LINDSAY B.

CUMMINGS

EMPATHY
AS DIALOGUE
IN THEATRE AND
PERFORMANCE
Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance
 Lindsay B. Cummings

Empathy as Dialogue
in Theatre and
Performance
Lindsay B. Cummings
University of Connecticut
USA

ISBN 978-1-137-59325-2 ISBN 978-1-137-59326-9 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59326-9

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of

Connecticut, and to my wonderful friends and colleagues. In particular,
thank you to Adrienne Macki Braconi, Michael Bradford, and Vincent
J. Cardinal for the mentorship and emotional support, and to my students
for their energy and enthusiasm. My gratitude, also, to the Department
of Performing and Media Arts (previously Theatre, Film, and Dance) at
Cornell University, where the ideas in this book first began to take shape.
Sara Warner was and continues to be a mentor extraordinaire. I am also
indebted to the guidance of Amy Villarejo, Philip Lorenz, J. Ellen Gainor,
and Nick Salvato. Field research for Chap. 3 was funded by the Cornell
American Studies Program, and a very early version of Chap. 4 was work-
shopped in a dissertation writing group funded by Cornell’s Society for
the Humanities. I am thankful to many people for reading chapter drafts
and talking through ideas, including Anne Beggs, Diana Looser, Aaron
C.  Thomas, Aoise Stratford, Shea Cummings, and Thomas Meacham.
Scott T.  Cummings and Erica Stevens Abbitt provided excellent edito-
rial guidance on portions of Chap. 4. Thank you to Rachel Lewis, for
always having the best reading recommendations and pushing me on to
the next project. Thanks to the Women and Theatre Program for provid-
ing mentorship and an intellectual home. Thank you to Dudley Cocke,
John Malpede, Henriëtte Brouwers, Dee Davis, Nell Fields, Robert Salyer,
Loyal Jones, and Catherine Simmonds for taking the time to speak with
me about their work and/or their participation in performances, and for
the provocative, engaging conversations we have enjoyed. My gratitude
to Elizabeth Barret and Caroline Rubens at Appalshop for all of the help

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

locating archives and interview subjects. To the University of Connecticut

Humanities Institute, particularly Michael P.  Lynch and Brendan Kane,
thank you for the invitation to present an early version of Chap. 5 in
your lunchtime lecture series. To Greg Webster and the members of Split
Knuckle Theatre, thank you for providing a place for me to play, to exer-
cise my dramaturgical muscles, and to take a much-needed break from the
book. To Anne and Diana, thanks for being with me the whole way. To
Mike, thank you for seeing me through the final stages. And to my family,
thank you for the constant support and the care packages.
Earlier versions of some chapters have been previously published as
follows: Lindsay B.  Cummings, “Reviving Feeling: Performing Robert
F. Kennedy in Kentucky,” Performance Research 16.2 (June 2011), Taylor
and Francis Ltd., reprinted by permission of Taylor and Francis Ltd.,
http://www.tandfonline.com; Lindsay B.  Cummings, “Naomi Wallace
and the Dramaturgy of Rehearsal,” in The Theatre of Naomi Wallace:
Embodied Dialogues, ed. Scott T.  Cummings and Erica Stevens Abbitt,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, reproduced with permission of Palgrave
Macmillan.
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Interruptions: Estranging Empathy 39

3 Repetitions: Empathy, Poverty, and Politics in 

Eastern Kentucky 77

4 Rehearsals: Naomi Wallace and the Labor of Empathy 123

5 Empathic Economies: Performance by Refugees

and Asylum Seekers 161

6 Conclusion 191

Bibliography 197

Index 213

vii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

During the intermission of a 2009 performance of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit

the King at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City, I overheard
an usher ask a man sitting in the row in front of me what he thought of
the character of the king. My fellow audience member replied that he did
not admire the king. In Ionesco’s play, King Berenger refuses to accept his
mortality, even as his mind, body, and kingdom crumble around him. The
usher responded, “But do you empathize with him?” His tone implied
that this was the truly important question, the ultimate litmus test for
theatrical engagement. The man answered, “Yes, I do. I have a daughter.”
Since he did not further explain his reasoning, I assume that he meant he
would not want to leave her on her own, and thus he could understand
the king’s strong desire to continue his life.
But the king in Ionesco’s play does not wish to live for the sake of oth-
ers. In fact, Berenger’s desire to live is so strong that he would choose
life even if it meant that everyone else in the world died. He wants to live
because he fears letting go, giving up power, losing himself. The man in
the audience was engaging in empathy by analogy: I have a reason to want
to live, therefore I can empathize with the character’s reason to want to
live, even if it is different from my own. Did this answer satisfy the usher’s
question? What are we actually doing when we empathize in the theatre?
Are we, as is often suggested, “putting ourselves in another’s shoes”? Are
we “feeling with” another, sharing his or her emotions? Identifying? And
what does this empathy achieve, if anything? These are the questions that
this book explores.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

L.B. Cummings, Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59326-9_1
2 L.B. CUMMINGS

Whether in the theatre or outside of it, empathy is the source of much

disagreement. In the collection Empathy and its Development (1987),
addressing psychological perspectives on the term, editors Nancy Eisenberg
and Janet Strayer call empathy “a broad, somewhat slippery concept—one
that has provoked considerable speculation, excitement, and confusion.”1
This description refers to the way in which “empathy” and the German
word it was coined to translate, Einfühlung, moved rapidly across fields
and disciplines, inspiring new and often contradictory meanings as they
went. Following German aesthetic theorist Robert Vischer’s use of the
term in an 1873 essay, Einfühlung was quickly adopted—and adapted—by
phenomenological philosophers and psychologists.2 With each new disci-
pline and theorist to take up the word, empathy acquired new dimensions
and meanings, so much so that as early as 1935, psychoanalyst Theodor
Reik asserted that empathy had come to mean so much that it was begin-
ning to mean nothing.3
Nevertheless, as the usher’s question implies, empathy does not mean
nothing—either in our society or in theatrical spectatorship. Whatever we
mean by empathy, whether we experience it or not is a question given much
import. Discussions of empathy can be found everywhere these days, from
politics to popular culture. Barack Obama used it frequently throughout his
first presidential campaign and first term in office, arguing that the United
States suffered an “empathy deficit.” He later ignited a national debate
about the role of the judiciary by declaring empathy as one of his criteria
for appointing judges.4 Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, a collection

1
Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer, eds. Empathy and its Development (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 3.
2
The term, or other forms of it, appears prior to Vischer’s usage. I discuss this history in
greater detail later in the chapter. See Henry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou,
Introduction to Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, eds.
Mallgrave and Ikonomou (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1994); Laura Hyatt Edwards, “A
brief conceptual history of Einfühlung: 18th-Century Germany to Post-World War II
U.S. Psychology,” History of Psychology 16.4 (2013), DOI: 10.1037/a0033634.
3
Reik is quoted in George W. Pigman, “Freud and the History of Empathy,” International
Journal of Psychoanalysis 76 (1995), 237.
4
Obama used the phrase “empathy deficit” on several occasions in 2006 and 2007, includ-
ing a commencement speech at Northwestern University and an interview with National
Public Radio. His inclusion of empathy as a quality he sought in a Supreme Court justice
occurred in 2009, and dominated the media surrounding his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.
After the backlash caused by the Sotomayor nomination, Obama’s use of the term decreased
notably. See “Obama to Graduates: Cultivate Empathy,” June 19, 2006, http://www.north-
 INTRODUCTION 3

of essays ruminating on the nature of empathy, was one of the most widely
celebrated non-fiction books of 2014. Empathy is now deemed essen-
tial to healthy interpersonal relationships and psychological functioning,
as evidenced by the updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders V, in which “empathy” appears far more frequently than in the
previous edition. The DSM-5 lists a lack of empathy or empathic “impair-
ment” as one of the diagnostic criteria for a range of disorders, including
antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and even
obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.5 Scholarly interest in empathy
has become increasingly prominent since the Holocaust, an event that by
purportedly confounding understanding similarly confounds empathy—
the method by which we comprehend others’ actions, feelings, and reasons.
In the current age of continuous global conflict, empathy seems to offer
a ray of hope, leading some to claim that it is our empathetic capacities that
make us human and upon which all social life and organization depend.
David Howe, social work scholar and author of Empathy: What it is and
Why it Matters (2013), writes, “Success in the social world depends on
our ability to recognise and understand, interpret and anticipate the men-
tal states and behaviour of others.”6 Consequently, “Evolution rewards

western.edu/newscenter/stories/2006/06/barack.html; “Does America Have an ‘Empathy

Deficit?”, National Public Radio, March 7, 2007, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
story.php?storyId=7755013; Peter Slevin, “Obama Makes Empathy a Requirement for
Court,” The Washington Post, May 13, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051203515.html. All articles accessed March 30,
2015.
5
The DSM-5 offers two models for diagnosing personality disorders—one following current
clinical practice and a new, “alternative” approach. The “alternative model” uses empathy far
more often as a diagnostic criterion and catalogs a range of empathic impairments beyond the
“lack of empathy” described in the older diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.
The newer model, for instance, describes the following as empathic “impairments”: “Lack of
concern for feelings, needs, or suffering of others; lack of remorse after hurting or mistreating
another”; “Preoccupation with, and sensitivity to, criticism or rejection, associated with dis-
torted inference of others’ perspective as negative”; “Compromised ability to recognize the
feelings and needs of others associated with interpersonal hypersensitivity (i.e., prone to feel
slighted or insulted)”; “excessively attuned to reactions of others, but only if perceived as rel-
evant to self; over or underestimation of own effect on others”; “Difficulty understanding and
appreciating the ideas, feelings, or behaviors of others.” American Psychiatric Association,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, http://dsm.psychiatryon-
line.org. (See, in particular, the section “Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders.”)
6
David Howe, Empathy: What it is and Why it Matters (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2013), 3.
4 L.B. CUMMINGS

the  empathic.”7 In The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of

Cruelty (2011), developmental psychologist Simon Baron Cohen similarly
cites “empathy erosion” as the source of many social ills and lauds empa-
thy as “the most valuable resource in our world.”8
Recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience, meanwhile, position
empathy not as a social skill but rather as a neurobiological fact. Mirror
neurons, so-called because they fire both when we perform an action and
when we see another perform the same action, have led many to claim
that we have an innate connection to the actions, intentions, and feel-
ings of others. Marco Iacoboni writes, “We are wired for empathy, which
should inspire us to shape our society and make it a better place to live.”9
Empathy is thus a biological fact and an aspirational goal, a sign that we
are “built” to be better, more compassionate, and more socially attuned
than we are at present. In this view, empathy is the path to our greatest
potential humanity—a rather lofty promise for a word that entered the
English language little more than a century ago.
Theatre, both professionally and academically, often takes up the call to
produce a better society through empathy. In more than one department
meeting, professional conference, and hallway conversation I have heard col-
leagues offer, as a rationale for the continued importance of theatre in the
age of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), the argument
that “we foster empathy.” This statement is often connected to others like
“we explore what it means to be human” and “we build a sense of com-
munity.” While these may sound like three distinct functions, their frequent
appearance in concert speaks to the strong association between empathy,
humanity, and community. This is the idea of empathy that Howe champi-
ons, and to which Iacoboni hopes we will aspire. These goals often position
theatre not simply as an alternative to the skills and capacities developed in
STEM disciplines, but as a corrective to the (presumed) lack of ethical, social,
and community values fostered by these disciplines. These goals are also
frequently presented, in college and university settings, in connection with
initiatives in diversity or globalism. By becoming better empathizers, we rou-
tinely argue, we will appreciate diversity and become better global citizens.

7
Ibid., 24.
8
Simon Baron Cohen, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty (New
York: Basic Books, 2011), 153, emphasis in original.
9
Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (New
York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), 268.
 INTRODUCTION 5

And yet, for all of the excitement it has provoked, empathy has inspired
an equal measure of controversy. It has been charged with promoting mis-
guided identification, perpetuating an assumption of access to the minds
of others, reinforcing power hierarchies, and encouraging an uncriti-
cal adoption of others’ viewpoints. In the Dictionary of the History of
Ideas, Charles Edward Gauss offers this unflinchingly negative summary:
“Empathy is the idea that the vital properties which we experience in or
attribute to any person or object outside of ourselves are the projections of
our own feelings and thoughts.”10 Empathy in this view always consists of
a mistaken sense of understanding. Did the audience member at Exit the
King recognize the difference between his reason to live and Berenger’s?
Who was he ultimately understanding: the character, or himself? As Amy
Shuman argues, even when empathy is not an emotional projection or
misattribution, it always involves a “transvaluing” of experience, shifting
“the personal to the more than personal (human, shared, universal).”11 In
doing so, it may change the meaning of experience, obscuring particular
details to render the experience accessible beyond its original context.
Despite these critiques, theatre is still celebrated for its ability to place
lives and situations before us, inviting us to imaginatively enter other
worlds and entertain experiences other than our own. This ability to give
a distant “other” an embodied, affective presence is what makes theatre
seem, to many, an ideal medium for encouraging empathy. Without negat-
ing the significance of embodiment, this book explores another possibility,
suggesting that theatre creates a unique situation that can help combat the
potential problems of empathy: theatre invites dialogue. Aesthetic models
of empathy imagine emotion as moving in one direction, from spectator
to aesthetic object. The most prominent critics of empathy in the theatre,
Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal, describe it as a similarly unidirectional
movement going in reverse, from stage to spectator. Theatre, however,
is always an exchange—between performers and audience members,
between performers and each other. Live theatre involves an exchange
loop that is different from reading a novel or watching a film. In those
later situations, our responses may alter as a result of our own evolving

10
Charles Edward Gauss, “Empathy,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of
Selected Pivotal Ideas, ed. Philip P.  Wiener, Vol. II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1973), 85.
11
Amy Shuman, Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 4.
6 L.B. CUMMINGS

experience of the text, but the text will never adjust itself in reaction to our
particular, individual response. A novel may address us directly (“Reader,
I married him”), and assume a dialogue in doing so, but a novel cannot
insert a “harrumph” to emphasize a point or pull a face to respond play-
fully to the audience’s laughter.12 A film cannot adjust the pace and tenor
of a speech to reach a bored spectator or hold a cue to accommodate a
collective gasp of surprise. In theatre, an actor may adjust a line delivery
or a stage manager may call a cue differently in a split second in response
to the feeling she has of a particular audience. Theatre is dynamic, shifting,
and taking shape in the moment, between all present.
To be effective in understanding others, empathy should be equally
dynamic. I am calling this type of responsive engagement “dialogic empa-
thy.” Dialogic empathy does not “arrive” at understanding, but rather
consists of a constant and open-ended engagement, responding and react-
ing to the other as actors respond to fellow actors and audience, audience
members respond to actors, and stage managers and other crew respond
to subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) shifts in pace and performance
both on stage and in the house. Few models of empathy, particularly those
that have influenced our discourse in the theatre, account for this kind of
dynamism.
In this book, I explore techniques for encouraging dialogic empathy
in the theatre, particularly theatre aimed at promoting social change or
increasing understanding for marginalized populations. In doing so, I
draw on techniques and theories from community-based and publicly
engaged performance. In these forms of theatre-making, dialogue is often
a crucial part of the process, from the workshops, interviews, and story
circles that go into play development to the talkbacks and other commu-
nity events that frequently follow performances. Dialogue is certainly easi-
est to pursue in what Richard Schechner calls the “proto-performance”
stages of training, workshop, and rehearsal and the “aftermath” stages
of critical response, archiving, and memories.13 But these stages are not
open to all who attend theatre, nor are they always utilized when available.
Many theatregoers exclusively engage in the “main” event of performance

12
This particularly famous instance of direct address in fiction is, of course, from Jane Eyre.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, ed. Beth Newman (Boston and New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1996), 437.
13
Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2nd edition (New York and
London: Routledge, 2006), 225.
 INTRODUCTION 7

itself, and any discussion of empathy in the theatre must account for this.
Thus, I am interested in how we as theatre artists can promote a more
dialogic experience of empathy in all stages of performance, opening up
the act of spectating to the more dynamic, contingent forms of engage-
ment that we are accustomed to finding in rehearsals, talkbacks, and other
para-performance times and spaces. In other words, how can we promote
a more dialogic empathy in all stages and aspects of theatre and perfor-
mance, broadly speaking?
Consequently, my focus here is on performances and texts, asking what
dramaturgical structures and performance-based techniques we can uti-
lize to help all of us—artists and audience members alike—rethink what
it means to empathize in the theatre. The performances I consider in this
book represent a range of theatrical styles and genres, from documentary
plays, to community-based performances, to more traditional theatre.
The range of performances indicates that dialogic empathy is not exclu-
sive to specific styles of performance. Likewise, the techniques I explore—
interruptions, repetitions, and rehearsals—are not limited to particular genres
or methods of artistic creation. Rather, they have the potential to work across
genres, opening moments of performance to the frisson of empathic engage-
ment. In each of the performances I discuss, I attend to when, how, and
where empathy takes place, as well as who is involved, the extent to which
the various parties are able to participate as equals, and the conditions that
influence their exchange. In this sense, I am following Patrick Anderson’s
call to “attend to the modes through which our empathies proceed” and
to “rigorously trace the ‘contact zones’ of feeling.”14 While questions of
aesthetics, intended audience, commercial v. community, and so on are all
factors influencing how empathy emerges, this book considers how artists
working in a range of styles and contexts might elicit a dialogic empathy,
thereby leading toward a more nuanced engagement with others.
The empathy I explore does not entail the transmission of thought or
affect from one subject to another, but rather a dialogue in which all par-
ties are responsive to one another. It is a provisional process that involves
thinking and feeling, imagining the other in the other’s situation, allow-
ing his or her affect to resonate with us, and communicating our inter-
pretations back to the other whenever possible for feedback. Throughout

14
Patrick Anderson, “I Feel for You,” Neoliberalism and Global Theatres: Performance
Permutations, eds. Lara D. Nielson and Patricia Ybarra (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012), 92, 93.
8 L.B. CUMMINGS

the book I will use the terms “affect” and “emotion” in association with
empathy not because they are interchangeable, but because the process
that I am describing involves both our immediate, autonomic responses to
moods and feelings (affect) and our reflective, named descriptions of those
responses (emotion).15 This process does not confuse self with other or
rely on analogies. In this kind of empathy, all subjects strive to engage one
another as equals in an exchange, open to the possibility of new thoughts
and feelings. In short, if we are to encourage empathy in the theatre then
we need to conceive of it as a process as dynamic and multi-directional as
the theatre itself. It is worth considering why the work of understanding
others has so infrequently been thought of as a dialogue. This requires a
brief history of empathy and its various meanings. To address this, we have
to begin not in the theatre, but in philosophy and aesthetic theory.

EMPATHY: A SHORT AND COMPLICATED HISTORY

Empathy, as noted above, is the translation of the German word
Einfühlung, meaning “feeling into.” It combines the prefix “ein” or
“into” with the root “–Fühlen,” or “to feel.” When versions of “–Fühlen”
first appeared in eighteenth-century Germany they encompassed a range
of connotations, from physical touch to knowing or perceiving.16 Since
its inception, then, Einfühlung has confounded distinctions between sen-
sory, affective, and cognitive modes of understanding. The concept first
appears in the work of German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, in
such texts as This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity
(1774). Herder believed that we each have our own subjective percep-
tion of the world, and he used the verb Hineinfühlen to describe how we
consider another’s historical, geographical, and cultural context in order
to understand that person’s perspective: “go into the age, into the clime,
the whole history, feel yourself into everything—only now are you on the
way toward understanding the word.”17 Two things need to be said about
Herder’s theories. The first is that, while on the surface they advocate

15
The distinctions I draw between affect and emotion are fairly widely used, but for a good
discussion of these terms see Erin Hurley, Theatre & Feeling (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010).
16
Laura Hyatt Edwards, “A brief conceptual history of Einfühlung: 18th-Century
Germany to Post-World War II U.S. Psychology,” History of Psychology 16.4 (2013), DOI:
10.1037/a0033634, 271.
17
Quoted in Laura Hyatt Edwards, 272.
 INTRODUCTION 9

a careful engagement with other cultures, they were also linked to his
strong sense of German nationalism and his notion that each nation has its
own distinct, and separate character. Thus, as Rohan D’O. Butler notes,
Herder’s ideas later contribute to the philosophical groundwork for the
Nazi Party.18 Recognizing difference can just as easily reinforce boundaries
as help us communicate across those boundaries. The second point to be
made is that, although the process Herder describes requires research and
intellectual engagement, his philosophical rival, Kant, dismissed Herder’s
theories as mere sentiment. This critique not only helped push Einfühlung
out of the discourse for nearly a century, but also likely influenced later
critical reception of the term.
And so, for a time, the notion of understanding others by “feeling into”
them was not much discussed—that is until 1873, when aesthetic theorist
Robert Vischer published “On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution
to Aesthetics.” In this essay Vischer uses a number of different words from
the root -fühlung,19 but only Einfühlung sparked interest and “radically
altered the aesthetic discussion of an era.”20 Laura Hyatt Edwards suggests
that Vischer had no knowledge of Herder’s prior use of the term.21 Vischer
was building, instead, on a debate in German aesthetic theory, which was,
at the time, primarily divided between two schools of thought: Formalists
argued that aesthetic pleasure arose from our apprehension of harmoni-
ous forms, while sensualists argued that aesthetic pleasure arose through
our emotional engagement with art objects.22 Advocating the sensualist

18
I am indebted to Patrick Anderson for this genealogy. See Anderson, 85, as well as
Rohan D’O. Butler, The Roots of National Socialism (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1942).
Butler notes that Herder understood the potential dangers of his own nationalism, and stated
that, while each nation was different, none stood above the rest as a “chosen people” (28).
19
See Ernest K.  Mundt, “Three Aspects of German Aesthetic Theory,” The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 17.3 (March 1959), 291, http://www.jstor.org/stable/427810.
20
Henry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, Introduction to Empathy, Form,
and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, eds. Mallgrave and Ikonomou (Santa
Monica: Getty Center, 1994), 22. Gustav Jahoda argues that Einfühlung, the noun, was
used before Vischer, but I cannot corroborate this. What is clear is that variations of the word
were in circulation before Vischer’s essay, which, if not responsible for coining Einfühlung,
at the very least launched it into popular usage. Gustav Jahoda, “Theodor Lipps and the Shift
from ‘Sympathy’ to ‘Empathy,’” Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences vol. 41 no. 2
(Spring 2005), 153.
21
Laura Hyatt Edwards, 274.
22
For more information on these aesthetic theories, see Mallgrave and Ikonomu, and
Mundt.
10 L.B. CUMMINGS

approach, Robert Vischer’s father, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, argued that

“we define our relation to the world, at least in part, through the symbolic
interjection of emotions into objective forms.”23 Thus, when Robert Vischer
wrote his influential essay, he was building on his father’s aesthetic theories.24
Vischer theorized Einfühlung as originating in our “intuitive invest-
ment” in the world around us.25 We seek to share our emotional lives with
our fellow human beings and to experience “reciprocal feeling”: “Only by
considering our fellow beings do we ascend to a true emotional life. This
natural love for my species is the only thing that makes it possible for me
to project myself mentally; with it, I feel not only myself but at the same
time the feelings of another being.”26 As the essay progresses, Vischer shifts
his focus from people to our relationship to nature and non-living objects,
including works of art, in which we engage in much the same way that we
engage people: “I can think my way into [an object], mediate its size with
my own, stretch and expand, bend and confine myself to it.” The process
Vischer describes is emotional and sensory/physical. Einfühlung suggests
that understanding is connected to sensorial knowledge—how we experi-
ence our bodies in the world and, by extension, other bodies, animate or
otherwise.27 As we think ourselves into objects, we are “magically trans-
formed into this other,” a process that emphasizes that we are all parts of a
larger whole.28 We do this out of “the pantheistic urge for union with the
world.”29 Through Einfühlung, we experience a larger version of ourselves.
Vischer places few limits on empathy. As long as we sense some kind of
harmony with an other—person, object, geographical feature, painting—we

23
Mallgrave and Ikonomou, 20.
24
He was building on others’ work as well. As Michael Fried explains, Diderot also wrote
about the act of viewing a painting as one of physically entering (that is, imaginatively pro-
jecting oneself into) the work of art, a process that he associated most with pastoral painting.
See Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
25
Robert Vischer, “On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics,” in
Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1983–1893, eds. Henry Francis
Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1990), 90.
26
Vischer, 103.
27
The physical resonances of empathy are retained in early psychological texts, but tend to
drop out of the discourse until they are revived in more recent, cognitive neuroscience stud-
ies. For a discussion of the body in relationship to empathy, see Susan Leigh Foster,
Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance (London and New York: Routledge,
2011).
28
Ibid., 104.
29
Ibid., 109.
 INTRODUCTION 11

can empathize with it, expanding ourselves into its borders and sensing our-
selves as part of the world beyond the boundaries of our own minds and
bodies. That sense of harmony originates in us as an urge to connect and
to be connected. Empathy is therefore an encounter motivated by our own
desire, which perhaps explains why the sense of reciprocity Vischer imagines
is the same whether he is describing empathy with a person or a painting:
The experience of communion is found not in exchange with another, but
within ourselves, whether the object of our empathy is animate or not. He
nevertheless notes that this process can lead us to attribute our own feelings to
objects, particularly to objects in nature, from which most of the examples in
his essay derive: “We have a strange knack of confusing our own feeling with
that of nature.”30 When we think of a winding road as languid or a mountain
as rising, these feelings do not originate in the objects; rather, as Vernon Lee
explains, “the rising of which we are aware is going on in us.”31
In spite of this potential confusion between our own emotional or
sensory experience and those of the object or person being observed,
Vischer’s theories were soon adopted by psychologists. The most influen-
tial of these was Theodor Lipps. Although Lipps was initially interested in
Einfühlung as an aesthetic concept, he later turned to the term because he
sought a means to explain how we understand what others think and feel
that did not rely on analogy.32 Lipps proposed this happened as a kind of
inner or mental imitation: When we see, for instance, a facial expression,
this causes “movement impulses” within us that mirror the expression and
can, in turn, reproduce that feeling in us. Or, at least, this occurs under
a rather narrow set of conditions, including our having experienced the
affect ourselves and that affect not conflicting with our “own nature.”33
The process is only “objective” or knowable in retrospect.34

30
Ibid., 107.
31
In her early writing, Lee uses the term “sympathy” to describe this idea. She later adopts
the term Einfühlung, translating it as empathy and crediting Titchener with the translation.
Vernon Lee, The Beautiful: An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1913), 62.
32
Gerald A.  Gladstein, “The Historical Roots of Contemporary Empathy Research,”
Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences vol. 20 no. 1 (January 1984).
33
These phrases are quoted by George W. Pigman. Lipps’s theory is striking in that it seems to
anticipate cognitive neuroscience and the discovery of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are so
called because the same neurons fire in response to observing an action as undertaking that
action, leading many cognitive neuroscientists to posit this automatic, inner-imitation as the basis
for empathy. I discuss the mirror neuron system in greater detail later the chapter. Pigman, 242.
34
Gladstein, 41.
12 L.B. CUMMINGS

As Lauren Wispé points out, to take Vischer’s term and describe it

as inner imitation constitutes a rather “generous” interpretation, if not a
wholesale reinvention of meaning.35 What Vischer described as a projec-
tion and expansion of the self into the other is reconceived by Lipps as a
process in which the other is first imitated within the self and then that
imitation is read back into the other. Lipps’s theories nevertheless proved
influential. His adoption of Einfühlung led directly to the English coin-
age “empathy,” made by Edward Bradford Titchener in 1909. Following
Lipps, Titchener argued that ideas are represented in our consciousness
through sensory imitation occurring “in the mind’s muscle.”36 Titchener
initially viewed this as instant and instinctive, but later expanded the con-
cept to encompass our imaginative capacity: “As we read about the forest,
we may, as it were, become the explorer; we feel for ourselves the gloom,
the silence, the humidity, the oppression, the sense of lurking danger;
everything is strange, but it is to us that strange experience has come.”37
Empathy, then, may occur in relation to any person or situation whose
sensory experiences we are able to imagine, thereby bringing foreign expe-
riences “to us.”
In the field of philosophy, Edmund Husserl was the first to consider
the notion of empathy, initially in Ideas: General Introduction to Pure
Phenomenology (1913) and later in Cartesian Meditations (1931). Our
own experience, Husserl contends, is primordially given—that is, per-
ceived or given to consciousness through our own self-awareness. Others’
experiences, on the other hand, are accessible to us only through empathy,
which he describes as the process of “analogizing apprehension” of the
other as a thinking, animate being like oneself, but not oneself.38 Husserl’s
theories on empathy were taken up by his student Edith Stein, whose dis-
sertation On the Problem of Empathy (1916) devotes considerable atten-
tion to the issues of emotional projection and identification. Stein argues

35
Lauren Wispé, “History of the Concept of Empathy,” in Empathy and its Development,
eds. Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), 20.
36
Edward Bradford Titchener, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought
Process (New York: Macmillan, 1909), 21.
37
Quoted in Wispé, 22.
38
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, Trans.
Dorion Cairns (The Hauge: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 111. Emphasis in original. Husserl
carefully qualifies the word “analogy,” noting that it is not an act of cognition, but rather a
process through which all prior encounters inform subsequent encounters.
 INTRODUCTION 13

adamantly that empathy is a cognitive process rather than the more affec-
tive one described by Vischer. For Stein, empathy involves neither emo-
tional projection nor transfer, and it maintains a clear distinction between
self and other.
Stein’s intervention into the discourse on empathy is important, as it
establishes the groundwork for the kind of dialogic empathy I describe in
the next section. Most notably, she deviates from many earlier theorists by
arguing that it is the other, not the self, who acts as the guide in empathy.
The experience of another “is primordial although I do not experience it
as primordial. In my non-primordial experience I feel, as it were, led by a
primordial one not experienced by me but still there, manifesting itself in
my non-primordial experience.”39 The other can “lead” the empathizer to
places to which he or she may not have access, thus proposing limits to our
empathetic capacities. Stein views these limits not as a failure of empathy,
but rather as an opportunity for the empathizer to recognize the need for
an expanded worldview.40 She also views empathy as more than a means of
gathering information and knowledge about others. This information, she
argues, may give us cause to reflect on our own behavior, knowledge (or
lack thereof), and orientation to the world. She calls the process of per-
ceiving ourselves through others “reiterative empathy.”41 By positioning
the empathizer as responsive to the other, and by exploring how this pro-
cess may produce the need for reflection and altered self-understanding,
Stein points the way toward a form of empathy in which information and
understanding travel in multiple directions.
In the space of a few short decades, Einfühlung/empathy transformed
from describing the urge to enter a spiritual union with other objects and
beings, to instinctive inner imitation, to a cognitive process through which
we attempt to understand how others experience the world. Both the popu-
larity of the term and its rapid metamorphosis reflect changing ideas about
both the mind and the body. Rüdiger Campe explains that empathy emerged
concurrent to major developments in psychological and philosophical the-
ory: “First, empathy relates to the embodiment of the I that is able to per-
ceive, understand, and act; and second, it underlines the circumstances that
an Ego’s perceiving, understanding, or acting presupposes a world where

39
Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltrout Stein (The Hague: M. Nijhoff,
1964), 11.
40
Ibid., 116.
41
Ibid., 89.
14 L.B. CUMMINGS

other Egos do similar things.”42 Susan Leigh Foster, meanwhile, argues

that empathy reflected changing scientific knowledge of musculature and
body, such that “it became necessary to project one’s three-dimensional
structure into the energy and action of the other.”43 As our concepts of
minds and bodies changed, we required new methods for comprehending
them. Rather than thinking of these various definitions, with their differ-
ing emphases on emotion, sensation, and cognition, as three disparate ways
of understanding others, I suggest that we consider, instead, the empathy
points to the intimate relationship between mind, body, and affect. Our
continued interest in the term may mark our ongoing need to understand
the complexity of how we experience the world and, in turn, how we begin
to conceive of how others experience the world.
The other reason why empathy arose when it did, and why it remains
relevant today, particularly in US culture, is its focus on the individual.
Whereas “sympathy,” a term widely discussed in the eighteenth century,
tended to focus on how groups of people come to share feelings and char-
acteristics, empathy shifts the focus from group to individual. David Hume
described sympathy as the process through which feelings are shared and
spread, accounting for the tendency of people in a nation to share char-
acteristics: “To this principle we ought to ascribe the great uniformity we
may observe in the humours and turn of thinking of those of the same
nation.”44 To be sure, Hume understood sympathy as a tool for under-
standing others, but it is also a tool for building a sense of similarity and
commonality.
Scholars like Susan Leigh Foster and Amit S. Rai have linked the rise
of interest in sympathy, particularly from Hume and Adam Smith, to the
rise of the British Empire and the need it precipitated to create new gov-
erning strategies and new concepts of citizenship and inclusion. Foster
writes, “The need to theorize a common ground on which one human
recognizes another…developed along with the growing awareness of cul-
tural difference brought on by colonial expansion.”45 As a mechanism that
marks the difference that it is meant to overcome (that is, the difference
between an observer and the object of his or her observation), sympathy
42
Rüdiger Campe, “An Outline for a Critical History of Fürsprache: Synegoria and
Advocacy,” Deutsche Vierteljahrs Schrift (2008), 357.
43
Foster, 217.
44
David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, eds. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 206.
45
Foster, 231.
 INTRODUCTION 15

taught members of an expanding empire both how to recognize them-

selves as part of that empire and how to identify differences within that
system of social organization. For the white, European male, whose prov-
ince it was to understand an empire, “sympathy renders the other as object
of identification, and so the other seems to be knowable, accessible, and
so appropriable.”46
Like sympathy, empathy assures us of our ability to access the experi-
ence of the other even as it marks that experience as “other.” But rather
than knitting together diverse communities into a common humanity in
the age of empire, empathy became the means by which we understood
others as psychologically unique beings in the age of bourgeois indi-
vidualism. Empathy arose when, as Foster puts it, “a newly constructed
interiority whose proclivities for repression, identification, transference,
and sublimation were just beginning to be explored and whose defining
consciousness could be fathomed only through intensive introspection.”47
The question of individual subjectivity at the heart of psychological
notions of Einfühlung mark it as a distinctly modern concept. In this age
of late-late capitalism and neoliberalism, this also means that empathy risks
shifting our focus from systemic conditions toward individual experiences.
Empathy tends to focus our attention on a single person, and on our own
responses to that person, potentially obscuring social, historical, and cul-
tural contexts in the process. If sympathy operated, potentially, as a tool
of empire, empathy may operate as a tool of global neoliberalism, separat-
ing individual experiences from the wider conditions that create them.
Understanding empathy as a dialogue does not eradicate this possibility,
but it does create the conditions through which we might pursue more
nuanced understandings of how some individuals experience the systems
that shape their lives.
In summary, empathy has remained both promising and confound-
ing largely because its various meanings—from emotional projection to
the imaginative recreation of another’s experience—remain current in
the discourse today, along with numerous others, producing endless dis-
agreement and confusion. Some argue that empathy is an instinctual affec-
tive response, some define it as cognitive, and others make a distinction
between two discrete categories of “affective empathy” and “cognitive

46
Amit S.  Rai, Rule of Sympathy: Sentiment, Race, and Power, 1750–1850 (New York:
Palgrave, 2002), 59.
47
Foster, 256.
16 L.B. CUMMINGS

empathy.” Some state that its presence indicates care and respect for oth-
ers, while others assert that it is value neutral or even invasive. As Jamison
suggests, to engage others in this intimate way may entail both “humility
and presumption.”48 Some say it can lead to altruistic behavior, while oth-
ers find no such connection. Still others use it synonymously with terms
like compassion and pity. Rather than conclude, as Reik does, that empa-
thy has come to mean nothing, I propose that these different definitions
persist because empathy, etymologically, describes not a state but a pro-
cess. That process is not clear-cut, unfolding in a neat, linear manner.49 It
is messy and complicated, like all human engagement, and it may take us
in many different directions.
In celebrating, rather decrying, empathy’s multivalent nature, I am fol-
lowing the work of Gail S. Reed, who argues that seemingly antithetical
concepts of empathy persist in psychoanalytic discourse because they are
all reflective of the analyst’s work, which entails “a synthesis of opposites.”50
Empathy, Reed posits, is active and passive, rational and mystical, intrusive
and penetrating. In this case, “synthesis” does not mean blending these
opposites so that they cancel or balance one another, but rather their co-
presence. When psychoanalysts engage in empathy, they are being both
intrusive and respectful, to varying degrees, in varying ways, at differ-
ent moments. In the theatre, spectatorial engagement can similarly range
from intrusive and judgmental to open and caring. Empathy is a perpetu-
ally evolving process that may take us in divergent and contradictory direc-
tions. This does not mean that we ought to accept any and every definition
of empathy. To do so would lead to serious confusion, beyond the confu-
sion already produced by the term. Nor does it mean that the various criti-
cisms leveled against empathy, such as its potential to be intrusive, ought

48
Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2014), 26.
49
Some theorists, like Martin L. Hoffman, have proposed that empathy occurs in different
“levels.” For Hoffman, the most “advanced” level involves a self–other distinction, as well as
a critical awareness of the other’s personality and life situation, rather than simply their
immediate situation. While I find this description of empathy helpful, I am resistant to cate-
gorizations like Hoffman’s, which distinguish levels along a scale that indicates hierarchy.
I take the position that empathy is complex and ever-shifting, and to divide it into levels or
stages oversimplifies the situation. See Martin L. Hoffman, “The Contribution of Empathy
to Justice and Moral Judgment,” in Empathy and its Development, eds. Nancy Eisenberg and
Janet Strayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 47–80.
50
Gail S.  Reed, “The Antithetical Meaning of the Term ‘Empathy’ in Psychoanalytic
Discourse,” in Empathy, eds. Joseph Lichtenberg, Melvin Bornstein, and Donald Silver
(Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1984), 20, emphasis in original.
 INTRODUCTION 17

to be accepted as part of what is “natural” to empathy. Empathy can take

many different directions, some of which may be antithetical to projects
for social change or social justice, and we have to be aware of these if we
are to make use of empathy in a responsible way. We are faced with the task
of how to do empathy well: without projecting our own emotions onto
the other, relying on analogy, or slipping into identification, and with an
openness and willingness to listen to and respond to the other. This task
begins by acknowledging both sides of the empathetic exchange.

EMPATHY AS DIALOGUE
In her 2003 cabaret performance Make Love, Karen Finley, dressed as Liza
Minnelli, recounts her experiences living in New  York City after 9/11.
The performance critiques the overwhelming and often discomfiting emo-
tional responses to 9/11 while at the same time mourning the losses of
that day. As she charts the emotional complexity of the event and its after-
math, Finley asks if empathy is possible when we are overwhelmed by our
emotions. She also questions what forms of empathy were in evidence in
the months after the twin towers fell. Of the tourists purchasing com-
memorative World Trade Center salt and pepper shakers, Finley contemp-
tuously sneers, “They had the story.”51 This comment critiques the way
in which the trauma of thousands of New Yorkers became—or seemed to
become—a nationally shared experience, as consumable and disposable as
souvenir salt and pepper shakers. In this case, to “have” the story, Finley
implies, was to not have it all, to possess only its cheap, plastic simulacra.
How often do we, as spectators in the theatre, think we “have” the
story? And how much does empathy contribute to our sense of acquisition?
Some plays, like Finley’s, challenge our interpretive acumen, reminding us
either overtly or subtly that we may not know as much as we think we do.52
Much of the time, however, we are left to our own devices when it comes
to interpreting a character’s behavior, emotions, and motivations. If we
understand empathy as one of the primary goals of theatre spectatorship
(think back to the usher’s question), might we rush to “achieve” it or to
possess some part of another’s experience without heeding warnings that

51
Make Love, Karen Finley Live (Perfect Day Films, 2004).
52
The last-minute perception shift is one way of unsettling our confidence in our interpre-
tations. Martin McDonagh uses this technique in plays like The Beauty Queen of Leenane and
The Pillowman.
18 L.B. CUMMINGS

our understanding is flawed or our empathy unwelcome? The dynamic

give and take that I have attributed to theatre does not, in itself, guarantee
a respectful, dialogic empathy. To achieve this, we have to attend to our
own motives and desires, as well as to how our engagement is received.
When I refer to empathy as a dialogue, I am drawing on the work of
dialogue studies, particularly the idea that a dialogue consists not sim-
ply of “taking turns” expressing established positions, but rather of an
engagement with an other or others through which meaning emerges.
To engage another in this way entails what Martin Buber refers to as a
“turning to” the other: “There is genuine dialogue—no matter whether
spoken or silent—where each of the participants really has in mind the
other or others in their present and particular being and turns to them
with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself
and them.”53 For Buber, genuine dialogue consists in neither attempt-
ing to force one’s perspective on another nor in passively accepting the
other’s perspective. Nor does it entail a simple statement of each party’s
position or opinion. Dialogue occurs in an open exchange in which all
parties are honest about their positions in the moment while remaining
open to new perspectives.
To participate in dialogue, then, one must be open to change. Later theo-
rists of dialogue, like Bakhtin, take this sense of contingency and indetermi-
nancy even further, arguing that meaning only emerges in the moment, in
relationship to its context.54 The sense of dialogue I am interested in is nicely
summarized by Julia T. Wood, who writes, “Dialogue is emergent (rather
than preformed), fluid (rather than static), keenly dependent on process (at
least as much as content), performative (rather than representational), and

53
Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (London: Kegan
Paul, 1947), 19.
54
I am aware that there are numerous differences between Buber and Bakhtin’s theoriza-
tions of dialogue. When dividing dialogue theorists into “camps,” Buber is generally identi-
fied as a liberal humanist, concerned with respectfully engaging others in order to reach new
understanding, while Bakhtin is categorized as a postmodernist, emphasizing the never-
ending proliferation of meaning. I nevertheless see both theorists as promoting a notion of
dialogue in which meaning and the self are contingent, emerging through exchange. For an
explanation of different schools of dialogue theory, see Stanley Deetz and Jennifer Simpson,
“Critical Organizational Dialogue: Open Formation and the Demand of ‘Otherness.’” For a
consideration of Buber’s theory as compatible with more postmodern notions of dialogue,
see Kenneth N. Cissna and Rob Anderson, “Public Dialogue and Intellectual History.” Both
essays can be found in Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies, eds. Rob
Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter, and Kenneth N. Cissna (London: Sage, 2004).
 INTRODUCTION 19

never fully finished (rather than completed).”55 A dialogic empathy, then,

is one that does not “arrive” at understanding, but rather emerges in the
moment-to-moment engagement with another.
The idea that empathy either involves or ought to involve dialogue
appears almost exclusively in psychological and psychoanalytic discourses,
where empathy always entails an engagement with an embodied, present
other, rather than an object or an abstract “ego.” Theatre also involves an
engagement between living bodies sharing the same space for a period of
time. Theatre happens, to paraphrase Peter Brook, when actors and audi-
ence occupy the same space. It happens between people. By drawing on
theories of empathy from psychology and psychoanalysis, I am not suggest-
ing that theatre becomes a place for the diagnosis and healing of mental
illness or that audiences ought to take on the role of therapist. This would
open the way for a host of potential problems, including reinforcing the
audience’s sense of interpretive authority and potentially feeding into our
cultural stigma against mental illness. Nor am I suggesting that empathy
in the theatre works in the same way that it does in psychological models,
which are premised on clinical settings. In the theatre we empathize, when
we empathize, most often with characters—fictional figures who have no
life, no emotions, and no motivations beyond what performers create for
them, and to which we have no responsibility as fellow beings.
And yet characters are brought to life by real people who invest them
with particular meaning and who are not ciphers, but rather living beings
whose in-the-moment, creative, imaginative impulses are inextricably
bound to the characters we see on stage. The way an actor brings a char-
acter to life will greatly influence how audience members feel about that
character and what they think of her. And the actor is an embodied pres-
ence to whom we have responsibility as a fellow being. I am suggesting
that we can look to psychology not to help us heal or diagnose characters
(for whom these actions are entirely pointless), but rather for clues about
how we might pursue a new understanding of empathy in the theatre,
one that encourages us to see empathy as a dynamic form of engagement,
communication, and exchange. The fact that this form of empathy is com-
plicated by the actor/character relationship is not a problem, but rather
an added layer of complexity. We cannot simply ask, “Do you empathize

55
Julia T. Wood, “Foreword: Entering into Dialogue,” in Dialogue: Theorizing Difference
in Communication Studies, eds. Rob Anderson, Leslie A.  Baxter, and Kenneth N.  Cissna
(London: Sage, 2004), xvii.
20 L.B. CUMMINGS

with this character,” but rather, “How are you responding to this charac-
ter as brought to life in this way, by this actor? What form of engagement
is happening here and now, with these people, in this theatrical moment?”
The type of empathy I am describing draws on the work of American
psychologist Carl Rogers, whose advocacy of empathy significantly
impacted the field of psychology in the mid-twentieth century. Rogers
believed that it was the client, not the therapist, who was an expert
in the client’s own experience. The therapist’s role was to help pro-
mote self-directed change, brought about through the therapist’s accep-
tance, understanding, and empathy. Rogers initially viewed empathy as
a state, but later revised his definition, describing empathy as a process
that helps clarify “felt meaning” in others: that is, how feelings produce
meaning and which feelings accompany which experiences. Because felt
meaning changes, empathy, too, must be dynamic, open, and respon-
sive: “[Empathy] means entertaining the private perceptual world of the
other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensi-
tive, moment to moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow
in this other person.”56 Although Rogers’s sense that we might be “at
home” in the perceptual world of another rings with presumptions of
access, his accompanying claim that this requires a continual awareness
of changes in the other suggests that any sense of comfort or authority
we might gain is temporary at best.57
Moreover, Rogers understood empathy as a give and take, perceiving
and then checking that perception against the client’s own understanding
of his or her experience, and then engaging again, sensitive to changes in
the other.58 This is not a simple act of understanding, but rather a multi-
directional “flow,” a continual dialogue between two or more parties as
they attempt to understand themselves and each other and as they con-
sider, imaginatively, the other’s perspective. Rather than the familiar idea
that empathy involves “putting yourself in another’s shoes,” this process
requires us to do more than simply think of how we would act if we were
in the same situation; it requires us to acknowledge at the outset that the
other is different from us, and as such might react quite differently to her

56
Carl Rogers, “Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being,” The Counseling Psychologist
vol. 5 no. 2 (1975), 4.
57
Anderson and Cissna argue that Rogers saw dialogue therapy as “at best a matter of
‘moments.’” See Anderson and Cissna, 30–31.
58
Rogers, “Empathic,” 4.
 INTRODUCTION 21

situation. Empathy as Rogers describes it is cautious, involving an awareness

that engaging another person in this way can be intrusive. And it is com-
municative, reflecting one’s own understanding back to the other for her to
consider and gauge.
I am not alone in identifying the importance of dialogue to Rogers’s
conception of empathy. In rhetoric studies, Rogers’s theories on empa-
thy led to the development of Rogerian argument, a form of argumenta-
tion in which the goal is not to convince others of their wrongness, but
rather to “establish and maintain communication as an end in itself.”59
This method acknowledges the other’s position and accepts it as valid, in
some cases, while proposing that the author’s position may be more valid
in other cases.60 Rogers also participated in a public dialogue with Martin
Buber in 1957 at the University of Michigan, as part of a conference on
dialogue. The two theorists differ on a number of points in their assess-
ment of the conditions required for dialogue, and their disagreements
are relevant to the case studies I will pursue in this book. In that con-
versation, Buber argued that the implied hierarchy of the client–therapist
relationship and the fact that the attention is entirely focused on the client
mean that real dialogue cannot occur in a therapeutic context.61 He noted,
“Neither you nor he look on your experience. The subject is exclusively he
and his experience.”62 For Buber, dialogue requires equal standing, as well
as an equal awareness of all participants’ perspectives and experiences. For
Rogers, on the other hand, dialogue is possible in moments or instances
in which structural hierarchies can be overcome through deeply invested,
mutual responsiveness.63 In the chapters that follow, I discuss perfor-
mances in which the relationship between the parties involved impacts the
possibility of empathy. In this sense, Buber is right that our social differ-
ences and the context in which we encounter one another deeply impact
our ability to engage. But like Rogers, I find the possibility of dialogue
comes in many forms—some sustained, others fleeting. Any encounter
59
Richard E.  Young, Alton L.  Becker, and Kenneth L.  Pike, Rhetoric: Discovery and
Change (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 8.
60
Ibid., 275–279.
61
Rob Anderson and Kenneth N. Cissna, The Martin Buber-Carl Rogers Dialogues: A New
Transcript with Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 41.
62
Buber in Rob Anderson and Kenneth N.  Cissna, The Martin Buber-Carl Rogers
Dialogues: A New Transcript with Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1997), 41.
63
Ibid. See Anderson and Cissna’s commentary on p. 53.
22 L.B. CUMMINGS

that produces, if only for an instant, a sense of reciprocity and communica-

tion, might open the door to deeper engagement.
The concept of empathy that I am outlining here is active and imagina-
tive, and as such differs distinctly from theories that describe empathy as
innate and instantaneous. This does not negate the fact that something in
us responds instinctively to the moods, emotions, and actions of others.
Mounting evidence suggests that this ability is the result of the mirror
neuron system. Mirror neurons, discovered in the 1980s, are neurons that
fire when we perform an action and when we see another perform that
action.64 In other words, there is a neural congruence between doing and
seeing, and also between self and other. Studies suggest that mirror neu-
rons may also play a part in helping us understand the intentions of oth-
ers when they perform actions.65 The idea that we imitate, in our brains,
the actions of others, has led many to argue that mirror neurons are the
basis of empathy.66 Mirror neurons have also inspired increased claims of
an evolutionary basis for empathy. According to this argument, without
empathy, we would not be able to form social bonds or react quickly to the
actions, intentions, and emotions of those around us.
It is true that mirror neurons have been proven to fire not just in asso-
ciation with actions, but also with emotional arousal and when reading.67
Furthermore, “those with more responsive mirror neuron systems show
greater empathy.”68 Still, many theorists remain cautious about the conclu-
sions that we can draw from this new research. David Howe points out,
“simple neurological mimicry of another’s behavior still doesn’t necessarily

64
Vittorio Gallese and George Lakoff, “The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-
Motor System in Conceptual Knowledge,” Cognitive Neuropsychology vol. 22 no. 3/4
(2005): 455–479, Academic Search Premier, DOI: 10.1080/02643290442000310, 458.
Mirror neurons do make a self-other distinction. They fire more strongly for actions per-
formed by the self than for actions observed in the other. See Marco Iacobani, Mirroring
People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Girouz, 2008), 133.
65
Iacoboni, 33–34.
66
For examples of this argument in theatre and performance studies, see, for example,
Rhonda Blair, The Actor, Image, and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience (London
and New York: Routledge, 2008); Bruce A. McConachie, “Falsifiable Theories for Theatre
and Performance Studies,” Theatre Journal 59 (2007): 553–577; and Amy Cook, “Interplay:
The Method and Potential of a Cognitive Scientific Approach to Theatre,” Theatre Journal
59 (2007): 579–594.
67
Iacoboni, 94–95.
68
Howe, 52–53.
 INTRODUCTION 23

reveal their state of mind or intention”; for that we also need to under-
stand context, personality, and an individual’s history.69 Studies also sug-
gest that mirror neurons may discriminate in favor of familiar experience.
Foster cites a study of dancers watching other dancers perform ballet and
capoeira. The results showed that “those trained in the form they were
watching had a significantly greater neural activity,” leading her to argue
that empathy (as defined by mirror neural imaging) is “a pan-human,
but highly individualized phenomenon, produced through the individu-
ally and culturally specific acts of each perceiver.”70 Although mirror neu-
rons suggest a fascinating connection between minds, they are automatic
and “pre-reflective,”71 and cannot fully account for the kind of empathy
I am pursuing here, which is cognitive, affective, and sensorial, or, more
accurately, marks the imbricated nature of thinking, feeling, and sensing.
Empathy involves the automatic and instinctive process of sensing the
other’s emotion and allowing it to “resonate” with us.72 It also entails the
cognitive process of imagining the other’s experience and emotional state
and how it impacts her experience and perspective on the world, as well as
comparing what we assess intellectually to what we are sensing affectively.73
In this process, we do not necessarily experience the same emotion as the
one with whom we are empathizing, but we allow her emotions to impact
us and we gather information from that impact, reflecting on what we are
feeling and why we are feeling it, even as we consider the other’s emo-
tional experience. Affect, emotion, bodily sensation, and critical thinking

69
Ibid., 53. Actually, some experiments have suggested that the mirror neuron system does
help us understand intention—at least on some level. See Iacoboni, 33–34.
70
Foster, 278, 279.
71
Iacoboni, 270.
72
I am grateful to the work of Jodi Halpern, a professor of Bioethics and Medical
Humanities at UC Berkley, for the term “resonate” in relation to empathy and emotional
response. See Jodi Halpern, “What is Clinical Empathy?” Journal of General Internal
Medicine 18 (Aug. 2003): 670–674, doi 10.1046/j.1525-1497.2003.21017.x, 671.
73
I am following, here, the widely used distinction between affect as an automatic, vis-
ceral, preverbal response to one’s environment and emotion as the projection or display of
feeling in a socially readable and namable way. I am also following theorists like Martha
Nussbaum, who note that empathy requires us to acknowledge the “qualitative difference”
between ourselves and another in order to understand how their reaction to events may be
different from ours, due to the particularities of culture, history, and personal experience.
See Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), particularly the section “Empathy and Compassion,”
327–342.
24 L.B. CUMMINGS

are co-present and mutually informing as we assess both the other and our
responses to her.
I have described in this section what it means to conceive of empathy as
a dialogue. As Warren Poland notes, on the difference between aesthetic
empathy and clinical empathy, “feeling one’s way into a text or painting
lacks the vital back and forth flow that arises when two [or more] living
people interact.”74 Live theatre is characterized by this back and forth flow.
Yet theatre is also different from a clinical setting, or even from empathetic
engagements we might undertake in our everyday lives. Characters are
not “real” people, and audiences are generally not permitted to inter-
rupt the play to verify the accuracy of their empathetic understanding.
Understanding empathy as a dialogic process also means attending to how
this dialogue might be limited in the theatre. As much as theatre may
pose problems for a multidirectional, fluid empathy, it can also aid this
process. The problems and the possibilities may occur in the very same
performance.

