What Was the Goodwill Arts Festival?
The scale of the Goodwill Arts Festival was much larger than the athletics portion of the games. The festival featured 200 performances, participation from 35 local organizations, and had over 500,000 attendees.1 The Games themselves lasted just over two weeks, while the arts festival lasted the entire summer. A $2 million sold-out production of War and Peace was performed, along with “Other sellouts…, Le Cirque du Soleil from Montreal, Grand Kabuki Theatre from Japan, Sovremennik Theatre from Moscow, the Shostakovich Quartet, Duo, Tri-o & Tiptons, and the Gay & Lesbian Theater Festival.”2 The Goodwill Arts Festival emphasized diversity in their performances and exhibitions, going beyond the Soviet and American rivalry. In a Seattle Times article, Melinda Bargreen raved about the success of the festival, “The festival survives in indelible sounds and images in the memory, an influx of the first-rate in Soviet and international music of all kinds: ethnic, avant-garde, chamber, solo and opera. From the incantatory power of the solo flute to the cast-of-hundreds ``War and Peace'' that is still galvanizing thousands of operagoers here, the festival offered a musical feast that expanded the senses.”3 The festival brought performances and art pieces to the United States that had never been displayed outside of their home countries. At the time of Goodwill Arts Festival, it was considered a big success.