The Empathy Gym

Our theatre is an empathy gym where we come to practice our powers of compassion. Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Ghandi; these are the olympic athletes of empathy. But the rest of us need to go to the gym. It’s tough to be compassionate in everyday life. We get cut off in traffic, get our purse snatched, get knocked down, our house broken into, our country is threatened. It’s tough to be empathetic. But from the darkness and anonymity of our seats, we are safe to risk entering into the lives of the characters on the other side of the proscenium. We feel what they feel, fear what they fear, love what they love, and hope for what they hope for. And along the way, with our one hundred hearts beating together in the dark, we realize that under the skin we are the same. And as we leave, we take that miraculous spirit of unity out into the world to make it better

Much as Ezekial and Jeremiah spoke to the Hebrews about imminent calamities and the moral corruption of their times, our modern playwrights speak to us. Born with ultra-sensitive antennae, they draw from their experiences, kernals of truth that most of us miss. Lost in our lives we lack the ability to see ourselves. We’re too busy living. Our playwrights distill their visions into stories that illuminate, that help us see, that give us the perspective we crave, that send us back out into our lives with renewed purpose to grow and to make our community better. Join us at SF Playhouse and help us present these important voices that speak the truths we crave.

Our theatre is an empathy gym where we come to practice our powers of compassion. Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Ghandi; these are the olympic athletes of empathy. But the rest of us need to go to the gym. It’s tough to be compassionate in everyday life. We get cut off in traffic, get our purse snatched, get knocked down, our house broken into, our country is threatened. It’s tough to be empathetic. But from the darkness and anonymity of our seats, we are safe to risk entering into the lives of the characters on the other side of the proscenium. We feel what they feel, fear what they fear, love what they love, and hope for what they hope for. And along the way, with our one hundred hearts beating together in the dark, we realize that under the skin we are the same. And as we leave, we take that miraculous spirit of unity out into the world to make it better, one play at a time.

Quote from Coraline. "How big is the soul?"

Why theatre? Theatre tackles the three big universal questions of mankind. 1.) What is the nature of our reality? 2.) How do we fit into that reality, 3.) How then shall we act?

Cormack McCarthy, in "Sunset Limited" makes a direct head-on run at question #1. What is behind our experience? What is the meaning of existence? Not much in life is possible or meaningful without an answer to this most basic question.

It is our job in theatre to pick these ancient questions up, shake the dust off them and hurl them at our audience. And hopefully as they reverberate around the room, we will all renew our curiosity and desire to ask?

Why theatre

I'm just about to start rehearsals for "The Sunset Limited," by Cormack McCarthy. I found a quote from Mr. McCarthy, author of "No Country for Old Men," "The Road," and the pulitzer winning, "Blood Meridian" He says, "I have no respect for authors who fail to deal with matters of life and death. Mr. McCarthy certainly earns his own respect in "Sunset Limited." Two men, slammed together on a subway platform, spend a few hours together in a tenement flat in NY City, in a brilliant verbal duel on the meaning of life.

Coming to grips with the misogyny in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a sobering process. It seems like every where we turn in the story, we find some woman is at the heart of the problem. Ratched, Billy's Mom, the chief's mother, Harding's wife, on and on. So, as theatre artists, how do humanize this?