TALKING (BACK) IN THE THEATRE

In 2009, I saw Marc Bamuthi Joseph perform his solo show The Spoken
Word at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, New  York. Joseph combines
spoken-word poetry and hip-hop-influenced movement in a performance
that contemplates what it means to be black in the United States today. He
draws on his life, taking the audience through his experiences as a young
man, an academic, a performer, and a father. The performance opens with
a poem about ancestors working in cane fields, an action that Joseph reads
as a labor of faith and love for future generations that they do not yet
know—generations that they will never know.
For Joseph, this show is a ritual, a dialogue, and an exchange. He wants
to hear that the audience is with him, for us to be participants, not observ-
ers. In this particular performance, he also wants to know if his mostly
white, upstate New York audience is following his hip-hop communica-
tion. So he tries to get us to participate, to affirm: “Word, word.” It is a
secular version of “Amen” and “Tell it, Brother.” It is a confirmation not
only that we are engaged, but also that we can give something back and
not just silently consume his performance. I understand why he wants

74
Warren S. Poland, “The Limits of Empathy,” American Imago vol. 64 no. 1 (2007):
87–93, Project Muse, 90, emphasis added.
 INTRODUCTION 25

this exchange, and yet I find that I am resistant to his desires—not to his
desire to know that I am engaged, because I am. Like him, the relative
quietness of the audience bothers me. It seems incongruent to the style of
the performance, which is part slam poetry and part movement theatre.
There should be stomps and claps and comments. But “word”? As a white
woman, I am so acutely aware that his is not my word, that “word” is not
my word, that there are moments when he goes places I cannot.
About midway through the performance, he tells a story of theatre as
an offering or gift, recounting an instance when he presented his own
awkward dance—all he had to give—to a group of African villagers. He is
not talking about barter, exactly, in Eugenio Barba’s sense of the term, but
rather theatre as something you bring because you should never approach
others empty handed, especially when trying to involve yourself in their
affairs. Barba and his group, Odin Teatret, developed a “barter” approach
to intercultural performance, which Ian Watson describes as “an event in
which actions are the currency of exchange, performances of songs and
dances, displays of training exercises and techniques, even fragments from
full-length plays are transformed into commodities in barter.” Instead of
performances in exchange for currency, performance is given in exchange
for performance. It is an interaction between cultures: “Those who meet
to exchange and the dynamics of that exchange are far more important
than what is exchanged.”75 This notion is very close to what Joseph is
describing, but it is perhaps more goal-oriented, more determined to
prompt discussion and increased cultural understanding. What Joseph is
evoking, I think, has less to do with understanding through exchange than
the simple fact that, when we may have nothing else to give, we always
have our performance, and when we give each other performance we give
ourselves.
Joseph has been giving himself all night, but as he does he never lets
us forget what it means for a black man to perform for an audience in this
country. The specter of minstrelsy emerges in the shuffle of his feet, while
the tableau of the black man shooting hoops is presented in stunning still-
ness, evoking Harvey Young’s idea that the performance of stillness can
both highlight and reclaim the ways in which black bodies have been held
captive and motionless in cells, in the holds of ships, on auction blocks, or,

75
Ian Watson, “The Dynamics of Barter,” Negotiating Cultures: Eugenio Barba and the
Intercultural Debate, ed. Ian Watson (Manchester and New  York: Manchester University
Press, 2002), 94.
26 L.B. CUMMINGS

in less literal ways, in limited and limiting social roles.76 As the tableau of
shooting a basketball morphs into the image of a man picking cotton, and
then a lynched body, Joseph traces the connections between entertain-
ment, labor, and racially motivated violence. It is a reminder of the fraught
nature of his being before us, and thus, in some ways, for us.
Joseph’s performance illuminates the complexity of pursuing empa-
thy as a dialogue. His attempt to produce a response from the audience
was a form of “checking in,” seeing if we were “getting” the message he
was communicating. He was also inviting us to break the silence that the
conventions of Western theatre dictate. While his urging us to respond
in a particular way might be read as coercive, it did not feel that way to
me. Rather, it felt like a performer reaching out to the audience to gauge
our responses, asking us to provide him with feedback, encouraging us to
take part in his performance/ritual. In some ways, Joseph’s performance,
particularly his attempt to engage the audience, perfectly exemplifies the
kind of dialogic empathy I have been advocating. Yet I found myself resist-
ing the precise form of engagement he requested. It felt inappropriate to
affirm, as if in doing so I was appropriating an experience I had no right
to appropriate, even by invitation.
Should we, can we, affirm an experience that we cannot fully under-
stand? What is the difference between “responding,” and “affirming,” the
latter of which I think describes the performative action of “word.” Can
we give a “word, word,” with the understanding that the word is not our
own? Should we? What kind of dialogue is that? The philosopher Kelly
Oliver links these issues to her definition of subjectivity, which hinges on
“the ability to respond and to be responded to.”77 Responding, for Oliver,
must exceed our own experience: “We are obligated to respond to what
is beyond our comprehension, beyond recognition, because ethics is pos-
sible only beyond recognition.”78 To give this response knowing that it
is insufficient, that it operates “beyond recognition,” takes more bravery
than to give it without pausing to consider what it means to enter this

76
See Harvey Young, Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the
Black Body (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), particularly chapters two and
three. I am reminded, too, of Frank X.  Walker’s poem, “Death by Basketball,” which
describes the sport as “a dream/that kills legitimate futures” for young black men. Frank X
Walker, “Death by Basketball,” Affrilachia (Lexington, KY: Old Cove Press, 2000), 26.
77
Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2001), 91.
78
Ibid., 106.
 INTRODUCTION 27

exchange. I am reminded of Joseph and his awkward dance, his willing-

ness to give of himself even when he felt that what he had to give was
inadequate, and I wish that I had been as brave as he.
Knowing that we are engaged in a dialogue but not knowing how to
respond can be incredibly productive. It is not, however, what is usually
required of us in the theatre. Beyond feedback in the form of laughter or
applause, we are generally allowed to keep our emotional and intellectual
responses to ourselves unless we choose to share them in the form of
reviews, talkbacks, or academic essays. Except in these circumstances, no
one is likely to challenge how we understand the plot or the characters, and
thus what our responses—empathetic, critical, or otherwise—have led us
to conclude. But the empathy that, to me, has the most potential to affect
change outside of the theatrical experience is the one that, like Joseph’s
performance, compels us to share our responses in some way, expressing
them and assessing them in dialogue with others, or perhaps even just with
ourselves. This dialogue may be as simple or as complicated as verbalizing
our response in the moment of performance. We might also participate
in more formal or structured dialogues that surround performance: story
circles, post-show discussions, or even conversation with friends over din-
ner or peers in a classroom. As an internal dialogue, we might consider our
reactions to the performance and explore what prompted them, how we
feel about them, and how our in-the-moment reaction has evolved as we
look back on the experience.
It is worth noting, however, that none of the methods described above
are inherently dialogic. Post-show discussions, for example, can stimulate
nuanced, difficult engagements. They can also amount to a sequence of
people stating their reactions, with no one really engaging or listening to
one another. And people might verbalize their responses to a performance
in a way that is counterproductive to exchange: heckling, for example. In
all of our engagement and spectating, we have to assess our own openness
to others. Thinking of empathy as a dialogue shifts the question from,
“Did you empathize?” in which empathy itself is the end goal, to some-
thing like “What has the process of empathizing caused you to think, feel,
wonder, or question?” It is a dialogue that builds on the dynamic give and
take of performance and expands it, challenging us to see the phenomeno-
logical experience of performance not as a delimited experience but rather
as one part of a larger conversation.
We must expand our notion of empathy beyond the comfortable identi-
fication of similarities to encompass potentially uncomfortable, estranging
28 L.B. CUMMINGS

recognitions. After all, to embrace the absurdity of Exit the King requires
that we face the king’s extraordinary will to live, not rationalize it away
through familiar explanations from our own lives. Whether the result of a
performance is, ultimately, to acknowledge that we share the characters’
feelings depends on the play, the situation, and the person watching. But
this is not, strictly speaking, the goal of empathy. Empathy describes a pro-
cess of encounter. Where that encounter takes us depends, in part, on how
willing we are to engage in this process without knowing what the out-
come will be. As a process that may ask us to see the world and ourselves
differently, empathy might have much more in common with the theatre
of Bertolt Brecht than he or the many artists and scholars who have turned
to his work have argued.

BRECHT ON EMPATHY
Brecht’s rejection of empathy is well known and, at least in the early years
of his writing, unequivocal. Bemoaning conventional theatre, he wrote in
1929, “Our dramatic form is based on the spectator’s ability to be carried
along, identify himself, feel empathy and understand.”79 John Willet explains
that Einfühlung in Brecht’s work describes “the process by which the audi-
ence is made to identify itself with the character on the stage and actually feel
his emotions.”80 Brecht’s critique of empathy accompanies his critique of the
principle of Gesamtkunstwerk, or the “integrated work of art,” which com-
bined music, poetry, theatre, and visual art. For Brecht, this method risked
producing a sense of artistic unity that fused all aspects of the theatre, car-
rying the spectator along with it and creating the illusion that what is is and
cannot be otherwise.81 He associated empathy not with an emotional projec-
tion or even “inner imitation” that allows us to understand the other, but
rather with a passive, even hypnotizing, adoption of the character’s emotions
and point of view. The idea that empathy fuses the spectator and the charac-
ter is reminiscent of Vischer’s idea of a “pantheistic urge for union with the
world.” But whereas Vischer saw this as a spiritual sense of harmony, Brecht
viewed it as dangerous witchcraft designed to seduce us into complacency.82
79
Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. John
Willet (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 25.
80
Willet, footnote in Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 16.
81
Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 37.
82
Vischer, 109. Augusto Boal adopts this aspect of Brecht’s critique of empathy, focusing
in particular on how identification with the character deprives the spectator of the will to
 INTRODUCTION 29

It is hardly surprising that Brecht, a champion of rational thought and

dialectical analysis, should reject any connotation of spiritual mysticism
such as those associated with Vischer’s notion of empathy. Still, Brecht’s
use of Einfühlung is somewhat idiosyncratic. Most theorists who view
empathy as identificatory see this as entailing the empathizer projecting
her own emotions into another. For Brecht, however, the emotions of the
character are projected into the spectator. Art historian Juliet Koss attri-
butes this unique understanding of empathy to a thread in German aes-
thetics contemporary to Brecht’s writing, in which Einfühlung had begun
to be associated with femininity and passivity. This arose out of the long-
standing link between Einfühlung and nature, which can be traced back
to Vischer. In 1908, Karl Scheffler published Die Frau und die Kunst, in
which he argued that women’s art was characterized by empathy, natural-
ism, and imitation. Women were depicted as passive copyists of nature, not
creators of original thought or work, and thus empathy was associated not
only with nature and the feminine, but also with mimetic art (or mimetic,
that is, Aristotelian theatre).83 Brecht was likely aware of this current of
thought, as evidenced by the fact that he not only associates empathy with
passivity, but also frequently characterizes it as a feminizing position in
which the spectator is penetrated by the affect of the stage.
For Brecht, empathy consisted of emotional identification without
thought. He did not reject emotion in the theatre, nor did he believe that
emotion could not accompany thought. He believed, rather, that one par-
ticular kind of emotional engagement—empathy—thwarted thought. His
elaboration on the role of emotion in the theatre is perhaps best expressed
in The Messingkauf Dialogues, written between 1939 and 1955, in which
the Philosopher, Brecht’s mouthpiece, describes emotions as generative of
thinking.84 The Philosopher argues that the audience needs to see characters

act: “the spectator assumes a passive attitude and delegates the power of action to the char-
acter. Since the character resembles us (as Aristotle indicated), we live vicariously all his
stage experiences. Without acting, we feel that we are acting. We love and hate when the
character loves and hates.” Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. Charles A. and
Maria-Odilia Leal McBride (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985), 34.
83
Juliet Koss, “On the Limits of Empathy,” Art Bulletin vol. 88 no. 1 (2006), stable URL
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067229, 150.
84
While it is often claimed that the Short Organum summarized the work of The Messingkauf
Dialogues, there is much included in the Dialogues that does not appear in the Organum,
including extensive discussion on the place of emotions in Brecht’s theatre. For further dis-
cussion on the writing of The Messingkauf Dialogues and its place in Brecht’ oeuvre, see Mary
30 L.B. CUMMINGS

as “shifting raw material, unformed and undefined, that can surprise them,”
because “It’s only when confronted by such characters that [the audience]
will practise true thinking; that is to say thinking that is conditioned by
self-interest, and introduced and accompanied by feelings, a kind of thinking
that displays every state of awareness, clarity, and effectiveness.”85 In this
formulation, thinking is only complete when accompanied by feeling. Later
in the Dialogues, the Philosopher asks, “Why should I want to knock out
the whole realm of guessing, dreaming, and feeling? People do tackle social
problems in these ways … One thinks feelings and one feels thoughtfully.”86
The problem for Brecht arises when guessing, dreaming, and feeling fail to
lead to thinking, knowing, and planning. This happens, he asserts, when
empathy occurs, prompting him to claim, “Only one out of many possible
sources of emotion needs to be left unused, or at least treated as a subsid-
iary source—empathy.”87 If empathy is to occur in the theatre, he argues, it
should do so only when it operates within a dialectic, serving as a counter-
point to estrangement: “The contradiction between empathy and detach-
ment is made stronger and becomes an element of the performance.”88
If we understand empathy not as identification or emotional contagion,
but rather as the process by which we gain insight into characters’ emotions
and points of view, then it might be completely compatible with Brechtian
dramaturgy. Empathy was originally applied to interpersonal interactions
to describe how it is that we come to understand others’ experience of the
world, and we would do well to attempt to hold on to this thread of its his-
tory even as we allow for variation in how this might happen. If, as I have
outlined here, we understand empathy as an imaginative and affective pro-
cess through which we attempt to understand others, which does not rely
on analogy or identification, then it is entirely compatible with Brecht’s
theories. This being stated, it is also the case that we have to attend care-
fully to how this kind of empathy might function in politically oriented
theatre and theatre for social change. While Brecht may have been wrong
that empathy thwarts thought, and consequently action, it does not neces-
sarily follow that it compels action, despite what many have claimed.

Luckhurst, Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2006.
85
Brecht, The Messingkauf Dialogues, ed. and trans. John Willet (London: Methuen
Drama, 1965), 47, emphasis added.
86
Ibid., 88, emphasis added.
87
Ibid., 50.
88
Ibid., 100.
 INTRODUCTION 31

EMPATHY IN POLITICAL THEATRE AND THEATRE

FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, co-creators of The Exonerated (2003), a doc-
umentary play about death-row inmates who are proven innocent, offer
one of the most oft-provided rationales for the importance of empathy:

Narrative theater asks us to stand inside, to identify with the characters at

the heart of the story, to see those characters in ourselves and ourselves in
them…. When we empathize, the wall between self and other, between us
and them, begins to disintegrate. We can no longer view the other as an
abstraction or an object—we have to experience the other as human; as
human as ourselves.89

Like Brecht, Blank and Jensen equate empathy with identification, but
conclude that such identification is necessary to seeing the other as human,
and thus worthy of care, concern, respect, and justice. As has already
been stated, this form of identification can erase important differences—
differences that may be crucial to understanding the other’s situation and
how she experiences it.
Even if empathy avoids identification and helps us understand the
other’s point of view, does it necessarily motivate us to take action on
his or her behalf? Psychologists and social scientists are deeply divided
as to whether or not empathy motivates “prosocial” behavior (behavior
intended to benefit others). While Howe asserts that “Empathy allows
for human kindness,” Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer are far more
cautious, stating, “[T]he relationship between empathy and prosocial
behavior is neither direct nor inevitable. Many factors must be considered
when one is attempting to predict the relation between the two.”90 Paul
Bloom, a professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, notes that
empathy has significant limits: We are more inclined to empathize with
people we find attractive and “those who look like us or share our ethnic
or national background.” Furthermore, because it focuses on individual
narratives, it does not function in regard to groups or statics.91 Some

89
Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, “The Uses of Empathy: Theatre and the Real World,”
Theatre History Studies 25 (2005), EBSCOhost, 19.
90
Howe, 18; Eisenberg and Strayer, 11.
91
Paul Bloom, “Against Empathy,” Boston Review, September 10, 2014, http://boston-
review.net/forum/paul-bloom-against-empathy, accessed April 1, 2015.
32 L.B. CUMMINGS

studies have shown that people are less likely to empathize if they antici-
pate that their empathy will cost them time or money, suggesting that our
feelings about taking action may influence our empathy, not vice versa.92
Still others note that empathy, particularly when defined as perceiving
what another feels, might be used in exploitative ways: “The con man,
the demagogue, the exploiter, and the sadist all function best when their
empathic skills are sharp.”93
Empathy, when defined as a dialogic process aimed at understand-
ing how the other experiences her situation, is potentially value neutral.
Allowing the other’s experience to resonate with us affectively is likely to
produce a response in us that gives the experience value, but that value
may be positive or negative: that is, our affective responses may indicate
feelings in support of the other or against them. This is why an attitude
of openness, or what Rogers describes as “a real willingness for this other
person to be what he is,” is crucial to the continuation of dialogue.94
This does not mean resisting negative responses, but rather being aware of
them without allowing them to forestall the engagement. We have to be
honest with ourselves and others.
Pro-empathy arguments, like the one offered by Blank and Jensen,
often assume that we can only recognize others as human when we see
them as like us. Although it is true that identifying similarities can make
empathy stronger, when we focus on what we share alone we are see-
ing only part of a larger, more complex picture.95 Even if we leave aside,
for a moment, the possibility that our sense of similarity or kinship with
the other might be premised on a faulty understanding of her and her

92
I am referring here to a study conducted by psychologist Daniel Batson, as well as a
follow-up by Daryl Cameron and Keith Payne. These studies are referenced in Daryl
Cameron, Michael Inzlicht, and William A. Cunningham, “Empathy is Actually a Choice,”
The New York Times, July 10, 2015.
93
Poland, 89. While the DSM V does introduce empathy as one of the diagnostic criteria
for antisocial personality disorder, some studies have questioned this link. See Bloom,
“Against Empathy.”
94
Rogers quoted in Anderson and Cissna, 30.
95
Numerous studies suggest that people empathize with those they find similar to them-
selves, or who they are encouraged to see as similar to themselves. These studies are some-
what problematic in that they tend to equate a heightened sense of vicarious emotion with
greater empathy, leading to an understanding of empathy that is more or less synonymous
with compassion. See, for example, C.  Daniel Batson, The Altruism Question: Toward a
Social-Psychological Answer (Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum, 1991); or Dennis Krebs, “Empathy
and Altruism,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32.6 (1975): 1134–1146.
 INTRODUCTION 33

situation, it is a self-centered way to engage: using one’s own responses

as a barometer for humanity and, in turn, as the determining factor in
whether or not another should be treated justly. As Wood points out in
regard to dialogue, “The search for (and belief in) common ground may
thwart, rather than facilitate, genuine dialogue, because almost inevitably
the dominant culture defines what ground is common and legitimate.”96
In a non-dialogic empathy, the empathizer is allowed to seek similarities
and common ground, determining what values and experiences merit the
appellation “human.”
We have to unlearn the method of empathizing by identifying similari-
ties or making analogies and pursue, in its place, a method of empathiz-
ing by engaging the other, imagining his or her situation, and seeking
verification of one’s interpretations through dialogue and feedback. To
empathize in this way means that, rather than latching on to what strikes
us as similar in the other, we remain as receptive as possible to our sense
of both similarities and differences. This relearning also requires us to see
empathy’s role in a political theatre not as making the other worthy of
concern because she is like me, or even developing feelings of kindness or
warmth toward another, but of critically expanding our understanding of
how others experience the world so that we might work collaboratively
toward solutions that benefit more people in a more democratic way.
If we are to open ourselves to the other in this way, entertaining the
other’s difference and critically examining ourselves in the process, we
must also be open to how this process might change us. By asking us
to imagine experiences radically foreign to us, empathy challenges us to
entertain thoughts that may threaten our sense of self, reminding us that
that self emerges as part of a social unit, constituted in and through other
beings. How do we achieve this kind of empathy in the theatre? How do
we as theatre artists promote empathy that is non-identificatory and self-
reflexive? As audience members, how do we avoid projecting our own
experience onto the other or relying on analogy to achieve empathy? In
short, how do we ensure that empathy, when it occurs in the theatre, is
dialogic?
In this book, I set out to answer some of these questions. In particular,
I consider how the techniques of interruption, repetition, and rehearsal
might be used within the dramaturgy of performance to provoke a more
dialogic empathy. These techniques borrow from the more obviously dia-

96
Wood, xvii.
34 L.B. CUMMINGS

logic spaces of the theatre—workshops, talkbacks, and so forth. They are

vitally important spaces where empathic dialogues may be widened and
deepened. They are also spaces where ideas are often inchoate, develop-
ing, and shifting. Through this book, I want to explore how performance
itself can become more dialogic, where ideas and feelings are imbued with
a similar sense of contingency. Each in their own way, interruptions, rep-
etitions, and rehearsals disrupt the flow of narrative, creating space for
reflection and engagement. They ask us to turn back, reexamine, and
pause, and to consider how we are engaging others even as we engage
them. My goal here is not to set out a complete theory of empathy in
the theatre, or to suggest that these are the only techniques that promote
dialogic empathy. As I have already stated, empathy is a process; it can
and will take many forms in all present. Rather, the aim of this book is
to explore how we might infuse the already dynamic experience of live
performance with even more dialogic exchange, encouraging us to favor
questions over conclusions and to reflect emotionally and critically on who
is present in our engagement, how our relationships are structured, and
how our encounter in the theatre is informed by and in turn informs rela-
tions beyond that space.
My turn to dialogue also raises questions about labor, both spectatorial
and theatrical. Empathy is usually thought of as something that audience
members feel (or do, depending on your understanding of what empa-
thy entails). Some might also think of it as part of the labor an actor
undertakes when getting into character, or in her observation of human
nature.97 Dialogic empathy moves us away from these isolated spheres
and toward a notion of theatre and performance, as, potentially, spaces
of empathic co-laboring. I use the term labor to indicate the deliberate
effort involved in this kind of engagement, as opposed to more instinctual,
pre-cognitive conceptions of the term. In a recent New York Times piece,
a group of psychologists argued that empathy is a choice, citing among
their evidence a recent study that found that, when informed that empa-
thy was a skill rather than a personality trait, study participants put forth
more effort to empathize with people of different racial backgrounds.98 I
97
For a discussion about whether or not it is possible to empathize with a character, which
is a construction developed, in part, by the actor, see the exchange between John Wesley Hill
and Rhonda Blair, “Stanislavsky and Cognitive Science,” TDR: The Drama Review 54.3
(Fall 2010): 9–11.
98
Daryl Cameron, Michael Inzlicht, and William A. Cunningham, “Empathy is Actually a
Choice,” The New York Times, Sunday Review, July 10, 2015.
 INTRODUCTION 35

am building on this notion of empathy as a set of skills or acts that can be

developed and repeated, like other forms of work.
But I also want to note that this labor, like other labor, comes with a
complex array of costs and rewards. Empathy may be emotionally difficult,
challenging our sense of self or the world. Or, as noted above, it may be
linked to fears that it will cost time or money. On the other hand, it may
make us feel good about ourselves, or emotionally connected to others.99
Because empathy is often accompanied by affective cost/benefit assess-
ments, and because our ability to empathize is always connected to wider
social value systems, I also want to connect empathy to economies, or the
management and distribution of resources—whether affective, economic,
material, or otherwise. As I will discuss later in the book, our empathic
capacities may impact our ability not only to fit into a new social or cul-
tural environment, but to earn a wage in that environment. Although I
am not arguing that empathy entails the same repetition of skills for pay
as other forms of waged labor, it is, nevertheless, deeply imbricated in sys-
tems of social, affective, cultural, and economic exchange. My interest is in
shifting our sense of empathy as the thing we exchange (that is, I feel your
suffering and respond with the gift of empathy) to the thing we produce
through exchange (that is, by engaging one another we produce empathy,
or greater understanding, which will help us work together in the future).
The chapters that follow consider how, as both spectators and artists of the
theatre, we might promote the conditions for dialogic empathy: a greater
sense of give and take; increased parity between stage and audience; a
heightened awareness of socio-historical conditions that influence each
encounter; and a shared investment in the labor of building new relation-
ships and new pathways of understanding.
In Chap. 2, “Interruptions: Estranging Empathy,” I argue that, rather
than curtailing empathy as Brecht would have it, interruptions might
encourage a more critically aware, dialogic empathy. Using Gregory
Burke’s Black Watch as a case study, I analyze how interruptions act as
a method of “talking back,” disturbing the often-monologic nature of

99
Dorian Peters and Rafael Calvo cite fMRI studies showing that compassion for the suffering
of others actually produces positive affect. They distinguish compassion from empathy, but they
also define empathy as shared emotion, and thus assume that empathy with suffering will lead
to emotional distress. My point is not that empathy is the same as compassion, but rather that a
non-identificatory view of empathy might lead to a wide range of neurochemical response—
both positive and negative. See Dorian Peters and Rafael Calvo, “Compassion vs. Empathy:
Designing for Resilience,” Interactions 21.5 (Sept. 2014): 48–53. DOI 10.1145/2647087.
36 L.B. CUMMINGS

empathic spectatorship. Based on interviews with soldiers in the Scottish

Black Watch Regiment, this play raises complicated questions about when
and how our desire for “first-hand accounts” of war might be invasive.
When our interest in another is challenged, we are forced to consider the
impact of our empathic engagement, rather than focusing exclusively on
our own thoughts and feelings. This chapter also challenges the notion
that empathy operates, ideally, by closing gaps in understanding, propos-
ing instead that interruptions may mark gaps that cannot be overcome
within the context of performance, and that require further exploration.
I focus on two intercultural performances: a collaboration between the
Appalachian Roadside Theater and the Bronx Latino/a Pregones Theater,
and a workshop production called BOP: The North Star that I attended
in Ithaca, New York, in fall 2009. Both performances suggest that inter-
ruptions need not signal the end of empathetic engagement. Rather, they
highlight the difficult work of continuing to engage others when you
encounter serious conflict. All the performances in this chapter suggest an
empathy that is never simple or “complete.”
Chapter 3, “Repetitions: Empathy, Poverty, and Politics in east-
ern Kentucky,” addresses the role of empathy in political performance,
particularly performances that attempt to circumvent dialogue through
the repetition of familiar narratives. Although repetition may act as a kind
of “shorthand,” when used in performance it might open up space for
additional voices and more complex dialogues. To pursue these ideas, I
analyze two different repetitions of Robert F.  Kennedy’s 1968 tour of
eastern Kentucky: a 2004 community-based reenactment, RFK in EKY:
The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project, directed by John Malpede in
collaboration with Appalshop, and John Edwards’s 2007 “Road to One
America” tour, part of his bid for the 2008 presidential election. I consider
how dialogue emerged in each iteration of the event: whose voices were
heard, who listened, what was said, and what kinds of empathy emerged
as a result. This chapter also addresses the role of a third-party listener,
an audience not engaged in the dialogue but nevertheless impacting its
content: in this case, the national media reporting first on Kennedy and
later on Edwards, and the national audience “listening in” via the media.
I discuss how the national understanding of Appalachia as “backwards”
impacts the possibility for Appalachians to achieve a position of parity in
dialogue. I argue that empathy is not an “effect” that can be reproduced
by simply reviving memories or repeating signs—as many politicians who
 INTRODUCTION 37

turn to the Kennedy legacy attempt to do. Empathy emerges when there
is a sense of equity and exchange between participants on all sides.
In Chap. 4, “Rehearsals: Naomi Wallace and the Labor of Empathy,”
I propose that we can look to theatrical labor—specifically the work of
rehearsal and techniques for developing a character—for examples of how
to engage in empathy that is dynamic, dialogic, and open to the other.
I analyze how Wallace includes pedagogical rehearsals in her plays In the
Heart of America and The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek. In these moments, we
see characters engaged in the work of rehearsal—exchanging ideas, nego-
tiating and analyzing potential outcomes, role-playing, and perspective-
taking. In drawing on the actor’s labor to explore empathy, I demonstrate
the way in which empathic skills can be developed, as well as the col-
laborative nature of this work, reminding us that cooperation with part-
ners is crucial. Wallace integrates the theories of Stanislavski, Brecht, and
Boal to suggest that social change requires embodied, affective rehearsal.
These rehearsals reveal that social change is not simply a matter of devising
new actions or choices, but also of emotionally preparing oneself for the
uncertainty that comes with remaking one’s world. Empathy, like acting,
involves imaginative, embodied, and affective labor. This chapter expands
on feminist Brechtian theory, suggesting that a revised understanding of
Brecht offers us not only a means of critically viewing the world, but also a
means of exploring the affective labor associated with social change.
Chapter 5, “Empathic Economies: Performance by Refugees and
Asylum Seekers,” shifts away from models for promoting dialogic empathy
to consider some of the consequences associated with empathic labor in
the theatre. Whose labor is valued, and how is that labor compensated, if
at all? Although the overall project of the book is to encourage an empathy
of equally divided labor in which all parties listen, engage, and respond,
this chapter argues that social, political, and economic factors outside the
theatre always impact the exchanges that occur inside the theatre. Thus,
this chapter shifts from a focus on specific techniques to a caution that
empathic labor is not always equally recognized or equally compensated. I
make this case by analyzing the labor of performances by and about asylum
seekers, comparing the empathic labor of asylum seekers in the theatre to
the empathic labor that they must perform in the asylum process, where
asylum claims often hinge on a good story and a convincing delivery of
that story. Although theatre is often presented as a corrective to the restric-
tive ways in which personal narratives are shaped in the asylum process,
both venues actually require similar forms of empathic labor. Using Sonja
38 L.B. CUMMINGS

Linden’s 2002 play I have before me a remarkable document given to me by

a young lady from Rwanda, I demonstrate how expectations for refugee
and asylum narratives in the theatre in turn shape the empathic and emo-
tional labor of asylum seeker performance. I  then demonstrate how this
labor can be made visible in performance, based on my analysis of Journey
of Asylum—Waiting, a community-based performance devised in 2010 by
members of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne, Australia.
We cannot fully understand the empathic engagements we participate in
unless we are able to recognize the labor that goes into that engagement.
This chapter ties together the three previous chapters by discussing how
the empathic labor of Journey of Asylum—Waiting reflects the techniques
explored in the book: interruptions, repetitions, and rehearsals.
In all of these case studies, I approach empathy not as an emotional
state to be achieved, but as a process to be collaboratively developed and
explored. While I turn to theatre and performance to identify these tech-
niques, they are useful beyond the theatrical context. What theatre, as a
practice, offers to the understanding of empathy is a sense of activity, play,
and exchange. Empathy, like performance, is something we do in the
moment, and as such we must be flexible and responsive enough to let it
take us to unexpected places. We must engage, moreover, in the labor of
empathy—labor that is self-reflective, challenging, and at times uncom-
fortable and scary. As in performance, we do not know what will happen
from one moment to the next. When we surrender to this process—not
in a passive way but in an engaged, critical, emotional, and exploratory
way—we invite new possibilities into our world.
 CHAPTER 2

Interruptions: Estranging Empathy

Cammy: What day you want tay know?

Writer: What it was like in Iraq.
Cammy: What it was fucking like?
Stewarty: Go tay fucking Baghdad if you want tay ken what it’s like.
— Gregory Burke, Black Watch

Like the Writer in the dialogue quoted above, most audience members
attending the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch have come, at
least in part, to find out “what it was like” for members of the Scottish
regiment during their deployments in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. This play,
based on interviews with former members of the Black Watch, promises a
kind of intimacy not available through more “impersonal” media accounts
of the war. In other words, it promises an opportunity to empathize. But
our curiosity, like the Writer’s in the epigraph, is rebuked. Black Watch
is replete with cautionary reminders that what we are seeing is never the
whole story and that our interest may be exploitative. Yet the play persists
in attempting to communicate these soldiers’ experiences, first encourag-
ing empathy, then interrupting it, and then encouraging it again. As audi-
ence members, we repeatedly confront our inability to know the very
thing that we have come to the theatre to learn—what it was like for the
soldiers on the ground. In the process, we are prompted to consider why
we want to know these things and what it feels like to be on the receiving
end of our empathetic curiosity.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 39

L.B. Cummings, Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59326-9_2
40 L.B. CUMMINGS

In this chapter, I explore the ways in which interruptions to empa-

thy may enhance rather than curtail dialogue, promoting a more nuanced
empathy and highlighting issues or moments that require special attention.
It may seem odd to propose that interruptions, the hallmarks of rudeness
in conversation, can produce a more respectful dialogue. But under certain
conditions, interruptions may perform a disruptive function, challenging
the hierarchies that structure communication in the theatre. If empathiz-
ers are too confident in their ability, they may proceed uncritically, without
pausing to assess their interpretations. In this context, empathy proceeds
without dialogue. An interruption may remind the empathizer to pay
closer attention to the signals and responses of the other. By establish-
ing a boundary or marking a misunderstanding, interruptions may correct
an imbalance of power, working toward the parity that makes dialogue
possible. In these situations, interruptions are communicative moments,
places where the recipient of empathy “talks back,” as it were, by mark-
ing a misinterpretation or misstep on the part of the empathizer, just as
the character Stewarty does in the passage quoted at the beginning of this
chapter: “Go tay fucking Baghdad if you want tay ken what it’s like.”1
Empathy may be interrupted when, like the Writer in Black Watch, the
empathizer oversimplifies the subject of empathy, assuming that under-
standing will be easy. Or it may be interrupted when the recipient of
empathy wants to remind the empathizer of historical injustices that can-
not be healed by a mere moment of empathetic understanding, as occurs
in performances like BETSY ! and BOP: The North Star, both discussed
later in this chapter. Interruptions may remind us that empathy is only
one way in which we engage others, not the whole of that engagement.
The gaps created by interruption may mark the need for further dia-
logue, action, or reparation; they may even mark that which can never be
repaired, but which must nonetheless be acknowledged. These moments
may challenge us to consider what it feels like to be on the other end of
the empathic exchange, which in turn calls on us to analyze ourselves in
the situation and to see the gap that interrupts our empathy as historically
and socially constructed, not as a universal limit between any two human
beings, thereby eliminating the convenient excuse, “Well, there are some
things that simply cannot be shared.” I am proposing, in other words, that

1
Gregory Burke, The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch (London: Faber and
Faber, 2007), 7.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 41

we think of dialogic empathy as a process that seeks not always to close

gaps, but to acknowledge them.
More commonly, empathy is associated with closing gaps. As discussed
in the introduction, this idea can be traced to Robert Vischer’s argument
that empathy is motivated by “the pantheistic urge for union with the
world.”2 Empathy emerges, according to this theory, out of a sense of har-
mony or similarity between self and object or self and other that inspires
the desire for union. This desire for union is, of course, predicated on a
sense of disunion. We cannot join that which is already a part of us. As Karl
F. Morrison writes, “Closure always begins with a gap, or a need.”3 Thus,
empathy is often characterized as a “bridge” over any number of divides—
ideological, historical, racial, sexual, ethnic, etc. While theorists like
Vischer and Morrison locate the urge to union in love, compassion, and a
sense of harmonic accord, others link it to the desire to dominate, master,
and consume. The history of empathy is also the history of a disagreement
over what motivates our desire to close the gap between ourselves and
others and what effects result from our attempts to do so.
Empathy’s tendency to close gaps is central to Brecht’s own critique of
the process. Brecht associates empathy with a theatrical style in which all
aspects of performance are bound together in such a way as to defy any
effort to consider them separately. Music, emotion, script, and character-
ization all merge into a single, seemingly natural whole that thwarts our
ability to conceive of alternative actions or behaviors. This type of theatre
promotes a “fusion” that “extends to the spectator, who gets thrown into
the melting pot too and becomes a passive (suffering) part of the total
work of art.”4 What we see on stage is seamlessly stitched together such
that its constructedness is rendered invisible. Epic theatre aimed to inter-
rupt the seeming cohesion of theatrical narrative, to probe its gaps and
fissures. In “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre,” Brecht rejected
conventional narrative structure, which “propel[s] the spectator down
a single track where he can look neither right nor left, up nor down.”5

2
Vischer, Robert, “On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics,” in
Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1983–1893, eds. Henry Francis
Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1990), 109.
3
Karl F.  Morrison, “I am You”: The Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature,
Theology, and Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 354.
4
Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. John
Willet (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 38.
5
Ibid., 44.
42 L.B. CUMMINGS

Brecht demanded that the theatre draw attention to its own constructed-
ness, showing the seams in meaning making.
It is this interruption of perceived unities and “truths” that has made
Brecht such a popular figure among poststructuralist theorists. In his essay
“Brecht on Discourse,” one of the earliest texts to promote a poststruc-
turalist understanding of Brecht, Roland Barthes argues that Brechtian
theatre reveals discontinuities in meaning; it “detaches the sign from its
effect.”6 Like other poststructuralist readers of Brecht, Barthes champions
epic theatre’s ability to probe the gaps and fissures in meaning-making
systems. Althusser, in fact, translated Verfremdungseffekt as “an effort of
displacement or separation.”7 The idea of displacement is similarly evoked
by Walter Benjamin, for whom interruption is the primary structuring
device of epic theatre: “[T]he truly important thing [in epic theatre]
is to discover the conditions of life. (One might say just as well: to alienate
[verfremden] them.) This discovery (alienation) of conditions takes place
through the interruption of happenings.”8
Like quotation, interruption disrupts by lifting a theatrical moment
out of the flow of narrative so that we might pause to consider it from
different perspectives. By calling attention to the spectator’s role as
interpreter and offering the audience alternatives to the action on stage,
Brechtian interruption “remind[s] us that representations are not given
but produced.”9 Or, as Fredric Jameson puts it, the Verfremdungseffekt
takes the illusion of wholeness and breaks it back up into its constituent
parts, demanding we attend to why and how the whole was constructed
to begin with: “What history has solidified into an illusion of stability and
substantiality can now be dissolved again, and reconstructed, replaced,
improved, ‘umfunktioniert.’”10 The Verfremdungseffekt severs links, inter-
rupts unities, and creates gaps.

6
Roland Barthes, “Brecht and Discourse: A Contribution to the Study of Discursivity,” in
The Rustle of Language by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1986), 213.
7
This translation is quoted in Sean Carney, Brecht and Critical Theory: Dialectics and
Contemporary Aesthetics (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 16.
8
Walter Benjamin, “What is Epic Theatre?” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans.
Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 150.
9
ElizabethWright, Postmodern Brecht: A Re-Presentation (London and New  York:
Routledge, 1989), 19.
10
Fredric Jameson, Brecht and Method (London and New York: Verso, 1998), 47.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 43

Understood in Brechtian terms, empathy and interruption are incom-

patible. Empathy involves identification, which for Brecht involves the
complete adoption of the character’s point of view. In The Messingkauf
Dialogues, he describes this process as the audience “borrow[ing] its heart
from one of the characters.”11 As his reference to the heart implies, this
identification is an emotional, not an intellectual, one. Empathy entails
feeling in accord or agreement with a character, rather than critically
recognizing similarities between the character and oneself. Empathy
overcomes gaps; estrangement creates them.12
In spite of what Brecht believed, empathy need not be an identificatory,
totalizing experience, an overwhelming wave of emotion. As discussed in
the introduction, the dialogic empathy that I am interested in is both cog-
nitive and affective, that involves the imaginative recreation of the other’s
experience, respecting always that this imaginative process is fallible and
that there is no way for us to have direct, cognitive access to another’s
thoughts and feelings.13 We must imagine, interpret, and seek to under-
stand by continually checking our responses with the other and adjusting
our process when we learn that we err. Empathy approached in this way
is not a wave that sweeps us away, but a conversation, an ebb and flow in
which thought and feeling continually evolve. It involves reflection, and
it can accommodate gaps. As such, an interruption may not put an end
to empathy. Instead, it may mark a moment, holding it up for reflection.
This is not simply a matter of a critical response that holds excess emotion
in check. Interruptions can also come in the form of sudden changes in
our affective response, or they may create the space to work through a
critical-affective shift.
While the literature on empathy is full of references to limits, these
limits tend to be treated either as ontological facts to be accepted or as

11
Brertolt Brecht, The Messingkauf Dialogues, trans. John Willet (London: Methuen,
1965), 18.
12
Johannes Türk also sees interruption as a corrective to empathy. Like Brecht, he under-
stands empathy as an emotional response that leads to identification. Türk argues that the
“interruption of empathic dynamics—and not their celebration—has been defined as the
ethical task of literature.” His case studies all have to do with either feeling too much or feel-
ing inappropriately or unadvisedly; literature, through the use of interruption, thus becomes
the corrective for excessive or misapplied emotions. See Johannes Türk, “Interruptions:
Scenes of Empathy from Aristotle to Proust,” Deutsche Vierteljahrs Schrift (2008), 448.
13
We may have some access to those thoughts and feelings in a pre-cognitive way, through
the mirror neuron system.
44 L.B. CUMMINGS

obstacles to be overcome. Psychologist Robert L. Katz asserts, for exam-

ple, that the “empathic researcher” must remain aware that “some depths
and nuances of human experience remain permanently out of the reach of
either his intellect or his feelings.”14
Text upon text instructs upon how to be a better empathizer, how
to role-play and imaginatively engage the other in order to close these
remaining gaps. But neither alternative—accepting the gaps as given or
attempting to overcome them—actually attends to the gap itself, to the
reasons why these fissures emerge when and where they do.
In what follows, I explore the gaps, attending to two different types
of interruptions to empathy. In my first example, Gregory Burke’s Black
Watch, interruptions remind us that our empathy may be presumptuous
and self-serving, challenging us to consider why we seek to empathize and
what we hope to gain from the experience. This type of interruption calls
into question the aims of theatre based on testimony and first-hand experi-
ence—theatre that, by its very nature, raises complicated questions about
empathy. When we empathize in these plays, we are potentially empathiz-
ing not with a fictional character, but with a living human being who has
agreed to share some part of his or her story with us, but who is absent
in the moment of theatrical encounter. In the final section of the chapter,
I analyze performances that interrupt empathy in order to call attention
to historical and cultural differences. These performances defy the desire
to rush too quickly to heal the wounds of racial antagonism. In these per-
formances, interruptions suggest that engaging one another empathically
requires us to acknowledge divisions and conflicts. In all of these examples,
empathy is presented as a tool in the process of both social and individual
healing, but it is not a perfect tool. And in all of these cases, the theatrical
narrative is connected to real people and communities whose stories are
shared on the stage in the hope of reaching some greater understanding,
one with repercussions beyond the walls of the theatre.

INTERRUPTING OUR DESIRES: EMPATHY IN

TESTIMONIAL-BASED THEATRE
In December 2004, in the midst of the Iraq War, the British military
announced that the Black Watch, also known as the Royal Highland
Regiment, would no longer maintain its regimental status. As a result
14
Robert L. Katz, Empathy: Its Nature and Uses (London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 20.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 45

of army reorganization, it would become a battalion within the newly

formed Royal Regiment of Scotland. This change was significant, cultur-
ally and historically, because the Black Watch had a long and famed his-
tory. The oldest Highland Regiment, it was formed in 1739. The change
in status was announced while the Black Watch was deployed, which many
considered an insult. The situation was further heightened by the fact that
the deployment itself, intended to support the US assault on Fallujah, was
highly unpopular, drawing criticism as a political move on the part of Tony
Blair’s government to come to the aid of the George W. Bush administra-
tion, which reportedly did not want to risk public opinion so close to the
2004 US elections by supplying more US troops to the cause.
Vicky Featherstone, then Artistic Director of the newly created
National Theatre of Scotland, asked playwright Gregory Burke to “follow
the story.”15 He did, and this ultimately led to the writing and devising
of Black Watch. The play was directed by John Tiffany, with movement
direction by Steven Hoggett, one of the founders of the famed Frantic
Assembly Company, and music by Davey Anderson. It premiered to much
acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006, where it won numerous
awards.16 Reviewer Owen Humphrys wrote that it “has a depth of human
knowledge and fellow feeling that makes it both real and contemporary.”17
Charlotte Higgins reported in The Guardian that it was “the play, above
all others, for which 2006 will surely be remembered.”18 After Edinburgh,
the play toured the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, before
returning to Scotland and then London.
As one of the characters in the play informs us, Black Watch’s primary
purpose is “to know … what it was like for you. For the soldiers. On the
ground.”19 The narrative shifts back and forth between scenes in Iraq and
scenes in a Fife pub in which former regiment members recount their

15
Vicky Featherstone, Introduction to The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch by
Gregory Burke (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), xiv.
16
Awards include a Scotsman Fringe First, a Herald Angel, and a Stage Award for Best
Ensemble.
17
Owen Humphrys, review of Black Watch, RUSI Journal 151.5 (Oct. 2006), 75.
Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
18
Charlotte Higgins, “Flower of Scotland: A Play that has Taken the Edinburgh Festival
by Storm Shows What a Truly National Theatre Can Do,” The Guardian, August 14, 2005,
25. Accessed via Proquest April 21, 2010.
19
Burke, Black Watch, 7.
46 L.B. CUMMINGS

experiences of the war.20 Woven into the play is the story of the deaths
of three Black Watch members. While no names are provided, the details
make it clear that the story is that of Sgt. Stuart Gray, Pte. Scott McArdle,
and Pte. Paul Lowe who, along with their Iraqi interpreter, were killed
by a suicide bomber on November 4, 2004.21 In spite of its stated aim
of communicating an “authentic” experience, however, Black Watch is
replete with cautionary reminders that what we are seeing is never the
whole story. The play suggests a kind of emotional and cognitive authen-
ticity even as it reminds us about the incompleteness of what it can achieve.
Intimacy is interrupted; truth and mediation are not mutually exclusive,
and our ability to empathize is not predicated on the need for total access
to the characters in the drama. In Black Watch, the audience repeatedly
confronts our inability to know the very thing that we have come to the
theatre to learn—what it was like for the soldiers on the ground. By inter-
rupting our empathic engagement, the play challenges us to consider why
we want to know these things and what it feels like to be on the receiving
end of our empathy and curiosity.
The idea that we need to know what it is like for soldiers “on the
ground” reflects a larger trend in our cultural attitudes toward war, a
trend that is itself entwined with the history of empathy. In the post-
World War II period in the USA, more soldiers than in previous wars
sought care for “shell shock” and combat stress fatigue, in part because
the American populace was beginning to accept mental illness as some-
thing that might happen to anyone, rather than a marker of personal
weakness or deficiency.22 Psychiatrists found themselves overwhelmed by
the needs of returning veterans, which led to a “boom” in the field of
clinical psychology. Two of the primary institutions promoting the entry
of psychologists into clinical work were the Veterans Administration and
the University of Chicago Counseling Center, run by Carl Rogers, whose
theories were discussed in the introduction. Rogers’s work on empathy
significantly influenced both veteran care and psychology more broadly.23

20
All performance references are based on my viewing of the play at St. Ann’s Warehouse
in Brooklyn, New York on November 21, 2009.
21
Humphrys, 74.
22
Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American
Society (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 40.
23
Donald Moss, “Carl Rogers, the Person-Centered Approach, and Experimental
Therapy,” in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology: A Historical and Biographical
Sourcebook, ed. Donald Moss (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 42.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 47

Rogers advocated empathy as part of what he called “client-centered”

therapy. During this period, both psychoanalysts and psychologists began
to focus more and more on individualized treatment, a shift reflecting
the popularity of humanism within psychology. Humanist psychology calls
for an understanding of the “whole person,” a subjective, individualized
approach to therapy that works from the understanding that each person
experiences his or her life in a unique way. Empathy was significant to the
humanist school because it offered a means of helping the clinician bet-
ter understand the client’s subjective experience of his or her life. Rogers
describes empathy as “entertaining the private perceptual world of the
other,” a non-judgmental process that involves frequently checking in
with the other person to determine the accuracy of one’s perceptions.24
Empathy for Rogers had dual benefits: it helped the clinician better under-
stand the client and it made the client feel understood, valued, and cared
for as an individual. “Empathy,” he writes, “gives that needed confirma-
tion that one does exist as a separate, valued person with an identity.”25
When we do not feel understood or empathized with, we may experience
a sense of rejection or isolation.
At the same time that empathy grew more popular in psychology, so,
too, did the notion that violent or “traumatic” experiences must be talked
about. Following the Vietnam War, the introduction of the new clinical
diagnosis “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” or PTSD, drew on the theory
that trauma is an unrecoverable event that cannot be overcome until one
can speak about it, using personal narrative to gain control over one’s past.
Thus, as the late twentieth century saw the continuation of war and global
conflicts rendered increasingly more immediate to the international com-
munity through satellite television and the internet, people in the Western
world developed a growing sense that what happens in war is beyond the
comprehension of those who have not shared similar experiences (a notion
linked to the increased popular awareness of the concept of trauma), and
yet deeply important for people to talk about in order to achieve healing,
and also important for us to attempt to understand (linked to the grow-
ing prevalence of the idea that both talking about trauma and obtaining
empathetic understanding are healing). On the one hand, there is some-
thing unrepresentable about what soldiers, victims of genocide, and others

24
Carl Rogers, “Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being,” The Counseling Psychologist
5.2 (1975), 4.
25
Ibid., 7.
48 L.B. CUMMINGS

who have lived through mass violence have experienced, and on the other
hand we attempt to represent it, to create opportunities for both telling
and witnessing.
It is no accident that documentary theatre experienced a resurgence in
this climate, which was also, not coincidentally, that of the emergence of
the reality television era. We are a culture obsessed with exposure, confes-
sion, and unlimited access to the lives of others, whether those others are
celebrities or soldiers. But as much as we crave access, we are also savvy to
the media’s limitations in providing it, including its ability to distance that
which it exposes. In this 24-hour news cycle dominated by social media,
when we are “closer” to events around the world than ever before, we
may yet feel that this overwhelming volume of images accessed through
electronic screens does not, in fact, bring us “closer” than before.26 This is
a conceit adopted by a great deal of documentary theatre, including Black
Watch, which mocks embedded reporting in a way that suggests that it is
the play, not the media, where we can find the real true stories of the war.27
It is not surprising, then, that John Tiffany’s original intent was to rely
primarily on stories and interview material collected from Black Watch
members, resulting in a documentary-style piece. He explains, “I  told
Greg not to go away and write a fictional drama set in Iraq, but that instead
we should try and tell the ‘real’ stories of the soldiers in their own words.
This led to Greg interviewing a group of Black Watch lads in a Fife pub
over a couple of months (thanks to our researcher Sophie Johnston), all

26
Michael Anderson and Linden Wilkinson see verbatim or documentary theatre as a cor-
rective to the age of infotainment. Where the media provides short, packaged stories and
limited viewpoints, they argue that verbatim theatre fulfills “the community’s need to hear
diverse and authentic voices, to be presented with multiple voices and perspectives, to be
informed, engaged and transformed” (167). While I agree that verbatim theatre may offer a
wider range of voices than the mainstream, commercial media, Anderson and Wilkinson
underemphasize the ways in which both mainstream media and verbatim theatre can capital-
ize on packaging of “otherness.” Michael Anderson and Linden Wilkinson, “A Resurgence
of Verbatim Theatre: Authenticity, Empathy, and Transformation,” Australian Drama
Studies 50 (2007): 167.
27
This idea is communicated, for instance, in a scene in which the character Cammy is given
instructions by his Sergeant on how to speak to a reporter: “Just smile and reassure the great
British public that you are happy in your job.” The reporter also makes Cammy re-answer a
question, “but without the swearing.” The overall impression is that the embedded reports
are being “cleaned up” for the audience at home. Gregory Burke, Black Watch, 36–38.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 49

of whom had just left the regiment.”28 This meant that rehearsals began
more or less without a script. The show did not evolve, however, as Tiffany
originally intended. Burke decided to go ahead and write fictional scenes
set in Iraq, which eventually became an important part of the story and
the play’s structure.29 In the final production, fictional scenes are mixed
with scenes inspired by or based on the interview material. Movement,
traditional regimental songs, and multi-media sequences were developed
alongside the text, resulting in a play that blends movement, music, film
projection, and conventional narrative scenes.30
The play’s “semi-documentary” status is, I argue, both crucial to its
success and indicative of the kind of empathy we want to experience in the
theatre. Later in the chapter, I will discuss how Black Watch attempts to
challenge our empathetic desires, but I will first address how its particular
generic and aesthetic choices relate to empathy. While it is unclear how
“word for word” the scenes based on interviews are, I think we should
assume that Burke has taken as free a hand with them as with his wholly
imagined scenes in Iraq. Nevertheless, the play was originally subtitled
“An Unofficial Biography of a Regiment,” and its reliance on the stories
of “real” soldiers is a selling point. David Smith, who calls the piece a
“raw, rough, thrilling piece of reportage,” celebrates Burke’s choice to

28
John Tiffany, “Director’s Note,” in The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch, by
Gregory Burke, xii.
29
Ibid.
30
The not-quite-documentary style of the play and the blending of dialogue, movement,
song, and video have prompted a host of comparisons to Joan Littlewood and the Theatre
Workshop’s Oh What a Lovely War. Tiffany, meanwhile, identifies the play’s style as particu-
larly Scottish in nature, perhaps because of the long influence that the music hall tradition
held in Scotland. We might also consider Black Watch within a genealogy of Scottish theatre
that includes the group 7:84, a theatre collective formed in the early 1970s and best known
for their first play, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (1973). Like Black Watch,
The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil was developed through a workshop process,
and drew on traditional musical forms. For a discussion of the musical and popular influences
on the development of theatre in Scotland, see David Hutchison, “Scottish Drama 1900–
1950,” The History of Scottish Literature, vol. 4, ed. Craig Cairns (Aberdeen: Aberdeen
University Press, 1987): 163–176; Fermi Folorunso, “Scottish Drama and the Popular
Tradition,” Scottish Theatre Since the Seventies, eds. Randall Stevenson and Gavin Wallace
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996): 176–185; Linda Mackenney, “The People’s
Story: 7:84 Scotland,” Scottish Theatre Since the Seventies, eds. Randall Stevenson and Gavin
Wallace (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996): 65–72. For Tiffany’s comments on
the play aesthetic, see Tiffany, “Director’s Note,” in The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black
Watch by Gregory Burke, xi.
50 L.B. CUMMINGS

let the soldiers “speak in their own words.”31 Mark Fischer similarly lauds
Burke for “giv[ing] voice to a strand of working-class experience usually
lost in the maelstrom of debate between peaceniks and warmongers.”32
Overwhelmingly, reviewers find the play respectful of the soldiers it treats,
not sentimentalizing them or villainizing them—an effect that seems to
derive, at least in part, from the interviews that provide the inspiration for
much of the text.
Other reviewers, however, praise the play for its diversions from the
more typical documentary structure of long monologues and first-person
narrative. Johann Hari of The Independent notes that, “for a moment it
seems like Black Watch will turn out to be yet another turgid work of
docu-theatre, passively recounting their stories. But, instead, it takes their
words and machine-guns them into an expressive, hellish stress-dream that
takes its audience as close to the raw terror the troops feel in Iraq as any
of us wants to go.”33 When the play returned for a second run at St. Ann’s
Warehouse in Brooklyn, Adam Green echoed Hari’s estimation that the
play has more life (and by that he means a certain aggressive masculinity)
than your typical documentary play: “This is no mere docudrama or smug
evening of, as Tiffany puts it, ‘slightly woolly, liberal pieties.’ Filled with
song, dance, stage effects, and video—not to mention savage humor,
electric ensemble acting, and language that would make David Mamet’s
teeth curl—Black Watch is some kind of masterpiece.”34 Tiffany himself
seems to echo this opinion, commenting that he finds a lot of verbatim
theatre “very dry emotionally.”35
These reviews indicate more than a critical weariness with a particu-
lar theatrical form. They tell us something about the kind of empathy
critics want to experience in the theatre—at least, in theatre about war.
This particular group of (male) critics want a visceral, physical, affective
experience—one that is coded, at least in these reviews, as masculine.

