internet companies in the U.S.
In addition to your business enterprises, you've been very active in promoting human rights. Tell me about that.
During my Internet venture in China, I saw how the Chinese censored the Internet and otherwise denied basic liberties to their people. This was the catalyst that caused me to become interested in human rights. I went back to my alma mater, Harvard's Kennedy School, and endowed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which does research and analysis into issues like preventing genocide and stopping child labor. I'm also on the board of Physicians for Human Rights. Last year I funded a PHR research project wherein some medical workers went into Afghanistan and documented the human-rights abuses being meted out to Afghani women. When a nation mistreats its own people, it's an early warning sign that they will mistreat citizens of other nations.
You've acquired the Aryan Nations headquarters in Idaho. How did this come about? What are you planning to do with it?
There's a man named Richard Butler who has lived in Northern Idaho for more than 25 years, and he's the self-proclaimed head of the Aryan Nations, the terrorist group of neo-Nazis. Their modus operandi eerily parallels Osama bin Laden's, but with extremist Christian instead of extremist Islamic ideology. Butler advocates violence and preaches that Nordic whites are the superior race, that Jews should be killed, that African-Americans are less than human and that all of this is based on teachings found in the Bible. He built a compound on 29 acres near an Idaho town called Coeur d'Alene, then recruited followers from local prisons and gave them a place to stay when they were released. In 1998 a mother and son named Victoria and Jason Keenan were innocently driving past Butler's headquarters when they were shot at and assaulted by his security guards. They sued and, in the fall of 2000, won $6 million in damages. This drove Butler into bankruptcy, and the Keenans bought the compound. I purchased it from them, and am now turning it into a peace park and working with local community leaders to create a human-rights education center nearby in Coeur d'Alene.
Let's talk about the Market Theater. How did you first get the idea for it?
In 1999 Doreen Beinhart [the wife of Bob Brustein, the director of Cambridge's American Repertory Theater] started a human-rights film series at the Kennedy School, and I became good friends with her and Bob. Then, in early 2000, Bob and I decided to stage a reading of The Diary of Anne Frank at the ART. This wasn't a staging of the play?rather, Aysan Celik, a New York actor, played Anne by reading directly from Anne's diary. Through this experience I became intrigued with the idea of opening my own theatrical space. In February of 2000 I noticed this beautiful empty building on Winthrop Square in Cambridge, and found out that it had been erected in 1908 for a Harvard men's club and actually used by them to stage drama. Soon after I learned this, I purchased the building and began the process of turning it back into a theater. Bob Brustein introduced me to Tom Cole, this talented young playwright who for eight years had worked as an assistant to David Mamet, and I asked him to join me. Fortunately for me, he agreed. He came on board in September 2000, and we then began hiring people, reading plays for our first season and, of course, watching the ongoing renovation of the building.
What was the philosophy behind the Market as you and Tom prepared to open it?
My favorite quote as to why plays ought to be produced comes from Tennessee Williams, who said that "great art stops time." It can pull us out of the rush of day-to-day activities. I like theater because its purpose is to engage the emotions, teach us something about being human. Our philosophy at the Market is to take risks with new material and new artists. As a nonprofit theater we're not trying to turn a dollar, and at times we may not please mainstream audiences. Tom and I read the plays and jointly decide which ones we'd like to produce and who ought to direct them. Then, once the play is selected, we give the director space in which to move.
Since the Market opened in March 2001, you've worked with some of the most exciting playwrights in the world?people like Robert Auletta, Charles L. Mee and Kate Robin. Are you pleased with the way things have gone so far?
Yes. One of the joys that I could not have anticipated was the immediate, real-world feedback that I received. Occasionally I would sit in the park outside the theater and try to overhear conversations as people left. I like the fact that theater gets people out of their houses and?ironically, given my past endeavors?off the Internet, into a situation where they have a communal experience with the arts. It amazes me how entire audiences can take on a single personality. Because you can't do as much visually in theater as you can with a movie, the script of a stage play seems to me more important than a screenplay is to a film. I think theater audiences are more prepared for a challenging text than movie audiences, who often want to just sit back and escape. You can't escape with a live actor standing in front of you. Instead, you have to engage with that character.
I just saw the production of The Square Root of Minus One by Peter Morris, and it's heavy stuff, the way it portrays sexual humiliation and sadism at a boys' boarding school during the 50s. What you're showing at the Market is a far cry from traditional theater. What are your thoughts on the coming season?
I happened to be having lunch with a friend on Monday, Sept. 10, and we were talking about what produces the extremist mindset in people. Among the possible causes we tossed around was the seemingly hard-wired desire that the human mind has for absolutes. Ambiguity distresses us. The notion that my perspective has some truth, but that yours might, too, is unsettling for some. And in the worst cases, as we've seen, this fear of the Other turns to hatred. Some of my favorite works of art?as is the case in The Square Root of Minus One?disconnect signs, symbols and "absolutes." I'm greatly anticipating our next two productions this fall. David Mamet will be directing Ricky Jay. After that we'll be putting on some previously unproduced short plays by Shel Silverstein.
Any other projects for the foreseeable future?
I'm building a natural history museum in my hometown with my older brother Steve, who still lives there. The museum will cover a period of time from the Pleistocene, when humans first came to the area, to the present day. We're hoping to instill in young people a love of bio-diversity and an understanding of such complex issues as global warming.
Do you anticipate expanding your artistic endeavors to New York?
One of the great pleasures that I've received from the Market thus far is meeting a collection of artists. I like to think that the Market will become a community or, at the very least, a loose collection of writers, directors, actors, designers with whom we work occasionally and in some cases regularly. That network already extends from Boston to New York. We've had a number of New York artists participate in our productions, and we will continue to do that. I doubt that we will be producing anything in New York in the near future, but I have just purchased a home there, and I intend to begin entertaining in the city as a way of developing connections and, of course, seeing friends. I hope this doesn't sound too sentimental, but after seeing the pictures of Sept. 11 and then reading the countless stories of heroism, I've fallen madly in love with New York and New Yorkers.