The literal meaning of utopia (the dictionary defines utopia as "that which does not exist") is belied by the profusion of attempts to create heaven on earth. The Leviathan, Erehwon, Das Kapital and What is to Be Done? exemplify the historic yearning for human perfectibility in the political sphere. But such attempts have seldom if ever created happiness. This roundtable will look at utopia in the light of the Lincoln Center Theater's current production of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia, which provides one of the most cogent dramatizations of the paradoxes of the utopian sensibility in the canon of dramatic literature. It's no surprise that Plato banished the poets, whose self-seeking runs counter to the needs of the Republic (and it's no surprise that Stalin imprisoned the great poets of his generation 2500 years later). What psychic and historical forces create utopian visions? How do these impulses differ from the attempt to find salvation in aesthetic and religious spheres? What properties of mind and brain impelled the great thinkers of a previous era to produce masterpieces that became blueprints for annihilation in the twentieth century?

Adrienne Baxter Bell is Assistant Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the author of George Inness and the Visionary Landscape and the editor of George Inness: Writings and Reflections on Art and Philosophy.

Anne Cattaneo (moderator) is the Dramaturg of the Lincoln Center Theater and creator and head of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors' Lab. A three term past President of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, she is the recipient of LMDA's first Lessing Award for lifetime achievement in dramaturgy.

Peter Gay is Sterling Proffessor of History Emeritus at Yale University and Director of the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture and The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud. He is the winner the National Book Award for his definitive work The Enlightenment: An Interpretation.

Robert Pippin is Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor on the Committee on Social Thought in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. An expert on German idealism, he is the author of Kant's Theory of Form, Hegel's Idealism, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem and, most recently, Henry James and Modern Moral Life.

John Rockwell is the chief dance critic of the New York Times and the former founding Director of the Lincoln Center Festival. He has served on the advisory board of the College of Letters and Sciences at U.C. Berkeley and on the Board of Overseers at Harvard University. Outsider: John Rockwell on the Arts, 1967-2006, a compilation, was recently published.

Edwin Schlossberg is the founder of ESI Design, a New York firm that produces award-winning interactive experiences for institutional and corporate clients. He is an internationally recognized designer and artist, and the author of Interactive Excellence: Defining and Developing New Standards for the Twenty-first Century.

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