31
David Smith, “In Bed with the Boys from Fife,” London Observer, June 29, 2008: 13.
Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
32
Mark Fischer, “Fringe on a War Path: Edinburgh Takes on Violence, Religion,” Variety,
September 4–10, 2006, 38. Accessed via Proquest March 1, 2011.
33
Johann Hari, “Iraq and a Hard Place,” London Independent, August 10, 2006: 12.
Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
34
Adam Green, “Theatre of War,” Vogue 198.10 (Oct. 2008): 262. Accessed via Proquest
July 14, 2009.
35
This statement by Tiffany is quoted in “Operation Total Theatre,” by Dominic Cavendish,
London Daily Telegraph, August 23, 2006: 25. Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 51

Documentary theatre, these reviewers pronounce, is too “dry,” too mor-

alizing, too pious, too passive. Ironically, these reviewers imply that first-
person testimony is too removed from affect—or, at least, from the kind
of affective experience the reviewers desire. Black Watch manages to draw
on the legitimacy and authority of the documentary form while providing
a different kind of affective experience—one that is “thrilling.” It makes
your teeth curl (or Mamet’s teeth, according to Green). It impacts you
physically. As Charles Spencer writes, “this show makes you think hard as
well as giving a visceral sensation of what it feels like to serve under fire in
a desert war.”36 These reviews are all tinged with the sense that to be either
emotional or intellectual alone, without accompanying action, is not an
accurate representation of war. It is not masculine and also not interesting.
I do not think that these reviewers are entirely wrong about what
makes Black Watch engaging as a work of theatre. The monologue for-
mat of much verbatim theatre often eliminates two of drama’s most basic
components: action and conflict. Events described have taken place in
the past, rather than taking life on the stage, removing dramatic tension.
By relying on a more traditional dramatic structure, albeit one with a
fragmented timeline and theatrical movement that pushes the boundar-
ies of strict realism, Black Watch avoids these problems. And it is thrilling
theatre. Loud music and the use of video screens provide an immersive
experience, and Hoggett’s movement sequences often call for an aggres-
sive physicality that sometimes verges on the out-of-control, whether
those sequences show military training, soldiers fighting to relieve stress,
or more abstract expressions of anxiety and frustration. When I saw the
production at St. Ann’s Warehouse, where the audience was seated on
risers lining two sides of a long stage, my front-row seat was at stage
level. More than once I had to pull my feet under my chair out of fear
that actors running by at high speed might trip. I flinched; they did not.
This kind of physical commitment is exciting. Watching performers give
over fully to an action, particularly an action that involves risk, is a deeply
affecting experience. The fast dialogue similarly carried me along with its
energy. Like the reviewers quoted above, I was drawn into this play, in
part, because of the frisson of danger it produced in me, a feeling made
all the more acute by the fact that the characters themselves were often so
nonchalant about that danger.

36
Charles Spencer, “Searing Insights into the Horrors of Modern Warfare,” London Daily
Telegraph, June 26, 2008: 29. Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
52 L.B. CUMMINGS

The very things that made Black Watch compelling theatre, however,
are not necessarily things the play is celebrating. The reviews quoted
above laud the play’s ability to capture an authentic affective experience of
war (at least, one that the reviewers find authentic), but this authenticity
is measured by a particularly gendered set of assumptions: all soldiers are
men, masculinity is “active” while femininity is “passive,” and aggression
and fighting are active while discussion is not (that is, “passively recount-
ing … stories”). These responses risk leading us to a problematic interpre-
tation of the play, such that we might be tempted to commend its violence
rather than question it. And Black Watch does want us to question the
violence it depicts—both the military violence occurring in Iraq and the
frequently violent means through which the characters in the play man-
age their emotions. Black Watch walks a fine line between giving us the
violence that we find thrilling and questioning our desire for that violence,
and how that desire impacts the soldiers themselves. The play does this by
makings its characters conscious of the fact that their lives are being made
into a work of theatre. When they reflect on how they will be received by
the play’s eventual audience, we are made conscious of the fact that we are
that audience. And when they challenge our ability to really understand
their experiences, our own empathic capacities are similarly challenged.
At noted earlier, Black Watch takes place in two separate times and
places. The pub scenes occur in the dramatic “now” of the story, while
scenes in Iraq are set in the past. In the pub scenes, the playwright appears
as a character, calling attention to the process of interviewing and collect-
ing the stories that make up the play. The writer character is never directly
named (although a female research assistant who never appears in the play
is), appearing in the program and the printed text only under the heading
“Writer.” The play performs its origins to us in the second scene, which
also establishes the ethical issues associated in telling the story. As the actors
create a pool hall setting, Cammy, one of the former soldiers, addresses the
audience: “So where does it all begin? See, what happened was, this tasty
researcher lassie phoned us up ay. She got my name out ay the fucking
paper. She phones us up ay and says she’s a fucking researcher, a fucking
researcher for what? The fucking theatre. Wants tay find out about Iraq.
Will I talk tay her?”37 A comic scene follows in which the men await an
attractive female researcher, only to be disappointed when the male Writer
shows up. Once the men are sure that there is actually no woman coming,

37
Burke, Black Watch. 4.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 53

the Writer has to offer to pay for their drinks to keep them from walk-
ing out.38 The scene establishes early the divide between the Writer and
his subjects. As David Smith writes, Burke depicts himself as “a nervous
interviewer who … asks naive but obvious outsider’s questions about their
experiences.”39 His difference from them is marked linguistically; while the
soldiers’ speeches are all represented in phonetically reproduced Scottish
dialect, the Writer speaks the Queen’s English. In performance, the actor
portraying this character was somewhat older than the men he has come
to interview, and his argyle-print vest stood out amid the former soldiers’
casual, sporty attire, a difference in appearance that may be what motivates
one soldier to describe the Writer as a “poof.”40
Not only are we meant to recognize the “foreignness” of the writer
to his subjects, but we are also meant to see the problem inherent in the
assumption that he—or anyone—is equipped to understand and commu-
nicate these soldiers’ story to the public, and that what we are seeing now,
in the theatre, is filtered through this awkward, mis-stepping figure. The
character named Stewarty, who emerges as the play’s voice against easy
assumptions of empathy, challenges the Writer, “Go tay fucking Baghdad
if you want tay ken what it’s like,” suggesting that what the Writer has
come to learn can be obtained only through first-hand experience.41 The
line interrupts the polite banter of strangers feeling one another out,
shifting the tone of the conversation rapidly. The Writer knows he has
mis-stepped, fumbling, “No. I’m sorry,” and taking a beat to rephrase,
attempting to reestablish a rapport.42 But it is not just the writer who feels
the hitch, the awkward sense that he has trod where he is not wanted.
After all, we in the audience are likely there for much the same reason as

38
Tiffany reports that what happens in the play does not exactly match what actually
occurred. Burke was the first to attempt to make contact, but no one would talk to him, so
they sent in researcher Sophie Johnston, for whom the men showed up. The next week,
when the men returned expecting Johnston, they got Burke instead (reported in The Observer
13 April 2008).
39
Smith, “In Bed with the Boys from Fife,” 13.
40
Burke, Black Watch, 5. This depiction of the Writer is certainly open to critiques of a
clichéd version of queerness played for laughs. At the same time, I also think the play may be
asking us to recognize this reading of the character (by both the soldiers and, perhaps, our-
selves) as an act of stereotyping. In a play that interrogates the problem of understanding
others, these clumsy first impressions should, perhaps, announce themselves as just that—
clumsy, drawn from stereotypes, and incomplete.
41
Burke, Black Watch, 7.
42
Ibid.
54 L.B. CUMMINGS

the Writer: to find out what it was like for soldiers in Iraq. In that moment,
our expectations and interests, like the Writer’s, are interrupted. To dis-
suade us from taking this rebuke as a challenge to overcome, the play
reiterates the interruption in a variety of ways.
In the pub scenes, we observe how difficult it is to solicit informa-
tion from the soldiers. Burke includes long passages in which the Writer
asks litanies of questions, working to get his subjects to address the issues
he is interested in pursuing. The men’s responses often consist of single
words: succinct, frequently sarcastic, sometimes reticent. There are no
long, confessional monologues like the ones found in documentary and
verbatim plays like The Laramie Project, Fires in the Mirror, and Talking
to Terrorists.43 These men have to be coaxed to talk. Because the Writer
is interviewing many people at once, the result is one of unstructured
dialogue and disagreement, reminding us that, even when dealing with a
tightly knit community—one that Burke describes in the introduction as a
“tribe”—feelings, thoughts, and points of view differ radically.44 There is
no single experience of the Iraq War but many, some of them conflicting.
This reticence to talk is not presented simply as a trait shared by those
with combat experience, but rather as, possibly, a purposeful response to the
writer’s agenda. The men in the play are aware that there is a public appetite
for war stories and that they may be served up to satisfy that appetite. Again,
it is Stewarty who voices concerns, expressing the fear that he will be made
into a spectacle or fetish for others’ entertainment: “You want tay get off
on folk having tay kill cunts…. They’re only fucking interested if they think
they’re gonnay get some fucking dirt on you.” When Cammy responds,
with a shrug, “Well, that’s what the public want ay,” the Writer admits,
“Usually.”45 There are no platitudes assuring the men that this play will be
different, and as we sit in the audience, we may be asking ourselves, “Is this
what we want as well?” Our motives for empathizing are directly challenged.
In spite of Cammy’s nonchalance, the soldiers in Black Watch, as if
channeling Brecht, refuse to offer themselves or their stories for easy

43
Which is not to say that the people represented in these plays necessarily presented their
stories in this way. This may, instead, be the result of editing that produces the effect of a fully
formed, coherent narrative. For a further discussion of the manipulation of narrative and
individual voice in documentary theatre, see Jay Baglia and Elissa Foster’s, “Performing the
‘Really’ Real: Cultural Criticism, Representation, and Commodification in The Laramie
Project,” in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Spring 2006): 127–45.
44
Burke, “Author’s Note,” viii.
45
Burke, Black Watch, 60.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 55

empathic engagement. In The Messingkauf Dialogues, Brecht writes,

referring to himself in the third person, “His actors weren’t waiters who
must serve up the meat and have their private, personal feelings treated as
gross importunities. They were servants neither of the writer nor of the
audience.”46 The same could be said of the soldiers as they are presented
in the play. Lurking throughout Black Watch is the caution that, if we
came to get a vicarious thrill over the horrors of war, we are going to be
disappointed or, at the very least, we will not be allowed to enjoy these
stories without being reminded of our invasive desires, our potentially
self-serving interest in the private feelings of others.
Although empathy is often associated with warm, caring feelings, Black
Watch reminds us that it may not always produce such feelings in the
recipient. It may, instead, be invasive and unwanted. This is an important
reminder because, while there are extensive discussions in the literature on
empathy attending to the limits the empathizer may place on his empathy
with others, there is very little attention devoted to when, how, or why we
may wish to prevent others from empathizing with us. Karsten R. Stueber,
for instance, argues that empathy encounters “imaginative resistance” when
we cannot understand how someone who strikes us as otherwise “normal”
or “rational” could behave in a certain way.47 To seriously entertain the
other’s reasons under these circumstances would, according to Stueber,
threaten our sense of self and wellbeing.48 I cannot “go there” because
to go there would be to threaten the very “I” that engages in empathetic
simulation. Theodor Lipps described a similar situation that he referred to
as “negative Einfühlung,” in which the affect of the other is apprehended
and imitated, but ultimately rejected, usually because the other is behaving
in a way that might harm the empathizer.49 Likewise, Martin L. Hoffman
argues that our empathy may decrease if the victim is seen as a bad or

46
Brecht, Messingkauf, 66.
47
Karsten R.  Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human
Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 213.
48
Stueber is using a model of empathy as simulation, taken from cognitive neuroscience.
The instance described above relies on the “I” test: that is, would I behave the same way?
Not all theorists agree that we have to answer “yes” to this question to experience empathy,
a position I also share. As I note below, arguments like Stueber’s are part of a large body of
critical work focused on the position of the empathizer and on the need to feel safe and
secure in order to empathize.
49
See Gustav Jahoda, “Theodor Lipps and the Shift from ‘Sympathy’ to ‘Empathy,’”
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41.2 (Spring 2005): 151–163. Accessed via
ArticleFirst, June 21, 2010.
56 L.B. CUMMINGS

immoral person.50 Many scholars cite the Holocaust as the prime example
of an event that limits empathic engagement. We protect ourselves by refus-
ing to empathize. We avoid confronting uncomfortable feelings, upsetting
our sense of right and wrong, or risking our own sense of self.
But what of those who refuse our empathy, who reject our attempts to
engage, or at least call attention to the moments when that engagement
is insufficient or unwelcome? The effects of empathic engagement are not
always positive. Even Rogers, a strong advocate of empathy, warns that
psychologists must not try “to uncover feelings of which the person is
totally unaware, since this would be too threatening.”51 In psychological
cases, the client has to be the leader, the one to identify and name feelings
with help from the therapist. Rogers’s cautions inspire questions for the
theatre, where it is often difficult, if not impossible, to check the accuracy
of your empathy. And who would judge this accuracy—the actor, who,
after all, is not the character? As Stueber notes, “interpretation based on
empathy is not self-verifying,” but must be rigorously tested in life.52 Does
the generally fictional nature of theatre mean that anything we feel or think
through empathy is “right” because it is part of our subjective response
to a work of art? I don’t think that is the case. We might be wrong, and
we might take that mistaken understanding with us into future interac-
tions. If we engage in uncritical empathy with fictional characters, allow-
ing ourselves to believe in the infallibility of our empathetic capacity, do
we not risk doing the same in life? Empathy with characters always implies
empathy with their “real life” counterparts, whether this is understand-
ing the effects of patriarchy through Nora in A Doll’s House; the pain of
racial discrimination through Troy in Fences; or the difficulty reconciling
religious, political, and sexual identities through Joe in Angles in America.
This connection between fictional character and social counterparts
is both stronger and more complicated in the case of documentary or
verbatim plays, where one is potentially empathizing not with a character,
but with the “real” person whose words are being performed. Or, at least,
it may feel that way. When theatre of this sort elicits or produces empathy,
it often does so not in the name of empathy as a general human capacity,
but rather as a tool to create greater understanding of and investment in

50
Martin L. Hoffman, “The Contribution of Empathy to Justice and Moral Judgment,”
in Empathy and its Development, eds. Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 56.
51
Rogers, “Empathic,” 4.
52
Stueber, 206.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 57

a particular person or group of people. Of course, provided people are

not “playing themselves,” the mediation between the person represented
and the audience is significant, and the exchange that is happening in the
theatre might be better understood as one between actor, as both vehicle
and interpreter for the one whose words she speaks, and audience. But this
does not absolve us of our responsibility to that absent figure; rather, it
makes that responsibility more difficult. The person whose words are spo-
ken on stage cannot at this point choose to withdraw from the dialogue,
to introduce new obstacles to empathy, or to invite a deeper engagement.
In psychological or psychoanalytic settings, or even in our daily lives, a
person may invite our empathy by initiating a dialogue or sharing clues
about their affective and cognitive state. This invitation to engage may be
revoked if we abuse the process or get it horribly wrong. In the theatre,
however, characters generally do not have the luxury of disengaging or
rebuking us if they do not like how we respond or if they experience our
empathy as a violation. In verbatim theatre this “character” represents a
real person who has chosen to share her story, letting her words invite
empathic exchanges that she herself will never experience. Still, the genre’s
claims of authenticity often allow it to suggest that by empathizing with its
“characters” we are empathizing with their “real,” but nevertheless absent
counterparts. Although not a verbatim play, the characters in Black Watch
are based on real people, and we are continually reminded of this fact.
Not only that, but our interest in them and our eventual reactions to their
stories are a pressing concern for the men in the play, suggesting that mak-
ing themselves available to our empathy is not without risk.
Even if we get it “right,” empathy may be invasive. James Marcia
warns, “It should be remembered that empathy can be experienced as
a kind of invasion or penetration—being understood by another can be
painful.”53 Considerations of what it feels like to be empathized with are
fairly rare outside of psychological texts. The lack of attention to the
recipient of empathy is apparent from the lack of a term to represent this
figure. An “empathizer” is one who feels empathy for or with another.
The one for whom this empathy is felt generally remains nameless, unrep-
resentable in language as anything but “other,” or, in clinical terms, the
“client.”54 The few discussions of the recipient of empathy come from
53
James Marcia, “Empathy and Psychotherapy,” in Empathy and its Development, eds.
Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 99.
54
Amy Shuman uses the term “empathized,” as in “empathy is almost always open to cri-
tique as serving the interests of the empathizer rather than the empathized.” See Amy
58 L.B. CUMMINGS

feminist and minority studies scholars, and these theorists tend to depict
empathy as an unwanted form of engagement. For example, literary
scholar Judith Kegan Gardiner explores the possibility that empathy can
take the form of domination through exposure. She describes a char-
acter from Doris Lessing’s story “The Trinket Box” whose “ability to
empathize without asking for a return threatens the narrator.”55 What
might seem like a demonstration of affection or care—the expression of
empathy without asking for anything in return—becomes a kind of emo-
tional blackmail, a subtle manipulation which the narrator experiences as
“covert dominance.”56
As Joost A.  M. Meerloo argues, the impulse for understanding one
another “is not only a loving interest, not only putting oneself in another’s
place to achieve more peaceful co-operation, it is also the wish to control
the secrets of the other person, to obtain power over him by understand-
ing him.”57 If we understand how others think, what motivates them, and
how they are likely to respond, we are more likely to be able to manipulate
their reactions to serve our own ends. Even without the threat of future
manipulation, empathy may assert a particular power dynamic or hierar-
chy. In the example above, the fact that empathy cannot be repaid means
that Lessing’s narrator is forced to endure emotional exposure and debt
without the ability to subvert the power dynamic. Feeling understood, in
this case, means feeling one’s privacy invaded, constantly at a disadvan-
tage, assaulted by understanding.
To avoid this kind of disadvantage, we might attempt to limit others’
ability to empathize with us, rebalancing power by asserting some con-
trol over when and how others are allowed to engage us. Doris Sommer
describes precisely this response in her analysis of texts by minority writ-
ers in the Americas. These writers, she asserts, construct boundaries for
empathetic engagement, announcing limits to warn the over-eager reader
that her desire to understand may not be matched with a desire to be

Shuman, Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy (Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 18.
55
Judith Kegan Gardiner, Rhys, Stead, Lessing, and the Politics of Empathy (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1989), 87.
56
Ibid.
57
Joost A. M. Meerloo, excerpts from Conversation and Communication, in The Human
Dialogue: Perspectives on Communication, eds. Floyd W. Matson and Ashley Montagu (New
York: The Free Press, 1967), 141.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 59

understood.58 Sommer’s analysis works, at least in part, to return a sense

of agency to the recipient of unwanted empathy. A dialogic approach to
empathy also does this by reminding us that empathy involves more than
one person. If we are to avoid feelings of invasion or domination, all per-
sons must have parity in the exchange. This does not mean that empathy
demands total access and unlimited understanding. Parity requires us to
respect boundaries and limits, including those imposed by the one with
whom we seek to empathize.
Thus, while Black Watch interrupts our empathy, challenging our
motives, implying that there are limits to what we understand, it does not
fully reject empathy. The only respectful response, the play suggests, lies
somewhere between easy empathy and no empathy at all. If the Writer
wants to know what it is like to kill someone, Stewarty charges, “Then
we can go out and find some cunts and kick them tay death.” When his
mates explain Stewarty’s behavior as the result of depression, the Writer
tries to empathize: “I understand.” To this, Cammy replies frankly, “You
dinnay. Beat. But dinnay worry about it.”59 But in spite of Cammy’s com-
ment, and in spite of the fact that Stewarty seems sure that no one can
understand, he nevertheless wants to tell his story, presumably because
he hopes someone might eventually “get” it. Or perhaps he just wants
a record of his experience to exist. As Amy Shuman has argued, we tell
“untellable” stories for a variety of reasons: to revise dominant ways of see-
ing or understanding events, to challenge social boundaries that regulate
what can be told where.60 After leaving the pub to calm down, Stewarty
returns and recounts how, after his arm was broken in combat, he re-broke
it himself, more than once. “Write that down,” he says, urging that a
record of his pain be kept and communicated to others. Then, as quickly
as he as invested in the project of sharing his experience, he veers again
to skepticism, pain, and anger. He turns, suddenly grabbing the Writer’s
arm and twisting it: “Write it down way a broken arm though. . . . If he
wants tay ken about Iraq, he has tay feel some pain?”61 If he hoped that
saying the words out loud would make him feel understood or would
somehow lessen the pain, it seems that this hope was unwarranted. As

58
Doris Sommer, Proceed with Caution, When Engaged by Minority Writing in the Americas
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
59
Burke, Black Watch, 61.
60
Shuman, Other People’s Stories. See the introductory chapter in particular.
61
Burke, Black Watch, 65.
60 L.B. CUMMINGS

Stewarty vacillates between seeking connection and lashing out in vio-

lence, we are tossed back and forth, invited to empathize then rejected in
what Sommer would call a “constant maneuvering between engagement
and estrangement.”62
Rather than taking a simple stand—“pro” empathy or “con”—Black
Watch suggests that empathy is a project and process. If we simply accept
that we do not understand, then how are we to engage someone like
Stewarty, who seems to feel that the only way to communicate or alleviate
his pain is to inflict it on others or on himself? Violence and pain ignored
frequently beget more violence and pain. While I do not believe that we
have to completely understand what someone like Stewarty has suffered
in order to engage him, I do think that we have to be willing to listen—at
least when the other wants to talk.63 Otherwise, by not worrying about
our lack of understanding, we could slip all too easily into not engaging
others, leaving them feeling isolated, or failing to hear when they have
something important to communicate about their experience or what they
need in order to heal. There is a fine line between acknowledging that we
cannot fully understand but engaging the other nevertheless, and disen-
gaging out of a sense that understanding is futile.
Black Watch explores the gray space between access and dismissal, under-
standing and confusion. How are we to empathize, the play challenges us,
given that the soldiers share so little and are so willing to interrupt our
empathy by questioning both our efficacy and our motives? For Green,
the play “captures [the soldiers’] inability, or refusal, to articulate emo-
tions, which gives the proceedings an admirable lack of easy sentiment.”64
Burke and Tiffany note that it was extremely hard to get the men to speak
about their emotions. Burke, who has family members in the military, was
surprised the men said as much as they did, attributing the openness to

62
Sommer, 88.
63
James Thompson writes astutely about the ways in which the Western discourse on
PTSD has privileged personal narrative as the path to healing, a method that is applied
uncritically to cultures who may have very different ways of dealing with both personal and
collective experiences of crisis. He writes, “Tell your story can become an imperative rather
than a self-directed action and this results in a set of practices and assumptions that inculcate
themselves into human rights and relief operations in many locations, ignoring and poten-
tially interrupting culturally particular modes of mourning, coping or crisis management”
(45–46). See chapter two of James Thompson, Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the
End of Effect, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
64
Green, 262.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 61

the confessional nature of our time. Still, Burke admits, “We had to imag-
ine how they would be in private, how they would talk to each other….
We were articulating a lot of emotional silent moments.”65 Rather than
imagine what the men might be feeling and creating fictional dialogue
accordingly, the movement pieces devised by Hoggett became central to
communicating the emotional life that did not always come through in
the interviews. It is one of these movement sequences, called “Blueyes,”
that communicates one of the play’s most powerful articulations of the
limits of empathetic understanding. While I agree with Burke’s explana-
tion that the scene is meant to address the emotions about which soldiers
seldom speak, the scene seemed, to me, to retain a sense of privacy about
those emotions, acknowledging their presence without invading too much
into the silence that the soldiers have chosen for themselves.
The sequence appears in the script only as a brief stage direction, but
in performance it holds significant focus. One by one, beginning with
Stewarty, the soldiers come in and receive an airmail letter, or “blueye,”
which they each open and read in silence, letting the letter drop to the
floor: “Stewarty creates a subconscious sign-language which expresses
the content of his letter. One by one the soldiers enter, take the bundle
of letters and, finding the one addressed to them, repeat the process for
themselves.”66 When I saw the production, the scene was performed in
dim, bluish light with instrumental musical accompaniment. What was
most noteworthy about the “sign language” that the men used was that,
while some signs were “readable”—arms held as if cradling a baby or
fingers tracing the outline of a heart—others conveyed no immediately
accessible reference or meaning, although they were clearly meaningful to
the character performing them. Each actor repeated his sign or movement
over and over in an inwardly directed manner. No one made eye contact
with other actors or audience members. They were, as Euan Ferguson of
The Observer writes, “each lost in a silent private world.”67
Watching this scene, I had the sense of witnessing something personal
and intimate—something that would have been inappropriate for me to
witness if it had not been for the fact that the content of the letters and each

65
Burke is quoted by Patrick Healy in “Piercing the Emotional Armor of Scottish Soldiers,”
New York Times, October 15, 2007, late edition: E1. Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
66
Burke, Black Watch, 39.
67
Euan Ferguson, “The Real Tartan Army,” London Observer, April 13, 2008: 10.
Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
62 L.B. CUMMINGS

soldier’s response to them was, in large part, withheld from me. Charles
Spencer of the Daily Telegraph, one of the play’s few detractors, found
the scene both sentimental and impenetrable: “the strange sign-language,
hand-jive routines the soldiers indulge in while reading air mail letters from
home are downright embarrassing as well as mystifying.”68 Is it the display
of emotion that upsets Spencer? Or is it, perhaps, the display of emotion
that is at the same time withheld from us that places Spencer in such an
uncomfortable position? We are not accustomed, particularly in plays that
are meant to provide access to a particular community, to a theatrical style
that overtly refuses to communicate. Moments where the emotional content
seems to be experienced only by the performers, not shared with the audi-
ence, are condemned as “masturbatory”—a reminder that everything that
happens on stage is supposed to be for the audience. How, then, does one
remind that same audience that there may be things that are not for their
consumption? For me, the scene produced the sense of being cautioned
that there were things too personal to share. The limit placed on empathy,
in this instance, was not an ontological one, but an elected one; the soldiers
had chosen a degree of silence, and the artistic team respected that silence
in a way that simultaneously revealed this limit to us. Thus, while the scene
conveyed the importance of letters from home, it did not trespass on the
private nature of those letters, reminding us instead that there is much that
we are not hearing—that we may in fact have no right to hear.
I do not claim that everyone experienced the play, as I did, as a medi-
tation on the limits and interruptions of empathy. Ben Brantley declared
that it “took you inside the soldiers’ heads with an empathic force.”69 Sarah
Hemming, meanwhile, felt that “by drawing attention to the limits of the
dramatisation, Burke and Tiffany paradoxically make that dramatisation
keener and deeper.”70 We may feel assured that, because the play’s creators
are aware of their mediating influence, they are somehow well equipped to
negate that influence. An equal number of reviews, however, note (and laud)
the play’s lack of sentimentality, suggesting a rather different form of engage-
ment than Brantley and Hemming experienced. Mal Vincent, writing for
The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, VA, describes the play as producing what

68
Spencer, 29.
69
Ben Brantley, review of Black Watch, New York Times, December 30, 2007, late edition:
2.34. Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
70
Sarah Hemming, review of Black Watch, London Financial Times, June 28, 2008: 12.
Access via Proquest 14 July 2009.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 63

might be called a kind of Brechtian critical distance: “Although we are kept

at a distance as onlookers, we are quite amazed by what we see.”71 Michael
Billington of The Guardian similarly reflects that “Burke neither sentimen-
talises the soldiers not ignores the lunacy of the war.”72
These widely mixed results suggest to me a play that both offers ave-
nues for empathy and interrupts those avenues. Some theatregoers intent
on empathizing may, like Brantley, find a way to do so. Calling atten-
tion to the mediated nature of dramatic representation is in no way a
foolproof device for limiting empathy or promoting critical viewing. But
Black Watch, by including contentious discussions about the desires that
motivate the drama and the pitfalls associated with those desires, does
this better than many plays. This is partly to do with the fact that Burke
does not seem to reference his mediating influence as a way of dismissing
potential critiques.73 He confesses that,

As a writer I have always had a nagging doubt about the material that makes
up the text of Black Watch. That the appropriation of the soldiers’ stories
was in some way morally questionable. That any story about this disastrous
war, about the suffering of our soldiers, and the impossible position that
they’ve been placed in, is in some way a form of exploitation.74

71
Mal Vincent, “Play Bombards Senses as Media Mesh Onstage,” McClatchy-Tribune
Business News, May 27, 2008. Originally published in The Virginian-Pilot. Accessed via
Proquest July 14, 2009.
72
Michael Billington, “Proudly Marching Down from Scotland to Tell Their Iraq Story,”
London Guardian, June 25, 2008: 36. Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
73
For example, Moisés Kaufman and Dough Wright both foreground their role as writers
in The Laramie Project and I Am My Own Wife, respectively. But in doing so, they may be
doing more to mitigate their influence than to highlight it. Consider the way that Wright
suggests that it is his subject, not he, who has ultimately guided the editing process. The
“Doug” character, a stand-in for Wright, says, “I’m curating her now, and I don’t have the
faintest idea what to edit and what to preserve” (Wright 76). Only a few lines later, Charlotte,
the person he is “curating”, seems to advise him of the need to keep the potentially damaging
aspects of her life in the play: “A missing balustrade, a broken spindle. These things, they are
proof of its history. And so you must leave it” (Wright 77). Wright thus assures us that he is
conscious of the ethical issues bound up in his work and that he has addressed these issues by
following the ethos of his subject. But, of course, it is Wright’s editing that gives us this ethos
at the crucial moment, in a way that we are most likely to read Charlotte’s words as a meta-
phor for her life rather than what they literally are—a commentary on antique furniture.
74
Gregory Burke, “How We Became the Toast of New  York,” The Daily Telegraph,
November 7, 2007: 35. Accessed via Proquest July 14, 2009.
64 L.B. CUMMINGS

Rather than reassuring us that we are not engaged in a form of emo-

tional exploitation and that our desire to empathize is laudatory and wel-
comed, Black Watch leaves its audience, like its author, questioning. It
opens avenues for empathy, but also interrupts those avenues. The result
is a performance that suggests that empathy may be linked to emotional
fetishization and exploitation. It may also be an important tool for engag-
ing individuals like Stewarty, while at the same time recognizing that there
is much we still do not understand, and that even the most benign desire
to communicate may feel like a threat. Whatever it is, empathy is not
simple, complete, or uncomplicated.

LINGERING IN THE GAPS: EMPATHY IN INTERCULTURAL

PERFORMANCE

The territory of intercultural dialogue is abrupt and labyrinthine. It is filled

with geysers and cracks; with intolerant ghosts and invisible walls.75

As discussed earlier in the chapter, empathy is often understood as a proj-

ect not only of understanding, but of healing through understanding. Black
Watch complicates one of the ways in which that is supposed to occur by
challenging the assumption that being on the receiving end of empathy is a
necessarily positive experience. In the final section of this chapter, I discuss
another model of proposed empathic healing: empathy in performances
in which two or more communities or cultures engage one another in the
attempt to foster greater understanding and, potentially, heal rifts created
by past wrongs. Under these circumstances, empathy is meant to impact
both parties equally, thereby bringing it somewhat closer to a notion of
dialogic empathy. Like Black Watch, the characters in these plays act as sur-
rogates for real people—in this case, the members of the communities who
are brought together in and through the performance. While these perfor-
mances are often designed to evoke a sense of harmony and reconciliation
between the cultural, racial, or community groups involved, I am interested
in the moments when harmony fails. As discussed already, interruptions
may call attention to the emotional impact of our engagement. They may

75
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, “The Multicultural Paradigm: An Open Letter to the National
Arts Community,” Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality in Latin/
America, eds. Diana Taylor and Juan Villegas (Durham and London: Duke UP, 1994), 19.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 65

call attention to unresolved social issues, highlighting the need for further
discussion or action. In intercultural performance, these moments may pro-
voke us to see the project of healing past wrongs in a new way, creating
space for a history that need not be forgotten or forgiven, but may instead
need to be acknowledged as a part of our relationship to one another.
My use of the term “intercultural” here differs somewhat from its more
common usage to describe engagements between people from different
nations, ethnicities, and linguistic backgrounds. I am also using it with an
awareness of critiques leveled against it.76 In any encounter with an uneven
power dynamic, genuine exchange is nearly impossible. The examples I
discuss in this section entail exchanges between subcultures or commu-
nities within the larger culture of the United States: African American,
Latina/o, Anglo American, Appalachian, and so forth. These encounters
are deeply influenced by the ways in which each group is situated in the
social and cultural hierarchies of the USA. In this sense, they might also be
considered examples of what Bharucha calls “intracultural” performance,
a term that highlights the importance of localized cultures and traditions
within a larger society. In spite of the intranational, and in many ways
intracultural, nature of the performances I explore here, and in spite of the
political and social critiques that have accrued around the term “intercul-
tural,” I prefer the latter in this case because the prefix “inter-” emphasizes
exchange and dialogue. Because I am most interested in what happens
when two communities take the stage together in order to explore their
relationship to one another, I wish to retain the sense of exchange evoked
by the “inter-,” although in this case “intercultural” may also be thought
of as “intercommunity” or “intersubcultural.”
The intercultural performances I explore also grow out of the
community-based or grassroots theatre movement, which arose in the
wake of the political movements of the 1960s and 1970s. As community-
based theatre scholar Jan Cohen-Cruz writes, “Artists with activist agen-
das sought new strategies for using their work for social purposes, and they
increasingly explored ways of engaging people beyond spectatorship.”77
Turning their attention to community and local issues, companies like

76
As Rustom Bharucha reminds us, intercultural encounters have often amounted to
enforced acts of “exchange” in which Westerners pillaged Eastern cultures for their artistic
and religious traditions. Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the World: Essays on Performance
and Politics of Culture (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1990), 46.
77
Jan Cohen-Cruz, Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 50.
66 L.B. CUMMINGS

Roadside Theater in Appalachia and Junebug Productions in New Orleans

invested their time in developing local voices and adapting the stories of
their respective cultural traditions to the stage. Other companies, like
Cornerstone Theatre, now based in Los Angeles, focused on bringing
professional artists into communities without their own theatres, living
in a community for a time to develop and perform a play to suit that par-
ticular locale. In recent years, companies like these have turned more and
more to engagement not with one community, but with multiple com-
munities, using techniques learned over years of working closely within
their own communities to dialogue with other groups. As Andrea Assaf
points out, “Participatory arts practice requires skills that dialogue special-
ists identify as fundamental to productive dialogue, such as creating safe
space, listening for meaning, revealing assumptions, and leveling power
dynamics.”78 These techniques are often accompanied by collaborative
creation and democratic decision-making.
These intercultural projects spring from the belief that art can help us
recognize, respect, and engage our differences. Practitioners of community-
based theatre emphasize the need for engaged, active listening, and for
“taking in the other as equally important as oneself.”79 The artistic process
of creating and performing theatre together is seen as a means of bridging
cultural gaps and connecting divided communities. Another way of stating
this, of course, is that many intercultural performances promote empathy,
often in the dialogic ways I outline in the introduction. Most community-
based artists place a high value on discussion, polyvocality, collaborative
creation, and a willingness to confront the potential conflicts that come
with those things. This means an often messy and sometimes contentious
process. As Gómez-Peña notes, intercultural dialogue is filled with twists,
turns, gaps, and roadblocks. The question of how this process should be
represented on stage is the subject of much discussion. While total har-
mony and agreement would belie the reality of intercultural engagement,
there is, nevertheless, often a desire to achieve some sort of accord or
closure—not only for dramatic reasons, but also in the hopes that the
process has somehow brought people closer together. Artists working on
intercultural performance must consider when it is more important to

78
Andrea Assaf, Introduction to Dialogue in Artistic Practice: Case Studies from Animating
Democracy, eds. Pam Korza and Barbara Schaffer Bacon (Washington, D. C.: Americans for
the Arts, 2005), v.
79
Ibid., 86.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 67

highlight differences and when it is important to produce images of unity,

of a community that may not yet exist, but which is performatively evoked
through the theatrical event.
In the final section of this chapter, I examine moments in intercultural per-
formance in which empathy is interrupted, and the interruption is allowed to
persist. Rather than bridging the gap, healing the wound of the interruption,
the cultural encounter must go on in the face of the gap. Just as in Black
Watch, to be effective in this way the interruption must be marked, made pal-
pable. If empathy is simply denied from the start, we may not feel the smart
of rejection. We may not care that our engagement is rebuked and respond,
instead, with disinterest, or with the assumption that there is nothing to be
gained through engagement. To avoid this outcome, we have to experience
both empathy and the moment when empathy is rejected or challenged. I am
arguing, in other words, not simply for the importance of empathy as part of
a Brechtian dialectic, but, more specifically, for the importance of dialectics to
empathy itself. Wright says of the Verfremdungseffekt, “without involving the
audience in contradictory feelings it would hardly be possible to galvanize
them into any kind of productive thinking.”80 Similarly, empathy itself must
be subject to contradictory feelings and critical analysis, an engagement that
is never accepted as given, but is instead tenuous and shifting. As soon as we
think that we have “arrived” at understanding, we cease the complex work of
imagining how the other feels, thinking critically about their response, allow-
ing it to resonate in us, and contemplating our own part in that encounter.
When we do so, we have stopped engaging the other.
Experiencing the interruption of empathy is thus crucial, which prompts
the question, what is the nature of the interruption—its shape, duration,
and feel? In her analysis of literary works, Sommer imagines the rejection
of empathy as a kind of slap in the face, not unlike the “shock” that Brecht
described as necessary to estrangement.81 A slap and a shock are sharp,
quick experiences; they jolt us out of complacency. But what follows must
create the space for us to respond critically and emotionally to what we have
just experienced, otherwise we may move too quickly to recover our sense
of normalcy, to create new narratives that explain away our experience,
to protect ourselves by rejecting the other in return, or to reestablish the
broken empathetic connection. Interruptions mark a limit that is specific
rather than general. We have to attend not just to the instance of interrup-

80
Wright, 80.
81
Sommer 163.
68 L.B. CUMMINGS

tion, but to where and why it occurred. And to explore these details, we
may need to linger in the space created by the interruption.
In the Pregones Theater and Roadside Theater collaboration BETSY !,
the title character, a Latina jazz singer from the Bronx, is visited by the
spirits of Appalachian ancestors she did not know she had. As Betsy dis-
covers her Scots-Irish heritage, both she and the audience undertake a
journey that reveals unexpected connections between these diverse com-
munities. Pregones and Roadside are community-based theatres situated
in the Bronx and Appalachia, respectively. The companies have worked
together on and off for more than 20 years, collaborating, previously, with
Junebug Productions on Promise of a Love Song, a musical play developed
over 4 years of exchange. Whereas Promise tells three separate stories—one
from each culture represented—BETSY ! is more textually and themati-
cally integrated, allowing the characters to directly engage one another.
Both plays rely heavily on music as a celebration of individual cultures
and as a means of connecting across culture, through shared rhythms and
beats. BETSY !, in fact, is primarily a series of story-songs performed by
three vocalists and a five-piece band. I have seen two versions of the play,
first at Pregones Theater in November 2008 and again at the Puerto Rican
Traveling Theater in April 2015, with a further developed script and musi-
cal score.82 For the 2015 production, I was also involved in a Scholars’
Circle for the production, an interdisciplinary group of scholars involved
in teaching and writing about both the play and the longtime collabora-
tion between Pregones and Roadside.
As Stephani Etheridge Woodson notes in her blog for the HowlRound
series on BETSY !, “Collaborations don’t just happen; they take work,
hard work.”83 Roadside and Pregones engage in this work in order to
build understanding between communities. Dudley Cocke explains that
when they work together, the companies are “looking at the barriers of
race, class, and stereotypes” and how these barriers prevent empathy.84
As with many conversations across difference, the companies did begin
by identifying similarities—in this case, a geographical one. Pregones
Artistic Director Rosalba Rolón recounts that, because both Puerto Rico
and Appalachia feature mountains, “Describing the ‘Apalachos’ as ‘people

82
Pregones Theater and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater merged in 2013.
83
Stephani Etheridge Woodson, “Stories, Human Flourishing, and Spaces of Abundance,”
HowlRound.com, March 24, 2015.
84
Personal communication with author, January 22, 2010.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 69

from the mountains’ resonated with the nostalgia many Puerto Ricans
living in New York felt for the island’s mountain range.”85 But identifying
similarities is only one small part of a complex process of engagement.
Cocke notes that, before dialogue and empathy can begin, all parties need
to feel accurately and fully represented, “Because until people feel that they
are fairly represented it’s very hard to pay attention to someone else.”86
Thus, he contends, underrepresented audiences do not come to the the-
atre with the impulse to empathize as a way of consuming otherness. This
kind of empathy is the purview of the middle- and upper-class audiences
that make up the majority of ticket-buyers in American regional theatres.
He describes his own encounter with such an audience: “They were there
feeling confident about their identity. They were there not with the weight
of racism or classism or stereotypes on their back.”87 Audience members
who are not confident in how they are represented in mainstream media
do not come to the theatre with this intent to absorb another’s experience;
they come first and foremost to see how they are represented. If and only if
they are comfortable with this representation can they get “excited” about
cultural others.
The same is true for the artists working on the project. Ron Short,
whose own family history inspired the project and who composed many
of the songs in it, recounts some of the difficulties he and other musicians
faced early in the process: “We weren’t communicating because everybody
was defending their own music, until we stopped one day and started to
listen to each other’s history and stories of how we became musicians, how
this music came to ourselves. After we did that, we started playing and,
literally, music happened.”88 A productive intercultural exchange begins
when everyone feels heard so that we can move past “defending” our cul-
tures and ourselves because we know we will be fairly represented. Only
then can we engage in a “process of being willing to give up something in
order to learn something new.”89

85
Rolón’s comments were recorded by folklorist and anthropologist Maribel Álvarez and
quoted by Jamie Haft and Arnaldo J. López in “Beyond Cliché: Dramatizing Our American
Identity,” HowlRound.com, March 22, 2015.
86
Personal communication, January 22, 2010.
87
Ibid.
88
Ron Short quoted in Jonathan Bradshaw, “I Can Hear You: Cross-Cultural Music and
Complicated American Identities,” HowlRound.com, March 25, 2015.
89
Ibid.
70 L.B. CUMMINGS

Betsy’s own story in the play follows the same trajectory. She has to
“give up” her sense of herself and her family history to learn a new ver-
sion of that history, one that includes Appalachian ancestors she knew
nothing about. The play hints that we are all more hybridized than we
tend to assume. In the final musical number, the Appalachian song “I Am
Alone Again” is overlaid with “¿Y Tu Abuela Dónde Está?” The question,
which literally asks, “And your grandmother, where is she?,” is an idiom-
atic way of inquiring about someone’s ancestry. Common in Puerto Rico,
Cuba, and other Latin American countries, “¿y tu abuela, dónde está?”
originated as a critique of people who hid or denied their African ancestry
(implying that you are hiding your black grandmother so you can pass as
white).90 It has since been reclaimed as a way of proudly acknowledging
black heritage. In BETSY !, the question takes on new meaning, refer-
ring not to African ancestry but to Betsy’s hidden Scots-Irish roots. The
two songs come together “in a fusion of rhythms,” a musical metaphor
for the cultural blending of Betsy’s past and a symbolic representation of
how dissonance can transform into harmony. In the 2015 production,
Betsy and the other characters led the audience in a rousing music finale,
encouraging us to sing and dance along, and pointedly asking us, “¿Y tu
abuela, donde está?” Like Betsy, they imply, we all come from diverse
backgrounds and intercultural encounters. Ethnic and racial histories are
long and complex, and memory is short. As an intercultural performance,
BETSY ! prompts its diverse audiences in New  York and Appalachia to
consider that they may be more connected than they know—that we are
all more connected than we know—and that understanding our own past
may be the path to better understanding others.
Before we reach this moment, however, the path to harmony is inter-
rupted by the discovery that one of Betsy’s ancestors fought for the
Confederate Army. This moment operates differently in the 2008 and
2015 versions of the production, but in both cases the information not
only comes as a shock to Betsy, it also upsets her ability to connect with her
ancestors, to emotionally and cognitively engage in their lives. Where are the
limits of understanding, and when are we enticed to “understand” some-
thing inappropriate? In the 2015 production, the spirit of one of Betsy’s
female ancestors reads a letter recounting the growing discord between her
sons: “Daniel talks Union and Eli talks Confederate, but neither talks to

90
It is also the title of a poem by the black Puerto Rican poet Fernando Fortunato
Vizcarrondo.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 71

each other. Eli says he doesn’t need nobody telling him what to do and that
we will all be slaves if the Yankee government has its way.”91
Betsy is shocked. To her, joining the Confederacy makes no sense, espe-
cially considering the social status of early Scots-Irish immigrants: “Doesn’t
he know the War talk is about freeing the slaves! And that his own grand-
mother was practically a slave!! He probably owns slaves!!!” To the Spirit’s
response, “Mountain folk like us were too poor to own slaves,” Betsy turns
away dismissively and replies, “A otro perro con ese hueso,” which loosely
translates to “whatever, I don’t believe you,” or, more colorfully, “bullshit.”92
The turn away is decisive, and the moment lingers. The actress playing
Betsy makes it clear in her body language and her tone of voice that she
does not accept the Spirit’s explanation and that she is not able to empa-
thize with this part of her heritage. Her switch to Spanish also marks her
disengagement. They have come to an impasse—one that the play makes
no real attempt to resolve. In the 2015 production, the woman playing
the spirit simply took in Betsy’s response and let it linger. She did not try
to win her back, but rather let her be with her feelings for a beat before
continuing the story. There was no moment of forgiveness or acceptance.
The inclusion of this moment is strategic. In a play that is overwhelm-
ingly focused on the merits of intercultural understanding, this momentary
rupture reminds the audience that there is a reason why Betsy has “lost”
this part of her history. In spite of the Spirit’s protests, it soon becomes
clear that, slave owners or not, Betsy’s ancestors did not see themselves in
solidarity with other oppressed minorities. When Betsy’s mother falls in love
with Pedro García, her father responds with anger and contempt: “First you
take up with a damn nigger and now you tell us you are going to have his
baby. How in God’s name are we supposed to be ‘happy for you?’”93 The
play does not attempt to gloss over the pain and divisiveness of racial preju-
dice. Heartbroken over how her mother was treated, Betsy seems finally to
have had enough, proclaiming to the Spirit, “don’t ask me to love all those
bunch of Swindels,” referring to her mother’s family.94 But the Spirit points
out that they are a part of Betsy, whether she likes it or not. Recovering her
past does not mean that Betsy has to accept or agree with all aspects of that

91
Pregones Theater and Roadside Theater, unpublished script for BETSY !, March 23,
2015, 23.
92
Ibid.
93
Ibid., 30.
94
Ibid., 31.
72 L.B. CUMMINGS

past, or even to offer the conciliatory gesture of claiming to understand.

Rather than explaining away these moments or offering false reconciliation
or forgiveness, they are left simply to be, to exist as part of what it means to
encounter another culture or to investigate the past. Betsy judges her ances-
tors and refuses to see certain issues from their perspective, but in the end
she does not walk away from them—or her past—completely.
Cocke notes that this kind of disagreement is common when doing
intercultural theatre. He cites, for instance, the fact that after more than
20 years of collaboration with the African American company Junebug
Productions, the two companies still cannot resolve questions of race
and class, and their ongoing disagreements are reflected in the plays they
produce. In their collaboration Junebug Jack, for instance, “We could not
end at a formula for ‘we are all the same and now happy.’ … We never got
there. We would have liked to. Who wouldn’t?” The play ends without
a clear resolution or sense of unity. Cocke explains, “People might have
had insight in the course of the play and it’s even possible for someone to
have had some cathartic moments, but it would not have been the typical
way of the catharsis and then the resolution. There is no resolution.”95
Instead, the conversation continues—in the audience, between the com-
panies, anywhere it can. Roadside makes this a part of their practice; after
performances of Junebug Jack, they engaged the audience in story circles
intended to elicit local and personal stories on the play’s themes.
The interruption of empathy in BETSY ! reminds us that mutual under-
standing is not as simple as singing a song together, although these perfor-
mative rituals do help. Acceptance does not happen instantly. Forgiveness
is not always granted, and perhaps it should not be so. As important as it
is for us to understand and accept one another, it is similarly important
for us to maintain historical awareness and recognize our own experiential
knowledge of the world. In BETSY !, this history remains palpable in the
felt moments when empathy is interrupted. These moments, furthermore,
expose the illogic of racial prejudice. Just as the Scots-Irish were viewed
as a “dirty breed” and discriminated against, so too are Latin American
immigrants of later generations.96 The play explores not only a shared his-
tory of oppression, but also the fact that the oppressed group of one era
may become the oppressors of another. Recovering historical perspective
means not only identifying what we share, but also how we have harmed
each other in the past, and how that past continues to resonate today.
95
Personal communication, January 22, 2010.
96
Pregones and Roadside, 8.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 73

The moments I am describing mark an empathy that consists not in shar-

ing emotions or cognitively imagining others’ experience, but in accepting
the other without such connection or understanding, lingering, as it were,
in the undefined space that empathy is intended to close. This is not empa-
thy that ignores history, seeking instead to connect via “universality,” but
instead empathy that manages to exist in spite of an acute awareness of a his-
tory of wrongs. This kind of empathy also appears in the final performance
I want to discuss in this chapter, BOP: The North Star. This very early
stage, interracial, multi-media workshop performance took place in Ithaca,
New York, October 25–27, 2009. It was conceived and directed by Emilie
Stark-Menneg, a multi-disciplinary artist, and based on poems by Lyrae Van
Clief-Stefanon. Van Clief-Stefanon, an African American poet and a self-
described “Southern belle,” addresses in her work the cultural complexities
of life in the South, as well as what it means to be a black, Southern, queer
writer living and working in the predominantly white community of Ithaca.
BOP: The North Star uses Van Clief-Stefanon’s poems as text and inspira-
tion, combining them with banjo music, dance, and multi-media presenta-
tions. The version I saw in 2009 included a cast of four female performers,
two white and two black, as well as three white musicians.
In improvisations and exercises, performers and musicians, both black
and white, not only had to consider instances of African American experi-
ence through Van Clief-Stefanon’s words, but also to analyze their own
relationship to these experiences. Who can be a Southern belle? What
does it mean to be an “Ann”—a name used by black people to describe
a white woman or a black woman who acts white—and who among this
particular group of performers might fit these descriptions? Where does
identity exist? The musicians also stretched their experience, engaging in
the workshop process with the actors and drawing on the banjo’s African
American roots to create sounds beyond their usual repertoire. The proj-
ect called on all participants to work beyond their comfort zones and to
confront sensitive issues. In a post-show talkback, workshop participants
described the process as scary, difficult, and ultimately rewarding. Actor
Kellie Ryan wrote that she felt “truly grateful for the conversation and
deepening relationship with the cast that has taken place because of the
context of Race and Identity in the show.”97

97
BOP: The North Star, program, director Emilie Blum Stark-Menneg, The Kitchen
Theatre, Ithaca, NY, Oct. 2009.
74 L.B. CUMMINGS

While BOP: The North Star explored questions of identity, it also asked
how we understand and represent identities other than our own. In the
piece, the voice of one African American poet is expressed in and through
an interracial group of performers. Each woman, for instance, plays the
Southern belle, donning an enormous dress of red, white, and blue,
reflecting the relationship between race, nationalism, slavery, war, and the
female image.98 Watching each woman “become” a belle by stepping into
the dress (with all of the history and weight of representation that comes
with this identity) and seeing each woman inhabit that role differently
shatters the stereotype and offers, instead, a multiplicity of ways in which
one might be a belle. Each woman “owns” that experience differently;
comfort of representation is not assumed. Actors step out of character to
reveal their concerns; characters drop assumed accents to let us know that
race and ethnicity are a performance. Identity and experience are evoked
in the play as “the crushing need/for form” and the confusing project of
finding that form.99
Empathy, as it is imagined in BOP: The North Star, calls on us not to
turn away, even in the face of seemingly impossible divisions. It works
instead in the moments of interruption and rupture, as in the scene based
on the poem “Song for Bill,” which tells the story of an African American
woman who has come to stay with her adoptive, white Appalachian family
for a funeral. While there, her adopted brother confronts her with a fact
from his past, which the speaker of the poem recounts as follows:
Your eyes
free of dare or apology, you tell me yourself
how the Klan came recruiting in
your Appalachian youth, the arguments
they made and how you considered them before
refusing. After the service, you find me and
look hard into my face to say We need you in this family.
How can love like this exist? I refuse
not to see it clearly.100

98
I do mean enormous. To wear this dress, each actress had to duck under the skirt and
climb a ladder to put her arms through the bodice.
99
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, “Black Hole,” Open Interval (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2009).
100
Ibid.
 INTERRUPTIONS: ESTRANGING EMPATHY 75

Laid out on the page, the interruptions are clearly visible, marking the dis-
tance between the speaker of the poem and the one speaking to her. This is
not a story that flows easily. We are forced to linger on Bill’s consideration
of the Klan’s invitation, left hanging on the word “before,” experiencing
the gap between the possibility of acceptance and the final resolution of
“refusing.” Then, the speaker offers her own refusal not to see this love
clearly, but only after the line break causes us to linger on the word “refuse.”
We wonder—for a pause, a breath, an interval—what is refused: the brother
or the love? Even when these questions are answered, we are left with more.
What does it mean to “see [this love] clearly”? The poem suggests that this
entails working around these gaps—not ignoring them, but seeing instead
a love that is all the stronger and more significant because it can accommo-
date such divisions. Bill does not offer this information about his past with
any apology nor with any sense of aggression. He simply offers it. Now it is
there, a distance, a separation between them. The love the poem demands
that we see, the love that is remarkable, is not the one that exists in spite of
these gaps, but the one that exists because of them.
In the performance, the poem was enacted as a dialogue between two
performers, one white and one black. The scene was full of pauses and
silences, in much the same way that the poem is filled with gaps. Like
BETSY!, it offered no moment of reconciliation—no hug, no expression
of understanding or forgiveness. But neither was there rejection. Instead,
the two actors stood face to face—two bodies separated by a space,
but connected by a shared look. There can be no “We need you in this
family” without first the confession of considering the Klan’s offer, no way
of dealing with the gulf between these people without first acknowledg-
ing that gulf. Perhaps just as this man needs his adopted black sister in the
family, we need to confront, on occasion, instances of empathy and love
that seem impossible.
The poems that inspired BOP: The North Star come from Van Clief-
Stefanon’s collection titled ]Open Interval[. In mathematics, an open
interval is an interval that does not contain its endpoints. The performance,
like the poems in the book, explores the gap, the space, the distance—
between black and white, you and me, identity and non-identity. These
are unmeasurable distances. Like the open interval, we do not know their
endpoints. Rather than seeking to close or define the interval, collapsing
or fixing difference, BOP: The North Star takes the gap as a given that
must be felt and explored. To express what we share we have to express
what we do not. To empathize, we have to work with the interruptions,
76 L.B. CUMMINGS

accepting their existence and understanding them as part of the history of

racial injustice—part of our own histories.

CONCLUSION
While the performances I have discussed above would not be described
as “Brechtian” theatre in a conventional sense of the term, I would argue
that all of them fit Brecht’s qualification for epic theatre: “People’s activity
must simultaneously be so and be capable of being different.”101 And it
is in the moments when we are forced to confront our empathy but not
necessarily to abandon it completely, lingering in the interruption, that
this is so. It is precisely our empathy that is estranged by these plays, but
not in a way that completely ends empathetic engagement. We are forced
to ask, “Why do I want to empathize?” or “How can I empathize when
I refuse to accept your position?” We feel Stewarty reject the Writer and,
by extension, our own attention, and ask what drew us into the theatre
in the first place. We watch Betsy walk away from her ancestor in anger
and disbelief, and wonder what it takes to engage others whom we cannot
fully understand or forgive. We linger for a moment in the gap between
refusal and acceptance, understanding that for these characters to accept
one another means first that they, and perhaps we, must acknowledge this
gap, not overcome it. In the process, we confront our relationship to the
characters and the people they represent, the gaps between us and them,
and our own relationship to histories of racial injustice.
The performances I have discussed here suggest that empathy remains
an important method of engaging others, provided we do not allow our-
selves to slip into “easy” empathy—assuming we understand, assuming
our overtures are wanted, and hurrying to heal past wrongs that may yet
need to be acknowledged and explored. Empathy’s interruptions chal-
lenge us to engage others even when we cannot understand, to make room
in our dialogue for gaps and fissures. But we are also reminded that our
empathetic engagement impacts the other and that we cannot always
assume the impact is positive. We are challenged, in these performances,
not to rush through impasses or rejections in our hurry to reach the next
instance of connection, but rather to experience being with another with-
out the assurance that doing so will grant us access, provide healing, forge
a bond, or otherwise achieve a definitive result.

101
Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 71.
 CHAPTER 3

Repetitions: Empathy, Poverty, and Politics

in Eastern Kentucky

Act 1
On February 13 and 14, 1968, then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy traveled
to eastern Kentucky to conduct field hearings of the Senate Subcommittee
on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty. These hearings were intended
to garner information on how the War on Poverty legislation was impact-
ing the Appalachian region. While in Kentucky, Kennedy also visited a
one-room schoolhouse, a strip mine, local community centers, and private
homes—locations where, according to Kentuckians, Kennedy seemed to fit
right in. Kennedy, declares resident Lois Hill, “was one of us.”1

Act 2
In 2004, community-based performance artist John Malpede collaborated
with Appalshop in a three-day reenactment of Kennedy’s visit titled RFK
in EKY: The Robert F.  Kennedy Performance Project. Appalshop is non-
profit, multidisciplinary arts organization located in Whitesburg, Kentucky.2
Established in 1969 as part of the War on Poverty, Appalshop was designed
to prepare young people for media jobs outside the region. Participants soon
decided, however, that they would prefer to use their new skills to serve their
own community, and have been doing so ever since. Malpede is the founder
of the Los Angeles Poverty Department, or LAPD, a performance group

1
Lois Hill, “Memory and Memorabilia,” RFK in EKY Times, The Robert F.  Kennedy
Performance Project (accessed May 27, 2010).
2
Appalshop, “About Us,” http://appalshop.org/about/ (accessed 29 May 2010).

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 77

L.B. Cummings, Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59326-9_3
78 L.B. CUMMINGS

composed of homeless and formerly homeless people.3 LAPD is best known

for its 2001 production, Agents and Assets, in which the group recreated US
House of Representatives hearings on charges that the CIA was complicit in
drug trafficking in Los Angeles. In this recreation, the people most affected
by the drug trade performed the roles of politicians and government offi-
cials, effectively closing the gap between policy makers and those whose
lives are impacted by social policies.4 Malpede adopted this same method
for RFK in EKY. Local people played all the parts, from Kennedy and his
entourage to the community members who testified at the field hearings.
In addition to reenacting Kennedy’s visit, RFK in EKY featured speeches
by former Kennedy aides and local activists, a roundtable conversation on
the current state of poverty in Kentucky, a meeting with a local strip-mine
owner, and a pancake breakfast and styling party, where community mem-
bers could share a meal while getting decked out in 1960s garb. The goal
of the project, like that of the War on Poverty legislation, was “maximum
feasible participation.”5 Everyone in the community was invited to share a
memory, to send in photos or other memorabilia from Kennedy’s visit, to
play a role in the reenactments, or to join in as an audience member.

Act 3
In the summer of 2007, Senator John Edwards embarked on the “Road
to One America Tour,” a self-conscious act of political citation in which
Edwards retraced Kennedy’s steps through Kentucky. In Floyd County,
Edwards spoke on the steps of the same courthouse where Kennedy spoke
in 1968. Like Kennedy before him, Edwards insisted that he had come
to “listen.” He discussed the region’s need for jobs and promised that, if
elected president, he would bring the people of Appalachia out of their
isolation and political marginalization: “We see you. We hear you. We are
with you. And we will not forget you.”6

3
The acronym LAPD echoes the well-known acronym for the Los Angeles Police Department.
The name points to the ways in which the Los Angeles Poverty Department works in direct
opposition to the long and problematic relationship between the Los Angeles police and the city’s
poor and minority communities. Rather than a hierarchical relationship of force, the Los Angeles
Poverty Department places authority in the hands of the homeless and the marginalized.
4
For more information on Agents and Assets, see Victoria Looseleaf, “LAPD Deploys
‘Agents and Assets,’” LADowntownNews.com, Jan. 8, 2001, and John Malpede, “Los
Angeles Poverty Department: Agents and Assets” in Art, Dialogue, Action, and Activism:
Case Studies from Animating Democracy, Pam Korza and Barbara Schaffer Bacon, eds.
(Americans for the Arts, 2005).
5
“RFK in EKY: A Real Time Re-Creation of Robert Kennedy’s 1968 Tour to Eastern
Kentucky,” Press Release, 3. Appalshop Archives, Whitesburg, KY.
6
John Edwards, “The Road to One America—Floyd County Courthouse,” Youtube,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiDfMAyZfTI (accessed July 12, 2008).
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 79

The three events described here illustrate the pull of empathically charged
political performances, a pull that invites repetition. Many national politi-
cians have visited Appalachia, an area long impacted by poverty, out-migra-
tion, and the effects of absentee ownership in the coal mining industry.7
Since President Johnson declared the War on Poverty from a front porch
in Martin County, Kentucky, in April 1964, eastern Kentucky has served
as a popular backdrop for staging political messages about economic dis-
parity in the USA.  Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Bill
Clinton, Paul Wellstone, Jesse Jackson, and John Edwards all included
Kentucky in their so-called “poverty tours.”8 But of all of these men, it
is Robert Kennedy who is most remembered in Kentucky. Undoubtedly,
this has much to do with the iconic status of the Kennedy family, as well
as the timing of his visit. Robert Kennedy announced his bid for the presi-
dency only one month after visiting Kentucky, and he was assassinated less
than three months later, cementing the memory of his visit with that of
his death.

7
As defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission (or ARC, established in 1965
through the Appalachian Regional Development Act), Appalachia encompasses a 205,000
mile region extending from northern Mississippi to southern New York and including all of
West Virginia and parts of 12 other states. See “The Appalachian Region,” Appalachian
Regional Commission, http://www.arc.gov/appalachian_region/TheAppalachianRegion.
asp. The ARC was not the federal government’s first attempt to formally define the geo-
graphical scope of the Appalachian Region, which has gone by other names (for example,
Southern Highlands), but it has proved to be the most enduring. It is worth keeping in mind
that this definition was created not just to delineate the region, but also to facilitate the
administration of federal funds. See Karl B. Raitz and Richard Ulack, “Regional Definitions,”
in Appalachia: Social Context Past and Present, eds. Bruce Ergood and Bruce E. Kuhre, 3rd
edition, (Dubuque, IO: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1983): 10–26.
8
The origin of the term “poverty tour” is unclear. The earliest reference I have found is
from an advertisement from 1964 for Michael Harrington’s book The Other America, which
I discuss in this chapter. The advertisement reads like a travel brochure: “Come along on the
poverty tour. Harrington guides you through the beautiful, lush, Imperial Valley of California
where second-generation Okies sleep on flattened cardboard boxes on the floor of their
shacks. Stroll through the street of a mountain-ringed West Virginia town where tough min-
ers stand on lines for powdered milk—and bite their lips in defeated anguish. Take the sub-
way to Lenox Avenue, where 45 out of every 1000 babies die.” Johnson’s 1964 tour of
economically depressed areas was also frequently referred to as a “poverty tour” in the
national media. See “Walk Down, If You Dare, the Ill-Paved Streets on ‘The Outskirts of
Hope,’” advertisement for The Other America, The New York Times, January 23, 1964: 8.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Accessed February 15, 2015. See also Young, Robert,
“Johnson Views Poverty,” Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1964: S1. ProQuest Historical
Newspapers. Accessed February 15, 2015.
80 L.B. CUMMINGS

But it is not the sudden loss alone that stands out in people’s memories.
Kentuckians remember Kennedy because they felt a sense of intimacy with
him. The hope he brought to the region resulted not just from his political
attention, but from the way he truly seemed to care, to see Kentuckians,
and to understand their predicament as the result of structural inequity,
rather than laziness or ignorance. Local resident Steve Caywood, who
accompanied Kennedy on part of his tour, was particularly impressed by
Kennedy’s recognition that people did not keep old cars in their yards
because they liked to live with junk, but because they were using the cars
for parts. Caywood explains, “He understood the problem.”9 Kentuckians
experienced empathy from Kennedy—following Carl Rogers’ definition
of empathy, discussed in the previous chapter, as providing “that needed
confirmation that one does exist as a separate, valued person with an
identity.”10 Kennedy, they felt, saw past the stereotypes, seeing them the
way they wished to be seen.
When politicians retrace Kennedy’s route through Kentucky, they are
attempting to repeat more than a political event. They seek to revive the
sense of empathy that Kennedy inspired and to recapture the celebrity
and magic that adheres to the Kennedy name. Performance, as an act of
repetition, brings the past into the present, reviving what was—or how
we imagine or wish the past to have been. As Richard Schechner states,
performance “offers to both individuals and groups the chance to rebe-
come what they once were—or even, and most often, to rebecome what
they never were but wish to have been or wish to become.”11 As such,
performance is an act ripe for the exploration and revival of unfulfilled
promises. And the Kennedy name is laden with the weight of such unful-
filled promises. If we can revive some of the feeling and energy associated
with Kennedy, perhaps we can achieve the social and political changes that
seemed possible when he was alive.
As Lauren Berlant has argued, however, “the repetition of empathetic
events does not in itself create change.”12 Nor does the repetition of
empathetic events necessarily create empathy. This is true, in part, because

9
Steve Caywood, with John Malpede. Appalshop Archives, Whitesburg, KY.
10
Carl R.  Rogers, “Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being,” The Counceling
Psychologist 5.2, 7
11
Richard Schechner, Between Theatre and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 38.
12
Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in
American Culture (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), 166.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 81

repetition is never exact, and therefore the results can never be guaranteed
in advance. But, as I argue in this chapter, it is not the instability of repeti-
tion alone that challenges the efficacy of repeated empathy. I suggest, in
fact, that the problem with most political repetitions of Kennedy’s trip is
the very fact that they attempt to revive the empathy that Kentuckians felt for
him, focusing too much on the results of Kennedy’s trip and not enough
on what it took to achieve those results. What might we discover when
we repeat not to achieve a particular end, but simply to see what we can
experience through the repetition itself? Repetition in this sense offers us a
chance not to revive the past, but to enter into a dialogue with and about
that past, engaging history to consider where we have been, where we
are now, and where we might go in the future. It is, somewhat ironically,
the RFK in EKY event (which did not have empathy as one of its stated
goals), which fostered an empathy most similar to that associated with
Kennedy. It did so because it focused not on the desire to recover the past,
but on the conversations, relationships, and encounters happening in the
moment of repetition. It is only when we stop trying to produce empathy
and focus instead on engaging one another, exploring our relationship
to each other and to the past, present, and future, that we might achieve
the kind of empathy that leads to greater mutual understanding. To think
about repetition in this way requires us to shift the focus of our discussion
about repetition away from questions of (im)permanence and toward ones
of enactment.
This chapter is another repetition—a fourth act that draws on and recon-
structs the three events described at the opening of the chapter. In undertak-
ing this repetition, I engage in my own acts of scholarly empathy, imagining
my way into persons and moments I have experienced only through the
archive. I was not present for any of these events; rather, I am reconstruct-
ing them from Senate transcripts, historical accounts, interviews (some I
conducted and some conducted by others), photographs, YouTube vid-
eos, and other sources. Part of what makes these three events resonant is,
in fact, how well archived they are, and thus how readily available for our
return. Kennedy’s visit to Kentucky was not only thoroughly documented
by the national media but also, as I discuss later in the chapter, deeply
imprinted in local memory. Edwards carefully recorded and publicized his
Road to One America tour, particularly through YouTube videos. The RFK
in EKY project, itself reliant on the earlier documentation of Kennedy’s
tour, was also extensively archived. Research interviews were filmed,
transcribed, and preserved in Appalshop’s archives, along with primary
82 L.B. CUMMINGS

materials like fliers and handbills, and the event itself was filmed and photo-
graphed. Additional documents such as artistic statements, programs, maps,
and photographs are available through the project’s website, RFKinEKY.org,
and numerous videos are available on the project’s YouTube channel.
Archives anticipate our return, opening an invitation to dialogue across
time. But these abundant archives are not the only reason these particular
performances hail me. As a native Kentuckian, I am also drawn to these
events for the questions they raise about Kentucky’s relationship to the rest
of the nation. Kentucky, and more specifically its Appalachian region, is often
depicted as remote, backwards, “other.”13 As I discuss later in the chapter,
this has led to a long history of outsiders looking to Appalachia to explore
the “spectacle” of its poverty and, concurrently, to empathize with that spec-
tacle. This chapter considers the way that empathy is often imbricated in sce-
narios that perpetuate hierarchies across divisions of race, class, gender, and
other social strata. But it is also about how empathy might function as a way
for communities to examine themselves and their own histories. Thus, as I
recreate the events here, I am engaging in personal and scholarly empathy
for a state that still feels like home to me, although I have not lived there in
many years. I am also conscious, however, that by recreating these events for
an outside audience, I am potentially reproducing the problem of presenting
Appalachia as a source of fascination and site for the kind of empathic attach-
ment that favors distant feeling over dialogue and engagement. In this chap-
ter, I hope to model the kind of repetition that I advocate: one that explores
not to simply reproduce feelings, but rather to open a dialogue with another
community, another time, another place—exploring the feelings and ideas
that come with reenactment. Thus, I will track my own empathic journey
through this material, not as a way of marking the path for others, but as a
way of acknowledging my own voice in this dialogue.

ACTS OF REPETITION
As performance studies scholars have demonstrated, performance depends
on the possibility of repetition. Performance defies the notion that events
or actions are discrete, suggesting instead that our actions are always rep-
etitions or revisions of previous actions, or what Schechner calls “twice-
behaved” or “restored behavior.”14 To perform is to do something that

13
Officially, 54 of Kentucky’s 120 counties are part of Appalachia.
14
Schechner Performance Studies: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2006), 22.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 83

has already been done, and as such it is always about our relationship to
the past—how we understand it, relive it, or remake it in the present. Of
course, the acts of repetition that constitute performance are never exact.
Even if a performance attempts to replicate precisely, it will fail: “It is not
possible to ‘get back to’ what was.... [P]erformers’ bodies are different,
audiences are different, performative contexts are different.”15 Repetition
resists repetition, a condition that constitutes both the promise and the
problem of performance. On the one hand, repetition ensures the perpetu-
ation of cultures and traditions. It is conservative, ensuring continuity and
risking, in the process, the perpetuation of particular hierarchies, ideolo-
gies, and epistemologies. On the other hand, each repetition introduces
change, guaranteeing that that which is repeated is never an exact replica
of what came before. Taking performance’s resistance to repetition to the
extreme, Peggy Phelan has claimed that because it can never be reproduced
exactly, performance eludes the power structures and systems of significa-
tion that would render meaning static.16 Performance is always again, but
never again. It ensures that the past lives on in the present, and yet it is “in
a strict ontological sense... nonreproductive.”17 This conundrum has led
Rebecca Schneider to assert that: “the debate about whether or how per-
formance disappears and/or remains, has arguably been one of the most
fecund questions to result from the expansion of the study of performance
into its broad spectrum,” that is, the study of performance beyond text.18
Our discussion of repetition within the field of performance studies
often focuses on questions of permanence (does performance disappear
or “remain,” to use Schneider’s term?), or on the extent to which perfor-
mance does or does not repeat faithfully (which raises other questions:
faithfully to what, as performance undermines notions of an original?).
In our discussion of the ends of performance, we too often pass over the
experience, the doing, of the repetition itself.19 Schneider's 2011 book,
Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment,

15
Schechner, Between, 51.
16
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New  York:
Routledge, 1993), 148.
17
Ibid.
18
Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical
Reenactment (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 96.
19
By performance’s “ends,” I am alluding to the title of Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane’s
edited collection from 1998, The Ends of Performance (New York: NYU Press), and to
Phelan’s introductory essay from that volume.
84 L.B. CUMMINGS

is a notable exception. Concerned, among other things, with the ques-

tion of why Civil War reenactors do what they do, Schneider writes, “The
feel—the affective engagement—is key.”20 Reenactors hope to touch the
past, to experience the “whisper or ‘shiver’ of time seemingly gone ajar.”21
Schneider offers us a rich exploration not only of the affective pull of the
past, but also of the embodied experience of repetition, for it is the doing
or (re)enacting that creates this affective encounter with the past.
I am pursuing a slightly different issue than Schneider, one not so
much associated with the affective experience of touching the past, but
rather with the desire to revive instances of political empathy. In other
words, rather than repeating to feel the past, I want to consider attempts
to repeat the feeling of the past, reviving that feeling for political ends in
the present. This raises familiar questions about repetition: Why are some
repetitions of empathetic events more successful than others? When is it
possible to revive emotional responses and when is it not? Perhaps most
crucially, this issue also asks us to consider the affective consequences of
being cast in familiar scenarios. I borrow the term “scenario” from Diana
Taylor, who defines them as “meaning-making paradigms that structure
social environments, behaviors, and potential outcomes.”22 Scenarios
are repeated through both our actions and our interpretations of those
actions. They shape how we approach a situation, either as an actor in it or
as a critic of it. We might think of a scenario as being put into play, with all
of the resonances that phrase suggests. Like a script—or better yet a rough
outline—scenarios suggest a course of action, but there will always be a
certain degree of “play” in the sense of spontaneous response, improvisa-
tion, and flux. Because scenarios “deal with the embodiment of the social
actors” involved, they invite us to question how the structure is experi-
enced and enacted.23 What kinds of affective and embodied exchanges char-
acterize this structure and how might we restructure them? What desires
compel its repetition and which resist it? What lived experience does the
scenario facilitate, and what does it foreclose?
As a nation, we understand the people of eastern Kentucky through a
particular scenario associated with poverty. Because it has been so often

20
Schneider, 50.
21
Ibid., 51.
22
Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the
Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 28.
23
Ibid., 29.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 85

repeated, it has gained the force of authority and—like the performative

nature of gender—obscures itself as the structure that shapes our seeing.
According to this scenario, eastern Kentuckians and Appalachians are poor,
forgotten people living in a “remote” land, left out of the American Dream.
While Appalachians are cast as victims, politicians and journalists are cast in
the role of hero or discoverer, “exposing” poverty and injustice to an “audi-
ence” that is meant to respond with horror, indignation, pity, and empathy.
In this scenario Appalachian poverty is viewed not as a product of mainstream
American cultural or economic forces, but rather as an anomaly. This sce-
nario conceals economic realities in a way that forestalls real change, but this
is only one of its many effects. The ways in which this scenario invokes the
empathy of an audience outside Appalachia can cause Appalachians to feel as
if their problems are only worthy of attention if they can be sensationalized.
Rather than increasing a sense of understanding between Appalachians and
those outside the region, the scenario of “exposing” poverty reinforces the
sense of Appalachian otherness, forestalling the possibility of a dialogue that
might lead to a new way of engaging one another.

THE SPECTACLE OF POVERTY: THE POLITICS

OF REPRESENTATION IN APPALACHIA

Appalachia has long held a special place in the national imagination.

Historian Ronald D.  Eller writes, “For more than a century, Appalachia
has provided a challenge to modern conceptions of the American dream.
It has appeared as a place of cultural backwardness in a nation of progres-
sive values, a region of poverty in an affluent society, and a rural landscape
in an increasingly urban nation.”24 Appalachia fascinates us, Eller suggests,
because it defies our national narrative of progress. It is a “problem” region,
one that we want to see as exceptional, rather than as paradigmatic of the
failures of capitalism. It lags “behind” the rest of the nation, according to
this narrative, not because of the resource- and profit-driven systems that
have contributed to the destruction of the land, a crippling lack of economic
diversity, and an enormous gap between the highest and lowest paid work-
ers in the region, but rather because it is too far removed from the nation’s

24
Ronald D. Eller, Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945 (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 2008), 3.
86 L.B. CUMMINGS

capitalist economy.25 As Eller puts it, “Attainment of the good life, we

assume, is dependent upon the continued expansion of markets, transpor-
tation and communication networks, mass culture, urban centers, and con-
sumer demand,” all markers of economic and social success that are hard to
find in a region characterized by remote terrain, limited access to interstate
highways, and poor cellular and internet service.26 Thus, politicians have
often used Appalachia as a backdrop to deliver rallying cries against poverty
and to announce new policies and programs aimed to bring the nation’s
poor in line with the success and prosperity of the rest of the nation. In the
1960s, Appalachia attracted scores of young volunteers through projects
like VISTA, the Appalachian Volunteers, and the Alice Lloyd Community
Reserves. It has also attracted plenty of what local historian Loyal Jones calls
“high-minded up-lifters”: people who come to the region sure that they
know what Appalachians need to improve their lot in life.27
While sociologists, ethnomusicologists, and others have long traveled
to the southern mountains to research the culture of the Scots-Irish peo-
ple who moved into the region starting in the late eighteenth century, by
the mid-twentieth century the main thrust of the interest in Appalachia
pertained to the region’s persistent poverty. In 1962, Kentucky historian
and lawyer Harry M. Caudill published Night Comes to the Cumberlands:
A Biography of a Depressed Area. Generally understood as the foundational
text in what would become the field of Appalachian studies, Caudill’s book
presented a comprehensive history of the region. Rather than blaming
the Appalachian people for their economic deprivation, Caudill identified
social and historical forces behind Appalachian poverty, detailing, in par-
ticular, the problem of absentee ownership in the timber and mining
industries, as well as the environmental devastation caused by these indus-

25
When the ARC was founded, one in three Appalachians was classified as living in poverty,
and 223 of the region’s 420 counties were considered economically distressed in 1965. By
2014, this number had dropped to 93. “The Appalachian Region,” Appalachian Regional
Commission, http://www.arc.gov/appalachian_region/TheAppalachianRegion.asp (accessed
January 20, 2014). The region is still home to pockets of severe economic depression. In
eastern Kentucky, for example, the 2009 Census reported Martin, Clay, Owsley, and Knox
Counties as among the 30 most impoverished counties in the USA, with poverty rates exceed-
ing 37%. By 2012, the economic “downturn” also brought Lee and McCreary Counties to
over 37% poverty, although Knox County saw slight improvement. “U.S. Census Bureau’s
Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates” U.S.  Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/
did/www/saipe/data/ (accessed January 27, 2014).
26
Eller, Uneven Ground, 5.
27
Loyal Jones, interview with author, March 23, 2010.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 87

tries and the economic instability created by near total reliance on the coal
industry. Caudill’s book inspired renewed interest in Appalachia, coming,
as it did, on the heels of the postwar boom. Journalists descended on
the region, asking why a prosperous nation could not end poverty within
its own borders. Television programs like Charles Kuralt’s Christmas in
Appalachia, which aired on CBS in 1964, exposed harsh living condi-
tions, inspiring social and political interest in the plight of Appalachian
people. Such depictions of the region often made a spectacle of poverty,
dehumanizing the very people these programs were trying to help and
turning Appalachian’s problems into national entertainment. Caudill is
reported to have remarked that “while the mountains of North Carolina
had the Biltmore, and West Virginia had the Greenbrier, poverty was east-
ern Kentucky’s most popular tourist attraction.”28
If Appalachians are a tourist attraction, then the journalists, historians,
artists, and scholars who come to study, film, or report on the region are
both tourist and travel agent—there to exploit the commodity of poverty
and to send its images back to those who cannot make the trip themselves.
For this reason, Appalachians have become understandably distrustful of
outsiders intent on “exposing” the region’s problems, making real discourse
difficult. The scenario casts the players into roles before they have a chance
to engage with one another in a way that might revise understanding. This
problem is aptly highlighted by Appalshop filmmaker Elizabeth Barret in
her documentary film Stranger with a Camera (2000), which recounts
the story of Canadian filmmaker Hugh O’Connor, who was murdered in
Letcher County, Kentucky, in 1967 by local landowner Hobart Ison.
O’Connor and his crew were traveling the USA compiling footage for
a series examining Americans being exploited or otherwise left out of the
American Dream. They stopped at a rental house owned by Ison to pho-
tograph the man living there, a miner just home from work, still covered
in coal dust. The man had granted the crew permission to film him, but
as they were filming Ison drove up, armed with a gun, and shouted at
the crew to leave his property. They complied, but as they were return-
ing their equipment to the car, Ison fired several times, killing O’Connor.
Ison claims to have done so because he believed that the film crew aimed
to make fun of him and the people of the region, exploiting their pov-
erty for personal and economic gain. Many members of the community

28
Eric Reece, Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining
and the Devastation of Appalachia (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006), 180.
88 L.B. CUMMINGS

rallied behind Ison, celebrating him as a hero. His trial had to be moved
to another county, but even the change of venue resulted in a hung jury.
Rather than stand trial again, Ison accepted a plea bargain and was free
after only a year in prison.
In Stranger with a Camera, Barret uses the O’Connor incident to illus-
trate the many ethical questions associated with representing Appalachia.
In voiceover, she discusses her own feelings about the incident, conceding
that many of the strangers who have arrived with cameras do not help the
region. While some have sought to use the images they collected to help
precipitate social change, “others mined the images the way the compa-
nies had mined the coal.”29 Barret explains that she finds representations
of the region that focus on deprivation, rather than on people, insulting.
That does not mean she condones what Ison did; she states that the ties
that bind a community are not always positive and cites the suspicion of all
outsiders as an example. What Barret’s film reveals is that, unfortunately,
Appalachians’ suspicions are not completely unfounded. This does not
mean that every stranger with a camera is out to exploit the region, but it
does mean that those who come from outside seeking to engage the area
and discuss Appalachia’s problems face understandable resistance from
people who have, too often, been exploited, fetishized, and patronized.
The enduring nature of this scenario was in evidence only a few months
before I traveled to Kentucky to conduct research for this chapter. On
February 10, 2009, ABC aired Diane Sawyer’s special report on Appalachia,
“A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains.” While the program won
Sawyer a Peabody and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award (more on
the irony of that later), it was poorly received by people in the region. For
one thing, her exposé focused largely on how little the area had progressed
since Kennedy’s visit in 1968, a point that many locals rightly contest.30
One of the promotional videos even framed the area’s problems by asking
how a region populated by “legendary” fighters (Appalachia has report-
edly lost more men and women to death in war than any other region in
the country) somehow cannot “fight” its way out of despair—a deeply
flawed logic that obfuscates the structural causes of Appalachia’s economic
woes, not to mention the fact that those very problems are part of what
motivates so many young Appalachians to join the armed services.

29
Stranger with a Camera, DVD, directed by Elizabeth Barret (San Francisco, CA:
California Newsreel, 2000).
30
See footnote 25, this chapter, for details on the region’s current economic situation.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 89

To many Appalachians, the program reinforced stereotypes of poverty,

“hillbilly” ignorance, and incest. Few would deny that the region has
problems, but they do not want to be seen as synonymous with their prob-
lems, especially when doing so feels like exploitation. Eller, who was inter-
viewed by Sawyer and appeared in the program, nevertheless referred to it
as “shock journalism,” and Eastern Kentucky University student Courtney
Tennill wrote, in an editorial for her campus newspaper, “Reporters like
Sawyer come in looking for extremes because they get ratings. And it
worked this time; 10.9 million viewers tuned in Friday night, the highest
ratings for 20/20 since 2004. Coincidence? Hardly.”31
I was aware of Sawyer’s program, of course, although I could not bring
myself to watch it when it aired out of fear that it would simply reproduce
stereotypes about the region. I did wonder how it would impact my own
research in Kentucky. In setting up interviews, I tended to emphasize the
fact that I am a native Kentuckian (although not an Appalachian), rather
than the fact that I was, at the time, associated with an Ivy League univer-
sity. Would the negative response to Sawyer’s program impact how people
interacted with me? I don’t know the answer to that, really, but I do know
that the program was on some people’s minds. Loyal Jones brought up the
Sawyer program in my interview with him (with no provocation from me),
commenting that he was “disappointed” that she did not return to address
the criticisms leveled against her by Appalachians. Instead, she responded by
talking about the positive outcomes of the program, highlighting her role
in a long line of people who have set out to “save” Appalachia from itself.32

31
Courtney Tennill, “Diane Sawyer’s Appalachian documentary promotes old, irrespon-
sible stereotypes,” The Eastern Progress (February 19, 2009) (accessed May 12, 2010). Eller’s
comments were reported by Carl Keith Greene, “UK Professor Confronts Appalachian
Stereotypes,” Corbin Times-Tribune (February 5, 2009), http://www.thetimestribune.
com/features/x1065251980/UK-professor-confronts-Appalachian-stereotypes (accessed
January 20, 2014).
32
ABC responded to the barrage of comments on their website—which included scathing
critiques as well as offers to help and, in some cases, literally home the children featured on
the program—with links telling people where they could donate money to help those specific
children. A week after the program aired, they posted an update explaining how a young man
featured in the program has received scholarship offers, another teen featured received a baby
shower from a concerned viewer, a man had received offers to help pay for needed dental
work, etc. As to larger, more systemic issues, ABC simply noted that Kentucky officials had
recently signed a stimulus bill. Keturah Gray and Joseph Diaz, “Second Chances for ‘Children
of the Mountains,’” February 20, 2009, ABCNews, http://abcnews.go.com/2020/
chances-children-mountains/story?id=6922892 (accessed January 20, 2014).
90 L.B. CUMMINGS

When reporters, artists, and writers turn their attention to Appalachia

with the aim of representing the suffering of the people, they are call-
ing on those same people to exhibit feelings or despair or hopelessness
that may run counter to how those people experience their own lives
or how they wish to be understood by others. Nevertheless, the main-
stream media continue to search for images of abjection, images osten-
sibly designed to provoke emotion in order to motivate social action.
Depictions of Appalachian suffering can be described, following Lauren
Berlant, as not universal, given that the privileged do not experience it,
but rather “universally intelligible,” allowing those viewing it to assume
that we understand how others experience their situation.33 Our ability to
understand and feel for others’ pain marks us as “just” part of the solu-
tion, not the problem. In order for this understanding or sympathetic
emotion to occur, we must have narratives of the others’ pain that we
can recognize and understand. When we ask people to perform their suf-
fering, however, we have to consider that they may experience it in ways
that are not immediately recognizable to us, or that our desire for certain
sentimental narratives may run counter to their own understanding and
experience. Moreover, representations that call attention to the despair of
the Appalachian people but fail to show them “properly” enacting that
despair may have the effect of critiquing the people as being too ignorant
to recognize their own destitution. When people refuse to conform to the
scenario, to enact suffering the way it is expected, the result may be the
sense that these people must be rescued from themselves, educated in their
own suffering before they can be rehabilitated or saved. The very scenario
designed to promote an outside audience’s empathy with Appalachian suf-
fering may actually make Appalachians feel less understood.
How do we address this problem? One way would be to reorient our
focus away from the acts and feelings of the “outside” audience—the ones
supposedly responsible for feeling empathy and initiating social change—
and broaden our understanding of who, where, and how empathy might
emerge in these encounters. In other words, what happens when we begin
to think about empathy as an exchange, taking place in many different
directions? Rather than an outside audience’s empathy for Appalachians,
we might consider the empathy that Appalachians experience within and
for their own community, or for others outside their community. In spite
of his status as an outsider, Kennedy’s visit to Kentucky raised these very

33
Berlant, 144.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 91

questions. Repetitions of Kennedy’s visit have failed largely because they

ignored these questions, forgetting that empathy is an act of engagement
and focusing instead on the more familiar scenario in which empathy is
provoked for Appalachians, rather than with them.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY: EMPATHY AND PARITY

Nell Fields, project coordinator for RFK in EKY, said this to me regard-
ing her experience of Kennedy’s visit: “Empathy is not one of those
things you can substitute. You either have it or you don’t.”34 Kennedy
had it—or, at least, it felt that way to the people of Kentucky. What does
that really mean? What made Kennedy different from the Charles Kuralts
and Diane Sawyers of the world? Why did he connect with the people of
eastern Kentucky in a way that so many other politicians and journalists
have failed to do? And what would it take to repeat his encounter with
Kentuckians?
Like all the Kennedys, RFK’s empathetic quality derived in large part
from what Joseph Roach calls “It.” According to Roach, “It” is that mag-
netic, charismatic quality that emanates from one who embodies a par-
ticular set of contradictions: “strength and vulnerability, innocence and
experience... singularity and typicality.”35 As a powerful political fam-
ily whose tragedies have always been public, the Kennedys embody this
paradox perfectly. They appear to be both extraordinary and, in their
losses, extremely ordinary, or at least relatable through their vulnerability.
Those who have “It” also possess a “strangely empathic presence,” one
that goes two ways.36 These individuals—from performers to politicians—
are both available for us to empathize with and demonstrate the capacity
to empathize with us. What Roach seems to mean by “empathy” is the
ability to make us feel important, recognized, seen. “It” “gives us back
the Image of our Mind.”37 In other words, it assures us that another has
seen us just as we wish to be seen. Roach cites King Charles II’s ability to
“convince any interlocutor that his or her ideas or qualities interested him
more than anyone else’s,” and Princess Diana’s capacity to recognize who
in a room needed her the most and to respond by making them feel as if

34
Nell Fields, interview with author, March 24, 2010.
35
Joseph Roach, It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 8.
36
ibid., 34
37
Pope qtd. in Roach, 12.
92 L.B. CUMMINGS

she, too, needed them.38 This empathy is reciprocal. It allows you to bask
in the glow of being noticed and of returning the favor.
Roach’s description of empathy is not unlike the one offered by Rogers
in the previous chapter. Rogers argues that “a finely tuned understanding
by another individual gives the recipient his personhood.”39 For Rogers,
empathy is not so much “shared feeling” as recognition: the idea that
when we sense that another truly understands what we think and feel
not only are those thoughts and feelings validated but we ourselves are
validated. While Rogers views empathy as a means of promoting the cli-
ent’s investment in and estimation of him or herself, Roach reminds us
that the one who provides empathy can also become a target of empathy.
It feels good to be seen, and it feels good to be able to return the favor.
The very public nature of the tragedies suffered by the Kennedy family
has rendered them particularly available for our empathetic engagement.
They seem to need our emotional support as much as we need theirs.
As documentary filmmaker Robert Salyer explains, Kentuckians felt empa-
thy for Kennedy because “the people who live here understand what it
means to fall and to not succeed.”40 As remote as RFK may have been
to the people of Kentucky, they still felt that they understood him, feel-
ings that placed them closer to political power that was otherwise inacces-
sible: “He’s Robert to history but Bobby to the people who lived [when
he visited].”41 Without this sense of affective reciprocity and equity, the
recipients of political empathy could be left feeling powerless—forced into
an economy of compassion and concern in which they can only receive,
never give. Because they felt able to share their problems with Kennedy
without putting themselves at an emotional disadvantage, Appalachians
also felt included in the political discourse on the War on Poverty.
When Kennedy traveled to Kentucky in 1968, his “It” quality helped
inspire a sense of empathetic exchange with the people he encountered. His
death just four months later cemented his iconic status in local memories
by shattering the hope that had attached to his person. Without Kennedy,
how would the potential future that he had helped them envision come
to pass? His death, like that of many public figures who go “before their
time,” took with it political optimism, marking what Berlant describes as

38
Ibid. 31, 171.
39
Rogers, “Empathic,” 7
40
Interview with author, March 23, 2010.
41
Nell Fields, interview with author, March 24, 2010.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 93

“a broken engagement with a better destiny.”42 Attempts to retrieve the

political moment lost through RFK’s death have only served to confirm
the loss. Every politician who retraces Kennedy’s steps through Kentucky,
only to return to politics-as-usual once safely back in Washington, DC,
serves to affirm the idea that it was Kennedy and Kennedy alone who
could help break the cycle of poverty and political neglect in Appalachia.
Both Berlant and Roach are writing, for the most part, about our collec-
tive responses to public figures with whom we feel an intimate connection
in spite of our having no personal encounter with them. The intimate pub-
lics that Berlant theorizes are formed through readership or participation
in mass culture. “It” is a quality of celebrities, politicians, and kings. But
the people of Kentucky did have an encounter with Kennedy, one that for
many included more than standing on the side of the road and waving at
his motorcade. While memories of RFK have most certainly been affected
by his assassination and by the mass cultural investment in the Kennedy
family as American icons, there is still a real encounter between individuals
to be accounted for in this story.
Here is where repetitions begin to overlap. Many of the personal
accounts of Kentuckians are available because, when John Malpede began
the RFK in EKY project, his first step was to collect these stories: to turn
to the people of the region and ask them what they remembered about
Kennedy’s visit. I will describe the events of RFK in EKY in detail later,
but turn now to its archives to illuminate the events of 1968.
Donald H. Goble remembers Kennedy as “a very friendly, cordial per-
son” who took his time with the people he met.43 Anne Caudill asserts that
people loved Kennedy for his family, but also because “he took an inter-
est. He came here. He went up on the strip mine. He went into the coal
camps. He talked to people. He asked the right questions.”44 Anna Laura
Craft, who was a teenager when she drove Kennedy around Whitesburg
with her father, says, “I can remember he asked me personal questions. He
cared. ‘Tell me about you,’ he wanted to know. What I was doing. What
did I plan to do with my life? What did I see as the needs of this area, as
a young person. And that was important, you know, for a 19-year-old to
42
Berlant, 160.
43
Interview with RFK in EKY project member, April 27, 2004. DVD, Appalshop Archives,
Whitesburg, KY.
44
“Alice Lloyd College Panel,” RFK in EKY transcript, September 9, 2004. Appalshop
Archives, Whitesburg, KY. Anna Laura Craft was a community member of the project advi-
sory board, and served at the time as Letcher County Superintendent of Schools.
94 L.B. CUMMINGS

talk with someone on that level who cared what young people thought.”
It didn’t hurt, Craft notes, that he was handsome, with hair “like a cop-
per penny.”45 Lucille Ollinger was only a child when Kennedy visited. She
remembers that he came into her home to speak to her father, but couldn’t
wake the man because he was drunk. Kennedy handled the situation with
the comment, “He’s having a bad day.” She says, “I thought that was so
cool. You know, because he knew exactly what was wrong.”46 He knew,
but politely refused to call attention to the man’s condition.
Recollections are often conflicting. Lawrence Baldridge remembers
Kennedy’s eyes: “His eyes were, as I recall, extremely, extremely sad look-
ing, troubled almost.”47 Delmar Draughn, meanwhile, remarks, “Robert
was a friendly feller. He was easy to talk to and he smiled all the time.”48
Some people remember that his shoes were scuffed and muddy from
walking the dirt roads and marveled at how down-to-earth he was. Others
remembered his shoes as perfectly shined, a reflection of how put-together
he was. Nell Fields comments that people were impressed either way, and
proposes somewhat jokingly that perhaps Kennedy had two pairs of shoes
and was savvy enough to know which to wear in any given crowd. On
the one hand, these recollections support the Kennedy “It” factor. He is
remembered as both smiling and sad, slightly scuffed and perfectly pol-
ished—a walking contradiction that invites our admiration as well as our
affection. On the other hand, these affectionate memories only tell part of
the story. In addition to their personal encounters, Kentuckians also had a
political encounter with Kennedy, one that, again, felt intimate and honest
to them. The national media, however, did not see it that way.
For many, particularly those in Washington, DC, Kennedy’s trip was not
about Kentucky at all, but represented, rather, a prelude to his predicted run

45
Interview with RFK in EKY project member, date unknown. DVD, Appalshop Archives,
Whitesburg, KY.
46
Interview with RFK in EKY project members, date unknown. Appalshop Archives. The
transcript of this interview identifies the interviewers as “H” and “J,” so it is likely that this
interview was conducted John Malpede and Henriëtte Brouwers. While the project has been
thoroughly archived, not all records are clearly labeled or cataloged. Some transcripts supply
names and dates, while others do not.
47
“Alice Lloyd College Panel,” RFK in EKY transcript, September 9, 2004. Appalshop
Archives, Whitesburg, KY. Lawrence Baldridge, then a professor at Alice Lloyd College in
Pippa Passes, Kentucky, was the one who invited Kennedy to speak on the campus in 1968.
He also participated in the reenactment.
48
Interview with John Malpede and Henriëtte Brouwers, date unknown. Appalshop
Archives, Whitesburg, KY.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 95

for the presidency. This was not random political speculation. Kennedy trav-
eled to Kentucky only five days after delivering a scathing indictment of the
Johnson administration’s policies in Vietnam, in a speech in which he argued,
among other things, that the administration’s claim that the Tet offensive
represented a victory was one of many illusions they were perpetuating about
the war.49 While policy disagreements between Kennedy and Johnson were
no secret, the speech marked a turning point, making it clear that Kennedy
would no longer support Johnson out of party loyalty. The speech made
national headlines and divided the Democratic Party, whose members
foresaw the need to choose sides in the upcoming presidential election.
It is not surprising, then, that the news media treated the Kentucky
tour as a campaign event, in spite of the fact that it had been planned
long before Kennedy decided to publicly denounce Johnson’s Vietnam
policy. The Louisville Courier-Journal wrote that the visit “had all the
flavor and trappings of a candidate’s campaign swing through a district.”50
The New York Times reported that “Kennedy was cheered everywhere as if
he were a candidate rather than the chairman of a one-man fact-gathering
Senate subcommittee.”51 The Washington Post sardonically commented
that “Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D.N.Y.) discovered eastern Kentucky today
and it was almost like the circus had hit town.”52 As Erik Reece summa-
rizes, “not a few considered the visit to eastern Kentucky as mere grand-
standing, political theatre meant to show up LBJ.”53 The only people who
seemed surprised by the media attention were Kennedy and his entourage.
Kennedy’s aide Peter Edelman recounts that they were unprepared for the
volume of media coverage they received. There were so many journalists
following Kennedy that he kept having to wait for the caravan of cars to
catch up. By the end of the first day, they were running two hours behind
schedule, which, Edelman reports, displeased Kennedy as much as the
journalists who kept missing out on the photo ops.54
49
Kennedy’s speech in response to the Tet offensive can be found in Edwin O. Guthman
and C. Richard Allen, eds., RFK Collected Speeches (New York: Viking, 1993): 305–312.
50
William Greider, “Kennedy Hears Stories of Grim Mountain Life,” The Courier-Journal,
February 14, 1968, A1.
51
Ben A.  Franklin, “Kennedy Calls Antipoverty Programs a Failure,” New York Times,
February 15, 1968, 26.
52
Richard Harwood, “RFK, in Poverty Tour, Whirls Through KY,” The Washington Post,
February 14, 1968.
53
Reece, 180.
54
Peter Edelman, speaking at the opening event for RFK in EKY. “Peter Edelman Speaks
at UK,” Sept. 8, 2004 Transcripts and Pictures, RFKinEKY.org.
96 L.B. CUMMINGS

While the media and the nation understood the tour as a prelude to a
campaign, eastern Kentuckians perceived the event differently. Baldridge
says, “We had heard that he was primarily out for himself. That he was
very much trying to do his own thing. And he was very aggressive in terms
of getting power. The media portrayed him that way. I didn’t find him that
way. I thought he was very caring and really loved the mountain people.”55
Baldrige is not alone in this response. The way most Kentuckians saw it,
Kennedy came to have an honest conversation with them about living
conditions in the region. The media circus that followed him, meanwhile,
was more intent on telling the story of his as-yet-unannounced presiden-
tial campaign than actually reporting on the substance of the hearings
Kennedy was holding.
It was not Kennedy’s celebrity or reputation alone that communicated
sincerity to the Appalachian people. He stood out because he deviated
from the typical scenario of “exposing” Appalachian poverty. For one
thing, Kennedy eschewed the “culture of poverty” rhetoric that domi-
nated contemporary discourse, including Johnson’s War on Poverty. The
“culture of poverty” concept, developed by anthropologist Oscar Lewis
in the late 1950s, proposed that poverty perpetuated itself by creating
feelings of despair and fatalism that make it difficult to break the cycle.
While Lewis applied his theory only to the developing world, policy ana-
lysts and sociologists quickly adopted it to describe poverty in the USA,
most notably sociologist Michael Harrington in his widely read book The
Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962). In it, Harrington
writes, “The American poor are pessimistic and defeated, and they are
victimized by mental suffering to a degree unknown in Suburbia.”56
While Harrington acknowledged that poverty in the USA went hand-in-
hand with a lack of education, broken families, and a scarcity of jobs that
pay well, he did not explain whether these were the cause of poverty or
the result of the “pessimism” he describes at the opening of the book.

55
Baldridge.
56
Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1962), 2. It is worth noting the geography of poverty in Harrington’s
analysis. Poverty is “off the beaten track,” relegated to inner cities and rural areas (3). Of
course, we have to ask, off whose beaten track? For some, the remote valleys and dark alley-
ways that Harrington evokes as “other” are the sites of everyday life. Harrington addresses a
middle-class, suburban reader, one he assumes has no direct experience with or exposure to
poverty. It is precisely this mode of “explaining” poverty to the “mainstream” that I want to
challenge throughout this chapter.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 97

Harrington’s was more an emotional appeal for people to pay attention

to the problem of poverty than an incisive analysis of poverty’s causes,
making him “the Charles Dickens, not the Karl Marx, of this moment in
antipoverty history.”57 In his effort to engender interest in the plight of
the impoverished, Harrington worked hard to make sure that no reader
might feel somehow at fault, a technique that ultimately laid the “blame”
for poverty on the impoverished.58
The culture of poverty rhetoric was adopted enthusiastically by the
Johnson administration, which wanted a War on Poverty but did not want
to commit to large-scale job creation or massive public works projects.
Nor did Johnson want to significantly increase welfare programs, insisting
that the War on Poverty was “a hand up, not a hand-out.”59 As a result,
most War on Poverty programs consisted not of job creation, but of adult
education and work-study, including programs to teach the poor proper
interview skills. The idea was to attack the culture of poverty, rather than
its economic roots. In Appalachia, groups like the Appalachian Volunteers
worked to combat poverty by painting schools, based on the logic that
what was needed was not so much economic resources as a face-lift that
would inspire pride and optimism.
From the outset, Kennedy and others, including the head of War
on Poverty programs, Sargent Shriver, pressured the Johnson adminis-
tration for more extreme measures, arguing for job creation and more
spending on welfare and assistance programs. Kennedy argued that pro-
grams aimed at changing attitudes alone were insufficient.60 Moreover,
rather than telling people what they should do to change their situation,
Kennedy listened. He frequently cited the “maximum feasible participa-
tion” phrase from the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which stated

57
Frank Stricker, Why America Lost the War on Poverty and How to Win It (Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 46.
58
Ibid.
59
qtd. in Michael L.  Gillette, Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010), xiii.
60
We might compare Kennedy’s stance on poverty to his (and JFK’s) rather more equivocal
approach to the civil rights movement, where both brothers favored slower change, with little
governmental intervention (even to the point of hesitating to defend the integration of schools
and interstate bus traffic). There are many reasons for these differences in approach, chief
among them the Kennedys’ desire to retain the white, Democratic vote in the South, where
anti-poverty policies were far more popular than civil rights policies. Thus, while the people of
Appalachia may have felt more deeply respected because of Kennedy’s poverty policies, it is
also true that this position was part of a self-interested political agenda.
98 L.B. CUMMINGS

that “community action programs” should be “developed, conducted,

and administered with the maximum feasible participation of residents in
the areas and members of the groups served.”61 This phrase caused con-
siderable debate, confusion, and conservative backlash. Did this mean that
the poor were to run War on Poverty programs or simply have a voice in
how they were run? What constituted participation? These questions were
usually resolved by ignoring the issue entirely. Kennedy would not do so,
and developed the Senate Subcommittee Field Hearings on Employment,
Manpower, and Poverty in part to highlight the program’s successes and
ensure further funding, but also to hear from people—to encourage par-
ticipation not only in the programs themselves, but also in the political
discussion surrounding those programs.62 Edelman notes that “One of
[Kennedy’s] many attractive paradoxes was his capacity to listen. Here was
a high-energy man who wanted to get things done without red tape or
dithering... [but] who could listen very intently when he thought some-
one had something worthwhile to say.”63
Kentuckians felt like Kennedy listened because, in point of fact, he did.
The field hearings conducted in Vortex and Fleming-Neon, Kentucky,
entailed extensive, in-depth explorations of the region’s social and political
problems. Kennedy heard testimony from more than two dozen local
politicians, educators, nurses, homemakers, coal miners, and high school
students. These witnesses spoke on issues ranging from problematic min-
ing practices, to the exorbitant price of food stamps, to the lack of qual-
ity roads and schools.64 Kennedy opened the hearings at Fleming-Neon
with language that assured those gathered that he would not place the
blame for poverty at their feet. Instead, he focused on how industry had
exploited the land and its people: “Riches still flow from these hills, but

61
Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88–452, 78 Stat. 2642 (1964).
62
In addition to the hearings in Kentucky, Kennedy conducted hearings in Mississippi,
New Mexico, and California.
63
Peter Edelman, Searching for America’s Heart (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 66.
64
Early food stamp programs required participants to purchase stamps, receiving a higher
value in stamps than in cash. The first “free” food stamps were introduced in 1970, after a
long and difficult political battle, and then only for families with incomes of less than $30 a
month. In 1969 and 1970, limits were also placed on the percentage of family income that
could be collected in exchange for food stamps. See United States Senate Committee on
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, The Food Stamp Program: History, Description, Issues,
and Options (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1985).
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 99

they do not benefit the vast majority of those who live here, and I think
that situation is intolerable.”65
One of the most striking aspects of the hearings is the frankness with
which people spoke, both about their personal situations and about the
political corruption and negligence they encountered at local, state, and fed-
eral levels. Robert Messer of Clay Country reported that some people in his
county had no access to running water. Gussie Davis of Pike Country spoke
about having to pay someone to drive her to buy food stamps because she
had no other access to transportation; she recommended a transportation
program be created for people in her situation. Others recommended that
both food stamps and the school lunch program be provided at no cost to
participants. Edwin J. Safford critiqued federal programs aimed at encour-
aging local people to leave the area to find jobs. Participants did not focus
on deficiencies with federal programs alone, but also spoke about corrup-
tion and nepotism at the state and local levels. High school student Tommy
Duff testified that he had been expelled from school for photographing the
deplorable conditions of the campus and reporting on them in a newsletter
written and distributed by him and several peers. He stated, “The Principal
who expelled me threatened to turn my name in to the draft board if I didn’t
agree to stop working on the Newsletter.”66 John Tiller of the Community
Action Program spoke in sweeping terms of the problems faced by the peo-
ple of eastern Kentucky: “Our area is not feeling the Welfare Program with
all the billions that have been poured into it; you go from house to house and
find one penny’s evidence of it [sic]. All these things are needed. Our area is
feeding the war machine.” Tiller also claimed that “When you leave and we
start a program, we will be met with opposition at the Courthouse level.”67
The transcripts suggest that Kennedy listened attentively to what each
person had to say. He asked questions of almost all those who testified and
made time for people who were not on the schedule but wanted to speak.
With political grace, he even embraced those who came to critique him and
the programs for which he stood. A group of high school students stood
in the back of the hearing wearing paper bags over their heads that read,
“Give us jobs and education. We can’t eat Your fancy Promises.” Kennedy

65
U.S.  Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty, Transcript of
Evidence, Fleming-Neon, Kentucky, Chairman Robert F.  Kennedy, Reporter Ann Rader,
February 14, 1968. The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project (accessed April 5, 2010).
66
Ibid.
67
Ibid.
100 L.B. CUMMINGS

invited them to come closer and “make [themselves] comfortable,”68 later

promising to have an assistant call the students’ schools to say that they had
been testifying in the hearings so that they would not get into trouble for
their absences. When people spoke about the difficulties they faced paying
their bills and feeding their families, he asked for particularities about their
situations, appearing to want to understand the precise details of income,
bills, and other costs of living. When people detailed social problems, he
asked them what solutions they recommended or whether they thought
a certain solution would work or not. His demeanor seems to have been
straightforward, but not without humor. He joked after Tiller’s rather
impassioned testimony, “I’m glad you are not in the state of New  York
and would ever run against me.” In a more serious vein, he emphasized
that change would not be immediate, and that it would require effort
and cooperation from individual citizens and all levels of government. He
emphasized how important the people of Appalachia would be to that pro-
cess: “Washington doesn’t have the answer; people in the local community
know the kind of program that would be effective; Washington can come
in and help but Washington can’t come in and find the answers.”69 By
inviting Appalachians to propose solutions but not blaming them for their
poverty, Kennedy emphasized their capacities rather than their failures,
without dismissing the very real challenges they faced.
Without the sense that Kennedy respected them, the people of
Appalachia likely would not have been as open with him as they were.
And without the accompanying political conversation, empathy alone has
little to no effect. In 1968, difficult conversation converged with empa-
thetic understanding to produce a politically and affectively resonant
moment: one that inspired hope as well as political action. The hearings,
for instance, significantly contributed to mounting political pressure to
reform how food stamps were administered, and locals credit Kennedy’s
visit with helping them secure federal funds in 1971 to build 50 new
homes on Liberty Street in Hazard.70 And, as I discuss below, some local

68
Ibid.
69
Ibid.
70
For a complete history of the food stamp program in the USA, see Ronald F.  King,
Budgeting Entitlements: The Politics of Food Stamps (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown UP,
2000). For Kennedy’s impact on the housing issue, see RFKinEKY, “Hazard, KY—Liberty
Street and City Hall,” YouTube, December 8, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=upOImw-MmhM&list=PLn6BnmIMrlwftkqFRhif7eZh9oZuzWBK5 (accessed
January 27, 2014).
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 101

youth were inspired to embark on lives of social activism. Attempts to

recreate Kennedy’s trip have largely failed. Some repetitions may have
evoked empathy but failed to provoke real conversation or action. Others
worked in reverse, failing to capture Kennedy’s empathy and charisma,
but grappling nevertheless with the region’s social issues.71 I turn now to a
performance that opened new possibilities for engagement, conversation,
and empathy, recovering something from Kennedy’s visit that no political
repetition has achieved, and adding new dimensions in the process. It did
so because its goals were not to produce a particular emotion, to win a
campaign, or even to change public policy. Instead, the performance dis-
cussed below asked a community to critically engage its own history while
encouraging the widest participation and conversation possible.

RFK IN EKY: A COMMUNITY IN DIALOGUE

The impetus for RFK in EKY came in 2000, when Malpede attended
an artists’ gathering at the American Festival Project, a diverse network
of artists and theatre companies engaged in community-based work,
social organizing, and intercultural collaboration.72 While there, he began
conversing with people from Appalshop about the possibility of work-
ing together. Several options for collaboration were considered, but after
talking with people from the region and hearing how much they had to
say about Kennedy’s 1968 visit, it became apparent to Malpede that the
Kennedy project was the way to go. He spent several months in the fall
of 2001 traveling around eastern Kentucky, stopping in towns and asking
people if they had lived there when Kennedy visited and what they remem-
bered. Appalshop filmmaker and project participant Robert Salyer recalls
accompanying Malpede on his visit to the small town of Vortex. At the
first house they visited, they met people who had, in fact, been living there
when Kennedy came, and who had a story to tell. This happened over and
over. People were thrilled to be able to share their stories, to contribute to
the archive of community and public history. Ronnie Dee Blair said, “I’ve

71
Davis argues that Sen. Paul Wellstone’s trip was very politically efficacious, although it
drew almost no national media attention and is seldom discussed in the region. Wellstone did
not have Kennedy’s celebrity factor. Thus, while he became a successful advocate for
Appalachia, he did little to extend the discussion to the nation as a whole.
72
For more information on the American Festival Project, see Linda Frye Burnham,
“Reaching for the Valley of the Sun.: The American Festival Project’s Untold Stories,” The
Drama Review 44.3 (Fall 2000): 75–112.
102 L.B. CUMMINGS

sat on these tapes and these pictures all these years. And suddenly you
came up with this project. I am thankful you did, because finally they can
be used for something other than to pass around at family gatherings.”73
RFK in EKY began, then, with good listening. As already demon-
strated, good listening is crucial both to empathy and to political dialogue.
It is also crucial to collaborative art making. But, of course, empathy, art,
and politics are not about listening alone. They are also about whose voices
are available to be heard and how those voices are framed. In this section,
I demonstrate how RFK in EKY produced empathy through what I call
“a community in dialogue.” By this, I mean that the RFK in EKY project
did not recreate the past to commemorate the importance of Kennedy’s
visit or engage in nostalgia for this moment in history. Rather, the reenact-
ment sought to bring a wide range of voices into conversation with one
another, allowing community members to engage critically and affectively
with their past and their present. In doing so, RFK in EKY invited partici-
pants to speak, to listen, to think, and, sometimes, to empathize.
While RFK in EKY shares characteristics with the earlier LAPD pro-
duction Agents and Assets, that performance has consisted of straightfor-
ward reenactment, drawing text from the congressional hearings alone.
Malpede felt that RFK in EKY called for a different approach, especially
given the fact that so many eastern Kentuckians had stories to tell about
Kennedy’s visit. Personal memories and memorabilia shaped the project in
important ways, expanding the number of voices represented by the reen-
actment. Community members were invited to share their stories, pho-
tos, and other mementoes from Kennedy’s visit. These contributions were
then used to create installations and discussions throughout the reenact-
ment. People read letters from Kennedy or spoke about their memories of
his visit. The one-room schoolhouse Kennedy visited was recreated with
photos of the students from 1968 and valentines made by local schoolchil-
dren in 2004 (Kennedy’s visit occurred in mid-February). The inclusion
of memory and memorabilia gave community members a sense of creative
ownership in the project.
For some, Kennedy’s visit had left a particularly strong impression.
This included two of the local organizers and participants in the project,
Nell Fields and Dee Davis, both teenagers in 1968. Fields recalls that
Kennedy’s visit inspired her to serve her community and to view it in

73
Ronnie Dee Blair, interview with RFK in EKY project member, DVD.  Appalshop
Archives, Whitesburg, KY.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 103

a new way, taking away the message that “There’s nothing flawed with
the people.”74 Kennedy helped her see her own community as one with
potential, agency, and the ability to motivate change on its own behalf.
Davis, now president of the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg,
Kentucky, was also a teenager when Kennedy visited. While his experience
has more in common with the typical scenario of exposing Appalachian
poverty, the way he describes it is interesting in that Kennedy himself is
not responsible for this act of exposure. Davis joined a group of friends
to see Kennedy when he toured Liberty Street (after first going home to
comb his hair to look like Kennedy’s). Davis recalls how the media contin-
gent that accompanied Kennedy made him look at his own town with new
eyes: “[A]ll of a sudden I saw the whole idea of poverty in a different way,
because you begin to reflect on it not as part of your community or these
individuals, but how they are going to be perceived by broader audiences
who will share in this.”75 It seems not so much Kennedy’s judgment that
caused concern for the young Davis, but rather the “broader audiences”—
those not present but implied by the video cameras and photographers fol-
lowing Kennedy. Davis also notes that by accompanying Kennedy to the
predominantly African American Liberty Street, local politicians, citizens,
and media found themselves face to face with a portion of their own com-
munity that they did not regularly encounter.76
Accounts like Fields’s and Davis’s are only a few of the many personal
stories, experiences, and perspectives integrated into the performance. This
technique increased the voices represented in the project, expanding dia-
logue and participation. It also produced a complicated, and sometimes
contradictory, representation of history. People’s memories differed, as in
the case of Kennedy’s shoes. At no point did RFK in EKY attempt to “sort
out” which memories were accurate and which were not. On the one hand,
then, memory itself became a site of interrogation in the project, putting
these contradictory accounts into the public sphere where they might be
debated, and where the fallible nature of memory itself might be discussed.
On the other hand, these inconsistencies may simply create confusion.
Malpede’s style, as a director, is to include many voices, perspectives, and

74
Nell Fields, interview with author.
75
Dee Davis, interview with author, March 23, 2010, emphasis added.
76
RFKinEKY, “Pippa Passes—Alice Lloyd College—RFK in EKY performance,” YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzZ9_1_Em-Q&list=PLn6BnmIMrlwftkqFRhif7eZh
9oZuzWBK5 (accessed February 10, 2014).
104 L.B. CUMMINGS

points of entry. His goal, he says, is to open up different ways of engag-

ing without trying to focus the response in any particular way. Individual
memories are only one of the ways in which RFK in EKY offered mul-
tiple points of entry and multiple layers for interpretation. I discuss these
techniques below, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of this overall
approach. While including many voices and layers may promote a more
diverse and far-reaching dialogue, it might also leave some participants
confused and disengaged, and thus excluded from that dialogue. RFK in
EKY points to the fine line between an open, undirected dialogue on the
one hand and, on the other hand, the possibility that the lack of direction
may make it hard for some to know where or how to engage.
The project’s attempt not to impose interpretations is reflected in the
very title, which suggests a kind of objective, journalistic approach—one
playfully reproduced in the performance broadsheet, titled RFK in EKY
Times and formatted like a newspaper. This deceptively simple title, which
gives balanced attention to both Kennedy and Kentucky, suggests that
the recreation is not trying to evoke emotions or promote a particular
position. Instead, it seeks to maximize on what Schneider has called the
“superabundance” of reenactment, or its ability to invite a proliferation
of meanings and possibilities.77 In fact, RFK in EKY expands this poten-
tial “superabundance” by supplementing the reenactment with a range of
discussions, displays, and other “contextualizing events.”78 RFK in EKY
opened with a historical and academically framed event: Edelman gave
a speech titled “Searching for America’s Heart: RFK and the Renewal
of Hope,” at the University of Kentucky, followed by a reception spon-
sored by the Appalachian Studies Program, the College of Education, the
departments of Sociology and Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation,
and the Appalachian Center.79 Other events interspersed throughout the
reenactment included a photo exhibition on the history of Liberty Street
in Hazard, Kentucky; panel discussions on issues from hunger and pov-
erty in the 1960s, to the history of the War on Poverty, to contemporary
resonances inspired by the reenactment; and a display of RFK memorabilia
and artifacts held as part of the Neon Days Festival in Neon, Kentucky.

77
Schneider, 29.
78
The term “contextualizing event” was used in the press and marketing for the project.
See, for example, RFK in EKY/Art and Democracy, quarter page mailer. Appalshop
Archives, Whitesburg, KY.
79
RFK in EKY Times, 4.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 105

The primary goal of the project, according to Malpede, was to put a

historical mirror up to the present moment, offering a critical context
through which to explore contemporary issues. To achieve this, Malpede’s
approach was often Brechtian, encouraging audience to see past and pres-
ent simultaneously. For example, no attempt was made to cast persons
that looked or sounded like the historical figures they would portray.
Malpede has stated that in his performances he is “not looking to col-
lapse or disappear the performer into the character.”80 He wishes, rather,
to maintain an awareness of the presence of both figures at the same time
in order to think about how those figures—actor and character—relate to
one another. When local lawyer Jack Faust worried that he would make
a better Ted Kennedy than a Robert, Malpede assured him that physical
similarity was not the point of the project.81 He wanted Faust to look and
sound like Faust. A similar sense of distance was achieved by casting Mitty
Owens, an African American man, to play Kennedy aide Peter Edelman,
a white man. Although all participants—including audience members—
were invited to costume themselves in 1960s fashions, the organizers did
not try to costume everyone “down to the last button,” allowing instead
for a visual blending of past and present. High school student and per-
former Brian Gover was highly aware of the dual presence of performer
and actor, marveling at how the performance introduced him to his neigh-
bors in new ways: “You get to see their acting side and their real-life side,
so you see a part of them that they wouldn’t normally [see].”82 We all get
used to seeing each other in particular ways, fulfilling particular roles in
our families and communities. Seeing people do something new and dif-
ferent challenges your concept of who they are.
Participants and spectators of RFK in EKY were thus offered a com-
plex array of reenactments, discussions, conflicting memories, and non-
representational casting with which to contend—in a performance event
that spanned multiple locations over three-and-a-half days. Unsurprisingly,
the project archives reveal that responses varied widely. Some focused on
the relationship between the past and the present, as Malpede intended.
Jim Webb, who covered the events for Appalshop’s radio station, explained

80
John Malpede, “RFK in EKY: Artist’s Statement,” The Robert F. Kennedy Performance
Project, http://rfkineky.org/project/malpede.htm (accessed October 15, 2009).
81
James Dao, “L.  A. artist stages Robert Kennedy’s Kentucky visit,” San Francisco
Chronicle, September 2, 2004, E12.
82
Brian Gover, interview with Robert Salyer, September 10, 2004. Transcript. Appalshop
Archives, Whitesburg, KY.
106 L.B. CUMMINGS

the event this way: “Well, it is a little bit about a war, and it’s a little bit
about Vietnam, it’s a little bit about Iraq and it’s a little bit about what’s
happening right now in America, and what’s happening in America and
Appalachia in 1968.”83 After hearing Kennedy’s conversation with the stu-
dents of Alice Lloyd College, in which he discussed his position on the
Vietnam War, community-based arts scholar Linda Frye Burnham found
herself thinking about the presidential campaign then underway, saying,
“I just keep thinking, this is the speech I want to hear from John Kerry.”84
Other participants, like Ginny Norris, were struck by the substantive con-
versations on issues like segregation, social programming, and war that
occurred during the course of the event in both formal and informal
ways.85 The discussion of Vietnam in the reenactment inspired parallel dis-
cussion on the war in Iraq that were, to Faust, “almost eerie.”86 Audience
member Ron Daley made connections between the divisive nature of
political discourse in 1968 and that of 2004, and felt that the reenactment
served as a “slap in the face” to be more civically active, even though he
already considered himself a passionate and active person. Marie Cirillo
similarly saw the performance as a wake-up call for greater political activ-
ism and participation in the democratic process.87 For these participants,
the project created a historical framework through which to discuss con-
temporary issues.
Conversations spanned both national and local issues. Throughout
the event, Edelman talked about the growing gap between the richest
and poorest in the USA, asserting that the reason “we keep spending and
we can’t seem to reduce the rate on poverty is because the economy has

83
“Neon Days Cast and Crew Talkback.”
84
“Alice Lloyd College Panel,” September 9, 2004. Transcript. Appalshop Archives,
Whitesburg, KY.
85
“Neon Days Cast and Crew Talkback.”
86
Jack Faust quoted in Dao.
87
Marie Cirillo, What on Earth! 5.15, September 18, 2004: 1. The only cynical response
to the project that I have encountered comes from French journalist and theatre critic
Frédéric Martel, who writes, “By undertaking a reenactment of Kennedy’s visit, RFK in
EKY demonstrated theater’s power of deconstruction. In spite of the strong feeling Kennedy
and his tour can evoke, the theatre made apparent the profound pointlessness of this type of
political campaign stop. It is really no more than a media-hungry construction that, several
decades later, the theater can openly expose” (84–85). As was the case with Kennedy’s visit
in 1968, however, what is apparent to Martel seems to be far from apparent to the people of
Kentucky. Frédéric Martel, “Staging Kentucky’s Poverty,” translation Tara Chiatovich,
Theater 35.2 (2005): 83–85. IIPA (accessed October 19, 2009).
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 107

fallen apart so badly for people at the bottom.”88 Focusing on issues more
specific to eastern Kentucky, Fields notes that whereas the discussion in
1968 had focused mainly on hunger, food stamps, and free and reduced
school meals, in 2004 people considered how these problems had largely
been solved, but in ways that led to other problems such as poor dietary
habits. Other events, like a roundtable discussion on the current state of
Head Start in eastern Kentucky, directly addressed the legacy of the War
on Poverty. Head Start is one of the few remaining social programs cre-
ated by the War on Poverty legislation still in effect in eastern Kentucky.
Head Start teachers in 2004 talked about how the program was changing
such that decisions were no longer being made at the local level, some-
thing that had always been critical to Head Start and other War on Poverty
programs—part of the controversial “maximum feasible participation” clause.
Reflecting on the event, Malpede notes that some of the best discus-
sions were those that took place informally, as people traveled together
from location to location.89 And the conversations did not end when the
project concluded. In one example of the project’s lasting impact, RFK
staff members united with local Head Start teachers to form a group called
EKY Speaks, designed to address the impact of OxyContin and meth-
amphetamine abuse on the region’s youngest members. In 2006, EKY
Speaks developed a short performance, Oxy Girl, to address these issues.90
For participants like Davis, the coupling of historical material and formal
dialogue, as in the panel discussions, ensured both interpretive freedom
and critical engagement. He explains, “It encouraged a more thoughtful
approach because it was already in the context of what happened histori-
cally,” providing participants with shared knowledge to help them assess
what has changed and what hasn’t.91 Jones similarly felt that the historical
context kept the project from dictating a particular response. Revisiting
history to see what we can learn from it, he notes, is “not preaching.”92
Salyer was impressed with the confidence that this approach demonstrated
in its audience: “We just put it out there, as complex as it was, and trusted

88
“Alice Lloyd College Panel.”
89
John Malpede, “Final Artistic Statement,” The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project,
http://rfkineky.org/library/after-statement.htm (accessed October 15, 2009).
90
“Post-Project Community Activities,” The Robert F.  Kennedy Performance Project,
http://rfkineky.org/library/community.htm (accessed October 15, 2009).
91
Dee Davis, interview with author.
92
Loyal Jones, interview with author.
108 L.B. CUMMINGS

that people involved and the audience would get it, and people did.”93
The community’s own contributions, he added, made the event “much
richer than we could have planned.”94 For these participants, Malpede’s
methods worked and demonstrated his respect for the audience.
This does not mean, however, that everyone attending the event made
these connections, or that socio-historical analysis was the only way that
people engaged the performance. For some, the event evoked nostalgia
for past. That nostalgia was often connected to the Kennedy mystique, but
was sometimes more local and personal. Jones, for instance, was moved
by watching Anne Caudill speak her late husband’s words—a response
based on his personal relationship to Anne and Harry Caudill, not to their
status as historical figures. Other responses were emotional, but not really
about Kennedy at all. Actor Frank Taylor, who played state Representative
Carl D. Perkins, said that the reenactment felt “more like a family reunion
would feel, where people would sit around and tell stories... [there was] a
collective familiarity.”95 And while he was able, in retrospect, to reflect on
the tone of political discourse in 1968 and 2004, Daley also noted being
swept up in his own memories, experiencing a “flood of emotions” and
feeling it easy, in the moment, to “forget that this was a re-creation.”96
And there were those who, without a personal connection to the events or
a clear sense of how to engage, may have been left out. Multiple partici-
pants commented on bored students who, in Davis’s perhaps overly gen-
erous account, “very politely sat through the hearing part because that’s
what they were obligated to do, and then... absented themselves.”97
For individuals with a personal investment in either the history or the
politics of the performance, RFK in EKY seemed to function more or less as
Malpede intended, offering a range of ways to engage both the reenactment
itself and the broader discourse it sought to inspire. These same participants
may have felt invited into an open dialogue in which all ideas, reactions,

93
Robert Salyer, interview with author.
94
Ibid.
95
“Neon Days Cast and Crew Talkback.” Transcript. September 11, 2004. Appalshop
Archives, Whitesburg, KY.  Taylor was the only professional actor involved in the reenact-
ment, but he is not exactly an “outsider.” Taylor lives in southwest Virginia, and has appeared
both on stage and in the PBS recording of Roadside Theatre’s Red Fox/Second Hangin’.
Roadside is the theatre arm of Appalshop.
96
Ron Daley, interview with Robert Salyer, September 9, 2004. Appalshop Archives,
Whitesburg, KY.
97
Davis, interview with author.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 109

and feelings were valid. But some people may have been flustered by the
sprawling nature of both the performance and its multifaceted approach.
Still others may not have been hailed by the performance’s inclusive nature,
particularly those too young to have a personal memory of Kennedy. These
groups may have needed a more focused means to engage, a more direct
invitation to dialogue. Certainly, those who attend events because they are
required to do so (students, for example) do not make ideal partners in dia-
logue, as their presence itself has already been coerced. These issues point to
the complexity of creating an environment in which the maximum number
of people feel welcomed into the broader conversation.
RFK in EKY’s ability to promote dialogue and critical thinking may have
been most effective for those most actively involved in the reenactment. It
was, after all, not just a platform for conversation but also a performance
event that asked people to enact their own history. Children played their
parents. High school students in 2004 performed the roles of students from
1968 who came to the hearings to protest the flooding of Kingdom Come
Creek, learning what it felt like, for a moment, to be an activist. And while
personal recollections were an important part of the event, the reenactment
portions called on people to play someone other than themselves, requiring
community members to imagine themselves into another time and another
perspective. This active imagining led many participants to think not just
about their characters and how they were impacted by poverty, hunger, or
any other number of social issues, but about their own relationship to those
issues. By performing the past—and, in particular, by performing the politi-
cal process that influences our current social situation—we might learn not
only the facts of history, but also where we fit into that history.
While playing a local woman listening to Kennedy speak in the
Fleming-Neon high school gymnasium, Louise Smith had the sense of
being two people: “the character and the actor who is playing the part.”
“Democracy,” Smith writes,

is precluded in the notion that we as a people can hold multiple realities

together in the same hand, that we can embrace multiple perspectives and
distinctive points of view. Watching RFK in EKY, I was aware that I was
challenged to embody the very notion of democracy in its most fundamental
form. I was the woman from the past, in my imagination layered onto the
women in the present that looked back on her experience of those years.98

98
Louise Smith, “RFK in EKY: Faking it,” The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project,
http://rfkineky.org/library/first-person-accounts.htm (accessed May 27, 2010).
110 L.B. CUMMINGS

In one moment, Smith is grappling with two points of view on the same
event. She is also caught in the interplay between the affective experience
of being “in the moment” and the reflective, critical one of looking back
on that moment with all the knowledge of the present.
Performing in the project challenged some participants to rethink
their political perspective. Judy Jennings, the Director of the Kentucky
Foundation for Women, came to the project seeking a strong feminist role
to play and was surprised to find that role in her Appalachian ancestors.
She writes, “I am sorry to say that it did not occur to me that the persons
with feminist leanings would be the local women.... But they were.” This
realization led Jennings to ponder whether or not “some women and
some issues got ‘lost’ in the urban-based feminism focusing on the work
place.”99 Through a combination of historical analysis and the embodied,
affective knowledge provided by performance, RFK in EKY prompted
some participants to think about themselves in relation to larger social,
historical, and political forces.
While I did not participate in the reenactment itself, I did find myself
caught up in my own version of this embodied response to repetition.
Writing this chapter, I watched hours of video, as well as conducting and
transcribing interviews with Jones, Davis, Fields, and Salyer. After so much
time listening to their voices, my dialect actually changed, and more than
one person noted that, for the first time since knowing me, I “sounded like
a Kentuckian.” I do not generally have a Kentucky accent. Growing up,
I was encouraged to minimize the regional inflections in my speech, first
by those who worried that a recognizable accent would be perceived as a
sign of ignorance and later by college voice teachers who instructed me in
“neutral,” midwestern dialect. I can slip into a Kentucky accent when it is
convenient. It is common practice, for instance, for interviewers to “mir-
ror” their subjects physically and vocally in order to make them more com-
fortable. But the vocal changes I was experiencing happened long after
the interviews were conducted—and were not the result of my efforts to
adjust my own speech, but of other voices echoing in and through me. As
a former actor, I know that what I do with my body and my voice change
me, producing different feelings and experiences of the world than those I
habitually inhabit. This was no exception. When vocally mirroring my sub-
jects, even across a distance of time and space, I felt closer to them. I cared

99
Judy Jennings, first-person account, The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project, http://
rfkineky.org/library/first-person-accounts.htm (accessed October 15, 2009).
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 111

more. But I was also unsettled, aware of being a different “me,” of being
“me, not me.”100 Like some of the participants in RFK in EKY, I experi-
enced a sense of two selves, each one able to observe the other, and each
with slightly different perspectives on the events discussed in this chapter.
Over time, the effects faded, but the memory of the experience remains.
Kennedy may have been the historical and affective focal point of the
event, but in some ways, RFK in EKY was not about Kennedy at all, but
about the community. Kennedy’s trip provided a frame, saying, in effect,
“let’s all think ourselves into this same moment in history, a moment
when a different kind of ‘we’ seemed possible—a ‘we’ created by respect
for each and every person and recognition of each individual’s capacity
to assess his or her own social condition and how that condition ought
best be addressed.” Structuring the event around the affectively charged
figure of Kennedy allowed participants to feel the hope and excitement
of that possible past and challenged them into conversation about how
they might revive that hope—how they might rebecome that which they
never were but wished they might be. After all, as Jan Cohen-Cruz writes,
“Community-based performance is as much about building community as
it is about expressing it.”101 Similarly, RFK in EKY is not just about the
community’s past and present, but also its future.
Nevertheless, I caution against reading RFK in EKY as a utopian per-
formative or even as a means of producing communitas.102 To be sure, for
some it was an emotionally charged event that brought the community
together and invested in the hope and promise of democracy. Salyer notes
that before participating in the project, he “didn’t really get the Kennedy
thing,” but after the reenactment he felt that he did: “It’s all of this unful-
filled potential. The family sort of represented for the people here the

100
Richard Schechner, Between Theatre and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 100–101.
101
Jan Cohen-Cruz, Local Acts: Community-based Performance in the United States (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 100.
102
Jill Dolan defines utopian performative as theatrical moments that enact utopic ideals,
allowing us to experience radical democracy, hope, or intersubjectivity, if only for that
moment. (For a more in-depth discussion of utopian performatives, see the next chapter.)
Communitas is a term used by Victor Turner to describe a state of social relations, usually
achieved through ritual, in which social hierarchies and boundaries dissolve, producing a
basically undifferentiated community of equals. See Jill Dolan, Utopia in Performance:
Finding Hope at the Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 5, and Victor
Turner, “Liminality and Communitas,” The Performance Studies Reader, ed. Henry Bial
(London and New York: Routledge, 2004).
112 L.B. CUMMINGS

unfulfilled potential of this area.... There’s this empathy for the Kennedys
because the people who live here understand what it means to fall and to
not succeed.”103 Malpede, on the other hand, says that the project was not
about identification and empathy, but about our relationship to history
and the political process. Does the experience of empathy, then, make this
event a failure? Does it slip too far into the affective realm, taking us away
from the critical engagement that Malpede desires?
The short answer is no, for multiple reasons. First, to restrict empathy
as a possible means of engaging the event would conflict with Malpede’s
desire to allow people to respond freely. Malpede is democratic both in
his creation process and in his ultimate artistic product. What you have
to contribute, you contribute. How you respond, you respond. While,
as discussed above, this method may not engage all audience members
equally, it does mean that no response can be dismissed. This leads me to
my second point about the nature of empathy in RFK in EKY: As with
Kennedy’s visit, the empathy that emerged out of the reenactment did
so because people felt respected. They were treated as participants and
equals, not as an audience or electorate to be manipulated. Given the his-
tory of representation in the region, this is no small thing. By speaking
the words of their friends, neighbors, and ancestors, the participants in
RFK in EKY reminded themselves and others that empathy—empathy
with potential to effect change, anyway—comes not from outpourings
of emotion in response to images of suffering, but through difficult dis-
course. As emotional as it was, for instance, for Phyllis Buckner to play
her own recently deceased mother in the reenactment (she even wore her
mother’s dress), her emotional response was accompanied by a critical
one: “By them [Malpede and Appalshop] doing this, it has shown that
eastern Kentucky has moved up some, but it needs to continue to grow.
We need more stuff here. Just like they wanted in ’68. We still want it.”104
The project allowed Buckner to stand in her mother’s shoes, reclaiming a
piece of her own history even as she thought critically about the present.
The emotional engagement strengthened the critical one.
Fields claims that you can’t fake empathy. I think you can surely fake
the signs of empathy, but it’s much more difficult to fake engagement, dia-
logue, and collaboration. By moving to Kentucky for the duration of the

103
Robert Salyer, interview with the author.
104
Phyllis Buckner, interview with Robert Salyer, September 9, 2004. Transcript.
Appalshop Archives, Whitesburg, KY.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 113

project, Malpede and his wife and collaborator Henriëtte Brouwers resisted
the scenario of the outsider who comes to Appalachia for a “story.” They
did not sweep in with an artistic vision, a camera, or a script. They got to
know people, then helped build a performance that drew both from the
official historical record and from the community’s memories. Salyer points
out that the approach of listening to what people have to say is also what
worked for Kennedy, and it is the guiding philosophy behind Appalshop’s
work: “The way you get that story is you let people speak for themselves.
And that’s the big difference. Those hearings—they’re this document. It’s
on the record. These people said that. And I think that was really important
for people to know—that what I’m saying is not just going to be lost.”105
You didn’t have to have a story to be a part of the project. People donated
clothes for the reenactment, and hairstylists styled participants’ hair during
the pancake breakfasts that kicked off each day. A flier sent out to the com-
munity asked people to participate as actors, technicians, logistics whizzes,
classic car buffs, documenters, and writers. There was a role for everyone
who wanted to be involved. More than 1000 people are estimated to have
been involved in some level of planning or performance.106 While this num-
ber includes some community-based and site-specific performance artists
from outside the region who worked on the project or attended the per-
formance, the majority were eastern Kentucky locals. During the talkback,
numerous participants commented on how amazed they were by the scale
of the project and by what they, as a group, had accomplished.
Without this sense of ownership and accomplishment, the empathy
inspired in RFK in EKY might have been politically empty—a feeling
that comforts us for a time, assuring us that, if nothing else, at least we
“feel right” about things. We know what a just world should feel like, so
we must be good, even if the world is not. This kind of empathy is likely
to pass through us like a wave, perhaps leaving a slightly nostalgic residue,
the vague trace of a wish that the world had turned out differently, if
only Kennedy had lived. Such feelings do nothing to help the people of
Appalachia, who still feel that they are not seen or heard by the rest of the
nation. In spite of its Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, programs like
Diane Sawyer’s do not necessarily help achieve social or political change.
The award, founded and administered by journalists, honors those “who

105
Salyer, interview with author.
106
Ferrell, Ann. “Kennedy’s tour of Southeastern Kentucky to be re-enacted,” City
(Summer 2004): 25.
114 L.B. CUMMINGS

report on issues that reflect Robert F.  Kennedy’s concerns including

human rights, social justice, and the power of individual action in the
United States and around the world.”107 A journalism award is inherently
tied to the notion of “reporting on” something or someone, whereas what
made Kennedy feel different to the people of Kentucky was his focus on
listening, dialogue, and the contributions of local people. Network televi-
sion news shows, in contrast, are more likely to perpetuate the sense that
the region’s problems are only worth our attention when they can be
sensationalized for television ratings.
By performing for each other, and not for a national audience, RFK in
EKY allowed participants to engage in and to experience empathy without
performing their hardships for an outside audience. The empathy experi-
enced during the reenactment may have consisted of a neighbor’s empathy
for her neighbor, a child’s empathy for a parent, or a community’s empa-
thy for itself. As a magnetic empathetic figure, Kennedy helped mobilize
this empathy, but he was not necessarily the object or source of all empa-
thy in the project. Salyer comments that, through the reenactment, he
was struck by how “even in this big circus, this huge media event, this
huge political event, [Kennedy] was able to connect with people in a really
intimate way. Because of that, I think, the performance had that element
in it too. People were connecting in an intimate way during the circus of
this reenactment.”108 And, since Kennedy was performed by a local man
in RFK in EKY, even his empathy for Appalachians became, in a way,
a mutual empathy—a chance for a community to look at itself with respect,
caring, and critical understanding.
The community bonding that occurred derived not simply from cel-
ebration, but also from taking a hard look at the problems and issues that
persist in Appalachia. Davis remarks, “What John and Henriëtte did was
that they invited us into a critical conversation about our own place and
our own history that has persistently been very difficult for us to come
to terms with.” The issues were all there, part of the history being reper-
formed: jobs, nutrition, health care, war. All that it took to start a new
conversation was to repeat an old one: “A woman was rehearsing a scene
in which she plays a nurse concerned about hunger when she suddenly

107
“US Journalism Awards,” Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights,
http://rfkcenter.org/journalism-awards-stati-uniti-3?lang=en (accessed January 20, 2014).
108
Salyer, interview with author.
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 115

exclaimed, ‘But this still goes on today!’”109 RFK in EKY allowed people
to make their own connections, discoveries, and emotional engagements,
without the worry that delving into these issues would place them in the
national spotlight in a negative way or force them to enact victimization.
In doing so, it opened the possibility of a different kind of empathy: one
based on respect, parity, and dialogue.

JOHN EDWARDS: REVIVING POLITICAL EMOTION

Repetitions of Kennedy’s trip did not end with RFK in EKY. In the long
run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Democrats, striving for ways to
excite a cynical electorate and to motivate their own party on par with the
ways in which the Republicans had mobilized the conservative base, turned
repeatedly to the Kennedy legacy for guidance. John and Robert were
quoted with even more frequency than they usually are. Ted was courted for
his endorsement. Echoes of the 1960s reverberated as candidates declared
the need for public service and community action. One of the most overt
echoes was John Edwards’s “Road to One America” tour, which retraced
Kennedy’s 1968 route through Kentucky. The tour also included visits
to Marks, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee, both sites from Martin
Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s march from that same legendary year.110
Like any performance, the campaign rehearsed past performances—forging
a “new” road for the nation by carefully following a road already traveled
by some of the most popular political and social figures in recent history.
Edwards, like the other candidates seeking the Democratic nomination,
was attempting to reach into the past and revive a sense of hope, solidar-
ity, and a responsibility to look out for the needs of the many, rather than
the few. These are not just political ideas; they are feelings—about what
is right and just, about who we are as a nation, about what constitutes a
“good life” and how we will provide that life for our citizens. In the 2008
election, emotions took center stage. Negativity, at least according to con-
ventional wisdom, was winning. People were responding to messages of
fear and hate, and there was a political consensus that the Republicans
knew how to use emotions in their favor while Democrats did not.111

109
Dao.
110
The name of the tour evokes the title of Harrington’s book, The Other America.
111
Lauren Berlant and her colleagues at Feel Tank Chicago put their own spin on the poli-
tics of negative emotion, protesting the Bush administration by publicly embracing their
116 L.B. CUMMINGS

Emotion was also seen as vitally important for the Democratic candidates
in the primaries because their positions on most issues were so similar. In
an article published in Newsweek in February 2008, Sharon Begley wrote,
“What has emerged from the volatile and unpredictable primary season so
far is that the candidates who can make voters feel enthusiasm and empa-
thy and, perhaps paradoxically, anxiety are going to make it to November
and maybe beyond.”112 Candidates were feeling pressure to generate the
right blend of urgency and hope, optimism and empathy. This was partic-
ularly critical given that one of the members of that primary field had risen
to political stardom through a 2004 speech in which he asked the elector-
ate, “do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?”—a
speech in which the word “hope” was used no fewer than 11 times. That
candidate, of course, was Barack Obama.
Obama’s was only one voice of many in the clamor to “reclaim” some-
thing lost—hope, the American Dream, the possibilities of democracy
itself. When Edwards went to Kentucky, he was attempting to revive two
things: the national discourse on poverty and the political excitement that
surrounded the Kennedys. He endeavored to replicate the affective reso-
nances of Kennedy’s trip by insisting that he had not come to campaign
but to “listen.” But he failed to create the sense of intimacy and empa-
thy that Kentuckians experienced from Kennedy. These failures ought not
be laid at Edwards’s feet alone. They are, rather, indicative of the nature
of politics and campaigning. Edwards’s focus was divided between the
Appalachian audience and the wider national audience, and the media who
covered the tour were far more interested in tracking the campaign (not
to mention sensationalizing personal controversies) than in reporting on
economic issues. Finally, because he was making the case for his own elec-
tion, Edwards offered the people of the region a vision of change that did
not fully include them as participants, and thus an empathy that did not
engage them as equals or as partners.
Edwards’s campaign manager, David Bonier, explained that the pur-
pose of the “Road to One America” tour was both to call attention to and
to humanize the 37 million Americans living in poverty. “They are not

feelings of political depression through “depress-ins,” sit-ins conducted in bathrobe and

slippers, affectively and effectively demonstrating their feelings about the state of politics in
the Bush years.
112
Sharon Begley, “When its Head Versus Heart, the Heart Wins,” Newsweek 151.06 (Feb.
11 2008). Proquest, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/abiglobal/docview
/214253554/143162DA21537267945/4?accountid=14518 (accessed January 20, 2014).
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 117

just statistics,” he told reporters. “They are human beings with hopes and
aspirations.”113 The notion of “putting a face” on a social ill is intimately
linked to the project of empathy. It relies on the idea that we understand
social problems better when we are faced with the individuals affected by
those problems. The campaign publicity explained, “The tour is intended
to shine a light on places and people struggling with poverty and highlight
solutions to restore economic fairness building on the principles of work,
opportunity, and families.”114 In this simple example of the complexity of
addressing two audiences, Edwards told the people of Kentucky that he
was there to listen to them, but he told the nation that he was there to
expose Kentuckians, another stranger with a camera come to illuminate
the shadowy world of poverty.115 Local journalist Homer Marcum put it
this way: “John Edwards is making news this week by focusing on ‘pov-
erty.’ The subject’s [sic] being treated by the media hoard who follow
him as if poverty is a disease, or worse, a self-indulgent habit like smok-
ing, waiting for someone like John Edwards to announce a cure.”116 As
Marcum’s comment indicates, Kentuckians were not viewed, at least by
the mainstream media, as partners in the effort to end poverty.
The solutions Edwards offered and the issues he highlighted fur-
ther reminded both the Kentucky audience and the wider audience that
Edwards was engaged in a national campaign, and thus that the particular
problems of Appalachia were not necessarily at the forefront of his con-
cerns. While he talked about guaranteed sick days for all workers and other
labor protections, the people of eastern Kentucky worried about the fact
that the only new industry they seem able to attract is the prison industry,
in part because there are no major interstates in the region, making it dif-
ficult to access (and, in the minds of many, making it an ideal place to send
convicts—out of public sight).117 While labor protections matter to every-
one, the people of eastern Kentucky have particular concerns, few of which
Edwards addressed. Every speech Edwards made had two audiences: the
people of eastern Kentucky and the rest of the nation. It is hard to have

113
Bonier quoted in Marsh Taylor, “Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” Huffingtonpost.com, July 9,
2007 (accessed September 9, 2010).
114
“Building One America with Healthy Families and Communities,” John Edwards 08,
John Edwards for President (accessed October 19, 2009).
115
Recall the name of Sawyer’s program: “A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains.”
116
Homer Marcum, “We Don’t Need a War on Poverty, Just Good Schools,” Daily
Yonder, n.p., n.d. (accessed October 19, 2009).
117
OneCarolinaGirl, “Kentucky Voters Speak Out,” YouTube (accessed January 31, 2008).
118 L.B. CUMMINGS

intimate conversation when your comments are aimed at two overlapping

but nevertheless distinct demographics, with different needs and concerns.
Kentucky journalists Jamie Lucke and Don McNay sensed the presence of
this “other” audience by suggesting that Edwards’s discussion on poverty
was targeted not at those already below the poverty line, but rather at the
American middle class which, in 2007, was beginning to feel the mounting
pressure of rising health insurance costs, exorbitant interest rates on their
credit cards, and the danger of landing upside-down in mortgages.118
Interpreting Kentuckians' responses to Edwards is, in many ways, a mat-
ter of reading an absence. Most Kentuckians with whom I have discussed
his tour had little to say about it one way or the other. I heard, more than
once, the neutral comment, “It was good that he came.” Kentuckians want
a broader national discourse on the problems in their region and recognize
any political attention as potentially helpful, but years of poverty tourism
have taught them to be skeptical of any potential for real changes as a result
of what are essentially political drive-bys. Nevertheless, in spite of his dis-
taste for the “poverty tour” designation, Davis contends that it is better for
people to come with a problematic vocabulary than not to come at all. In
a commentary for National Public Radio, he said, about the 2008 presi-
dential primary campaign, that he wished all the candidates were coming
to Kentucky: “[T]here are sights that need seeing.... When the rest of the
country never sees the broken families and children cut adrift from addic-
tion, then a pharmaceutical company can get off with a fine and a pat on
the rump for years of dumping pain drugs like OxyContin into these rural
communities.”119 Davis’s comments allude to the fact that, while Kentucky’s
problems may seem isolated, they are, in fact, part of broader national poli-
cies and practices that continue to isolate and neglect certain communities
to the benefit of other communities, corporations, and interests.
While Edwards’s attempt to manage dual audiences thwarted his own
goals, he was not solely responsible for his seeming inability to connect with
people in Kentucky. Davis accompanied the Edwards campaign while they
were in Kentucky, and he remembers the candidate being very moved by the
people he met and the stories they told. He also remembers Edwards being
thoroughly frustrated with the reporters who refused to focus on social
issues, even losing his temper in a private moment of frustration. One after

118
“Comment on Kentucky,” KET.org, July 20, 2007 (accessed May 27, 2010).
119
Dee Davis, “In Rural Poverty Fight, Showing up is a First Step,” NPR.org, July 17,
2007 (accessed May 4, 2010).
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 119

one, Davis recalls, reporters would ask not about the local health clinic they
just visited or the future of rural economies, but about Edwards's $400 hair-
cut, about the cost of his house, about his wife’s health.120 Some reporters
were chagrined, prefacing questions by acknowledging that they were silly,
but “my editor told me to ask.”121 It wasn’t until an intern from Appalshop
interviewed Edwards that he was asked a single question about rural policy.
If that is how the national media is going to operate, Davis asks, “How can
you expect to have any honest discourse?” Davis notes that he had a conver-
sation with a pollster for Joe Biden who told him that poverty was a “losing
term” politically, a sure way to turn people off from your message.122
Edwards attempted to overcome this national silence on poverty, using
himself and his campaign to do so, but his status as candidate worked
against his own desire to build empathy and intimacy. There was a sig-
nificant media presence on the “Road to One America” tour, but it was
Edwards, not the towns or people he visited, that remained the focus
of the media’s attention. Not only that, but it was the more sensational
details of his life, and not his political policies, that became the focus for
the mainstream media. The issues Edwards hoped to raise went largely
ignored, and the sense of empathy he hoped to provoke did not seem
to materialize, in part because he was always directing his attention at
two audiences: the national one and the local one.123 When he did speak
directly about issues that concerned Appalachians, he seems to have done
so in fairly private moments.124 These moments may have been wonderful

120
If they had known about it at the time, the questions would have been about Edwards’s
mistress, Rielle Hunter, who only two months earlier had told him she was pregnant with his
child. Hunter would not come to the media’s attention until October 2007, although the
campaign successfully denied her relationship with Edwards until August 2008, when he finally
admitted it in an interview on ABC after being caught visiting Hunter and his new daughter.
121
Davis, interview with author.
122
Davis, interview with author.
123
It is difficult to read this moment without also wondering just how distracted Edwards
was by Hunter’s pregnancy. But I do not know John Edwards, and I certainly do not want
to speculate too far into his psychological state. Thus, I am doing my best to focus on what
was said and not said between Edwards and the people of Kentucky.
124
Stefanie Feldman reports that, in her interview with Edwards during the tour, he spoke
specifically about rural issues like drug problems and limited access to clean water and high-
speed internet. This message, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to have reached far beyond these
one-on-one encounters. Stefanie Feldman, “On the Road with Candidate Edwards,” The
Daily Yonder, Center for Rural Strategies, July 19, 2007, http://www.dailyyonder.com/
speak-your-piece-road-candidate-edwards (accessed January 27, 2014).
120 L.B. CUMMINGS

dialogues, and should not be totally discounted, but they could not create
the same kind of widespread impact that Kennedy’s visit had done.
Campaigning is different from listening, and seeking votes (and, by
implication, investing in politics through proxy) is different from sitting
down at the table and working together for political solutions. Ultimately,
Edwards’s tour promoted increased citizenship through political proxy.
The poor would be heard through him. Whereas Kennedy had empha-
sized that solutions must come from all levels, from citizenry to govern-
ment, Edwards argued that those in poverty “need somebody to speak
for them.”125 Even his message of national unity relied on structural dis-
parity. He assured the crowds gathered around the steps of the Floyd
County Courthouse, “We see you. We hear you. We are with you. And
we will not forget you.”126 Who is the “we” that hears the “you,” and
how are we with you if there is any risk at all of us forgetting you? By
performing himself as the one responsible for unity, for leading us on
the road to “one” America, and for communicating the message of the
underprivileged, Edwards depicted citizenship as a matter of electing the
right representative, assuring rural and poverty-stricken communities that
their needs and concerns as citizens would finally be recognized through
the same representational democracy that had failed them for so long.
In the process, he risked using Appalachians as props, set-dressing in his
performance of political empathy, a critique made rather pointedly by an
internet video satirizing Edwards’s campaign tour by depicting it as a rock
concert tour featuring “1800 miles of soul-crushing poverty.”127 To a cer-
tain extent, Edwards succeeded more in reactivating the scenario in which
Appalachians are used as political props designed to provoke empathy
that unites the majority of the nation, but still manages to leave out the
very people for whom the feeling is motivated, than in building an empa-
thetic connection between himself and the people of Kentucky. Empathy
of the sort that seems to have occurred in 1968 requires focused engage-
ment between two parties who are willing, at least for a time, to put that
engagement above all other concerns.

125
NYCDemAmy, “Appalshop Forum with John Edwards,” YouTube, (accessed July 12,
2008).
126
John Edwards, “The Road to One America  – Floyd County Courthouse,” YouTube
(accessed July 12, 2008).
127
“236.com: John Edwards Road to One America Poverty Tour,” 236 Video, YouTube
(accessed March 17, 2009).
 REPETITIONS: EMPATHY, POVERTY, AND POLITICS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 121

REPETITION AS EXPLORATION
At the beginning of this chapter, I asked what we might discover if we
focused not on repetition’s propensity either to preserve or disappear, but
on the act of repeating itself, and how this shift of focus might impact
the way we understand empathy in relationship to performance. What is
the difference between a repetition aimed simply at reproducing an emo-
tion and one that permits us to embody and relive the past in such a way
that we might change our relationship to it—physically, affectively, and
intellectually? Instead of presenting the people of eastern Kentucky with
their own past, Malpede and Appalshop allowed those most impacted by
the history in question to undertake the repetition of that history and
avoided as much as possible dictating their response. Political repetitions
of Kennedy’s visit, meanwhile, are generally intent on reproducing a par-
ticular effect—that peculiar mix of empathy, nostalgia, hope, tragedy, inti-
macy, and inaccessibility that defines “It.” But empathy is not an effect;
it is a process. If you focus only on the end result, then you are likely
to ignore the very process through which empathy occurs. Kentuckians
have been told long enough how they should feel about their situation,
how they should perform those feelings for an outside audience, and how
others should feel about their circumstances in return. By creating mul-
tiple points of entry, multiple layers of meaning, and multiple ways of
participating, RFK in EKY allowed participants to explore their feelings
about past and present in a new way, without being bound to the familiar
scenario of poverty tourism. And this, not ardent displays of feeling in
campaign speeches, allowed some of those involved to experience the kind
of empathy that might lead to a more nuanced understanding of both the
past and the present.
RFK in EKY was also different from political reenactments of Kennedy’s
tour in that it was in no way trying to revive Kennedy in the form of a
new political figure. The various politicians who have followed Kennedy’s
trail have, in effect, been auditioning for the role of surrogate, trying to
fill a vacancy made particularly powerful because we have decided that this
vacancy has precluded certain social changes.128 If only we could fill it; if
only we could right the diverted course of history, we would put ourselves
back on track to become what we were always meant to be. But, while

128
Roach develops the concept of surrogation in Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic
Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
122 L.B. CUMMINGS

there was a man playing Kennedy in RFK in EKY, at no point was Jack
Faust trying to be the “new” Kennedy. This was not repetition as surroga-
tion, but as exploration. Rather than engage in a collective fantasy of what
might happen if another Kennedy were to come along, the community
formed in and through RFK in EKY was able to have a conversation
among themselves. No political savior required.
Berlant is correct that empathy, in and of itself, does nothing. But how
we attempt to produce empathy can matter a great deal. Empathy that
grows out of participation, engagement, and listening might do a lot—
because there has been participation, engagement, and listening. The way
to create this kind of empathy is not to try to produce a particular emo-
tional or critical response. Neither is it to attempt to reinvigorate a lost
political icon. Rather, the way to create empathy is to engage one another
honestly in the shared exploration of an issue. RFK in EKY suggests that,
instead of thinking of empathy as a tool of the theatre, an effect we create
to motivate social change, we might think of it as an activity concomitant
to a collaborative creative process—a process that is democratic, complex,
dialogic, affective, and critical. In the next chapter, I develop the idea of
how we might look to the process of theatre making for models of empa-
thetic engagement.
 CHAPTER 4

Rehearsals: Naomi Wallace and the

Labor of Empathy

In Naomi Wallace’s play In the Heart of America (1994), set during the
1990–1991 Gulf War, the character Remzi poses this question to Craver,
his fellow soldier and soon-to-be lover: “Let’s say I’m lying over there,
dead as can be, and then you see it’s me, from a distance. But you still
have to walk over to my body to check it out. So, how would you walk?”1
In this scene, the first scene in the play between the two men, Remzi
is asking Craver to define their relationship. He is also asking Craver to
travel the distance between them, a distance delineated by race and class—
Remzi is Palestinian-American and Craver is self-described “White Trash”
from Kentucky. It is a distance, furthermore, created by the military ban
on same-sex relationships then in effect.2 In what follows, the two men
improvise, revise, and negotiate the most appropriate physical representa-
tion of their relationship.
If you were in this situation, how would you feel? How would you
act? These are questions that every actor who has studied Konstantin
Stanislavski’s system of actor training has asked, and this includes nearly
every actor in the United States. Many students and teachers of Stanislavski
understand this system as one that requires the actor to imagine herself

1
Naomi Wallace, In the Heart of America, in In the Heart of America and Other Plays
(New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001), 88.
2
In 1990–91, the US military still officially banned gay men and lesbians from service.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the controversial policy that allowed homosexual people to serve in
the military, but only if they kept their sexuality a secret, went into effect on October 1, 1993.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 123

L.B. Cummings, Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59326-9_4
124 L.B. CUMMINGS

into a situation and respond emotionally. Remzi certainly asks this of

Craver. But Remzi’s question is also a call for critical analysis: in this case
the production of a Brechtian gestus. What is the space between us, and
what does it mean? How Craver might walk depends on their social cir-
cumstances as well as how he feels toward Remzi. The process by which
they act out and discuss this moment also evokes the work of Augusto
Boal, who uses theatre as a site to test social actions. Here, as throughout
her plays, Wallace draws on the techniques of all three theorist/practitio-
ners, calling our attention to the demands of acting in each of these sys-
tems. She does this by depicting characters engaged in rehearsals designed
to help them change their worlds—rehearsals that employ a range of act-
ing techniques, from affective to cognitive to physical. Rehearsing, as it is
explored in these plays, requires estranging and empathizing, reasoning
and feeling. In rehearsal, we practice feeling and responding differently,
letting our responses derive from unfamiliar circumstances and exploring
the perspective of a character that might be quite different from ourselves.
Significantly, what follows Remzi’s question is not an answer, but a
dialogue in which both men participate equally. To “arrive” at a final walk,
the two men undertake many journeys, trying out different emotions,
attitudes, and embodied responses toward one another and the situation
in which they imagine themselves. In the process, they exchange roles,
imagining themselves into the other, contemplating how he might feel and
behave. They build on one another’s ideas, ask questions, and share criti-
cal commentary. These multiple journeys from self to other and back again
challenge models of empathy in which affect moves—or seems to move—
from one body to another and from a clear origin to a clear destination.
The scene between Remzi and Craver suggests, instead, a multidirectional
empathy built through revision, collaboration, and negotiation. This
open-ended method of engaging in empathy has much in common with
the process of theatrical rehearsal. Empathy achieved under these circum-
stances will be changeable, subject to constant negotiation—an empathy,
in other words, that consists not in “arriving” at understanding, but in the
ongoing labor of engagement with an other.
I use the term labor here to emphasize empathy as a process entailing
deliberate, repeatable acts of engagement, listening, thinking, and imagi-
nation, rather than spontaneous feeling. I liken empathy to the steps a
trained actor undertakes to build a character. As I describe below, this is
emotional, intellectual, and physical work with cultural (and sometimes
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 125

monetary) value. My analysis of actors’ labor also calls for a revised

consideration of the relationship between empathy and estrangement in
feminist performance. A great deal of feminist scholarship on Brecht has
focused on his idea of complex seeing—viewing the world historically and
dialectically.3 This concept is central to the work of scholars like Sue-Ellen
Case, Janelle Reinelt, Alisa Solomon, and Elin Diamond. Solomon argues
that Brecht’s theatre “demands that we perceive things as they are and, at
the same time, as other than they are.”4 In her influential book Unmaking
Mimesis (1997), Diamond pursues specifically how critical seeing impacts
the representation of gender, writing: “When gender is ‘alienated’ or fore-
grounded, the spectator is able to see what s/he can’t see: a sign system as
a sign system.”5 These arguments privilege the act of viewing and the nego-
tiation of representation that occurs between a performer and a spectator.
Without negating any of these important lessons, I suggest that there
is more that we can learn from a Brechtian feminist theatre—particularly
from the process of doing such theatre—especially when it is practiced in
conjunction with empathetic methods of acting. What does it feel like to
estrange our world? How might critical seeing be aided by imagining the
other’s point of view or embodying new behaviors? One of the lessons of
feminism is the need to acknowledge forms of labor that have historically
gone unrecognized. I am proposing a Brechtian feminist approach to the-
atre that acknowledges the imbricated labor of mind and body, affect and
intellect. These forms of labor are central to the work of the actor. In what
follows, I theorize why rehearsal, as the space where actors’ labor is most
exploratory and conditional, offers a particularly helpful context for the
study of empathy, as well as how the rehearsal techniques Wallace empha-
sizes help us rethink the relationship between empathy and estrangement.
I then analyze rehearsals in In the Heart of America and The Trestle at Pope
Lick Creek (1999). In the Heart of America models empathy as a collab-
orative endeavor that challenges our sense of self, allowing us to experi-
ence new ways of being in the world. Empathy undoes us and remakes us.
Trestle, meanwhile, explores how this undoing may produce resistance and
asks the audience to empathize with the emotional difficulty of estranging
3
Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. John
Willet (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 44.
4
Alisa Solomon, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essay on Theater and Gender (London and
New York: Routledge, 1997), 74.
5
Elin Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 47.
126 L.B. CUMMINGS

ourselves and the world. Together, these plays reveal a model of empathy
that draws on the uncertainty of theatrical rehearsal. In doing so, they
offer new ways of thinking about the relationship between Stanislavski-
based and Brecht-based acting methodologies.

REHEARSAL, ACTING METHODOLOGY, AND FEMINIST

APPROACHES TO THEATRICAL LABOR
Etymologically, “to rehearse” originally meant to repeat—to say or do some-
thing said or done previously, an act of quotation, citation, or repetition.
This meaning is retained in the French répéter. Around the end of the six-
teenth century, the English word acquired a new dimension in its meaning,
referring to an act of preparation—doing or saying something that will be
done or said again in the future.6 Like the much-theorized “performance,”
rehearsal is thus a revision of the past and a proposal for the future. But
whereas performance, at least in a great deal of performance studies schol-
arship, emphasizes the aspect of “doing,” rehearsal retains its somewhat
more liminal status as experimentation and exploration, its future-oriented
nature reminding us that this is one possibility of many, a proposition rather
than a declarative statement about what is or will be.7 Richard Schechner
has suggested that rehearsal is subjunctive (“as if”), while performance is

6
“Rehearsal,” OED Online, accessed Aug. 14, 2010.
7
The Oxford English Dictionary Online lists as its first definition of performance, “The
accomplishment or carrying out of something commanded or undertaken; the doing of an
action or operation” (“Performance”). This use of the word dates from at least 1487. The idea
of performance as an instance of presenting a work of art dates from somewhat later, around
1611, and clearly draws on the earlier definition’s emphasis on “doing”: “The action of per-
forming a play, piece of music, ceremony, etc.; execution, interpretation” (“Performance”).
The idea of performance as involving falsehood, acting, or deception creeps into later defini-
tions, dating from at least the late seventeenth century and leading up to the nineteenth-cen-
tury usage of “performance” to indicate such occurrences as “a fuss, a scene,” and thus a
specifically theatrical (and, by extension, false) scenario (“Performance”). The emergence in the
1980s and 1990s of the discipline of performance studies shifted the discussion from the more
historically recent idea of performance as a falsification or exaggeration of reality back to the
earlier definition of performance as a doing. This does not mean that questions about artificial-
ity or theatricality disappear; the questions, however, become different. Performance studies
allows us to consider that everything we say and do can be construed as a performance of sorts,
which deeply troubles notions of surface and interior, origin and copy, real and artificial.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 127

indicative (“is”).8 Performance does while rehearsal proposes, explores, pre-

tends, simulates, and hypothesizes.
As an exploratory process, rehearsal often requires us to question that
which seems “normal” or “natural” in life. Workshops and rehearsals are
liminoid processes in which “strips of behavior” are broken down and reas-
sembled in new and different ways, a process that Schechner refers to as
“re/membering” the past—disassembling it and putting it back together
in a way that it may never have existed before.9 In rehearsal, Anne Bogart
states, “an actor searches for shapes that can be repeated.”10 We might
think of rehearsal as the search for what works—for what we can use and
remake from the past that we might apply toward the future.
Rehearsals can be both exciting and scary. They demand risk, open-
ness, and vulnerability. Like any act of creation, they start with great
holes—the unknown—out of which we collectively build something. This
requires participants to enter the process without too many fixed ideas and
assumptions—to work, as it were, as much from what they do not know as
from what they do. While the text of the play, assuming a rehearsal process
that involves a text, is a “given” or known entity, even that given must be
approached with an open mind. Our understanding of the text evolves
through the rehearsal process, continuing to do so as elements like set
and costumes are added. In Viewpoints, this openness is called “Working
Without Knowing”: “The actors work to become skilled observers using
memory recall and repetition, while acting as full participants, refusing to
predict or guide the end result.… They recognize the event as it appears,
gradually developing the ability to hold several simultaneous focuses
while continuing to be aware of what is transpiring.”11 Working Without
Knowing is thus something of a misnomer, as it requires the critical abil-
ity to remember and understand what is happening even while remaining
emotionally, physically, and sensorially responsive to changing circum-
stances. It is a state in which we focus not on our individual capacity to
create, but on how creation happens when we surrender to the unknown,
becoming part of our social and physical environment.

8
Richard Schechner, Between Theatre and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 104.
9
Schechner, Between, 48.
10
Anne Bogart, A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre (London and
New York: Routledge, 2001), 42.
11
Mary Overlie, “The Six Viewpoints,” in Training the American Actor, ed. Arthur
Bartow (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006), 209.
128 L.B. CUMMINGS

Actors put themselves “out there” for others to “play off of,” to respond
to, or perhaps even to command (as occurs in clowning). Of course, the
“I” that is “out there” is usually a character with an identity separate from
my own, but the actor is never not on stage when the character is on stage,
and thus the performing self is always vulnerable. Schechner argues that
in performance, the performing subject shifts from “me, not me” to “not
me, not not me,” a process of displacement precipitated by the fact that
performance is always a social act, an encounter between a performer and
other performers, or a performer and the audience.12 The best moments in
rehearsals are often ones in which an actor is surprised by her own choices,
finding something in herself that she has not premeditated or previously
experienced. This occurs because rehearsals, improvisation, and theatrical
play are designed to undo ingrained patterns of behavior—not so that we
can “become” someone else in the stereotypical image of Method acting,
but so that we might be able to set foot, for a moment, in that space of
“not me, not not me,” encountering a self that is clearly other and yet not
other, a self that awakens us to affects, ideas, and embodiments that we
might not have found if we did not first go “out” of ourselves.13
What occurs in rehearsal, of course, may differ drastically based on the
aesthetic of the play and the acting methodology utilized to bring it to life.
Feminist criticism has aptly demonstrated that how actors create characters
is a politically and ideologically charged activity, and Stanislavski-based
methods have been widely criticized for perpetuating extant ideolo-
gies and worldviews rather than helping us reimagine those views. In
Stanislavski’s system, the actor uses her imagination to place herself within
the “given circumstances” of the play so as to achieve “truth of the pas-
sions” (a phrase Stanislavski borrows from Pushkin).14 Stanislavski writes,
“You must sincerely believe that such a life is possible in the real world.
You must become so used to it that it becomes an intimate part of you.
If you can do that, then the truth of the passions or feelings that seem

12
Schechner, Between Theatre and Anthropology, 100–101.
13
“The Method” is the name given to the system of Stanislavski-inspired actor training
developed by members of the Group Theatre, including Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and
Sanford Meisner, and is perhaps most specifically associated with Strasberg. While there are
significant differences between these three approaches to acting, they share as their central
tenet the aesthetic ideal of “truth on stage.” See Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares:
Women and “the Method” (London and New York: Routledge, 2012).
14
Elizabeth Hapgood omits the Pushkin reference in her translation of Stanislavski.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 129

true will arise of their own accord.”15 Rehearsal techniques derived from
Stanislavski are usually aimed at helping the actor discover the inner life of
the character, to achieve “true” emotions under imaginary circumstances.
This process is frequently likened to empathy, although it is more iden-
tificatory than empathy as I understand it, requiring the actor to imagine
themselves into another set of circumstances, and then to respond emo-
tionally from that “other” position.16 He wrote, “He [the actor] speaks
not as the non-existing person, Hamlet, but in his own right, in the Given
Circumstances.”17 And, while this may very well push an actor to imag-
ine a set of circumstances distinct from their own, it may also require
her to experience those circumstances uncritically, or even to “live in”
a character in a manner that damages or demeans the actor.18 Sue-Ellen
Case famously argued that a female actor utilizing Stanislavski’s system is
forced both to represent and internalize misogyny. Using Amanda from
Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie as an example, Case writes, “the
female actor learns to be passive, weak and dependent on her sexual role,
with a fragile inner life that reveals no desire.”19 As Case and others have
contended, Stanislavski-based acting systems leave little room for actors
to distance themselves from their characters, and require them, instead,

15
Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work: A Student Diary, trans. and ed. Jean Benedetti
(London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 53.
16
Some argue that a Stanislavski-based process of building a character does not involve
empathy, because the character does not exist as a distinct “other” with whom one can empa-
thize. This, for instance, is the position taken by John Wesley Hill in a correspondence with
Rhonda Blair, published in TDR. My position on this is more in line with Blair, who takes
the position that the “self” is no more a stable construction than the character; rather, “self
[is] a process or an ever-adjusting, fluid, ‘mental’ construction,” and thus that actor and
character can neither be thought of as “one” or as “separate” in simple, binary ways (10). See
John Wesley Hill and Rhonda Blair, “Stanislavski and Cognitive Science,” TDR: The Drama
Review 54.3 (Fall 2010): 9–11.
17
Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work, 280.
18
In Stanislavsky in Focus, Sharon Marie Carnicke argues that “living” or “living in” a char-
acter is a mistranslation of the Russian word perezhivanie, which would be better translated as
“experiencing.” She offers a nuanced analysis of Stanislavski’s multifaceted use of this term,
concluding that, ultimately, a revisiting of this term will dismantle our notion of what “truth”
means in Stanislavski-based acting and “unequivocally break[] the assumed but inaccurate link
between the multivalent training System and the aesthetic of Psychological Realism” (147).
Because the notion of “living in” a role has long held sway in the USA, however, it is still
relevant to the discussion at hand. Sharon Marie Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting
Master for the Twenty-First Century. 2nd edition. (London and New York: Routledge, 2009).
19
Sue-Ellen Case, Feminism and Theatre (New York: Methuen, 1988), 122.
130 L.B. CUMMINGS

to find a way to make potentially problematic actions and feelings appear

“true” to others by first making them feel true to the performer herself.
In her recent book An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method”
(2012), Rosemary Malague argues that one of the major problems with
Stanislavski-based methods is that “truth” is often determined not by the
actor preparing the role, but by an outside authority. Turning her atten-
tion to acting pedagogy, Malague declares, “‘Honest’ behavior in the act-
ing classroom is determined by the rules established by the teacher and
often by social convention and sexual stereotyping.”20 Malague offers a
detailed analysis of the acting exercises and classroom techniques of some
of the most influential acting teachers in the USA—Lee Strasberg, Stella
Adler, Sanford Meisner, and Uta Hagen. In so doing, she demonstrates
how an actor’s “truth” is often rejected by the acting teacher in favor
of a more normative or stereotypical choice, particularly in the case of
Strasberg and Meisner. As Malague reveals, a Stanislavski-based approach
to acting may not simply reinforce patriarchal values or other social norms
by asking actors to internalize these systems, but may also do so by remov-
ing the actor’s ability to analyze those norms and placing that power in
the hands of another. Paradoxically, the system of acting through which
a character is built from the “inside out” may, in some cases, be better
described as imposed from without.
Feminist critiques of Stanislavski, of course, are not based on char-
acter development alone, but also on how this system impacts an audi-
ence. Stanislavski’s methods were intimately linked to theatrical realism,
itself the object of much critique for the way that it naturalizes the world
depicted on stage, and also for its focus on characters’ psychological expe-
riences rather than on social, economic, or political forces. The 1980s saw
a widespread rejection of realism—and Stanislavski along with it—from
feminist artists and scholars, many of whom turned to Brecht in the pro-
cess. Brecht rejected the ideal of “truth on stage,” advocating instead for
actions on stage to appear constructed and changeable. Central to this
position was, of course, his rejection of empathy, which, again, he under-
stood as identification. A Brechtian actor approaches a character not from
a recreation of her emotional life, but rather from an analysis of her social
circumstances. She refrains from manifesting the emotional life of the
character and living it on stage and maintains, instead, her own emotions
and ideas about the character. Brecht’s rehearsal techniques discouraged

20
Malague, An Actress Prepares, 13.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 131

emotional identification by having actors do things like speak stage direc-

tions out loud or switch roles to observe one another, thus building a
character through multiple points of view. Overall, these techniques were
designed to highlight the act of showing a character rather than being the
character. Feminist artists and theorists gravitated toward Brecht because
his approach offered a clear way to see gender, ideology, and social norms
as constructed rather than as natural. His aesthetic, furthermore, allowed
a performer to have a perspective on the role she played rather than neces-
sitating that she adopt her character’s perspective.
There have been, in recent years, parallel and sometimes overlapping
reevaluations of realism, Stanislavski-based approaches to acting, and the
relationship between Brecht and Stanislavski. In her essay “Rethinking
Feminism, Stanislavski, and Performance,” J.  Ellen Gainor argues that
feminist criticism championing Brecht over Stanislavski has focused pri-
marily on audience reception, all but ignoring the actor’s process. Gainor
points out that many performers categorized by scholars as “Brechtian”
actually testify to their indebtedness to Stanislavski’s techniques for pre-
paring a role, leading her to assert that we must stop privileging reception
over creation in our search for feminist performance practices. Rhonda
Blair, meanwhile, has argued that recent discoveries in cognitive neurosci-
ence support many of Stanislavski’s theories and help us understand them
in new ways, while Malague notes how helpful his techniques can be to
actors if they are employed with a critical awareness of social norms and
power dynamics in the classroom/rehearsal room.21 In the midst of these
feminist reconsiderations of Stanislavski, other scholars have pointed to
various similarities between Brecht and Stanislavski. Michael Morley, for
example, argues that Brecht’s techniques for analyzing a script resemble
Stanislavski’s system of breaking a scene down into “bits” (or “beats”),
and Duane Krause suggests that Brechtian gestus is not unlike Michael
Chekhov’s Stanislavski-influenced notion of a “psychological gesture.”22

21
See Rhonda Blair, “Reconsidering Stanislavski: Feeling, Feminism, and the Actor,”
Theatre Topics 12.2 (2002): 177–190, as well as her book The Actor, Image, and Action:
Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience (New York: Routledge, 2008). See Malague, An Actress
Prepares, 189.
22
Reevaluations of the two artists’ relationship have abounded in the past 15 years. See, for
example, Jean Benedetti, “Brecht, Stanislavski, and the Art of Acting,” Brecht Then and
Now/Damals und Heute, Brecht Yearbook 20, ed. John Willet, The International Brecht
Society (1995): 101–111; Michael Morley, “Brecht and Stanislavski: Polarities or
Proximities?,” I’m Still Here/Ich bin noch da, The Brecht Yearbook 22, The International
132 L.B. CUMMINGS

I am building on these reassessments, but also asking us to think about

them somewhat differently. Many of these reevaluations are based on “they’re
not as different as they seem” arguments. I contend that these approaches to
character development are different, but they also complement one another
in rich and productive ways, offering us an approach to both acting and
empathy that is cognitive, embodied, and affective. By blending Brechtian
and Stanislavskian approaches, actors may be able to gain affective insight
into a character by putting themselves into her circumstances, while at the
same time maintaining a critical and analytical perspective on both circum-
stances and character. My approach is also informed by Anna Deavere Smith,
who has linked a Stanislavski-based approach to acting to an inability or
unwillingness to empathize.23 Smith argues that techniques such as iden-
tifying our similarities to a character and finding analogous emotions from
our own lives do not ask the actor to live or walk in the character’s shoes,
but rather asks “the character to walk in the actor’s shoes.”24 Stanislavski-
based techniques, for Smith, do not require actors to go far enough outside
themselves to construct a role. While she seeks a linguistic and physical-
ized remedy to this problem, building characters from the recreation of her
interviewees’ verbal patterns, I suggest that a path to better empathy in a
Stanislavski-based approach—one that contends with the critiques of both
Case and Smith—might come, paradoxically, via Brechtian techniques.
There is a third theorist/practitioner to consider here: Augusto Boal.
Boal’s work is important to this chapter because of his emphasis on theatre
as a space to rehearse new behaviors and seek solutions to social problems.
He famously referred to theatre as a “rehearsal of revolution,” explain-
ing that whereas the bourgeois theatre presents a finished image of the
world, “the proletariat and the oppressed classes do not know yet what
their world will be like; consequently their theater will be the rehearsal,
not the finished spectacle.”25 Significantly, he understands rehearsal here
not as rote repetition that prepares the proletariat for a predetermined
revolution, but as a space for exploration and discovery in which all
involved have an equal voice: “the people have the opportunity to try out

Brecht Society (1997): 195–203; Duane Krause, “An Epic System,” Acting (Re)considered:
Theories and Practices, ed. Phillip B.  Zarrilli (London and New  York: Routledge, 1995):
262–274.
23
Anna Deavere Smith, Introduction to Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and
Other Identities (New York: Anchor Books, 1993), xxvii.
24
Ibid., xxvi.
25
Ibid., 142.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 133

all their ideas, to rehearse all the possibilities, and to verify them in prac-
tice, that is, in theatrical practice.”26 Boal’s work draws heavily on Brecht,
of course. He adopts from Brecht the idea that theatre should reveal that
the world could be other than it is and goes one step further, using theatre
to help us enact what those other possibilities might be. My goal here is
not so much to suggest a new understanding of Boal in relation to either
Stanislavski of Brecht, but rather to reveal how estranging and empathiz-
ing are embodied and rehearsed in Wallace’s plays in a way that evokes
Boal’s understanding of theatre itself as a means of producing knowledge
and social change. He writes, “Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should
and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build
our future, instead of just waiting for it.”27
In what follows, I analyze two plays by Naomi Wallace, The Trestle at
Pope Lick Creek and In the Heart of America, explicating how Wallace’s
characters utilize the embodied, affective, and critical labor of rehearsal to
understand and change their worlds. I focus on these plays, rather than on
the concept of rehearsal in general, for two reasons. First, the texts provide
a grounding point for the discussion. Second, Wallace’s plays are unique
in the way that they foreground the frequently hidden process of theatre-
making for an audience, suggesting that the work of theatre is much the
same as the work of life. Amy Steiger has described Wallace’s work as being
“full of moments of embodied teaching and learning, in which characters
remember and repeat the movements of others to transform their bodies
to fit particular social roles.” She continues: “Teachers and pupils in these
plays are also actors who manage to change their worlds through per-
formances that combine real bodies and history with courageous acts of
imagination.”28 Building on Steiger, I argue that Wallace’s characters learn
to act through the techniques of theatrical rehearsal. Wallace’s characters
use rehearsals to work out what it means to live in the world and what it
would take to change that world. These rehearsals are social encounters
in which one character is changed through his or her interactions with
another. They open the way to intimate relationships—to the love and
friendship that make us vulnerable to others. New worlds and identities

26
Ibid., 141.
27
Boal, Games for Actors and Non-Actors, 2nd edition, trans. Adrian Jackson (London and
New York: Routledge, 2002), 16.
28
Amy Steiger, “Re-membering Our Selves: Acting, Critical Pedagogy, and the Plays of
Naomi Wallace,” Theatre Topics 21.1 (March 2011), 21.
134 L.B. CUMMINGS

are not built alone in these plays, but with and through others. Thus it is
in the affective and analytical state of rehearsal, where the self is actively
under construction, that we might find the conditions for social change.
My analysis of these plays is primarily textual because I am particularly
interested in how Wallace builds acting techniques into her dramaturgy. The
productions of Wallace’s plays that I have seen suggest an acting style in
which the actors show action—to the audience, to the other characters, and to
themselves.29 But rather than offering action with comment, or with a sense
that they have arrived at their own understanding of what they show us, the
actors in these plays often seemed to be pondering, analyzing, and respond-
ing affectively to their own actions as much as we in the audience were,
considering what it feels like to stand in a certain way or to speak a particular
line. Actors’ performances tended to be deliberate and halting. Movement
and action were not fluid, emerging from an organic impulse; rather, when
a character moved, she or he did so with awareness, calling attention to the
movement. This kind of performance signals an encounter with the world
that is constantly being revised, analyzed, felt, and estranged, inviting the
audience to engage in a similarly complex affective and cognitive response.
I turn now to In the Heart of America, in which characters use rehears-
als to construct an empathetically informed gestus that not only expresses
their social relationship, but brings that relationship into being, setting
in motion a series of events that will ultimately change each man and his
relationship to his social environment. As an element in their rehearsal,
empathy is not something the characters feel but something they do in
collaboration with one another, and thus something that changes as the
rehearsal develops. I argue that as much as these rehearsals represent the
desire and the attempt to make change happen, they also bring the char-
acters face to face with the limits of their own agency, the extent to which
they must allow themselves to be changed by others, and the extent to
which these changes require them to move into the unknown.

IN THE HEART OF AMERICA: UNDOING EACH OTHER

THROUGH EMPATHY

In the Heart of America is a play about the damaging effects of war. It is

also about connection, disconnection, and communicating across time,
distance, race, and class. All of the characters in the play are searching
29
I saw Things of Dry Hours at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2009 and The Trestle at
Pope Lick Creek, produced by the Eclipse Theatre Company, in Chicago in August of 2011.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 135

for something: love, friendship, their place in this world, a person lost to
them. The story follows the growing friendship and eventual love affair
between Remzi and Craver, soldiers in the first Gulf War. The setting
shifts temporally between the “present,” which takes place in Craver’s
hotel room in Kentucky, and the past, in Iraq. In the present, Remzi’s
sister Fairouz has tracked Craver down in order to find out what happened
to her brother, who never returned from the war and whom the army has
classified only as “missing.”30 Fairouz is aided in her quest by Lue Ming,
a Vietnamese ghost on her own search through time to find the spirit
of Lieutenant William Calley, the man who murdered her.31 When she
locates his spirit, we find that it has taken residence in Remzi and Craver’s
commander in Iraq, Boxler.
Wallace explores larger questions of geo politics through motifs of
travel and movement—of ghosts across time, of bodies across borders, and
of ideas and feelings from body to body. Who can cross borders and who
cannot? The wars in Vietnam and Iraq both evoke the ease with which the
US military moves about the world. For the individual characters in the
play, however, movement it far from free, a condition Wallace manifests
through the way her characters walk. Remzi’s sister Fairouz walks with a
limp, the result of a childhood injury caused when schoolchildren took
a hammer to her foot to prove that the “Dirty Arab devil” had cloven
hooves.32 The Vietnamese ghost Lue Ming walks hunched over, like all
the women in her country, she claims, so as to be “less of a target” for the
bombs that fall around them.33 Fairouz and Remzi’s mother limps from
an injury probably sustained at the hands of Israeli soldiers.34 Each step
these women take is encoded with a history of ethnically motivated hate,
religious conflict, war, and violence. In Brechtian terms, these walks are
all examples of gestus, as an expression of the characters’ relationships to

30
Wallace, Heart, 111.
31
The name William Calley suggests that Lue Ming was killed in the infamous My Lai
massacre. William Laws Calley, Jr. was the commander of the US Army Division charged
with the murder of civilians in My Lai on March 16, 1968 (numbers vary, but the total num-
ber of those killed may be as high as 400). Of the few soldiers charged, Calley was the only
one convicted. His initial life sentence was widely protested by many who felt he was a scape-
goat, or that his actions had been justified. Nixon responded to public pressure, commuting
his sentence to house arrest. Calley’s sentence was reduced multiple times, until he was ulti-
mately released on parole in 1974.
32
Wallace, Heart, 128.
33
Ibid., 91.
34
Ibid., 93.
136 L.B. CUMMINGS

each other and to their social environment, a representation of who they

are historically and culturally.35
In Wallace’s plays, gestus is not simply a means of helping the audi-
ence recognize historical and social conditions; it is also an exploration
of lived experience. “War wreaks extreme damage to the body, either by
putting it at risk or turning it into a killing machine,” Wallace states. She
goes on, “But how are our bodies damaged through sexism? How is our
desire damaged through homophobia?”36 Gestic walking is embodied in
a way that asks the audience to empathize with the damage done by war,
sexism, homophobia, and other ways of restricting lives and bodies. It is
also created and revised through rehearsal. Fairouz practices “walking with
grace,” an attempt to overcome the “clumping” caused by her damaged
foot.37 Lue Ming also teaches Fairouz how to cross borders—not only the
international borders that she will have to cross if she travels in search of
Remzi but also the borders of time and space that Lue Ming traverses in
her search for justice.38 Characters thus attempt to change their relation-
ship to the world by changing how they live and move in that world.
One of the most importance examples of this comes in the moment
described at the opening of this chapter, when Remzi asks Craver the ques-
tion that foreshadows Remzi’s death: “Let’s say I’m lying over there, dead
as can be, and then you see it’s me, from a distance. But you still have to
walk over to my body to check it out. So, how would you walk?”39 The sce-
nario Remzi proposes is at once highly critical and highly affective. He asks
Craver, literally and metaphorically, to travel the distance between them. In
this sense, the walk can be viewed as a metaphor for empathy, since empathy
is often characterized as “bridging of difference between self and other.”40

35
This is true, at least, of what Brecht characterized as “social” gestus. See Brecht, Brecht
on Theatre 86, 104, and 198.
36
Wallace quoted in Greene, 466.
37
Wallace, Heart, 90, 91.
38
While my primary focus in this chapter is on the gestus created by Remzi and Craver,
because it most closely resembles the work of actors in rehearsal, it is important to note that
the women in the play are not reduced to gestic representations of victimhood. Both Lue
Ming and Fairouz undertake quests for retribution and justice, a fact that Emily Rollie
explores in her astute analysis of this play, which I had the good fortune to hear at the 2011
Women in Theatre Preconference in Chicago, IL.
39
Wallace, Heart, 88.
40
Judith Kegan Gardiner, Rhys, Stead, Lessing, and the Politics of Empathy (Bloomington,
Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989), 1. Smith also alludes to empathy as a kind of bridg-
ing between self and character. See Smith, “Introduction,” xxix.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 137

When Craver questions what would motivate him to want to walk

to Remzi’s body, Remzi suggests that in this imagined future moment,
they are “pretty good friends,”41 a condition that transforms the moment
into a call to friendship. When they begin the rehearsal, they are not, in
fact, “pretty good friends.” Earlier in the scene, Remzi had responded
to what he perceived as an anti-Arab sentiment from Craver by attempt-
ing to highlight their mutually minoritized status, stating, “You’re broke
and I’m Arab. That about evens it out, doesn’t it?”—a question Craver
ignores.42 At this early point in the play, they seem unsure of the depth of
their friendship, as well as how to address the racial and class differences
that identify them to the world and to each other. By inviting Craver
to perform in an imaginative scenario in which they are “pretty good
friends,” Remzi asks that Craver experience, physically, emotionally, and
intellectually, the possibility of this kind of relationship. To realize the pos-
sibility of friendship, both men must establish what the distance between
them means. Are they, as Remzi proposes, “about even,” or are they not?
By accepting Remzi’s invitation and engaging in the imaginative scenario,
Craver accepts the challenge that he has previously ignored; he responds
to Remzi’s call to friendship.
To explore this hypothetical future and this possible friendship, the two
men approach the situation much as actors might. “This is something
important I’m talking about,” Remzi says, establishing the “stakes” of
the situation. “Let’s say I’m you and I see me lying up ahead, dead. I
stop in my tracks. I’m upset. We were friends, and I’ve got to cross the
thirty or so feet between us.”43 The crossings described in this passage are
more than physical. Remzi “crosses” to Craver’s point of view, seeing his
own dead body as he imagines Craver might see it. Craver, in turn, stud-
ies “his” actions by watching Remzi perform them, just as a Brechtian
actor might.44 Remzi and Craver thus develop Craver’s actions collabora-
tively. The men then contemplate what Stanislavski would call the “given
circumstances” of Remzi’s scenario in order to devise a walk that both
agree suits the situation in all its complexity—the heat of the desert bear-
ing down, Craver’s understanding that he could easily have been the one
41
Ibid., 90. Remzi’s scenario begs the question of whether or not Craver is only able to
entertain the possibility of their friendship under the condition of Remzi’s death, his absence.
Even if this is so, that imagined future paves the way for friendship and love in the present.
42
Ibid., 87.
43
Wallace, Heart, 88.
44
Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 197.
138 L.B. CUMMINGS

killed (in the scenario, Remzi has been shot by an Iraqi), Craver’s hap-
piness at still being alive, and their status (in the context of the scenario)
as “Pretty good friends.”45 Physical, psychological, social, and affective
circumstances are all considered, embodied, and evaluated. Remzi’s first
walk, the men determine, is “too confident,” while Craver’s ensuing
attempt is “too careful.”46 These assessments are made not just by actor or
observer, but by a combination of both perspectives—seeing and doing,
thinking and feeling. Remzi then devises a version of the walk both men
find appropriate, and Craver attempts to reproduce it, pausing first to pose
another question evocative of Stanislavski’s system acting: “Why do I want
to get closer if you’re dead and I know it’s you? I mean, there’s nothing
else to figure out, is there?”47 Craver is asking, in other words, “What is
my motivation? How do I justify this action?” Remzi replies by emphasiz-
ing the significance of friendship: “Because… I’m your friend, and you’d
rather be the one to report my death than some jerk who doesn’t know I
exist.”48 Finally, the two men “link arms and walk in unison.”49 The final
image, in which both men accept the condition of being “pretty good
friends” and all that entails, while also understanding the survivor’s own
relief at being alive, suggests consensus and mutual understanding.
As they exchange roles, traveling the space between them, Remzi and
Craver engage in empathy. They attempt to see the situation from the
other’s perspective, but never by simply imagining what that perspective
might be or presuming knowledge of it. Instead, they ask questions and
respond to the other’s comments. They attempt to embody different ver-
sions of the walk, seeing if they can live in the other’s experience or if their
own attempts will produce something different. Their respect for one
another emerges through the dialogic nature of their empathy, evident in
the extent to which each man regards the other as having his own, distinct
understanding and experience of the situation.
Both men are, furthermore, working in the subjunctive mode. While it
is true that they agree to assume the relationship of “pretty good friends,”
this is, at least initially, merely an imagined condition. Neither man is sure
what this condition looks or feels like, and consequently neither is imposing

45
Wallace, Heart, 90.
46
Ibid., 88.
47
Ibid., 89.
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid., 90.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 139

a particular emotional state or critical response on the other. They are try-
ing it out. Their empathy is contingent, able to move in new directions
as new ideas and emotions surface. Emotion, after all, comes from the
Latin emovere, meaning “to move.” As they experience emotions, they are
moved to new places, inspiring new emotions, ideas, and questions in the
process. When Remzi suggests that Craver would not be feeling very con-
fident because he would be thinking “that could just as easily be me lying
there as him,” Craver agrees.50 But when Craver turns this idea around,
proposing that, “I might be feeling in a pretty nice way, thinking about
being alive and not quite as dead as you,” Remzi concedes, “You’ve got a
point there.”51 First one possibility is imagined, felt, and enacted, and then
another, until both feel that they have explored all the possibilities and
permutations, and that they both understand where they finally end up.
The empathy that Remzi and Craver engage in contrasts markedly to
the more monologic and unidirectional forms described by theorists such
as those discussed in the introduction: Vischer, Lee, Gauss, Sommer, and,
of course, Brecht. For these theorists, empathy consists of an engage-
ment with a relatively passive body: the aesthetic object, the spectator, the
minority subject, etc.52 These bodies become either a canvas onto which
the empathizer projects his or her emotions or an involuntary recepta-
cle for emotion and ideology. Boal expresses the latter understanding of
empathy in The Rainbow of Desire: “The emotion of the characters pen-
etrates us, the moral world of the show invades us, osmotically; we are led
by characters and actions not under our control; we experience a vicarious
emotion.”53 Under these circumstances, the spectator feels that she must
“surrender empathetically.”54 Empathy is seen as an emotional invasion,
more of a one-way street than a bridge, and the feelings and thoughts that
travel it remain unaffected by the act of transmission. These models of
empathy imagine a clear exchange between a stable, coherent “I” and an
“other”—and, while empathy may threaten to disrupt that coherence, it

50
Wallace, Heart, 88.
51
Ibid., 89.
52
Sommer actually argues that readers intent on empathizing with the minority subject
perceive that subject as passive and accessible, when, in her analysis, minority writers might
actively work to refuse this easy intimacy, targeting “those who would read in the presumptu-
ous register of ‘If I were a…,’ and forget how positionality affects knowledge” (9).
53
Augusto Boal, The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy, trans.
Adrian Jackson (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 42.
54
Ibid., 27.
140 L.B. CUMMINGS

seems to do so in a way that is always invasive, with the power located only
on one side of the exchange.
Remzi and Craver, on the other hand, open themselves willingly to one
another, inviting respectful exchange that is not only multidirectional but
also constantly shifting as the two subjects engaged in the project grow,
change, and respond to one another. In this respect, their exchange is more
characteristic of clinical empathy than aesthetic empathy. As Warren S. Poland
argues, “Emotional traffic goes two ways.”55 Craver and Remzi reflect this as
they carefully, slowly establish trust and understanding. But even this model
of exchange suggests a closed system, with stable subjects transferring emo-
tion back and forth from stable origin to stable destination. In Heart, the
exchange is complicated by the ways in which Craver and Remzi each change
through their encounter. As Katz writes of clinical empathy, “the client with
whom we empathize is far from static.”56 This is presumably true of the clini-
cian as well. It is certainly true of Remzi and Craver, who are in the process
of reimagining their relationship, and thus themselves, as they undertake this
empathetic exchange. By engaging in this dialogic empathy in their rehears-
als for an imagined future, Remzi and Craver render themselves vulnerable
to change not because they risk being invaded by the other’s emotion, as
described by Brecht and Boal, but because they are willing to respond to the
other and possibly change in the process.
This sense of contingency is also attached to the gestus the pair
develops.  Diamond has argued that gestus reflects an act of interpreta-
tion: “What the spectator sees is not the mere miming of a social rela-
tionship, but a reading of it, an interpretation by a historical subject who
supplements (rather than disappears into) the production of meaning.”57
Before they can present their reading, however, Remzi and Craver have
to produce it. Moreover, they are not, strictly speaking, developing a
gestus in order to express their current relationship and structure future
understandings of it. When they begin their exploration, they are not
entirely sure what their relationship is. Unlike the moment when an actor
sums up a character’s social situation, like Helene Weigel snapping her
purse closed as Mother Courage, Remzi and Craver use the methods of
rehearsal to explore and develop their relationship, to make discoveries, to
create gestus, and to rehearse their own possible future. In doing so, their

55
Poland, 90.
56
Katz, 25.
57
Diamond, 53.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 141

hypothetical friendship evolves into a real one. In the scenes that follow,
Remzi and Craver grow progressively closer, moving from friendship, to
flirtation, and eventually to love. In the process of building a “reading” of
their relationship, Remzi and Craver perform that relationship into being;
they rehearse their way into friendship.
Building on Jill Dolan’s work, Shannon Baley has suggested that
Wallace’s plays offer examples of utopian performatives originating in
gestus. Dolan defines utopian performatives as the “small but profound
moments in which performance calls the attention of the audience in a
way that lifts everyone slightly above the present, into a hopeful feeling
of what the world might be like if every moment of our lives were as
emotionally voluminous, generous, aesthetically striking, and intersubjec-
tively intense.”58 Remzi and Craver’s democratically attained union cer-
tainly seems to affectively evoke a possible, utopian future. What Baley
and Dolan’s analyses do not fully account for is the way that Craver and
Remzi do not simply perform a utopian moment: they build one through
rehearsal. Similarly, they do not express gestus as a means of interpret-
ing their situation; they devise that interpretation through improvisation
and negotiation. Both scholars focus on the moment of the performa-
tive itself—the achievement of the utopian goal, in this case, the walk in
unison. But as the scene demonstrates, arriving at that moment of unison
took numerous experiments and failed attempts, just as any utopian per-
formative in the theatre may take a great deal of experimentation and labor
to produce. The fact that Remzi and Craver found something that they
can agree upon required them to listen carefully to one another, analyzing
the moment and “trying out” different affective responses. Wallace calls
our attention to a key difference between performing and rehearsing. If we
are to perform new worlds into being, utopian or otherwise, how do we
get there? Both the critical readings of gestic interpretation and potential
utopian moments must be built, and, like anything in the theatre, they are
built through rehearsal—through taking the time to try things together,
and then try them again and again.
The range of performance theories and rehearsal styles Wallace incor-
porates into the scene emphasizes the combined importance of affect,
cognition, and embodiment to her characters’ collective labor. Remzi and

58
Dolan, 5. See also Shannon Baley, “Death and Desire, Apocalypse and Utopia: Feminist
Gestus and the Utopian Performative in the Plays of Naomi Wallace,” Modern Drama 47.2
(Summer 2004): 237–249.
142 L.B. CUMMINGS

Craver’s discussions about their environment, motivation, and the authen-

ticity of their enactments resonate with Stanislavski’s system of actor train-
ing. Brecht is evoked by having both Craver and Remzi perform the actions
that are “assigned” to Craver. But even these actions are also empathetic:
while one of the men critically observes the other to analyze his actions,
the other man is putting himself, physically and emotionally, into the
shoes of the “other” Craver who is “pretty good friends” with Remzi.
This rehearsal requires its participants to act as both actors and spectators
of their own actions—to embody and analyze. When Craver tries to copy
Remzi’s walk, he concludes, “That didn’t feel right.”59 Whether this is
because the solution was too much Remzi’s and not enough Craver’s, or
whether it is simply not the right solution, what Craver identifies in that
moment is the importance of affective and embodied knowledge, as well
as the fact that we are unlikely to adopt solutions that we cannot comfort-
ably embody. Craver’s comment echoes Boal’s point that solutions posed
only “in theory” may not work well in action.60
The scene suggests, ultimately, that we must engage not just the affective
moment of the utopian performative or the critical analysis evoked by the
gestus, but also the creative labor that produces these moments: labor that is
at times tentative, scary, and contentious; labor that requires trust, listening,
attending to our own thoughts and feelings as well as to those of others.
It is labor that responds to the call of friendship and the responsibilities
entailed therein.61 It requires empathy (and an empathy, more specifically,
59
Wallace, Heart, 89.
60
See, for example, Boal’s discussion of the difference between suggesting and performing
in Forum Theatre in Theatre of the Oppressed, 139.
61
I am alluding, here, to Derrida’s work in The Politics of Friendship (1994), in which he
suggests that the call to friendship both anticipates and recalls the friend who can hear and
respond to this call—what Derrida refers to as the “future anteriority” of friendship (249).
In responding to the call to friendship we are already caught up in the responsibilities of
friendship, having accepted our interpellation as potential friends. Derrida associates the
responsibility of friendship to respect and to the distance required for both: “[R]espect and
responsibility, which come together and provoke each other relentlessly, seem to refer, in the
case of the former, to languages of the Latin family, to distance, to space, to the gaze; and in
the case of the latter, to time, to the voice and to listening. There is no respect, as its name
connotes, without the vision and distance of spacing. No responsibility without response,
without what speaking and hearing invisibly say to the ear, and which takes time” (252).
Derrida’s account of the response to the call to friendship informs my reading of Craver’s
response as the first step toward friendship. Derrida’s work, of course, is part of a larger body
of contemporary scholarship on friendship drawing on both ancient and early modern writers
like Cicero and Montaigne, a great deal of which focuses on the imbricated nature of male
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 143

that requires labor). This listening, collaborating, risk-taking, and empathiz-

ing is physical, emotional, and intellectual work. It is the work of rehearsal.
As discussed above, however, rehearsals are not unequivocally liberat-
ing. For each rehearsal in which the characters attempt to build new ways
of being in the world, Wallace offers as contrast the rehearsals and repeti-
tions that structure the social world, resisting change. As the ghost Lue
Ming tells us, “What’s done is often done again and done again.”62 The
past is remade in the present. The genocide of Native Americans, the wars
in Vietnam, Panama, Iraq—all are depicted in the play as repetitions of a
perpetually reactivated scenario of invasion and destruction. As identities
and social structures are made and remade through the reinscription of
social norms, Wallace’s characters are faced, to paraphrase Judith Butler,
with the problem of when and how to repeat. In one scene, Remzi and
Craver are taught how to interrogate Iraqis by acting out the interroga-
tion. Playing the role of the Iraqi, their lieutenant, Boxler, shouts insults at
the pair until they respond by hitting and kicking him. Boxler urges them
to “Hold on to that anger” so they can use it later (an instruction that
resonates with Stanislavski’s notion of emotional memory), instructing
them to blame other minorities for their own sufferings in a logic that col-
lapses historical, racial, and ethnic specificity: “If the ragheads hadn’t shot
our buffalo, we could have swapped them for their camels, and then we
wouldn’t have needed the coal mines to begin with, and your father would
have worked in an auto factory, and he’d be alive today.”63 Successful learn-
ing requires not only enacting the correct behavior, but also strategically
deploying emotion, turning their own frustrated sense of minoritization
and feminization against the designated, appropriate “others.” Through
rehearsals like these, the two men try to remake themselves to fit neatly
into the US military’s one-size-fits-all scenario for interpreting the world,
a scenario in which “America” is constantly threatened by an “Other”
who goes by the various names “gook,” “Indian,” and “sandnigger.” This
is particularly the case for Remzi, who joined the military because he was
“sick of a being a hyphen… the gap between Arab-American,” a status

same-sex desire and friendship, as well as the relationship of friendship to death and
mourning—both of which are relevant to the present case study. For more of this subject, see
a special issue on friendship from GLQ edited by Jody Greene (issue 10.3 (2004)), as well as
Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship (London and New York: Verso, 1997) and The Work of
Mourning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
62
Wallace, Heart, 118.
63
Ibid., 99.
144 L.B. CUMMINGS

that left him dangerously close to the “other” who is always the enemy.64
Being a soldier, he hopes, will solidify his identity as an “American.”
Remzi and Craver’s rehearsal differs from that of the lieutenant in that
theirs is focused on engaging others, not rejecting them and erecting bound-
aries. Whereas Boxler wants them to internalize their emotions, focusing
intently on their own hurt and anger, Remzi and Craver attempt to step away
from themselves—creating a little critical distance from which to view their
burgeoning relationship while allowing the possibility of new feelings, per-
spectives, and ways of being to resonate within them. This willingness to be
other than they are opens the way to not only friendship but also to emotional
and physical intimacy, which in turn prompts them to approach their envi-
ronment differently. Wallace has stated, “Love supposedly has the capacity to
reconstruct and rediscover the body’s sensuality.”65 But it is not their sensual-
ity alone that Remzi and Craver reconstruct. When they use the language of
war in their flirtations, they create a space of love in an environment of vio-
lence. Remzi asks Craver, “Have you ever run your face over the wing of an
A-6 Intruder, or opened your mouth onto the tail of an AV-8B Harrier II? It’s
not steel you taste. It’s not metal.”66 As they trade thinly veiled sexual innuen-
does in a discussion about weaponry, Remzi and Craver refigure the overtly
phallic nature of guns, bombs, and missiles as homoerotic. They also draw a
parallel between the violence of war and the potential violence of love. Craver
remembers, “The first time we made love, we were so scared and I started to
cry. It was the first time for both of us, and it hurt.”67 How is the invasion of
war different from the invasion of sex? Wallace does not offer love as a pana-
cea to the horrors of war. She has commented that “The body is central—and
vulnerable—in both love and war,” a comment which echoes Butler’s argu-
ment that it is our bodily vulnerability to others, our susceptibility to violence
as well as to desire, that reminds us of our collective responsibility for each
other’s physical and social lives.68 It is, in fact, the dual recognition of the

64
Ibid., 95.
65
Wallace quoted in John Istel, “In the Heart of America: Forging Links,” American
Theatre 12.3 (1995), 25.
66
Wallace, Heart, 113.
67
Wallace, Heart, 134.
68
Wallace quoted in Istel, 25. Butler’s theories on the relationship between vulnerability
and sociality can be found in numerous texts, including Undoing Gender (New York:
Routledge, 2004), Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London and
New  York: Verso, 2004), and “Bodily Vulnerability, Coalitions, and Street Politics,”
Differences in Common: Gender, Vulnerability and Community ed. Joana Sabadell-Nieto and
Marta Segarra (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014).
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 145

vulnerability of the Iraqi population and his own vulnerability to Craver’s

love that causes Remzi to rethink his purpose for being in Iraq.
As a soldier, Remzi is asked to participate in the perpetuation of particu-
lar social structures. Explaining his reasons for joining the military, Remzi
repeats the “official line” to his sister: “Iraq invaded a sovereign country.
That’s against international law.”69 So he will go to Iraq to defend free-
dom, to “protect a way of life”—phrases and scenarios deployed by the
USA to justify its military presence in foreign nations.70 Scenarios require
the embodiment of social actors, and Remzi begins to find that he cannot
fit himself into this scenario the way that he had hoped. Significantly, it is
his affective responses that signal to Remzi that there is a problem. He is
uncomfortable in the embodiment of the role he must play, a discomfort
that becomes further pronounced in response to his growing love for and
attraction to Craver.
The more violence Remzi sees around him and the more love he feels
for Craver, the more Remzi begins to rethink both his role in the invasion
and his desire to overcome his hyphenated identity. Watching the bombs
fall on Baghdad, he recites the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme and asks
Craver, “Do you think he really wanted to be whole again?… I think he
was tired of being a good egg.”71 His statement resonates with the notion
of “good subjects” and “bad subjects.” To be a good subject, he would
have to conform to the identities provided to him by mainstream society,
remaking himself according to the racist, sexist, and homophobic norms of
the US military. This would require him to give up Craver and to engage
wholeheartedly in the violence against the people of Iraq. The more Remzi
sees Iraq shattered—“like a body with every bone inside it broken”—the
less he wants to feel whole.72 Wholeness, or self-sameness, after all, is itself
a kind of violence, the negation of disparate selves.73 Nevertheless, love is
not a simple or complete solution. Craver explains that “Love can make
you feel so changed you think the world is changed.”74 Remzi and Craver
make the mistake of forgetting the world outside the tiny social unit they
create. When they are caught together by other members of their unit,
Remzi’s psychic fragmentation is made literal as he is beaten to death by

69
Wallace, Heart, 93.
70
Ibid., 87. Scenarios, of course, refer to Diana Taylor’s work. See Chap. 3.
71
Ibid., 119.
72
Ibid., 130.
73
Diamond, 97.
74
Wallace, Heart, 136.
146 L.B. CUMMINGS

his fellow soldiers, an act of violence that says “that this body, this chal-
lenge to an accepted version of the world is and shall be unthinkable.”75
Wallace is suspicious of unearned happy endings and utopian solutions,
stating, “I’m not utopian. I know we’re never going to have a society
where there’s no injustice.”76 This does not mean that someone like
Remzi can never be accepted, but that we have not yet achieved the con-
ditions under which this would be possible.77 It is a reminder to the audi-
ence that the work begun in the play is not yet complete. We see Remzi
undertaking this work even in the moment of his death. Remzi died, and
not Craver, because Remzi could no longer stand by as a witness to vio-
lence and hate—the same violence and hate that was targeted against his
sister when they were children, and which has been targeted at him his
entire life. After they were caught making love, Remzi and Craver were
brought before a group of ranking officers. There was an Iraqi prisoner
in the room whom the other soldiers were taunting, calling “Sandnigger.
Indian. Gook.” Remzi “went wild,” fighting the officers, one of whom
had a knife. Even after the Iraqi died, Remzi kept fighting. Craver recalls,
“I shouted for you to stay down but you wouldn’t stay down.”78 Fairouz
once told Remzi, “There are three kinds of people. Those who kill. Those
who die. And those who watch.”79 When Fairouz was attacked as a child,
Remzi watched. The military attempted to make him a killer. If these are
the choices available to him, Remzi chooses, ultimately, to die.
Wallace’s plays often end in the middle of an action, a moment of
not-quite-realized hope. In Heart, it is a flashback to an earlier moment
between Craver and Remzi. They are poised to race one another, calling
out “Go!” simultaneously.80 Of this moment, she states, “the last scene
is a moment when there was happiness and connection between Remzi
and Craver… It’s this feeling, for me, of energy and forward power, and
although we know Remzi has died, in that moment we see that anything

75
Butler, Undoing Gender, 35.
76
Wallace, quoted in an interview in Alexis Greene, Women Who Write Plays: Interviews
with American Dramatists (Hanover: Smith and Kraus, 2001), 471.
77
We continue to get closer. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed in 2010, ending the ban
on service by gay men and lesbians. There are still rules that bar transgender people from
serving, and violence against all non-normative, non-conforming, and minority persons has
certainly not ended.
78
Wallace, Heart, 135.
79
Wallace, Heart, 96.
80
Ibid., 139.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 147

was possible.”81 She ends the play with a kind of “not … but.” Remzi did
not have to die.82 The outcome could be otherwise. What is important, for
Wallace, is that we remain open to the possibility that things can be other
than they are, and that we are continually seeking a better future, grap-
pling honestly with the obstacles that stand between us and that future.
Hope resides in the message that is passed on: when we let others in
we are unmade in terrifying and wonderful ways. At the end of the play,
right before the flashback described above, Fairouz and Craver discuss the
need to tell Remzi’s story, acting as witnesses to his life and his loss. This
is a form of activism for Wallace, a means of attesting to the parts of each
other that “were clipped or squashed or strangled because they didn’t fit
in with the norm.”83 Fairouz muses about something Remzi said to her
in the past: “Balance could be a bad thing, a trick to keep you in the
middle, where things add up, where you can do no harm.” She then admits
that Remzi did not actually say this, “But he might have.”84 In the space
opened up by grief and loss, the possibility—the thing not said—is as real
and vital as that which has actually occurred. And Fairouz is right, in a way.
Although Remzi went to Iraq looking for stability and balance, he failed to
find it. His “failure,” however, reflects a growing willingness to challenge
the identities available to him through mainstream sources, a willingness
manifested in his final act of defiance. It is in the unsettled, unbalanced
space where we may fall in unanticipated directions at any moment that
we encounter the possibility for change: for unexpected love, for an end to
war. As Fairouz and Craver cope with their loss, they, too, are unbalanced
and unmade, carrying change into the future. Remzi and Craver’s rehears-
als initiated this change, allowing them to produce a future that was not
possible until they engaged one in their collaborative, imaginative scenario.
As an audience, we, too, are witness to these acts. As Scott T. Cummings
writes, “Wallace’s viewers become, in Fairouz’s terms, ‘those who watch,’
neither victims nor perpetrators but witnesses who are compelled to make
a conscious choice to speak up or not.”85 I would argue that Wallace’s plays
engage us not just as witnesses, but as empathic witnesses—witnesses who

81
Wallace quoted in Greene, 464.
82
Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 137.
83
Wallace quoted in Greene, 463.
84
Wallace, Heart, 138.
85
Scott T.  Cummings, “Introduction: The Discourse of the Body,” in The Theatre of
Naomi Wallace: Embodied Dialogues, eds. Scott T.  Cummings and Erica Steven Abbitt
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 15.
148 L.B. CUMMINGS

are meant not just to attest to what happened but also to how those events
impact bodies and psyches. Here, again, I am arguing for an empathic
approach to Brechtian theatre, suggesting that Wallace’s plays ask us not
only to see social conditions, but also to consider what it feels like to live
under those conditions. Empathy, in her work, operates not just as a tool
for changing our worlds, but also for understanding how others experi-
ence the world, as well as how and why changing our world is emotion-
ally and psychologically difficult. To explore this point, I turn now to
The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek.

THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK: EMPATHIZING

WITH ESTRANGEMENT

The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek takes place in a Depression-era town, “out-
side a city… Somewhere in the U.S.”86 The local factories have closed,
and the only sign of economic activity or mobility comes in the form of a
train that rushes through town at the same time every day. As the protago-
nist, 17-year-old Pace Creagan, comments, “It’s going somewhere. And
it doesn’t look back.”87 Unlike the always “going” train, the characters in
the play are trapped in this town, without jobs, without many prospects
for the future, and without the means to leave. Here, again, Wallace pon-
ders the movement of bodies in geographical and socio-economic space,
reminding us that mobility is not equally granted to all. In response to
these bleak circumstances, Pace and her friend Brett played chicken with
the oncoming train, racing across the local trestle in an attempt to reach
the other side before the train closes off their path. One day, Brett fell
while running the trestle and was killed. Pace now enlists 15-year-old
Dalton Chance as she rehearses to run the trestle again, seeking to recre-
ate the past, but with a different outcome.
Pace has “a fascination with locomotion, with travel, with escape.”88
She is drawn to the train’s power. She studies the history of trains and even
builds a model engine for school. But her engine breaks, a sign that the
train’s power is not hers to have. Running the trestle represents a challenge

86
Wallace, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek in In the Heart of America and Other Plays
(New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001), 281.
87
Ibid., 327.
88
Erica Stevens Abbitt, review of The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Theatre Journal 54.3
(2008): 148.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 149

to power that cannot be mastered, an act of defiance toward a 560-ton

force that took the life of her friend and that passes her every day without
looking back.89 Kathleen Stewart’s assessment of trains as affectively pow-
erful sites for disenfranchised subjects offers a way of understanding Pace’s
ambivalence toward this aspect of her environment. In Ordinary Affects
(2007), a book about the way affect circulates around particular places
and objects, Stewart writes, “The train shapes a story of abjection mixed
with vital hopes… an intoxicated confidence that surges between life and a
dream. It’s as if the train sparks weighted promises and threats and incites
a reckless daydream of being included in the world.”90 By challenging the
train, Pace challenges a society that would ignore her, passing her by with-
out pause. Running the train is a demand for recognition, a declaration
that she does in fact exist. Pace represents at least the second generation to
feel this way. Forty-one-year-old Gin Chance, Dalton’s mother, speaks of
the train with a degree of bitterness: “Huge, sweatin’, steamin’ oil spittin’
promises when I was a girl. Always taking someone away, never bring-
ing someone back.”91 The promise of the train has long gone unfulfilled.
Running the train becomes an obsession for Pace, the only way to change
herself and her circumstances, even though she cannot articulate exactly
how this act will affect her: “I was going to be different. I don’t know in
what way. That never mattered. But different somehow.”92 Change in any
form is preferable to the status quo.
Whereas Heart uses empathy in the process of estranging and remak-
ing their world, Trestle is, on the surface, more conventionally Brechtian.
The characters “rehearse” moments in a way that invite them to think
of the world and themselves as different, but they do not switch roles or
explore in a nuanced way what it feels like to act in different ways. In fact,
when they have an affective response to their enactments, it is often one
of fear or frustration, producing resistance. For this reason, I would sug-
gest that Trestle offers, in some respects, a more conventional approach to
empathy, in that we as an audience are invited to critically assess (estrange)
and empathize with the fear that the characters encounter as they attempt
to change their circumstances. Through this combined estranging and
empathizing, we may better understand the challenges of making new and
different choices in our lives.
89
Wallace, Trestle, 153–154.
90
Kathleen Stewart, Ordinary Affects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 116.
91
Wallace, Trestle, 293.
92
Ibid., 317.
150 L.B. CUMMINGS

For example, although Pace’s desire for change is strong, her emotional
attachments to the past limit her pursuit of that change. Pace prepares
Dalton by practicing with him in the dry creek bed below the trestle:

Pace: Let’s start here. On this tie.

Dalton: What tie? The track’s up there.
Pace: Imagine it, stupid.93

While she teaches him that the world does not always have to be only
what we see in front of us, she also places limits on her imagination. When
Dalton suggests starting at a different (also imaginary) railroad tie, Pace
rejects the idea: “It’s tradition, okay. Besides, Brett made this X so let’s
use it.”94 Pace wants to repeat this act faithfully to honor Brett, in spite
of the fact that her primary purpose in rehearsing the event is to ensure a
different outcome.95 She attempts to use the format of the past to make a
new future, trying to find a way to succeed within the preexisting struc-
ture. In addition to marking Pace’s attachment to the past, this moment
is an example of the Brechtian “not…but,” a technique in which the actor
reveals that each action on stage is only one possibility out of many, pro-
voking us to consider why one variant is chosen over others, as well as
the ramifications of this decision. Wallace highlights the ways in which
even our imaginations are bound by memories, alliances, desires, and
attachments—our affective investments in the world. As we watch Pace,
we see the Brechtian “not…but,” understanding, perhaps, that Pace’s
method for bringing about a new future is flawed, but we are also likely to
empathize with her reasons for holding on to the past.
Just as Remzi and Craver’s collaborative process allowed them to explore
new ideas and feelings, Pace needs Dalton’s help to break from the past.

93
Ibid., 301.
94
Ibid.
95
Drawing on trauma theory, one might read Pace’s repetitions as attempts to access
repressed aspects of Brett’s death. This interpretation would suggest that Pace has not cog-
nitively processed the event yet. While there is value to this line of inquiry, it strikes me as
significant that Pace does remember Brett’s death, and speaks about it to Dalton in detail. She
does not repeat compulsively, but rather consciously and deliberately, attempting to break
the cycle that brought Brett to his end, although she does so by confining herself to the very
scenario that brought about his death. What we can draw from trauma theory is a sense that
Pace’s actions are an attempt to “work through” her memory of Brett, as Dominick LaCapra
might say. See, for example, Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca
and London: Cornell UP, 1998).
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 151

When we rehearse and play together, we challenge each other’s rules, alli-
ances, and affective bonds. Like a child in a game of “make believe” or
an actor improvising, Dalton invents new circumstances, adding to and
complicating Pace’s imagined scenario. Pace must decide whether or not
to accept his contributions to their game. For example, although it is Pace
who wants to prepare for potential obstacles by tripping Dalton (recreating
Brett’s fall), it is Dalton who suggests not only that they might fail, but
that one of them might ultimately have to leave the other behind to save
him or herself:

Dalton: You drop me and run. You run for your life.
Pace: No. I don’t leave you. I—
Dalton: You make it across. Just in time. Alone.
Pace: I drag you with me.96

All theatrical improvisation games begin with the same rule: Always say
yes. This means that whatever one’s partner does or says, go with it. The
rule is intended to stretch our creative muscles by forcing us to avoid plan-
ning in advance. It requires us to remain open to every new thing that
might come our way. Pace breaks this rule because she is trying to control
their play, and through it her life. This attempt at control was beautifully
manifested by Marissa Cowsill in a production of Trestle at the Eclipse
Theatre in Chicago in 2009. In contrast to the more halting, reflective
actions of other actors in Wallace plays that I have seen, Cowsill’s physi-
cality was forceful and energetic, as if she were using the power of her
movement, her wishes, and her very being to bend the world to her will.
Her attempts fail, however, because her actions take place within a broader
system of forces—a fact demonstrated in the rehearsals for running the
train. Dalton’s presence introduces an uncontrollable factor. He reminds
her that she cannot determine what will happen to him and cannot control
what will happen to her because of what happens to him.97 She may lose

96
Wallace, Trestle, 303.
97
In this respect, Pace and Dalton’s rehearsals have the quality of children’s play. Educational
psychologists argue that play is important not only because it develops creativity, but also
because it is a means for children to experience and negotiate control, as well as the limits of
that control. A report from the American Academy of Pediatrics explains, “Play allows chil-
dren to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears… Undirected play
allows children to learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts, and
to learn self-advocacy skills” (Ginsberg et al. 183). Thus, while play on the one hand increases
152 L.B. CUMMINGS

him. She may have to grieve for him as she has grieved for Brett. There is
no rehearsal that can guarantee success, promising to save her from poten-
tial trauma and loss. As they rehearse running the train, Pace must confront
the unknown, the unpredictable, and the uncontrollable, in spite of the
fact that her rehearsals are designed to preclude these very outcomes.
While Pace resists the unknown and uncontrollable in running the tres-
tle, she embraces it in the other “rehearsals” that occur underneath the
trestle: her intimate explorations with Dalton. She continually frustrates
Dalton’s attempts to establish a “traditional,” heterosexual boy–girl rela-
tionship with her, declaring that she will not kiss him on the mouth because
to do so is “common.”98 When she does finally kiss him, it is on the back
of the knee. Dalton is enraged by the strangeness of the act, just as he is
confused when she asks him to take his clothes off but then does not touch
him. When you take your clothes off, he argues, “Something is supposed
to happen,” to which she replies, “It already has.”99 Dalton attempts to
follow the established script for teenaged, heterosexual physical encoun-
ters, and any contact that isn’t part of that script doesn’t “count.” But
Pace is willing to imagine encounters and intimacies that have no place in
that script. In fact, she is only willing to engage Dalton in nonconventional
ways, rejecting the script entirely.
Pace acts as both the leader and the teacher in their relationship. Not
only does she determine the extent and nature of their physical intimacy,
but she also takes it upon herself to show Dalton what it means to grow up
in a town with few resources and opportunities. When Dalton claims that
he will escape by going to college, she challenges him to look at his shoes:
“If your mom’s putting you in shoes like that then you aren’t going to
college.”100 She teaches him to historicize his surroundings, to ask “where
a map came from, who fixed in the rivers, who’ll take the wrong turn; or a
door. Who cut the wood and hung it there? Why that width, that height?

a sense of mastery, when it involves others it also teaches us that our mastery is not complete.
See Ginsberg, Kenneth R., The Committee on Communications, and the Committee on
Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, “The Importance of Play in Promoting
Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds,” American
Academy of Pediatrics, Pediatrics (2007), 182–191. pediatrics.aapublications.org, DOI:
10.1542/peds.2006-2697, accessed February 16, 2015.
98
Wallace, Trestle, 311.
99
Ibid., 305.
100
Ibid., 289.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 153

And who made that decision? Who agreed to it and who didn’t?”101 Once
he starts to see the world as a series of choices and decisions made by some
people and not others, the possibility that the world might be otherwise
is suddenly apparent. In another example of the Brechtian “not…but,”
Dalton breaks a cup, turning it into a knife. But the vast possibility intro-
duced by this new way of seeing terrifies him. Pace robs him of all sense
of normalcy. The effect is as if the very boundaries of his self are coming
apart. He says to Pace, “Every time we meet, afterwards, it’s like pieces
of me. Keep falling off.”102 If the world can be other, so, too, can he be.
Dalton’s sense of psychic fragmentation is rendered palpable in the inter-
rupted grammar of his sentence. Here and elsewhere, Dalton’s speech is
interrupted by periods, ellipses, and hyphens. Just as his ability to interpret
the world is coming apart, so too is his ability to construct a sentence, to
conform to the received grammar of life.
In Trestle, estrangement emerges through social encounters. Sean
Carney argues that we cannot estrange the world for ourselves, that
estrangement “demand[s] the intervention of another so that we might
step outside of our ideological thinking and theorize about our thoughts
from the perspective of another.”103 Pace helps estrange the world for
Dalton. But no social relationship is uni-directional. Once she invites
him into her life, she risks inviting other changes she did not anticipate,
including Dalton’s challenges to her authority in their imaginative play.
The lines between teacher and student are continually blurred as Pace
and Dalton take turns instructing, challenging, and learning from one
another. Ironically, although it is Pace who initially instructs Dalton in the
techniques of estranged seeing, it is Dalton who truly embraces the impli-
cations of this estrangement. While Pace strives for change by rehearsing
the same moment over and over, Dalton feels his world and his very sense
of self fall apart simply because he can imagine other possibilities—endless
alternative ways of seeing.
Leaving behind the comfortable and the known is frightening, and here
we find the other way in which Wallace diverges from Brecht. Once we see
that a cup might be a knife, the possibilities are limitless but also terrify-
ing, because suddenly we exist in a world in which everything we thought

101
Ibid., 309.
102
Ibid., 327.
103
Sean Carney, Brecht and Critical Theory: Dialectics and Contemporary Aesthetics
(London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 27.
154 L.B. CUMMINGS

we knew is called into question. It is very difficult to act under these cir-
cumstances. As Dalton explains, Pace “made me—hesitate. In everything
I did. I was. Unsure.”104 Dalton resists this flood of uncertainty, blaming
Pace for wrecking his chance to live a nice, “normal” life. He charges
her: “You said you’d change me. You did, goddamn it. Now change me
back.”105 This is not possible, however, because Dalton cannot stop him-
self from seeing the world as Pace has revealed it to him. He is changed,
irrevocably, but he is emotionally unsettled both by that change and by his
new understanding of the world.
Brecht understood that estrangement brought with it a certain degree
of fear. He described the moment of recognition as one accompanied
by “terror” and often wrote about the Verfremdungseffekt as if it were a
means of waking us up out of a trance or breaking a spell—a realization
that comes like a splash of cold water to the face.106 In The Messingkauf
Dialogues, he argues that this shock is necessary because we do not learn
when changes take place “too gradually.”107 In “Theatre for Pleasure
or Theatre for Instruction,” he writes, “What is ‘natural’ must have the
force of what is ‘startling.’”108 After the initial terror, however, Brecht
tended to view the labor precipitated by estrangement as a pleasurable
one: “The theatre can let its spectators enjoy the particular ethic of their
age, which springs from productivity. A theatre which converts the critical
approach—i.e. our great productive method—into pleasure finds nothing
in the ethical field which it must do and a great deal that it can.”109 The
idea that theatre can “let” us enjoy our productivity reflects Brecht’s posi-
tion that the theatre has, up to this point, been hampering our intellectual
and productive pleasure. Elizabeth Wright argues that “Brecht’s utopian
wish was to produce an audience who would rejoice at the contradic-
tions of a necessarily estranged world—the uncanniness of a world in flux,
the constant shifting of figure and ground in a dialectical movement.”110

104
Wallace, Trestle, 310.
105
Ibid., 327.
106
Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 26.
107
Brecht, The Messingkauf Dialogues, trans. John Willet (London: Methuen, 1965), 24.
108
Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 71.
109
Ibid., 187.
110
Elizabeth Wright, Postmodern Brecht: A Re-Presentation (London and New  York:
Routledge, 1989), 52.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 155

Once the shock of estrangement wears off, Brecht was confident that we

would find pleasure in our newly discovered productive capacity.
In Trestle, however, terror is not limited to the transient shock concur-
rent with the moment of estranged seeing. It is not an electric jolt that
assures us of the necessity for change, but rather a persistent fear that has
as much to do with a lack of knowing and lack of surety as with the terrify-
ing recognition that one has, as Dalton puts it, bought into a “plan” that
“never was ours” by investing one’s time, labor, and dreams into a social
system that promises a future it can never deliver.111 Instead of acting as an
impetus for change, Wallace reveals that the shock and fear that accompany
estrangement might delay change, compelling us to take affective refuge
in the known and familiar. She does this not by producing those feelings
in the audience—where estrangement is typically understood to occur—
but rather in the characters on stage. By shifting the focus of estrangement
in this way, Wallace allows the spectator a different perspective on the act
of seeing one’s world anew. As we watch Dalton and Pace, we may be able
to both critically assess their choices and to empathize with their circum-
stances, gaining new understanding on how the fears and frustrations that
accompany estrangement might cause us to resist its potential.
This is precisely what Dalton does when, frustrated with Pace for shat-
tering his sense of the world, he declines to run the trestle with her or
even to act as her witness. Pace asks Dalton to watch her because “we
can’t watch ourselves. We can’t remember ourselves. Not like we need
to.”112 Pace needs Dalton to witness the change that she believes she will
undergo in running the train, but Dalton refuses to see, turning his back
on her. His refusal causes Pace to slow down, fatally, halfway across the
trestle. Without time either to beat the train or run back, Pace jumps to
her death in the dry creek bed below. While Gwendolyn Hale describes
this outcome as “the ultimate end of hope,” I find it significant that, in the
end, Pace chooses not to let the train crush her as it crushed Brett, making
her suicide a symbolic challenge to the social forces that have been bearing
down on her for her entire life.113 She cannot beat it, but neither will she
let it beat her. In a Brechtian sense, there are always alternatives, no matter
how seemingly insignificant those alternatives may be.

111
Wallace, Trestle, 323.
112
Ibid., 337.
113
Gwendolyn N. Hale, “Absence in Naomi Wallace’s The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek,”
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Spring 2007): 156.
156 L.B. CUMMINGS

By throwing herself the creek bed, Pace throws herself into the space
in which she and Dalton attempted to imagine their way into a differ-
ent future. It was in the creek bed that they established a friendship that
challenged the rules of the world in which they live, as well as their own
emotional and physical boundaries. They did so through their rehearsals
running the trestle, as well as their sexual encounters. These encounters,
like the critical estrangement that Pace teaches Dalton, trouble Dalton’s
sense of normalcy and probe the boundaries between the two young peo-
ple. They are also, significantly, instances when pleasure and fear mingle,
when the promise of something new and wonderful helps mediate the
terror of the unknown. Dalton says, “I could touch myself at night and
I didn’t know if it was her hand or mine… I don’t know but sometimes
I put my hand. Inside myself.”114 Here, again, Dalton’s thoughts are inter-
rupted, fragmented. The punctuation of the line estranges the content,
introducing boundaries where Dalton claims there are none. These inter-
ruptions signal hesitation; Dalton is not completely over his fear of being
undone, but he is, nevertheless, ready to remember both the challenges
and the pleasures that Pace has introduced into his life.
Just as in Heart, the final scene of Trestle takes us back in time, before
Pace’s death, to a scene in which Pace and Dalton experience physical inti-
macy without touching. As he touches himself, she says, “You’re touching
me. I want you to touch me. It’s going to happen. To both of us. Go on.
Open your legs… Can you feel me? I’m hard.”115 For a moment, physical
boundaries dissolve. Gender boundaries dissolve. They are “inside” each
other—as thoughts, ideas, memories, and feelings—and as a result they
are at once themselves and other than themselves. It is this final game, in
which both Pace and Dalton fully abandon the “rules” and give them-
selves over to each other, that achieves the transformation and transporta-
tion that running the trestle could not fully provide. Pace says, “There.
We’re something else now. You see? We’re in another place.”116 They get
to that other place together.
In the final moment of Pace’s life, when she dives off the trestle, Dalton
does turn to watch her. He is her witness, but to what, exactly? Kelly
Oliver describes witnessing as an act that involves addressing oneself to
others and responding to their address. In doing so, she asserts, we must

114
Wallace, Trestle, 310.
115
Ibid., 341.
116
Ibid., 342.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 157

be willing to respond to that which we do not necessarily understand:

“To recognize others requires acknowledging that their experiences are
real even though they may be incomprehensible to us; this means that we
must recognize that not everything that is real is recognizable to us… We
are obligated to respond to what is beyond our comprehension, beyond
recognition, because ethics is possible only beyond recognition.”117 To
bear witness, for Oliver, entails accepting a world beyond our grasp.
Bearing witness is not “speaking for,” since to do so we would have to
assume knowledge of experience foreign to our own. It consists, instead,
in attending to those whose presence makes us subjects, and just as we
witness them, they witness us.
What Pace demands from Dalton is nothing less than an act of witness-
ing to a self that is in process, contingent, unmade by her grief over Brett,
changing as she attempts to change herself into something she cannot
anticipate. To act as Pace’s witness, Dalton must accept this contingency;
he must accept the terror that Pace has introduced into his life. As he does
so, he accepts his own status as “beside himself,” to borrow a term from
Judith Butler. In Undoing Gender (2004), Butler argues that our bodies
are constituted by and through others—not just through the norms that
enable our recognition as social subjects, but through our mutual vulner-
ability. She cites love, grief, rage, and susceptibility to the violence of oth-
ers as examples of the sociality of being: “that primary way in which we
are, as bodies, outside ourselves, for one another.”118 Dalton is vulnerable
to the changes Pace has precipitated in him through her games, her friend-
ship, her sexuality, her way of reading the world, and, finally, her death. He
must accept that he is transformed by her, both because he is affectively
undone and because he has accepted a new way of viewing the world.
Estranging the world thus calls for more than assuming a critical distance;
it requires that we let others undo us and our world.

CONCLUSION
Acting is scary, and fear in the theatre is not different from fear in life:
fear of being judged, fear of being exposed and vulnerable, fear of fail-
ure and rejection, fear of the unknown. All of these fears result from the

117
Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2001), 106.
118
Butler, Undoing Gender, 22.
158 L.B. CUMMINGS

encounter with an audience, a witness. Stage fright, Nicholas Ridout has

argued, occurs in the moment when theatre undoes us, moving us from
ourselves to another, rendering the “I” heterogeneous.119 The aware-
ness that another person, as rehearsal partner or witness, can potentially
divorce you from yourself is a source of great possibility in Wallace’s work.
Others help us access another “I” by their watchful, responsive, respect-
ful, and loving presence. This is the promise on which Pace depends and
the possibility that allows Craver and Remzi to build a friendship. The
fear that is introduced into these characters’ lives is accompanied by new
pleasures found in unexpected places—a kiss on the back of the knee, a
new friend and lover who changes the way we understand ourselves and
the world. The first time Remzi and Craver make love, Remzi kisses him
and says, “You are my white trash, and I love you,” giving new value to
a denigrated identity.120 As much as Pace frustrates Dalton, he is drawn
to her, offering the only partially joking reason, “Warped people can be
fun sometimes.”121 Pushing the boundaries of our world can be exhila-
rating—as exhilarating as running a train or one’s first sexual encounter.
Fear and pleasure are mutually informing responses to the world, ways of
processing and interpreting our environments. Wallace’s characters live on
the boundary between the thrill of newness and the terror it can invoke,
helping each other negotiate this fraught territory.
Empathy emerges in Wallace’s work in a variety of ways. It is part of
how Craver and Remzi reimagine their world and experience new ways
of being in that world. It is also part of how we as an audience engage
the characters, encountering their experiences of estrangement through
our own empathetic engagement. No matter how empathy is encouraged,
modeled, or evoked in these plays, it is always combined in some way
with estrangement. Thus, it consists not of identification or a feeling of
oneness, but is, rather, an active process requiring imagination, historical
analysis, embodiment, and vulnerability. As such, the path of empathy is
never simple or straightforward, but rather circuitous and ever-changing
in response to social circumstances and to the changes that we undergo
when we explore our relationships to others. Boundaries and destinations
are continually shifting as we engage in a process that, by nature of its soci-

119
Nicholas Ridout, Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 67.
120
Wallace, Heart, 134.
121
Wallace, Trestle, 287.
 REHEARSALS: NAOMI WALLACE AND THE LABOR OF EMPATHY 159

ality, changes with each exchange. In doing so, we confront the possibility
that to be “not me” is also to be “not not me”—that there are other ways
of being ourselves. Empathy undertaken in this way is not an uninvited
emotional transmission or a projection of one person’s thoughts and feel-
ings onto another. It is, instead, provisional, requiring continual renewal,
reappraisal, and rehearsal.
Understanding empathy in this way moves us away from empathic mod-
els in which the spectator is either a passive victim or a conqueror, and in
which affect is transferred or projected across stable boundaries from body
to body. The subjects who engage in empathy are contingent—bound by
social and historical circumstances. They are also social actors engaged
in the process of making and remaking the social world and themselves.
To understand how to do this empathy, we can look to the techniques of
theatrical rehearsal and actor training. As I am suggesting about empathy,
acting is a process, and finding one’s way into a character is a journey
without end; each rehearsal and performance affords a new experience of
that character, both for the actor and for the audience. The kind of acting
that Wallace’s characters model—drawing from Stanislavski, Brecht, and
Boal—is affective, cognitive, and embodied. Wallace’s integration of these
techniques into the dramaturgy of her plays suggests that the theatre is not
only a place where we might experience empathy, but also a place where
we might find the tools and techniques that could help us engage in a col-
laborative, creative, and critical empathy, one that may move us—and the
borders we attempt to cross—in unexpected ways.
Even as Wallace depicts characters in the process of understanding and
making their worlds, she simultaneously focuses our attention on how
our decisions not only affect others but how we are continually affected by
those around us. We might think of rehearsal generally, and empathy spe-
cifically, as ways of exploring this state of being affected, because when we
imagine ourselves into the positions of others, we are, ourselves, impacted
by that process. This does not mean that we can understand everything
someone else thinks and feels or that our empathy is always accurate. It
does mean that we entertain the possibility of other ways of thinking and
feeling, and that in doing so we may find ourselves changing. Engaging in
respectful, dialogic empathy with another requires a flexible orientation to
the world, an ability to be responsive to continually changing conditions,
circumstances, and affective responses. Wallace explores the bravery that
is needed for this process, as well as the discomfort and vulnerability it
may cause. Butler makes this point regarding the search for what it means
160 L.B. CUMMINGS

to be human: “[O]ne must enter into a collective work in which one’s

own status as a subject must, for democratic reasons, become disoriented,
exposed to what it does not know.”122 If there is theatrical territory where
emotional “truth” and estrangement meet to produce the same ends—the
condition of being “beside ourselves,” in the sense of being both critically
self-aware and radically vulnerable to others—Wallace’s plays seem to offer
examples of such a meeting.
The implications for feminist scholarship and performance are numer-
ous. Building on the work of scholars like Gainor, Malague, and Blair,
we might reconsider what Stanislavski’s work may offer feminist theatre,
as well as how that work might operate in conjunction with Brechitan
methodologies. We might also consider what we as activists, teachers, and
scholars can gain from the labor of theatre itself. This requires us to recog-
nize theatrical labor that often goes unmarked and to attend to the nature
of that labor. What do actors do in rehearsal that might transfer to other
situations? What are the implications of focusing on the work of empathy?
I am suggesting that the materialist feminist embrace of Brechtian theatre
has ironically overlooked crucial labor, hewing too closely to a Brechtian
model in which our understanding of the world is changed in a single
shocking realization, rather than through deliberate, step-by-step work.
Moreover, by exploring the work of empathy within the creative pro-
cess, a process that is by its very nature messy and provisional, Wallace
complicates the models of affective exchange that we often associate with
Brechtian theatre. As feminist scholars and artists, we are left with the
challenge of how to imagine and understand a Brechtian theatre in which
empathy and affect move in a constant, multidirectional exchange, and in
which terror and fear are not passing shocks but rather potentially persis-
tent states of being that may hinder our ability to embrace new ways of
seeing and being.
In this chapter, empathic labor emerges in the exploratory space of
rehearsal and the relatively “safe” environment of the theatre. While
I propose that this labor may help us in the world outside the theatre, I am
not insensitive to the complexities of that transition, nor to the ways in
which empathic labor is already required of certain people in certain situ-
ations. In the next chapter, I analyze performances by and about refugees
and asylum seekers, turning my attention to the conditions under which
empathic labor occurs.

122
Butler, Undoing Gender, 36.
 CHAPTER 5

Empathic Economies: Performance

by Refugees and Asylum Seekers

I’m sick of telling my story; talk talk talk talk talk. I already told my
story. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to. Don’t make me do this. Sorry, I
don’t want to play.
— Journey of Asylum—Waiting, Catherine Simmonds and members
of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Melbourne

In the previous chapter, I explored the empathic labor of acting, arguing

that this labor is both frightening and pleasurable because through it we
experience other ways of being in the world. I advocated, furthermore,
for a recognition of theatrical labor that often goes unmarked. If, as Erin
Hurley argues, “‘feeling-labour’… is the most important aspect of the-
atre’s cultural work,” then it is vital to acknowledge who performs that
labor, under what circumstances, and for what forms of compensation.1
In this chapter, I expand on the feeling labor of performance, of which
empathy, as both a cognitive and an affective process, is a part. As I have
argued throughout this book, empathic labor is not (or should not be)
simply the purview of those secure in their subject positions—the com-
fortable engagement of majority subjects with minority ones. Empathy is
most effective at fostering greater understanding when it involves an equal
exchange between all parties involved. Of course, our ability to meet one
another as equals—in the space of performance or elsewhere—is always
complicated by a host of factors. When empathy is imagined as a one-sided

1
Erin Hurley, Theatre & Feeling (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 4.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 161

L.B. Cummings, Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59326-9_5
162 L.B. CUMMINGS

affair, the one who empathizes is generally understood to hold the posi-
tion of privilege and power,2 but this assumption overlooks the fact that,
frequently, minority subjects must engage in empathy as part of the pro-
cess of interpreting and negotiating the worldview of the majority.3 For
them, empathizing with majority culture is not an act of privilege, but may
rather be one of survival, while eliciting the empathy of that culture means
making oneself legible to those in power.
Chapters 2–4 explored techniques for pursuing a more dialogic empathy.
In this chapter, I shift focus to the context in which that dialogue occurs.
In particular, I consider how empathic labor in the theatre is shaped and
influenced by wider social and political forces. To pursue these issues, I
analyze performances by and about refugees and asylum seekers. I turn
my attention here for several reasons. First, these performances frequently
invite audiences to empathize, often in the hope that doing so may inspire
support for these categories of migrants. As Alison Jeffers argues, “All the-
atre about refugees attempts to create a better sense of understanding of
refugees among non-refugee audiences.”4 While Jeffers does not necessar-
ily see empathy as a part of this process, the kind of empathy I discuss
in this book involves the attempt to understand another’s experience and
perspective, and is thus compatible with Jeffers’s description of theatre
about refugees. When scholarship on refugee theatre considers empathy, it
tends to focus, not surprisingly, on the audience’s empathy or on whether
or not the style of the performance encourages that kind of engagement.
But this is only half of the story. Performers are also engaged in empathic
labor. Whereas the previous chapter considered empathic labor in terms
of a performer’s engagement with a character, this chapter considers the
empathic labor that an actor or storyteller undertakes in order to imagine
her audience and create a performance that will move them. That labor
2
See, for example, Amy Shuman, Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the
Critique of Empathy, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005 and Doris
Sommer, Proceed with Caution, When Engaged by Minority Writing in the Americas
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999).
3
Dwight Conquergood makes the point that minority and disenfranchised subjects “must
and can learn how to perform cultural scripts and play roles that do not arise out of one’s
own culture.” From my point of view, this requires a certain degree of empathy, learning to
understand how the majority culture sees the world. Dwight Conquergood, “Performing as
a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography of Performance,” Cultural Struggles:
Performance, Ethnography, Praxis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), 74.
4
Alison Jeffers, Refugees, Theatre and Crisis: Performing Global Identities, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012. Web. 14.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 163

is particularly complicated when those performers are refugees or asylum

seekers, for whom telling stories is a necessary part of the asylum process.
I am arguing, in other words, that to be an asylum seeker requires
empathic and emotional labor, or “making, managing, and moving feel-
ings in all its types (affect, emotions, moods, sensation).”5 As such, asylum
seekers are laborers in a complex economy of affect that impacts, in turn,
how feelings for and about asylum seekers are managed. Following Sara
Ahmed’s notion of affective economies, I am interested in how affect con-
structs both psychic and social space.6 I am also interested in the labor of
that management—who performs it, and what they receive in exchange
for their performance. When actors engage in empathic labor in order to
bring a role to life in the theatre, this is usually paid work. In her book The
Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling (1979), soci-
ologist Arlie Russell Hochschild defines emotional work as the emotional
management one does privately, while emotional labor describes that which
one does in exchange for a wage. Emotional work has use value, while
emotional labor has exchange value.7 In this chapter, however, I want to
complicate the distinctions between paid and unpaid labor. Empathic and
emotional labor in the asylum process also has exchange value: it is per-
formed in the hope that it will help one obtain residency, which, as I will
demonstrate, is often directly connected to the ability to earn a wage.
What, then, of this same labor performed in the theatre? Does it lose its
exchange value?
All live theatre entails exchange, even non-professional, non-
commercial theatre in which no artists are paid and no audience members
purchase tickets. Performers give performance in exchange for attention,
affect, and perhaps empathic engagement; audiences give these things
back in exchange for entertainment, pleasure, and an emotional and/or
intellectual experience. Paul Woodruff refers to this as the “double art”
of watching and being watched.8 Only when both sides are performing
their art well and in concert does theatre happen; it is collaborative work
from which both sides benefit. But the double art of performance does
not function in isolation. As Nicholas Ridout has argued, the face-to-face
5
Hurley, Theatre & Feeling, 9.
6
Sara Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” Social Text (22.2): 117–139.
7
Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling,
20th anniversary edition, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1983, rev. 2003): 9.
8
Paul Woodruff, The Necessity of Theatre: The Art of Watching and Being Watched (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 4.
164 L.B. CUMMINGS

encounter of theatre is always impacted by the material conditions under

which that encounter takes place, even when we do our best to pretend
that those conditions do not exist.9 Analyzing the conditions of modern
theatre, Ridout contends that the face-to-face encounter promised in the
theatre is disrupted by the disquieting awareness that the performer labors
before us for a wage: an uncomfortable reminder that our leisure comes at
the cost of another’s labor. I argue that this unsettling is possible whether
we have paid for our ticket or not, and even whether the performer has
been paid or not. Performance is labor, and any time others work for us
we ought to consider whether or not what we receive has been adequately
compensated. The issue of compensation is not simply a monetary one. It
is a question of how attention and affect circulate between stage and audi-
ence, and how that circulation impacts and is impacted by larger social,
monetary, political, and affective economies. The empathic and emotional
labor that occurs in the theatre is always informed by the world beyond
the playing space.
My objects of analysis include plays from the UK and Australia. I am
drawing primarily on texts because I am concerned with narrative struc-
ture and the patterns that emerge in texts about refugees. Regarding per-
formances by refugees and asylum seekers, it is also the case that the text is
often the only record, since participants may not want their performances
photographed or videoed out of fear that it will harm their asylum claims
or put family and friends in their home country in danger. This was the case
for Journey of Asylum—Waiting, a play I discuss at the end of the chapter.
I had the good fortune to discuss the play and its development with direc-
tor Catherine Simmonds. I focus on the UK and Australia, meanwhile, not
because they host more refugees or receive more asylum claims than other
countries; they do not.10 There is, however, intense public debate in these
countries regarding these categories of migrants. This debate has helped
inspire a strong theatrical response, with artists and refugees alike turning
to performance to explore the politics and the experiences of migration
and displacement.11 These countries also fear that they are the target of

9
Nicholas Ridout, Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 32.
10
In 2013, Germany received the highest number of new asylum claims, followed by the
USA, South Africa, France, and Sweden. In pre-2013 data, the USA does not even make the top
ten list; nor do the UK or Australia. See “The Facts: Asylum in the UK,” http://unhcr.org.uk.
11
The same is not the case in the USA, where the conversation about migration remains
largely fixed on the USA/Mexico border.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 165

“bogus” asylum seekers.12 I will return to the term “bogus” shortly, but
first want to clarify the terms “refugee” and “asylum seeker.”
A refugee, according to the United Nation’s 1951 Refugee Convention,
is one who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons
of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or
political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable
to, or owing to such fear is unwilling to, avail himself of the protection of
that country.”13 As the phrase “well-founded fear” indicates, a refugee is
one whose vulnerability to persecution has already been established. An
asylum seeker, meanwhile, is one whose refugee status has not yet been
officially determined and who is in the process of applying for refuge. If
an asylum seeker’s claim is rejected, the applicant will likely be returned,
usually by force, to her home country. In many cases, the only resource
an asylum seeker has at her disposal is her story. This means that stories
potentially have great value, but to realize that value they have to conform
to particular rules and expectations. Meeting those expectations entails
empathic and emotional labor.

EMPATHIC AND EMOTIONAL LABOR

IN THE ASYLUM PROCESS

I begin my analysis of the role of empathy in the asylum process with what
is probably an obvious point, but nevertheless an important one to make:
the goal of these stories is not to provoke empathy, at least not precisely.
While accounts of refugees and asylum seekers in film and television are
often aimed at evoking empathy and compassion, asking us to consider the
difficulties the individual has suffered and to respond emotionally, in the
asylum process stories are judged primarily on their truth value.14 This is
not to say that empathy plays no role in the process. Our sense of what is
possible, probable, or likely is linked to our ability to imagine situations we
have never experienced, and thus our sense of the truth of another’s story
may be linked to empathy, although not fully dependent on it. As I will

12
Similar fears are present in the USA, but, as suggested by the previous footnote, there is
much less public discourse on the topic of refugees and asylum seekers.
13
“The 1951 Refugee Convention,” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, http://www.
unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c125.html
14
April Shemak, Asylum Speakers: Caribbean Refugees and Testimonial Discourse (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 27.
166 L.B. CUMMINGS

argue, it may well be the tellers, rather than the listeners, who find them-
selves engaged in empathy in the asylum process. I suggest that empathy is
part of the labor of storytelling because to communicate we must attempt
to understand our audience. Many of us have the privilege of telling stories
and hoping they will find an audience somewhere out there in the world,
without thinking specifically about the cultural, social, or psychological
aspects of the person who will receive them. Asylum seekers do not have
this luxury. Their audience is specific, present before them, and endowed
with the power to pass judgment over the credibility of what they hear.
One’s story is often all an individual has to support her application
for refugee status. Most people who flee their country do not have time
to gather evidence of the threat that they face, much less the ability to
preserve and transport that evidence in what are, frequently, dangerous
travel conditions. Conventional evidence, in the form of documents, may
not even exist. For people who carry no paperwork and bear no physical
scars, the persuasiveness of their story is all they have to support their
petition for asylum, and the value of that story is never guaranteed in
advance.15 Rather, its value is determined by the border patrol agents,
immigration officials, and asylum caseworkers who hear it. Because anxiety
about “bogus” or “illegal” asylum claims abounds, creating a culture of
disbelief and fear around those seeking asylum, it is imperative to tell one’s
story well.16 This means choosing the right words and highlighting the
right events. To be credible, stories must focus on persecution and victim-
ization, proving that the asylum seeker indeed possesses a “well-founded
fear” and that they fit one of the categories of persons protected by the
1951 Convention. Clear and linear stories carry more credibility, but one
must also be careful not to sound too rehearsed. At the same time, these
stories must be repeated over the course of multiple interviews or tribu-
nals, and any inconsistencies may arouse suspicion.
Asylum seekers’ stories are evaluated not just on content and structure,
but also on delivery.17 Of the embodied dimension of refugee narratives,
Jeffers argues that “the story alone is not enough and it must be rehearsed

15
Aid workers sometimes refer to physical scars as a “torture bonus,” because they act as
evidence in support of the asylum seeker’s claims. See Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman.
The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Trans. Rachel Gomme.
Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2009, 245.
16
For a discussion of how the term “bogus” moves feelings of fear and hate around asylum
seekers, see Ahmed, “Affective Economies.”
17
Shemak, Asylum Speakers, 34.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 167

to create a credible performance, convincing in the telling as well as in

the construction. A weak ‘performance’ can lead to failure no matter how
strong the story/script and failure in these circumstances can be deadly.”18
All too easily, an asylum seeker’s story may be judged false, and therefore
worthless. To deliver a credible performance of personal narrative, asylum
seekers must engage their memories and emotions, as well as empathically
imagining what their audience wants or expects to hear, what might impact
them the most, and how they see the world. To craft a compelling perfor-
mance, asylum seekers must further overcome a variety of obstacles, from
problems translating language and cultural norms, to fear of disclosing per-
sonal details about oneself, to gaps in memory caused by psychic or physical
trauma, to reluctance to revisit emotionally charged events, to the personal
prejudices and idiosyncrasies of the individuals who review their claims.19
The stress of the interview process may further hinder a claimant’s ability
to “perform” well.20 All of this requires emotional and cognitive labor. This
is true even if the focus of that labor is on minimizing the emotion of the
performance, as asylum seekers are sometimes instructed to do.
Our perception of what “truth” looks and sounds like is, of course,
culturally constructed. Law professor Audrey Macklin, who has served on
Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, summarizes the standards in
most Western cultures: “The stereotype goes something like this: truth
tellers look us in the eye, answer the questions put to them in a straight-
forward manner, do not hesitate, show an ‘appropriate’ amount of emo-
tion, and are neither too laconic, nor too verbose.”21 Everything from
which emotions are appropriate and in what degree, whether or not it is
appropriate to make eye contact with figures of authority, what counts as
verbose, and what counts as laconic differ from culture to culture. Despite
numerous studies that indicate demeanor is a poor way to determine

18
Jeffers, Refugees, Theatre, and Crisis, 31.
19
See April Shemak, 3.
20
See Helen Baillot, Sharon Cowan, and Vanessa E Munro, “‘Hearing the Right Gaps’:
Enabling and Responding to Disclosures of Sexual Violence within the UK Asylum Process,”
Social and Legal Studies 21.3 (2012): 269–296. This essay discusses rape disclosures within
the asylum process. In their interviews with those associated with the asylum process and
their observations of it, the authors note that claimants may not disclose all relevant informa-
tion in an interview because they have found the interview itself so frustrating and/or
exhausting (279).
21
Audrey Macklin, “Truth and Consequences: Credibility Determination in the Refugee
Context,” International Association of Refugee Law Judges (1998 Conference), 137.
168 L.B. CUMMINGS

whether or not someone is telling the truth (for reasons that include and
extend beyond cultural differences), it nevertheless continues to influence
immigration officials’ decisions.
Because of the incredible significance placed on personal narratives
in the asylum process, performance scholar Rea Dennis describes asy-
lum seekers’ stories as having “a complex cultural, political, and social
currency.”22 It is important to note that these stories are, often, also the
path by which one might obtain monetary currency. Asylum systems are
often “designed to discourage settlement until the case for asylum has
been proven,”23 and one of the techniques used to discourage settlement
is the denial of the right to work. In the UK, for example, asylum seekers
are barred from working while their cases are being decided, leaving them
dependent on government and charitable organizations. The same is true
for certain groups of asylum seekers in Australia, including those arriving
by boat after August 13, 2012.24 In the USA, asylum seekers are denied
the right to work until at least 180 days after they file an application for
asylum, and immigration officials may “stop the clock” for various reasons,
delaying the applicant’s right to work even longer.25 It is possible for this

22
Rea Dennis, “Inclusive Democracy: A Consideration of Playback Theatre with Refugee
and Asylum Seekers in Australia,” in Refugee Performance: Practical Encounters, ed. Michael
Balfour (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2013), 282.
23
Mary Carter, “Navigation guide: Employment issues for refugees and asylum seekers in
the UK,” Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (July 2008). While this statement
pertains specifically to the UK, it is true of other countries’ asylum systems as well. The
European Union, which operates under a common asylum policy, guarantees access to
employment within nine months, even if a decision has not been made on an applicant’s case.
EU nations must also allow applicants to obtain job training, even before they are legally
granted access to the labor market. See “Common European Asylum System,” European
Commission Home Affairs, http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/
asylum/index_en.htm, accessed April 15, 2015.
24
This is one of several penalties applied specifically to immigrants arriving by boat in
Australia. These immigration policies have sparked wide-ranging international debates about
humanitarianism, maritime law, and modern interpretations of the Human Rights
Convention. Among the many issues raised by these policies is that of economic discrimina-
tion, as the law privileges migrants and asylum seekers who have the means to travel by plane.
25
Reasons for which an applicant’s clock may be stopped include any delay caused by the
applicant (including a delay to gather evidence in support of one’s claim) and failure to
appear for an interview with a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services officer
without an interpreter. Note that it is the applicant’s duty to find her own interpreter.
See Human Rights Watch, “‘At Least Let Them Work’: The Denial of Work Authorization
and Assistance for Asylum Seekers in the United States,” 2013, http://www.hrw.org.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 169

delay to extend for years. US law is unique in that it also prohibits asylum
seekers from receiving most forms of government aid during that period,
leaving them virtually without resources.26 In Australia, the Asylum Seeker
Resource Centre estimated that in 2013 approximately 10,000 asylum
seekers would be released into the community without the right to work.27
It is not unusual for asylum seekers to end up homeless.
The laws that prohibit employment are designed to keep asylum seek-
ers in a state of limbo and to discourage what governments see as abuses
of the asylum system by “economic migrants.” While the right to work
is explicitly stated in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the 1951 Convention does not recognize economic hardship as
a legitimate reason to seek asylum. Crafted in the wake of World War II,
the Convention was designed to protect those fleeing repressive political
regimes, particularly those deemed unfriendly to Western values, namely
fascism and communism. As Peter Nyers explains, the Convention “makes
no mention at all of socioeconomic rights … whereby people displaced
by market forces are excluded from qualifying for refugee status.”28 The
Convention does affirm the right of refugees to earn wages in their new
host nation but does not clarify whether that right applies to those whose
refugee status has not yet been determined, nor does it offer protection for
those who fear for their futures because they lack access to gainful employ-
ment in their home nation.29 The UK Home Office, in its “Asylum Policy
Instruction” booklet, explicitly states that the restriction on employment is
intended to “protect local labour markets.”30 But protecting labor markets
is, of course, only half of the equation. Denying asylum seekers the right

26
Human Rights Watch notes that, “While the majority of developed asylum-granting
nations place certain limitations on the right to work for asylum seekers, the United States
stands alone in denying both employment and government assistance.” Many other nations
deny the right to work but provide some form of (limited) government financial support. See
Human Rights Watch, “‘At Least Let Them Work,’” 1–2.
27
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, “Asylum Seekers and the right to work,” ASRC policy
position paper.
28
Peter Nyers, Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (New York and London:
Routledge, 2006), 50.
29
The Convention affirms the right of those “lawfully staying” in a country to earn wages.
The lack of clarity as to what is “lawful” as well as what constitutes “staying” (that is, perma-
nency or temporariness) opens the door to work restrictions. See Human Rights Watch,
“At Least Let Them Work,” 6.
30
UK Home Office, “Asylum Policy Instruction: Permission to Work,” version 6.0, 1 April 2014.
170 L.B. CUMMINGS

to work is part of a wider effort to discourage individuals from seeking

asylum by making the process one of privation and isolation.
As a result of these labor restrictions, asylum seekers are often left depen-
dent on government or charitable aid, or with no resources whatsoever.
They have little control over their lives and little ability to protect or pro-
vide for themselves and their families. The effects may last long after asylum
has been granted: “[W]hen asylum seekers are denied the right to self-suffi-
ciency, and are prevented from undertaking training or skills development,
their potential for future employment is severely diminished.”31 As Eithne
Luibhéid compellingly illustrates in Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal
Immigrant (2013), denying asylum seekers access to employment and job
training works systematically to disable and demoralize individuals. These
policies expose asylum seekers to criticism as government “spongers” while
in fact requiring them to rely on government aid. With no economic free-
dom and, in many cases, no choice in living conditions, such policies assume
“a future in which the right to remain has been refused and [individuals]
are on track to becoming illegal and deportable.”32
These laws have social, psychological, and financial implications. In
addition to a sense of insecurity, being unable to work can leave a person
depressed or without a sense of purpose. Employment provides people
with routines, a way to engage the world, and a degree of self-sufficiency.
If nothing else, it can take a person’s mind off the stress of her migration
status, giving her some area in their life in which she can be active, rather
than simply waiting. As one asylum seeker states in the verbatim play
Asylum Dialogues, from the UK company Ice and Fire, “I want some free-
dom in my life. I just want them to give me some freedom. Let me work
and have some money in my pocket.” In a market-based economy, a lack
of funds equates to a lack of personal freedom. Employment is also one

31
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, “At Least Let Them Work,” 2.
32
Luibhéid, Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2013), 119. Luibhéid is writing specifically about the “direct provision”
system that was in place in Ireland prior to the enactment of new European Union rules.
Under direct provision, asylum seekers were assigned housing which required them to sign
in and out, prohibited from working or seeking job training, and required to live on a stipend
provided by the government. Luibhéid reports that individuals found the housing restric-
tions confining, undermining their sense of agency and independence and making family life
particularly difficult. In many cases, however, even this sort of restricted housing may be
preferable to detention centers that can be found in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and
various EU member nations.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 171

of the primary ways we engage with our immediate social world. Denying
asylum seekers the right to work denies their ability to fully participate in
the communities in which they hope to settle. It is a form of both material
and psychological isolation.
My aim here is not to suggest that the solution to asylum seekers’ prob-
lems is to be found simply through increased access to labor markets or
that the system needs to place greater value on a neoliberal notion of
self-sufficiency. Neither is true. My point, rather, is that in the absence of
access to traditional wage labor, asylum seekers are not left with no way to
labor, but instead with a highly specific and circumscribed form of labor
through which they can attempt to gain right of entry, freedom, and inde-
pendence. To earn a wage, one must first be granted refugee status. To
achieve that status, one must, in most cases, tell a convincing story. Thus,
by defining these acts of telling as emotional labor, I am highlighting the
intimate connection between a successful performance of “refugeeness”
and the right not just to settle in a new country, but also to earn a wage.
The path to residency and economic freedom lies in the ability to under-
stand what the system demands of a laborer—emotionally, behaviorally,
and otherwise—and to perform accordingly.
Theatre, meanwhile, often attempts to reframe and revalue refugee sto-
ries, turning them into a different kind of currency. We might think of
this as the emotional labor of theatre: to make and move feeling about
refugees in ways that are limited or disallowed by the asylum process. But,
while the stories themselves may be valued in different ways, the labor that
goes into producing them is not entirely different from the labor that pro-
duces stories in the asylum process. I turn now to an analysis of fictional
plays about refugees because they are emblematic of the more conven-
tional empathic economy of the theatre—where the audience’s empathy is
the goal of the process, and where the stories told in the theatre are seen
as having political or humanitarian “currency.” In this model, the audi-
ence is figured as having the authority to “give” personhood, recognition,
and healing in much the same way that government officials in the asylum
process possess the authority to “give” refugee status and residency.

REVALUING REFUGEE STORIES IN THE THEATRE

Rather than asking audiences to evaluate the credibility of an individu-
al’s asylum claims, plays about refugees frequently encourage audiences
to empathize with the difficulties of the asylum process, particularly the
172 L.B. CUMMINGS

emotional strain of not being believed, with its potentially dire conse-
quences. UK playwright Kay Adshead’s fictional play The Bogus Woman
(2000), for example, reflects how one’s story becomes a synecdoche for
the self in the asylum process, to the point that a false narrative turns one
into a false woman, a nonperson. Adshead’s heroine, known throughout
the play only as “Young Woman,” endures detention and homelessness
in the course of her application first for asylum and then, when that is
rejected, residency on humanitarian grounds. At each stage, disbelief in
her story renders her vulnerable, until she is finally deported. Adshead
explores the dangers of both lying and of telling the truth throughout
this process. Lies may be grounds for deportation, but telling the truth
about something like how you obtained a false passport may also damage
your application, and admitting to losing one’s housing when your asylum
claim is pending will cause you to be placed in detention. When she first
arrives in England, the Young Woman expresses the anxiety of one who
knows that honest answers may not save her life. When asked how she
entered the country, she responds, “I don’t know which flight/I can’t
remember./I don’t know where from,/you tell me.”33 You tell me the
story you want to hear, the story that you will believe, and I will accept
it. From the first moment in her quest for asylum, the Young Woman’s
identity is a matter of negotiation between herself and the UK immigra-
tion office.
This and other plays about refugees often appeal to audience members
to witness lives and narratives repressed, ignored, or rendered invisible
through the asylum process, returning a sense of personhood to those
whose stories have been met with disbelief and dismissal. This kind of the-
atre engages the audience empathically. As reviewer Rachel Halliburton
writes, The Bogus Woman makes us “feel the reality of the humiliation,
frustration and anger of a young black woman who meets with only cyni-
cal disbelief when she tries to tell immigration officers about her rape and
the destruction of her family by soldiers.”34 As we empathize with the
Young Woman’s frustration we are meant to see the UK asylum process
as flawed for the way in which it assesses credibility, and how that process
dehumanizes the claimant. In other words, the play engages the audience
in empathy as a corrective to the legal/bureaucratic reliance on credibil-

33
Kay Adshead, The Bogus Woman (London: Oberon Books, 2001), 14.
34
Halliburton, Rachel. “Women’s Refuge.” New Statesman 14.646 (March 5, 2001):
48–49.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 173

ity. In a highly emotional interrogation scene, in which it is clear that

the Young Woman finds it difficult to revisit the frightening moments in
which her family was attacked and killed, and thus to produce a coher-
ent account of those events, we are likely to flinch at the interrogator’s
assertion that “I would suggest/your whole story, … is nothing/but a
pack/of well-schemed lies.”35 “Why aren’t these stories believed?” we ask.
“What would someone have to do to be believed?” Theatre uses empathy
to combat the “official” system for judging and evaluating refugee stories.
This does not mean, however, that theatrical performance recognizes
all stories as equally valid. To empathize with a person or character, to rec-
ognize their humanity and individuality, also requires that their story be
presented in a particular way. Sonja Linden’s I have before me a remarkable
document given to me by a young lady from Rwanda (2002) offers a clear
demonstration of the expectation that refugee stories be personal, emo-
tional, and ultimately healing. While fictional, I have before me is based on
Linden’s experiences working as a writing instructor at the UK organiza-
tion Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.36 First per-
formed in 2002, I have before me has gone on to numerous productions
in the UK and the USA, including the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It
tells the story of Simon, a British citizen who teaches writing at a refugee
center, and his student Juliette, a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda.
I have before me is, in many ways, the story of how a refugee story gets
rewritten to conform to narrative conventions and to expectations of what
emotions refugee stories should convey. The plot revolves largely around
Juliette’s efforts to write about what has happened in her country and
Simon’s advice and assistance. Simon’s response to Juliette’s first manu-
script is less than enthusiastic:

Look, what you’ve written, there’s nothing actually wrong with it, it’s detailed,
shocking of course, terribly shocking, awful—lists, dates, facts … but… it’s
dry, there are no feelings there, it’s impersonal, there’s no suggestion that it’s
actually been written by a survivor. (Pause) You are a survivor, aren’t you?37

35
Adshead, 84.
36
Now renamed Freedom from Torture, this organization offers mental and physical reha-
bilitation services for victims of torture and those who work with them, as well as helping
individuals navigate such issues as employment, education, and living situations. See www.
freedomfromtorture.org.
37
Sonja Linden, I have before me a remarkable document given to me by a young lady from
Rwanda (Aurora Metro Press, 2004), 28.
174 L.B. CUMMINGS

Juliette’s manuscript, written in its entirety before her first meeting

with Simon, is not about her experience with the genocide, or even an
account of the genocide alone, but rather an extensive history of her coun-
try, beginning well before the events of 1994. She has chosen to tell a
story not just of violence, but of the complex history of a nation, includ-
ing both the colonial and post-colonial periods. But as Simon informs
her in no uncertain terms, she has chosen to tell the wrong story: “The
truth is, it’s the personal story that will make people really understand
what went on, that’s what will make it real for us. And that’s what will
interest a publisher.”38 As crass as this sounds, Simon may not be wrong.
In their introduction to the volume Humanitarianism and Suffering: The
Mobilization of Empathy, Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D.  Brown
discuss a study of three different ad campaigns for the organization Save
the Children: one that included only an individual child’s story, one that
was only statistics, and one that combined story and statistics. The study
found that donations were highest for the individual story. While that
is probably not surprising, what is perhaps surprising is that combining
that story with statistics significantly reduced donations.39 Apparently, data
taints the effects of personal narrative.
Both the Save the Children study and Simon’s response to Juliette
suggest that personal narratives matter because they are more persuasive
than other tools we might use in the pursuit of social justice or humani-
tarian causes. Critics of this conclusion note that personal narratives and
the responses they are believed to invoke—empathy, sympathy, compas-
sion—may focus our concern on individuals at the expense of the larger
social groups for whom these individuals stand in.40 Stories emphasize the
personal. They are: “accounts of what happened to particular people—in
particular circumstances and with specific consequences.”41 Stories focus
our attention on how individuals experience those particular events. In
Marie-Laure Ryan’s words, “Some of the participants in the events must
be intelligent agents who have a mental life and react emotionally to

38
Ibid., 28.
39
Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Brown, Introduction to Humanitarianism and
Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 20.
40
See, for example, Paul Bloom, “Against Empathy,” www.bostonreview.net/forum/
paul-bloom-against-empathy. Accessed Sept. 22, 2014.
41
David Herman, Introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, ed. David
Herman (Cambridge University Press), Cambridge Companions Online, DOI: http://dx.
doi.org/10/1017/CCOL0521856965.001. 3.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 175

the states of the world.”42 The emphasis here on particularity of experi-

ence and response reveals how narrative may work to focus, rather than
broaden, our cognitive and affective response.
I want to pause here to point out that how closely the expectation for
credibility in the asylum process aligns with the expectations for narrative
as described above and as outlined in Linden’s play. To be credible and to
engage an audience, the story most be particular—that is, of an individ-
ual, not an entire group. While it is true that asylum applicants must prove
that they are part of a persecuted group, it is not necessarily enough to
claim membership. Personal risk must also be proven.43 Similarly, Juliette’s
story about her country is not specific enough to move a reader. She must
delve into her own experiences and responses to the events around her.
Both contexts require a demonstration of emotional impact. One must
experience a “well-founded fear” to be credible in the asylum process,
while narratives must focus on an individual who has “a mental life and
react[s] emotionally to the states of the world.” This emotional reaction,
moreover, must be “appropriate.” Too little emotion, too much emotion,
or the wrong emotion—as assessed by the one hearing the story—might
damage a story’s credibility or make it difficult to empathize with. Thus,
while empathizability is not a criterion of the asylum process, the stan-
dards of narrative correspond so closely to those of credibility that the
work of telling one’s story outside the asylum process is not entirely unlike
the work of telling one’s story to an immigration official, although the
stakes and potential rewards are quite different.
There are many reasons why an individual might not want to tell her
story according to these criteria. For one, the focus on individual experi-
ence rather than a wider perspective of family, social group, or even nation,
is a particularly Western paradigm. National or familial history may be cen-
42
Ryan’s definition of narrative is actually more flexible than Herman’s. She argues that
narrative texts should be defined not through a binary definition (as in it is or is not narra-
tive), but rather through a “fuzzy set” of criteria, meaning that some but not all of the crite-
ria need to be met for a text to qualify as narrative. Marie-Laure Ryan, “Toward a definition
of narrative,” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, ed. David Herman (Cambridge
University Press), Cambridge Companions Online, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10/1017/
CCOL0521856965.001. 29.
43
Rachel Lewis has discussed an instance of a lesbian asylum claim rejected on the logic that
the person could be “discreet” and thus remain safe in her home country. Thus, while this
woman’s membership in a persecuted group was at least provisionally accepted, the fact of
membership alone was not enough to prove her in danger. Rachel Lewis, “Deportable Subjects:
Lesbians and Political Asylum,” Feminist Formations 25.2 (Summer 2013): 174–194.
176 L.B. CUMMINGS

tral to how an individual contextualizes her experience. It may also be

the case that the emotional responses the immigration official or audience
expects are considered private or inappropriate to the individual and/or
to their cultural background. Or an individual may choose silence about
particular details as a way of exerting some power in the asylum process.
Baillot et al., in their study of rape disclosures in the UK asylum process,
argue that, “In a system where women are often the subjects of forcible
attempts to elicit their own life stories, perhaps the last power a woman
retains is the choice to remain silent.”44 This is not to say that it is always
empowering for women (or others) to refuse to speak, but rather that we
must keep in mind that both speaking and remaining silent may be deliber-
ate choices made in a situation in which individuals have very little choice.
While Juliette initially resists Simon’s attempts to change her approach
to storytelling, she ultimately relents. Despite the fact that this process
is difficult, causing her to feel stuck in a past that she would rather not
relive, the act of recounting her story nevertheless delivers her from that
past: “It was very hard to write, very painful, but now I have finished it,
I feel clean…. I can sleep. I can eat. I can walk in the park. I can see the
flowers, see the sky.”45 Juliette’s nightmares and headaches stop. Simon’s
instinct about what will be compelling to readers proves also to be heal-
ing for Juliette, thereby excusing his earlier insensitivity. The play assures
us that when we watch, read, or otherwise witness stories of suffering,
we become vehicles for the sufferer’s renewal. “I ask you to read [my
book] so that what happened can go a bit into your hearts and away from
ours,” Juliette says to a press audience, who are imagined, in staging, as
the audience of the play.46 This kind of engagement is what many would
call empathy—engaging with another’s feelings such that we feel them at
least “a bit” as our own.
In many respects, the affective economy of this moment feels reciprocal
and mutually beneficial. Juliette gives her story and the audience compen-
sates her through their healing attention, or, more simply, she transfers
some of her pain to us, “sharing the burden,” as it were. Although this is a
fictional play, Linden wants us to read it as representative of the real value
of telling and hearing refugee stories. The published text is dedicated to
Lea Chantal, a Rwandan woman whom Linden worked with at Care of

44
Baillot et al., “‘Hearing the Right Gaps,’” 287.
45
Linden, I have before me, 63.
46
Ibid., 63.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 177

Victims of Torture, and whose story clearly influenced the playwright. In

her introductory essay, Linden writes that, for Chantal, “What started out
as a testimonial act, the writing out of her family’s experience of genocide,
became, in addition, an act of healing as a result of which she reported
that she felt ‘clean’ and that her nightmares and headaches had ceased.”47
Linden explains that she was inspired by this woman’s perseverance, as her
emotional healing came at the great cost of “confronting and expressing
with full force the negative emotions that overwhelmed her in the years
following the genocide.”48 While elsewhere Linden acknowledges that,
for some individuals, directly recounting the events of their lives may be
harmful, in this essay, the costs of telling are presented as well as compen-
sated by the rewards, which are gained both through the writing and the
sharing of one’s story.49
Performance studies scholar James Thompson has expressed concern
for the ways in which the popularization of trauma theory has led to “the
prescription of ‘telling one’s story’ as the preferred method and neces-
sary precondition for ‘relief,’ ‘liberation,’ or ‘healing.’”50 Trauma theory,
Thompson and others critic note, may neglect other cultural modes of
dealing with trauma and overlook the ways in which telling and retelling
certain stories may reinforce an individual’s sense of victimhood, rather
than liberation. Trauma theory’s faith in the healing power of telling may
also fail to account for the ways in which personal narratives are com-
pelled, and thus complicated, in certain circumstances, including the asy-
lum process. In theatrical contexts, the prescription of telling one’s story
is nevertheless compelling because it may allow audiences to feel that they
are engaged in a transaction with the performers in which we do not sim-
ply receive, but also give. To feel good about acting as a witness to a
healing narrative, even at a degree of removal, such as is the case when an

47
Linden, Introduction to I have before me (Aurora Metro Press, 2004), 15.
48
Ibid.
49
In a separate essay, Linden offers a more nuanced understanding of the relationship
between writing and healing. While overwhelmingly positive about the potential of writing,
she notes that for some of the people she works with, “to revisit the experience of torture and
degradation is to re-enter the darkest tunnels of memory.” She also argues that “autofiction,”
or a somewhat fictionalized approach to autobiography, may be both easier to write and
more helpful in the healing process. Sonja Linden, “Return to the dark tunnel: the writing
cure,” Open Democracy, December 18, 2003, https://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-
Literature/article_1638.jsp. Accessed January 13, 2015.
50
Thompson, 45.
178 L.B. CUMMINGS

actor embodies a refugee character, may allow us to feel that we have par-
ticipated in this healing. Stated otherwise, if the asylum process consists of
the exchange of stories for residency, then the theatrical process, at least in
these cases, consists of the exchange of stories for empathy, personhood,
and healing. At least, this is a story we may tell ourselves.
Remember that, in these examples, actual refugees and asylum seek-
ers are absent from the theatre. In plays like I have before me or The Bogus
Woman, a professional actor engages in empathic labor to embody a
refugee character, often for the purpose of encouraging the audience to
empathically engage the character as well. The actor is compensated for
this labor with a wage. In performances enacted by actual refugees and asy-
lum seekers in such venues as community-based performance, similar labor
generally receives no monetary compensation. This is labor, moreover, that
echoes labor they have been required to perform repeatedly throughout
the asylum process. As Jeffers argues, “most, if not all, subsequent perfor-
mances of refugeeness, including theatrical performance, are conditioned
or marked . . . in some way” by these prior “bureaucratic performances.”51
I make this point not to suggest that community-based performance is
necessarily exploitative, but rather to remind us that it is still labor.
We are often inclined to interpret community-based theatre, especially
theatre produced by individuals who have experienced violence or per-
secution, as serving the needs of the participants in the same way that I
have before me suggests that writing and sharing her story serves Juliette’s
needs. Performers in this kind of theatre are frequently described as expe-
riencing empowerment or “reclaiming their voices.” A great deal of the-
atre performed by refugees and asylum seekers is understood as fulfilling
this purpose, at least in part. Community-based theatre is often defined as
being “of the people, by the people, and for the people,”52 suggesting that
performers and spectators are so connected that the theatrical experience
is not so much one of exchange but rather one of shared experience and
perspective. But good community-based theatre is still theatre: an experi-
ence crafted for an audience, designed to produce and manage ideas and
feelings in a particular way. Here, I follow Jan Cohen-Cruz’s argument
that community-based performance is not a closed circle of intra-group

51
Jeffers, Refugees, Theatre and Crisis, 31.
52
Richard Owen Geer, “Of the People, By the People, and For the People: The field of
community performance.” High Performance 64 (Spring 1993). Community Arts Network
Reading Room. N.d. n.p. Web. 9 March 2010.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 179

sharing, but rather a means of communicating experience-based knowl-

edge to a wide range of potential spectators.53 As such, it is cultural, social,
and affective labor performed to entertain, engage, and perhaps edify
an audience that may or may not share a background with the perform-
ers. In the section that follows, I analyze how community-based perfor-
mance—in this case performance by refugees and asylum seekers—makes
empathic and emotional labor visible. In doing so, these performances
simultaneously complicate the affective economy of the theatre, disquiet-
ing the audience not because the actor performs for our leisure, but rather
because we must consider how labor in the theatre repeats, reflects, or
comments on the circulation of bodies and affect in our society at large.

RENDERING EMOTIONAL LABOR VISIBLE

Performance can expose its own labor. In the case of theatre performed
by asylum seeking, doing so simultaneously exposes the emotional labor
of the asylum process, provoking the audience to consider when and how
it engages with refugee and asylum-seeker stories. This is precisely what
occurs in Journey of Asylum—Waiting, a devised performance produced
in 2010 by asylum seekers and community members at the Asylum Seeker
Resource Centre (ASRC) in Melbourne, Australia. Twenty-two asy-
lum seekers, none of whom had acted before, took part in an extended
workshop process lasting over a year. The workshop was led by theatre
artist Catherine Simmonds, who has been devising theatre with and for
communities since 1992, when she founded the Brunswick Women’s
Theatre, a community-based theatre working primarily with immigrant
and non-English-speaking women in the Brunswick neighborhood
of Melbourne.54 This work brought Simmonds to the attention of the
ASRC, Australia’s largest asylum-seeker support organization, providing
everything from food and health aid, to legal counseling, to advocacy and
employment training.55
As with the plays already discussed, Journey of Asylum—Waiting invites
the audience to empathize with the difficulties of the asylum process, shar-
ing stories, feelings, and reactions that cannot be told in that process. It

53
Jan Cohen-Cruz, Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States
(New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers, 2005), 110.
54
Personal conversation with author, January 14, 2015.
55
See their website: http://www.asrc.org.au
180 L.B. CUMMINGS

differs from many other plays about asylum seekers, however, in a number
of ways. First, as a devised piece drawing on the lives of its many pro-
tagonists, the play does not follow one main character or one narrative
throughline. It unfolds in a series of scenes. Some are realistic mini-stories,
while others are more expressionist, movement-based, and polyvocal. The
tone of the piece is similarly diverse, ranging from serious, to funny, to
anxious as characters recount the frustrations, absurdities, and fears that
characterize the asylum process. Simmonds says that the participants’ main
goal is to communicate to the audience that they are human,56 but it is a
vision of humanity that is decidedly diverse. No single emotional response
to being a refugee is privileged. And unlike many plays about refugee
experience, this humanity is not necessarily achieved through confession
or “telling one’s story.” It is this aspect of Journey of Asylum—Waiting
that I want to explore: its repeated emphasis on the act of choosing what
to tell, to whom, and when. Characters express ambivalence about telling
their stories, both in the asylum process and in the context of the play
itself. These moments highlight the decision to tell and the feelings that
accompany that decision, marking the emotional labor of asylum-seeker
performance.
In a radio interview promoting the performance, Simmonds argues
that the value of the play lies in its ability to at least partially “decon-
struct” the legal framework that has previously regulated these narratives.
This does not mean that those prior legal performances are completely
erased or overcome, but rather that the act of telling in workshops and
performance grapples with those prior acts of telling. As part of the work-
shop, Simmonds conducted individual interviews with each participant,
discussing what she or he wanted to communicate.57 Participants were
able to choose what they wanted to share outside of the constraints of the
asylum interview format and without the necessity of proving themselves
according to the UN Convention or otherwise meeting a particular set of
expectations. They were then able to share those stories with the group,
rather than in the one-on-one interviews that characterize asylum seek-
ers’ interactions with immigration officials and caseworkers. Events and
feelings could be discussed that were not spoken of with caseworkers or
immigration officials. During the workshop, some individuals found that
they shared feelings and experiences where they had previously felt alone.

56
Personal conversation with author, April 26, 2015.
57
Personal conversation with author, January 14, 2015.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 181

Told in a different venue, to a different audience, and for a different pur-

pose, stories could come to mean differently.
In the same radio segment in which Simmonds was interviewed, work-
shop participant and performer Ubah Badi, a refugee from Somalia, sug-
gests that telling one’s story under these circumstances constitutes less of
a performance than doing so before immigration boards. She appreciated
the process because “you can really tell your story from your own point
of view, and not act it, and just tell it just the way you feel it.” The notion
that one is not generally able to tell the story “the way you feel it,” but
must, instead, “act it,” points to ways in which asylum seekers manage not
just the content, but also the emotional tenor and delivery of their stories
within the asylum process. The effects of telling stories in new ways extend
beyond the tellers. People tell stories, after all, not just to communicate
but also to respond to “the entire system of communication, including
who speaks to whom, about what, in what circumstances, in what form,
and with what consequences.”58 A story is more than its narrative content;
it is a contribution to (or intervention into) the wider process of making
meaning.
Storytellers have power in this process, although it is a power that, in
the asylum context, is radically circumscribed. Journey of Asylum—Waiting
explores the tensions between agency and vulnerability that accompany
acts of telling. Early in the play, the character Yomal speaks from inside
a box constructed of clear plastic, from which he “beckons intimately to
the audience:” “Give me a banana and I will tell you a story. Give me
two bananas and I’ll tell you my story, but maybe you won’t sleep for
the rest of your life.”59 From his plastic “cage,” on display for all to see,
Yomal knowingly evokes the image of the performing monkey, trained to
do tricks for treats.60 This satiric representation of the asylum process is

58
Shuman, “Entitlement and Empathy in Personal Narrative,” Narrative Inquiry 16.1
(2006), 153. Shuman is drawing here on the work of Dell Hymes.
59
Catherine Simmonds and Asylum Seekers and Refugees from the Asylum Seekers
Resource Center, Melbourne, Journey of Asylum—Waiting, in Staging Asylum: Contemporary
Plays about Refugees, ed. Emma Cox (Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 2013), 146.
60
This moment produced extensive debate in the devising process. In its original version,
Yomal actually mimicked a monkey, but some participants felt that this might encourage
audience members to see asylum seekers in a degrading way. The revised version captures the
idea that asylum seekers are put in boxes (in this case, literally), treated reductively, and com-
pelled to perform in exchange for residency status, and it does this without turning the
character into a victim.
182 L.B. CUMMINGS

complicated by the latter part of his invitation, which suggests that those
who choose to engage in this transaction might get more than they bar-
gained for. Do we really want to know Yomal’s truth? Could we handle
it? The moment reminds us that, in telling a story, the speaker considers
his audience: what they know of the world, what they want to hear, what
will titillate them, what will frighten them. Yomal toys with our desire to
know, reminding us that he has some power in this situation: from within
his cage, demeaned as he may be, he may yet choose to entertain us, to
please us, or to shock us.
Yomal’s statement moves the threat of a failed transaction from the
teller to the hearer, if only for a moment. In the asylum process, of course,
it is usually the teller for whom failure produces negative consequences,
a fact also acknowledged in Journey of Asylum—Waiting. Before a single
refugee or asylum speaker utters a word in the play, a member of the
Refugee Review Tribunal says, “I don’t believe you.”61 These words inter-
rupt pantomimed stage actions, suggesting that disbelief precedes narra-
tive, extending to the very figure of the refugee. Characters are acutely
aware that their stories may be disbelieved, and they make their audience
aware of this, too. A man named Omar describes the stress of having to
repeat one’s story over and over again exactly as written on one’s asylum
claim, because any inconsistency can cast doubt on the veracity of the
entire story: “One mistake that can drag you into hell. Once you slip, you
just keep slipping. I can’t answer your question.”62 Telling one’s story
becomes a minefield of potential risk, a performance for which the stakes
are so high that, at a certain point, it seems better to remain silent.
Another character suggests that telling one’s story is an act of futility.
Haydar’s lines are quoted in the epigraph to this chapter: “I already told
my story. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to. Don’t make me do this. Sorry,
I don’t want to play.”63 Haydar’s ambivalence is a provocation for audience
members to consider the many reasons why asylum seekers may be fed up or
disillusioned with telling their stories, or even fearful of the consequences.
Simmonds notes that most of the participants in the production still had
asylum applications pending at the time of performance, meaning that
what they said in this venue could potentially have impacted their cases.64

61
Simmonds et al., Journey of Asylum—Waiting, 144.
62
Simmonds et al., Journey of Asylum—Waiting, 160
63
Ibid., 145.
64
Personal conversation with author, January 14, 2015.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 183

These issues needed to be carefully navigated, communicating the extreme

stakes to the audience without putting performers at risk. Haydar presses
the point further, asking the audience whether or not telling his story to
them in particular will have any impact: “If I tell you my story, am I going
to get PR: Permanent Residency? Am I? … Who are you, the Government,
Immigration, a spy of the Minister, who? A spy from my country, who?
… Look I’m not actor, all right? It’s my life.”65 Can you actually help me?
Might you hurt me? Haydar’s questions implicate the audience, forcing
them to consider what forms of response are available to them.
Even as it creates space for individuals to express themselves in new
ways, Journey of Asylum—Waiting challenges the simple reduction or
conflation of an individual with his or her story. Omar protests, “You’ve
asked me to explain twenty-four years of my life in two hours.”66 Stated
this way, the impossibility of Omar’s task is hard to ignore. What might
he accidentally overlook that could help his case? And what does it feel
like to have so little time to express to someone who you are? Under
the circumstances, it would be easy to feel that it is oneself, and not the
particular events that caused one to flee, that is being judged. To combat
both the pressure to tell one’s story and the sense that one’s story is all one
is, the workshop process allowed individual stories to become “collectiv-
ized”: “People pick up bits that other people won’t perform. It becomes
a collective story.”67 Individuals may share responsibility for stories, pass
their stories on to another, or even remain silent. In her analysis of the
production, migration studies scholar Anne McNevin argues that the fact
that performers play multiple characters, ranging from asylum seekers to
immigration officials, further fragments the relationship between individ-
ual actors and the stories they tell. This technique “magnifies awareness
that being a refugee is a legal, administrative and discursive designation,
rather than something essential.”68 Journey of Asylum—Waiting finds a
balance between the individualization that makes narrative function and
the collectivization that helps us see beyond the individual at the heart of
the story to larger social and political systems.

65
Simmonds et al., Journey of Asylum—Waiting, 145.
66
Simmonds et al., Journey of Asylum—Waiting, 179.
67
Catherine Simmonds and Ubah Badi, “Asylum Seekers’ Stories on Stage,” interview
with Simon Leo Brown, March 3, 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2010/
03/03/2835513.htm.
68
Anne McNevin, “Becoming Political: Asylum Seeker Activism through Community
Theatre,” Local-Global: Identity, Security, Community 8 (2010), 155.
184 L.B. CUMMINGS

The radio interview in which Simmonds and Badi discuss the play is,
a prime example of how refugee stories are told within a larger system
of making and producing meaning—a system that expects those stories
to conform to particular patterns. The interview is a fairly typical pro-
motional segment in which radio host Simon Brown asks Simmonds and
Badi about how the play was developed and what it is about, although the
segment’s 16-minute length allows for more breadth and depth than most
promotional interviews. Brown is also interested in Badi’s experience as a
refugee. When he introduces her, he does so, ironically, by asking, “Ubah,
what’s your story?” Although he quickly follows this up with, “How did
you get attached to this [project]?,” his opening question nevertheless
stands out as jarring in the larger context of their conversation, especially
after Simmonds spends the first several minutes of the interview establish-
ing the complicated nature of personal stories for refugees and asylum
seekers.
Brown’s colloquial phrasing is not just an instance of unfortunate word
choice. Throughout the interview, he repeatedly attempts to draw a par-
ticular kind of story from Badi—one focused on the disorienting nature
of living in a foreign country. He makes a concerted (and problematic)
attempt at empathy by analogy, bringing up on more than one occasion
the fact that his brother has just moved to a different suburb and finds
the change of location disorienting. Brown attempts to use this example
of small-scale disruption to one’s life as a means of accessing the radical
disruption of fleeing one’s home country. This attempt might have some
legitimacy if it weren’t for the fact that his focus on disorientation as the
central affective quality of refugeeness causes him to fail to hear the many
other things that Badi says about being a refugee and about the play. She
speaks about a range of experiences and issues, from the need to challenge
oneself to engage new communities, to confronting racism, to the ways in
which she must politely negotiate others’ lack of knowledge about her cul-
ture or religion. Brown takes these comments and repeatedly draws from
them notions of struggle and isolation—feelings that she is not always
expressing. While it is certainly not the case that she makes being a refugee
sound easy, her stories do not fall neatly into the particular narrative that
Brown anticipates, and at times the interview feels like a polite struggle
over meaning. At one point in the interview, when discussing the chal-
lenges of “shepherding truth on stage” (Brown’s phrasing), Simmonds
pointedly remarks, “You have to listen.” Her “you” is editorial, a com-
ment on what any director or workshop leader needs to do when creating
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 185

theatre out of the personal experiences of participants, but it also seems

to operate as a reminder to Brown of his own failures to listen carefully
to both the content and emotional quality of Badi’s comments. Brown
unwittingly illustrates how easy it is to seek someone’s story and fail to
fully receive what they offer.
By focusing attention on the dangers, limitations, and performance
anxieties associated with telling one’s story in the asylum process, Journey
of Asylum—Waiting brings to the foreground the emotional labor under-
taken by many refugees and asylum seekers—both in the asylum process
and, to a certain extent, in the theatrical process. This labor consists not
just of confronting and sharing affecting moments from their lives, but
also of considering the circumstances in which the telling occurs, empathi-
cally evaluating the listener, and assessing risks and rewards for particu-
lar strategies. Simmonds notes that part of her job, as the director, is to
facilitate this process. Many participants in the project did not have arts
or theatre backgrounds, and so could not always tell what would be effec-
tive on stage. Additional complications such as cultural differences make
understanding what and how to communicate a complex labor.
As the characters in the play determine what and how much to tell,
audience members are reminded that they are yet another audience in an
already long line of audiences. The play implicitly asks whether they will
listen in the same way as those previous audiences or whether they will
hear differently, which raises the question of what hearing differently can
do. As Jeffers has argued, “Audience members cannot escape the fact that
it is in their ‘gift’ to be able to offer theatre as a space for reflection and
expression. At the same time, the offer of a ‘hospitable stage’ on which
refugee stories can be re-enacted is just that, a stage, not substantial, not
‘real.’”69 Theatre audiences cannot grant refugee status or permanent resi-
dency. What they can grant is their attention and, possibly, their empathy.
While, in some respects, the labor of telling one’s story in the the-
atre mirrors that of telling one’s story in other venues, it also differs in
important ways. This may include the kind of exchange created between
performer and audience. Performance, as a method of acting in the world
that also renders us vulnerable, reflects Judith Butler’s argument that we

69
Alison Jeffers, “Hospitable Stages and Civil Listening: Being an Audience for
Participatory Refugee Theatre,” in Refugee Performance: Practical Encounters, ed. Michael
Balfour (Bristol UK, Chicago USA: Intellect, 2013), 307.
186 L.B. CUMMINGS

must “think vulnerability and agency together.”70 On the one hand, by

presenting herself before others, a performer invites criticism or judg-
ment. When that performance reflects one’s own life, it is that life, that
self, who is exposed. For individuals who may have asylum claims pend-
ing, what they reveal to others through performance could possibly have
consequences beyond the playing space. On the other hand, performance
involves a powerful expression of voice and claiming space. One’s story is
not compelled by the law, but given when, where, and how one chooses.
The performer has greater control over how the self is presented, as
well as what the audience sees, hears, and feels. In performance, “You
are the conduit to story and feeling,”71 with greater freedom over what
story and what feelings might be expressed than in the asylum framework.
Caseworkers who saw the performance said that they saw their clients in
a different way—with power and strength, not as victims. Not to under-
mine the importance of seeing people in this new way, we might, follow-
ing Butler, resist this binary framework (powerful/powerless, vulnerable/
invulnerable) and instead recognize that we are all vulnerable to the world
around us. We experience that vulnerability in differing ways and to dif-
ferent degrees, but none of us can survive or thrive without a range of
support systems.72 To be vulnerable does not mean to be without agency.
Butler asks, regarding activism, “Is this not a form of deliberate expo-
sure and persistence, the embodied demand for a livable life—precarious,
acting?”73 We might think not just about “precarious, acting” as coexis-
tent modes of being, but also of “precarious acting”— performance as a
medium that highlights the coexistence of power and vulnerability.
This dual experience of power and vulnerability comes not just from
telling one’s story on a stage: it requires an audience, a witness. To attend
to the other in this way, recognizing the self that they construct before
us in the theatre, involves empathy. I want to amend, here, Carl Rogers’s
statement, cited earlier in this book: “Empathy gives that needed confir-
mation that one does exist as a separate, valued person with an identity.”74

70
Judith Butler, “Bodily Vulnerability, Coalitions, and Street Politics,” 108, emphasis in
original.
71
Catherine Simmonds, personal conversation with author, January 14, 2015.
72
See Butler, “Bodily Vulnerability, Coalitions, and Street Politics,” as well as Shannon Jackson,
Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).
73
Butler, ““Bodily Vulnerability, Coalitions, and Street Politics,” 117.
74
Carl Rogers, “Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being,” The Counseling Psychologist
5.2 (1975), 7.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 187

Empathy gives personhood. Or does it? The kind of empathy that I am

advocating for is not an emotion or affect, but a process, and perform-
ers are putting at least as much labor into that process as the audience. If
empathy gives anything, it does so only through collaboration. Considered
in that light, we might think of a play like Journey of Asylum—Waiting,
with its attention to the labor of storytelling, as saying to the audience, in
effect, “Your empathic labor depends on my empathic labor,” or “What
you can give depends on what I choose to give,” or even, “We give each
other this attention and this dialogue in this moment.” If new narratives
emerge to expand what is tellable and hearable in regard to refugee expe-
rience, they do so because performers and audience have, in some sense,
worked together. This kind of co-laboring, while it does not have material
or legal impact on a migrant’s life, does create an alternative to the “story
for residency-and-therefore-ability-to-work” paradigm that dominates the
asylum process and the “storytelling in exchange for healing and person-
hood” paradigm found in so many fictionalized accounts of refugee expe-
rience. Journey of Asylum—Waiting raises the question of how we make
theatre a space in which audience and performers are aware that they labor
with one another. What Woodruff calls the “double art” of watching and
being watched, we might also think of as the “double labor” through
which meaning is constructed in the theatre. To truly engage one another,
we have to consider the conditions under which they labor.

INTERRUPTION, REPETITION, AND REHEARSAL REVISITED

While I do not wish to hold Journey of Asylum—Waiting up as the model
of ideal dialogic empathy, it is helpful to see how revealing a performer’s
labor may be linked to the other techniques I have explored in the book.
The first technique I discussed, interruption, is clearly evident in
Journey of Asylum—Waiting. By asking the audience why asylum seekers
should tell their stories and challenging what the audience hopes to get
out of that experience, the play’s protagonists insist that audience mem-
bers reflect on their own motives and expectations. Empathic engagement
is not denied outright, but the audience is reminded that these stories are
constructed for them. Thus, they are not windows into another’s life, but
rather pieces of those lives framed in a particular way for a particular pur-
pose. Interruptions to empathy remind us that we all have reasons for tell-
ing and not telling, sharing and hiding. Particularly when people tell their
own stories, such as in Journey of Asylum—Waiting, or when a play is based
188 L.B. CUMMINGS

on other people’s stories, such as in Black Watch, we ought to keep in mind

that there are likely many silences, some evident to us and others not.
As with RFK in EKY, repetition also created the space for dialogue, col-
laboration, and empathy in Journey of Asylum—Waiting. Stories that had
been told many times before were told again, but in a new space, to new
listeners, for new reasons. These repetitions in turn produced dialogue
within the group. In one of our discussions about the project, Simmonds
pointed out that empathy emerged among the participants in the project,
as well as with the audience. The participants came from a wide range of
cultural backgrounds, including some with a history of conflict toward
others in the group. She recounts one pair of participants who openly
acknowledged that, outside the space of workshop, they would never
have interacted or worked together, and would in fact have been enemies.
In  the context of the workshop, however, they could find connections.
If we are to build empathy, Simmonds contends, then we have to create
more spaces in which we interact with difference. In the workshop, old
stories were repeated in a new context, to a new audience, inviting con-
versation and connection. Through repetition and dialogue, these stories
took on new meaning for the participants. But telling stories does not
lead immediately to new understanding. Repeatedly, Simmonds empha-
sized the need for space and time to negotiate difference, to collaborate,
and to learn together. Intercultural issues are complex. Building relation-
ships takes time. She expressed the importance of workshops like the one
through which Journey of Asylum—Waiting was devised because they cre-
ate an active, collaborative space in which to engage others. “Where are
the conversations happening?” she asks.75
This is not to say that the audience is unimportant in Journey of
Asylum—Waiting. As discussed above, however changed we may feel by
creating performance, presenting that performance to another person
adds yet another dimension of agency. Simmonds notes that, initially, the
workshop participants didn’t know what to expect or what performing for
an audience would feel like, and many didn’t invite any of the people they
knew to the first performance. After the applause and the expressions of
gratitude from the audience, however, many of them immediately start-
ing calling and texting friends, encouraging them to come. The show ran
for eight performances, and the 250-seat space was sold out each night.
While the audience did not attend the workshops or hear the dialogue

75
Personal communication, April 26, 2015.
 EMPATHIC ECONOMIES: PERFORMANCE BY REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS 189

that emerged there, they benefit from that process nonetheless, because
what they saw had been shaped by the dialogue and the empathy that
emerged through that process. As Simmonds acknowledges, this didn’t
lead to a place where “we’re all best friends.”76 It would be naïve of us
to expect that, or to assume that one workshop or performance can solve
deeply seated conflicts. Speaking from the standpoint of a theatre art-
ist creating performance with individuals who may not agree, and whose
political, religious, or social histories may in fact place them in direct con-
flict, Simmonds reminds us that there is only so much that theatre can do
to solve these issues. She describes the work of this kind of theatre as a
delicate balance of knowing which tensions to bring into the room and
which to leave out, creating a space in which difference is recognized and
respected without forcing individuals to confront all of the things that
may divide them in order to be able to play, to dialogue, and to create
performance. Empathy for her is about creating a space in which to respect
difference—both in the workshop and on the stage.
Finally, the creative work of Journey of Asylum—Waiting offered par-
ticipants a place to try new things, to rehearse being in the world in new
ways. As I suggested in the previous chapter, this kind of work is both fun
and potentially frightening. In this chapter, I use the term “precarious
acting” to indicate how performance, for the participants in this project,
was not simply a way to take the vulnerability of the asylum process and
remake it as a form of power and agency. Rather, the participants found
the power of performance through a process that also invited them to
empathize with one another, to experience vulnerability, and to risk telling
their stories in new ways before an unknown audience. The performers
are at once acting agents and precarious subjects. The performance itself
reminds the audience that these acts of telling are risky, caught up in the
wider context of how asylum-seeker stories are shaped.
Ultimately, all of the performances discussed in the book complicate
conventional notions of how empathy circulates between stage and audi-
ence. Rather than a feeling projected from the audience onto the character
or something we “give” in response to performance, the labor of empathy
is undertaken in the house and on the stage, in rehearsal and in perfor-
mance. The thoughts and feelings that emerge through that labor can-
not be accounted for by simple notions of “giving” and “getting.” As we
undertake the labor of empathy, we must also consider how it is tied up

76
Ibid.
190 L.B. CUMMINGS

in other labor and economies, whether affective, financial, or otherwise.

This is, in part, a question of how we expect stories to conform to particu-
lar narratives in order to “merit” empathy, whether those are narratives
of Appalachian poverty and suffering (Chap. 3) or narratives of asylum-
seeker persecution. But we might also look at those examples and say that
they reveal more than just how empathy is constructed around “proper”
objects; they also suggest a tendency to offer empathic compensation in
place of or as a pathway to economic independence. In some respects, the
cases of both Appalachians and asylum seekers say, in effect, “We won’t
give you jobs, but we will give you the chance to tell your story in a way
that may inspire others to empathize”—to labor, we might say, in a kind
of empathic service economy. If we stop thinking of empathy as some-
thing that some people feel for others and begin to think of it, instead,
as something we do with others, then we encourage deeper engagement
while simultaneously undermining the tendency to use empathy as a gate-
keeper, limiting access to full citizenship and full participation in social
and economic life.
 CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

More than a definite position, the dialogical stance is situated in the

space between competing ideologies. It brings self and other together even
while it holds them apart. It is more like a hyphen than a period.
— Dwight Conquergood, “Performing as a Moral Act,” 75.

In the Introduction, I discussed the many different and often diametri-

cally opposed understandings of empathy. Rather than selecting one defi-
nition over another, I suggested, following Gail S.  Reed, that we need
to understand empathy as a process entailing a wide range of impulses,
desires, and reactions. This extends beyond recognizing the deeply imbri-
cated nature of affect and cognition; it requires us to see the project
of attempting to understand others as a careful balancing of opposing
tensions. This is akin to how Dwight Conquergood defines dialogic
performance:1 Like dialogic performance, empathy holds people in rela-
tionship—connected but not conflated. Empathy exists between: between
people; between the urge to share experience and the need to retain that
experience as our own; between similarity and difference; between singu-
larity and generalizability.

1
Dwight Conquergood, “Performance as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the
Ethnography of Performance,” in Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Practice,
ed. E. Patrick Johnson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013): 65–80.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 191

L.B. Cummings, Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59326-9_6
192 L.B. CUMMINGS

In The Empathy Exams, Jamison describes empathy as “always perched

precariously between gift and invasion.”2 Through a series of essays
recounting, among other things, her work as a medical actor helping train
future health care professionals in bedside manner, Jamison explores the
competing desires of wanting others to understand our pain and loathing
the presumptiveness that may accompany expressions of understanding.
She writes, “I grow accustomed to comments that feel aggressive in their
formulaic insistence: that must be really hard [to have a dying baby], that
must be really hard [to be afraid that you’ll have a seizure in the middle
of the grocery store], that must be really hard [to carry in your uterus the
bacterial evidence of cheating on your husband]. Why not say, I couldn’t
even imagine?”3 Sometimes, we need others to recognize just how much
they do not understand, to respect the boundaries of experience. And yet,
at other points in the book, she makes it clear how insufficient “I couldn’t
even imagine” is, leaving her feeling isolated and misunderstood. We want
our experience to be our own, and yet, often, we want to know that others
understand what we are experiencing.
The feelings Jamison describes pertain to the way empathy operates in
our everyday lives—understanding on a person-to-person level. But part
of what makes empathy so controversial is the way in which it morphs
quickly from understanding individuals to understanding (or thinking
that we understand) entire categories of individuals. As Shuman explains,
“Empathy relies on, but also destabilizes, the association among persons
and their experiences.”4 Another way of saying this is that empathy exists
between singularity and generalizability. It requires an individualized nar-
rative, but operates on the promise that this individuation is the very thing
that allows the narrative to reach others. For those who celebrate empathy,
this means that individual stories can travel far and wide, allowing us to
gain some understanding of cultures, experiences, and lives that we may
not encounter first-hand, but with whom we are nevertheless connected
by vast economic, environmental, and political networks. On a humanistic
level, it emphasizes a common humanity that transcends our many differ-
ences. Those less optimistic about empathy’s potential note that, often,
individual stories are shaped into familiar patterns in order to ensure their
transmissibility, and in the seeing and hearing of stories we focus on what

2
Jamison, 5.
3
Jamison, 4–5.
4
Amy Shuman, Other People’s Stories, 4.
 CONCLUSION 193

is already familiar at the expense of what is different. In doing so, those

with more power are permitted to continue to define that which makes us
similar and human. For these critics, empathy can never fulfill its promise
of helping us see other perspectives. We will always be like the audience
member I described at the beginning of the book, refiguring that which is
foreign to suit our own experience of the world.
The central question of this book is how we hold on to the active ten-
sion between humility and presumption, singularity and generalizabil-
ity, “mine” and “ours.” It is about how we make ourselves present in
the moment of interpersonal encounter, while at the same time making
space for consideration, exploration, and analysis. We do this, I think, by
thinking of empathy not as a feeling we “have” (“Did you empathize?”),
or an expression of understanding (“That must be really hard”), but rather
as an always incomplete process of engagement. We maintain the ten-
sion of these conflicting urges by maintaining dialogue, keeping the space
between us active and evolving. Jamison reflects the need to this open-
endedness when she writes, “Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the
questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry
as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing that you know noth-
ing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends
perpetually beyond what you can see.”5 Our horizons are always changing.
This does not make the work of empathy futile, but it does mean that we
must learn to think of our conclusions as provisional.
Part of the work of empathy is developing an awareness of the scripts
that inform our interpretations, pushing us not only to mold stories into
familiar narratives but also to experience a sense of finality in our responses
to those stories. These scripts appear throughout this book—narratives of
war that depict masculinity as violent and laconic; narratives of poverty
that emphasize personal suffering while ignoring the structural inequities
that cause it; narratives of identity that police national, ethnic, gender, and
sexual boundaries; and narratives of asylum that proscribe telling one’s
story as the path to citizenship and emotional healing. To engage in a
more dialogic empathy, we have to actively question our position in these
narratives, the positions of the one(s) we engage, and how they shape our
intellectual and affective responses.
This requires more than simply understanding how these scripts have
designated “proper” and “improper” recipients of empathy; it entails

5
Jamison, 5.
194 L.B. CUMMINGS

attending to what is between us in the moment of engagement. We have

to be aware of both ourselves and the other, attending to their responses
to our engagement as well as to our own desires, instincts, and reac-
tions. We also have to actively consider the wider context in which our
encounter takes place, and how our histories, subject positions, economic
circumstances, citizenship statuses and more influence how we represent
ourselves and how others receive us. We have to think about where singu-
larity may be lost along the way, listening for the places where we may be
“filling in” gaps in our understanding and reminding ourselves that what
we understand from this empathic encounter may not apply to other people
in similar situations. As Simmonds puts it, “You’ve got to be willing not to
know.”6 In the theatre, we have to ask all of these questions with the added
consideration of the gray area between “real” and “representational.” Is our
sense of empathetic engagement with the performer, the character she rep-
resents, or somewhere in between? Can we even tell? To what degree does
the performance encourage us to see that character as representative of a
larger social group, to move from singularity to generality?
In short, we have to consider not whether or not we empathized, but
what empathy has led us to think and feel, and why. Our language for these
issues is no clearer today than it was when empathy emerged as a concept.
We have the same overlap between sensation, emotion, and knowledge
that existed in the eighteenth-century German root –Fühlen. Colloquially,
“I feel you” and “I get you” both mean, “I understand.” But how do
we understand? The former statement may indicate that the emotion is
shared sympathetically or it may simply mean, “I sense your affect.” The
latter statement, meanwhile, indicates a sort of possession of knowledge.
Having, feeling, and understanding all operate in similar ways in contem-
porary parlance, linking empathic understanding to a kind of finality and
possessiveness that I want to challenge.
Theatre can bring to empathy a sense of dynamism and provisional-
ity, but this does not mean that it necessarily does so. We might easily
walk out of a performance feeling confident that we “get it.” But there
are many ways that we can, alternatively, use theatre to provoke a more
open-ended encounter. The first step is to remind audiences that they are
not alone in this encounter. This, I believe, is where a passing or momen-
tary engagement can operate as a part of larger dialogue. This might
occur when characters “talk back,” wondering what they get out of this

6
Personal conversation, April 26, 2015.
 CONCLUSION 195

encounter, as they do, in differing ways, in both Black Watch and Journey
of Asylum—Waiting. It might also happen in other flashes and moments
of encounter, such as when actors break the fourth wall and engage the
audience in ways that blur the lines between the scripted and the impro-
visatory. It might emerge in the collective acknowledgement that some-
times occurs in the moment before a curtain call, when the audience first
responds to the performance with a breath or moment of silence, the cast
acknowledges, and then the applause begins. Something passes between
individuals—collectively or individually—in these moments. Not all dia-
logue is verbal. It might be the charged feeling that travels between bodies
or a raised eyebrow from an actor when the audience laughs at a particu-
lar joke. Dialogue happens in moments when performers and audience
acknowledge each other as living beings in space, among whom energy,
ideas, and affect passes.
These moments are windows that open the way to the sustained work
of empathy, the dialogues that take time. In theatre and performance, this
extended dialogue is most frequently found in the development stages—
the months of interviews and community planning that went into RFK
in EKY or the workshops of Journey of Asylum—Waiting. But, as dis-
cussed in the previous chapter, the dialogue that goes into project devel-
opment can impact the shape and direction of the final performance in
important ways, including what voices and ideas emerge. Dialogue can
also be a part of the performance itself, such as in the case of the panel
discussions and other conversations structured throughout RFK in EKY,
which provided participants and spectators alike with the opportunity to
reflect on both the performance and contemporary social and political
issues. Alternatively, dialogue might be modeled for the audience, such as
in plays like BETSY!, BOP: The North Star, In the Heart of America, and
The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek.
It is not the contention of this book that empathy is what makes us
human or provides the path to a better humanity. I do think, though,
that empathy can be a helpful form of interaction, focusing on what is
between us in a way that, if done carefully, attempts neither to reinforce
borders nor to obliterate them. And that kind of engagement is important
to the development of a more just, equitable world, one in which more
voices and more points of view are heard and discussed. To do this means
attending carefully to the conflicting tensions of empathy. It also means,
crucially, attending to our partners in empathy—our co-laborers in the
project of engagement.
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 INDEX

A American Festival Project, 101

actor training, 120, 128 Anderson, Davey, 45. See also Black
Stanislavski-based, 128–32 (see also Watch (Burke)
feminism) Appalachia, 36, 65, 66, 78, 79, 82,
The Method, 128, 130 85–9, 103, 104, 117.
See also feminism politics of representation, 85–91
Adler, Stella, 128 (see also poverty tour)
Adshead, Kay, 172 stereotypes of, 89
aesthetics, 9 Appalshop, 36, 77, 81, 87, 94, 101,
theories of empathy, 19 105, 113, 119, 121
affect, 8 asylum process, 163, 165–71
definition of, 16, 20 and right to work, 168, 171 (see also
movement of, 11, 134, 135, 154 stories)
(see also Brecht, Bertolt) impact of cultural differences, 168
political, 115–20 See also Refugee Convention, 1951
2008 presidential campaign and, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre,
96, 106 (see also Edwards, Melbourne, 38, 169, 179
John) asylum seekers, 161–90
See also emotion “bogus”, 165 (see also labor)
affective economies, 163, 164 definition, 163, 171 (see also
in performance, 163 Refugee Convention, 1951)
See also labor empathic and emotional labor,
Ahmed, Sara, 163 165–71
Althusser, Louis, 42 performance, 164, 167
American Dream, 85, 87, 116 (see also refugees)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 213

L.B. Cummings, Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59326-9
214 INDEX

audience, 5, 6, 39, 162, 164 BOP: The North Star, 36, 40, 73–5,
as empathizers, 39, 55, 57, 139 195
desire for violence, 52 Brecht, Bertolt, 5, 28–31, 42, 43,
divided, 95, 116 (see also affect) 54, 76, 133, 139, 142, 153–5,
embodied engagement, 9, 24, 112 159
limits on engagement, 13 and Stanislavski, 131, 133
power dynamics, 66, 131 Brechtian feminist theatre, 125
responsiveness, or lack thereof, 21 (see also feminism)
authenticity, 46 critical distance, 63
affective, 52 dialectics, 67
See also Black Watch (Burke); Einfühlung, 28, 29 (see also
documentary theatre empathy)
not…but, 150, 153
rehearsal techniques, 130
B Brouwers, Henriette, 113
Badi, Ubah, 181, 184, 185 Buber, Martin, 18, 21
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 18. See also dialogue dialogue with Carl Rogers, 20
studies See also dialogue studies
Barba, Eugenio, 25 Burke, Gregory, 35, 44, 45, 49, 50,
Barret, Elizabeth, 87, 88 53, 54, 60, 62, 63. See also Black
Barthes, Roland, 42 Watch (Burke)
Benjamin, Walter, 42. Bush, George W., 45
Berlant, Lauren, 80, 90, 92. Butler, Judith, 143, 157, 159, 185
See also affect vulnerability, 144, 186n70
BETSY!, 70–2, 75, 95
See also community-based theatre;
Pregones Theater; Roadside C
Theater Calley, William, 135
Bharucha, Rustom, 65 Care of Victims of Torture, 173
Black Watch (Burke), 35, 36, 40, Case, Sue-Ellen, 125, 129. See also
46–55, 59, 188 feminism
depiction of violence, 53n40 Catharsis, 72
relationship to documentary Caudill, Harry M., 86, 87,
theatre, 48 93, 108
Black Watch, regiment, 39, 44, 45 Center for Rural Strategies,
Blair, Rhonda, 22n66 Whitesburg, KY, 103
Blair, Tony, 45 Chantal, Lea, 176, 177
Boal, Augusto, 5, 124, 132, 134, 140, citizenship, 120, 194
142, 159 Cocke, Dudley, 68, 69, 72.
Bogart, Anne, 127 See also community-
Bogus Woman, The (Adshead), 172, based theatre; Roadside
178 Theater
 INDEX 215

Cohen-Cruz, Jan, 65, 111, 178. documentary theatre, 48, 51, 54n43.
See also community- See also Black Watch (Burke)
based theatre Dolan, Jill, 141
communitas, 111
community in dialogue, 111–15
community-based theatre, 68, 178, E
179 Edelman, Peter, 95, 98, 104–6
Conquergood, Dwight, 162n3, 191 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 45. See also
Cornerstone Theatre, 66. See also Black Watch (Burke)
community-based theatre Edwards, John, 36, 78, 79, 115–20
Culture of poverty, 96. See also presidential campaign, 96
Other America: Poverty in Einfühlung, 2, 8–12, 15, 28, 29
the United States, The Fühlen, 194
(Harrington) See also empathy
Cummings, Scott T., 147n85 Eller, Ronald D., 85
embodiment, 5
embodied knowledge, 142
D See also Taylor, Diana
Davis, Dee, 99, 102, 103, 107, 108, emotion, 8
110, 118, 119 definition of, 10, 14
democracy, 109, 111, 116 exploitation of, 63, 64, 89
as performance methodology, 126, fetishization of, 64
128 in Brechtian performance, 131
desire, 44–64 in Stanislavski-based actor
empathy and, 41, 129, 134 training, 123, 126
for other people’s stories, 188 (see also feminism)
for the past, 81 (see also Edwards, movement of, 11, 133–5, 154
John) as part of critical engagement,
dialogue, 43 107, 112
between communities, 68 (see also politics, 115–20
Bharucha, Rustom; projection, 5, 12, 13, 15
community-based theatre) turned against others, 130
disengagement from, 71 See also affect
intercultural, 25, 64–76 (see also emotional labor, 163–71
Bharucha, Rustom; of theatre, 171
community-based theatre; See also labor
intercultural performance) empathic labor, 161–3, 165–71.
invitation to, 82 See also empathy; labor
power dynamics in, 131 empathy, 8–17
with and about the past, 102 accuracy of, 47
dialogue studies, 18 and asylum seeker stories, 166, 168
Diamond, Elin, 125, 140 and dialectics, 67
216 INDEX

empathy (cont.) feminist scholarship, 125, 160

and healing, 44, 47, 64, 65, 67 Fields, Nell, 91, 94, 102, 103
and imagination, 85, 109, 124, 128, Finley, Karen, 17
132, 150, 193 food stamps, 98, 99, 107. See also War
and mirror neurons, 4, 22 on Poverty
as act of scholarship, 125, 126
as analogy, 1, 184
as dialogue, 15, 17–24, 75, 107, 109 G
as distinct from sympathy, 15 Gainor, J. Ellen, 131, 160
as emotional projection, 13, 28 gender, 82
as invasion, 57, 59, 143 (see also affect and, 52
Black Watch (Burke); See also Black Watch (Burke)
documentary theatre) gestus, 124, 131, 134–6, 140–2.
as part of “It”, 94 (see also Roach, See also Brecht, Bertolt
Joseph) given circumstances, 128,
as what makes us human, 195 129, 137
combined with estrangement, grassroots theatre, 65. See also
148–57 community-based theatre
Einfühlung, 2, 8 (see also Vischer,
Robert)
identification and, 5, 15, 17, 27, 29, H
31, 43 (see also Brecht, Bertolt) Hagen, Uta, 130
inspiring change or action through, 2 Head Start, 107. See also War on
limits on, 10 (see also Black Watch Poverty
(Burke); Brecht, Bertolt; Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 163. See also
Roadside Theater) labor
multidirectional, 140 Hoggett, Steven, 51, 61. See also Black
political campaigns and, 106n87 Watch (Burke)
politics and, 85–91 (see also affect) hope, 80, 84, 104, 111–16, 121. See
power dynamics, 59, 66, 131 also affect; Edwards, John; Roach,
privilege, role in, 90, 125 Joseph
estrangement, 30, 43, 60, 125, 148–57 humanist psychology, 47
and fear, 149, 154–7 Hurley, Erin, 161
and pleasure, 154–6 Husserl, Edmund, 12
as social activity, 124
See also Brecht, Bertolt
Exit the King (Ionesco), 1, 5 I
I have before me a remarkable
document given to me by a young
F lady from Rwanda (Linden),
Faust, Jack, 105, 106, 122 37, 173
feminism, 125, 131 Ice and Fire, 170
mind and body, imbricated, 125 Asylum Dialogues, 170
 INDEX 217

imagination, 124, 128 empathy for, 92, 112

improvisation, 128 “It” factor, 94
In the Heart of America (Wallace), 37, listening, 109
123 media entourage, 78, 95
“It”, 91–4. See also Roach, Joseph presidential plans, 115
intercultural performance, 25, 36, reception in Kentucky, 104
64–76. See also Bharucha, Robert F. Kennedy Journalism
Rustom; community-based Award, 88, 113 (see also Sawyer,
theatre; Pregones Theater; Diane)
Roadside Theater See also Appalachia; affect; Edwards,
interruption, 7, 33, 34, 40, 44, John; poverty tour
187–90 King Martin Luther, Jr., 115
as part of empathy, 47, 67
as rebuke, 54
Brecht, Bertolt, 42, 43 L
disrupting the flow of narrative, 31, labor, 37, 124
34, 41, 45, 47, 49, 50, 187, 190 affective labor or feeling
feeling or experience of, 47 labor, 37, 179 (see also
maintaining a gap, 64–76 Hurley, Erin)
intimacy, 116, 119, 121. See also affect; and acting, 126–34
Edwards, John; Roach, Joseph and performance, 164, 167, 179,
intracultural performance, 65 180
asylum seekers and, 37
empathy as, 26, 35, 124, 129
J empathy as co-laboring, 187
Jameson, Fredric, 42 entertainment, racial politics of,
Jamison, Leslie, 192, 193 26
Jeffers, Alison, 162, 166, 178, 185 of storytelling, 166, 187
Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 79, 95, 96 paid and unpaid, 163
Jones, Loyal, 86, 89, 107, 108, 110. protections, 117
See also poverty tour; War on Linden, Sonja, 173, 175, 177
Poverty Lipps, Theodor, 11, 12, 55
Joseph, Marc Bamuthi, 24 listening, 27, 36, 66, 102, 109, 110,
Journey of Asylum–Waiting, 38, 164, 113, 114, 120, 122, 142, 143,
179–83, 185, 187–9, 195 193, 194. See also affect;
Junebug Productions, 66, 68, 72. See community-based theatre;
also community-based theatre Edwards, John; Kennedy, Robert
F.; Roach, Joseph; Roadside
Theater
K Los Angeles Poverty Department
Kennedy, Robert F., 36, 77–81, 88, (LAPD), 77, 78, 102. See also
91–106, 108, 111–16, 120 Malpede, John
assassination, 93 Luibhéid, Eithne, 170
218 INDEX

M P
Malague, Rosemary, 128, 130, personal narratives, 37, 47, 167, 168,
131, 160 174, 177. See also stories
Malpede, John, 77, 78, 93, 101–3, Phelan, Peggy, 83
105, 107, 108, 112, 113, 121. political discourse, 92, 106, 108
See also Kennedy, Robert F.; War poverty and, 92
on Poverty See also affect; empathy; War on
Masculinity, 50, 52. See also gender Poverty
maximum feasible participation, political performance, 36, 79. See also
97, 98. See also War on Edwards, John
Poverty Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Medical Foundation for the Care of (PTSD), 47, 60n63
Victims of Torture, 173 poststructuralism, 42
Meisner, Sanford, 130 poverty, 85–91, 190
Messingkauf Dialogues, The (Brecht), as tourism, 118, 121
43n11, 55 exploitation and fetishization of, 64
mirror neurons, 4, 22, 23. See also 2008 presidential campaign and, 96,
empathy 106
My Lai, 135n31 poverty tour, 79, 118
precarious acting, 186, 189
Pregones Theater, 36, 68, 71n91. See
N also community-based theatre
National Theatre of Scotland, 39, 45, prosocial behavior, 31
49n30. See also Black Watch Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, 68.
(Burke) See also community-based theatre
New York Theatre Workshop,
134
nostalgia, 62, 102, 108, 121 R
realism, 51
feminist critique of, 130 (see also
O feminism)
Obama, Barack, 2, 116 Refugee Convention, 1951, 165
Oh What a Lovely War (Joan refugees, 162, 163, 169
Littlewood and the Theatre and performance, 167, 171, 173,
Workshop), 49n30 177–81 (see also labor)
Oliver, Kelly, 26, 156, 157 definition, 163 (see also Refugee
“beyond recognition”, 26 Convention, 1951)
See also witnessing rehearsal, 6, 7, 126–34
Other America: Poverty in the and Boal, 124
United States, The (Harrington), as subjunctive, 126
96 disrupting the flow of narrative, 34
Owens, Mitty, 105 etymology, 126
 INDEX 219

reinscription of social norms Sawyer, Diane, 88, 89, 91, 113. See
through, 143 also poverty tour
vulnerability and, 127 scenarios, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 96,
Reinelt, Janelle, 125 103. See also Taylor, Diana
repetition, 7, 34 Schechner, Richard, 6, 80, 82, 126–8.
and affect, 121–2 Schneider, Rebecca, 83, 84, 104
and labor, 35 Short, Ron, 69. See also Roadside
as exploration, 121–2 Theater
disrupting the flow of narrative, 34, Shuman, Amy, 5, 59, 192
36, 38 Simmonds, Catherine, 178, 180–2,
embodiment and, 84 184, 185, 188, 189, 194
new encounters through, 187–90 Smith, Anna Deavere, 132
performance studies, 82, 83, Solomon, Alisa, 125
126 Sommer, Doris, 58–60, 67, 139
political performance, 79 Stanislavski, Konstantin, 37, 123,
restored behavior, 82. See also 126, 128–33, 137, 138, 142,
Schechner, Richard 159, 160
RFK in EKY: The Robert F. Kennedy and Brecht, 126, 130, 131, 133, 142
Performance Project, 36, 77, 78, empathy and actor training, 142
81, 82, 91, 93, 101–15, 122, feminist critique of, 130 (see also
188, 195. See also Kennedy, feminism)
Robert F.; Malpede, John See also actor training
Ridout, Nicholas, 158, 163, 164. Stein, Edith, 12, 13
See also labor Stewart, Kathleen, 149
Roach, Joseph, 91 stories, 171–9
Road to One America Tour, 78, 81, 115, “having” the story, 17, 193
116, 119. See also Edwards, John about Robert F. Kennedy, 91–101
Roadside Theater, 36, 66, 68. See also ambivalence about sharing, 180
community-based theatre as part of the asylum process, 163
Rogers, Carl, 20, 21, 32, 46, 47, 56, (see also Refugee Convention,
80, 92, 186. See also dialogue 1951)
studies collectivized, 183
dialogue with Martin Buber, 21 credibility of, 166
Rollie, Emily, 136n38 expectations and narrative
Rolón, Rosalba, 68. See also conventions, refugee stories,
community-based theatre; 171–87
Pregones Theater generalizability of, 193
healing through telling, 171, 176
in community-based theatre, 178
S in documentary theatre, 48, 51
Salyer, Robert, 92, 101, 107, 110, (see also war stories)
111, 113, 114 in the asylum process, 168
Save the Children, 174 (see also labor)
220 INDEX

stories (cont.) utopian performatives, 141

motivating social justice or built through rehearsal, 141
humanitarian causes, 174 See also Dolon, Jill
performance and agency, 181
“untellable” stories, 59 (see also
Shuman, Amy) V
See also labor Van Clief-Stefanon, Lyrae, 73
Stranger with a Camera (Barret), verbatim theatre, 48n26, 50, 51. See
87, 88 also Black Watch (Burke);
Strasberg, Lee, 130 documentary theatre
Subcommittee on Employment, Verfremdungseffekt, 42, 67, 154. See
Manpower, and Poverty, also Brecht, Bertolt
U.S. Senate, 77 Viewpoints, 127
suffering as performance, 90. See also Vischer, Robert, 2, 9–13, 28, 29, 41,
poverty tour 139. See also empathy
Surrogation, 122 vulnerability, 91, 127, 145, 157, 165,
Sympathy, 14, 15. See also empathy 181, 186, 189

T W
Taylor, Diana, 84 Wallace, Naomi, 37, 123–60
Taylor, Frank, 108 War on Poverty, 77–9, 92, 96–8, 102,
testimony, theatre of, 44. See also Black 107
Watch (Burke); documentary theatre in Appalachia, 97
theatre for social change, 31–8 See also Kennedy, Robert F
Thompson, James, 177 war stories, 54. See also stories
Tiffany, John, 45, 48, 49n48, 50, 60. as spectacle, 54
See also Black Watch (Burke) exploitation of, 63
Titchener, Edward Bradford, 12 Weigel, Helene, 140
trauma, 47, 152, 167, 177. “well-founded fear”, 165, 166, 175.
Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, The See also Refugee Convention,
(Wallace), 37, 133, 134, 1951
148, 195 witnessing, 146, 147, 155, 157, 158,
Eclipse Theatre production, 172, 177, 186
Chicago, 151 audience, 152, 172, 176
gender non-conformity in, 125 empathic witnesses, 147
Woodruff, Paul, 163

U
Universal Declaration of Human Y
Rights, 169 Young, Harvey, 25