When I was still quite young in my acting career I remember participating in a commemoration of the Holocaust for a particular memorial anniversary in Rochester, NY. Looming within myself was this sense of betrayal and shame which I shared with the festival Artistic Director, Anthony Zerbe, prior to the event. I felt I had no right to stand in front of people who had actually lived through hell and act in a role of having had experienced what they, personally, knew.
The evening came and hundreds of people were in the audience. When my piece arose I stepped onto the stage and did the best I could to infuse the text with life, respect, honor and dignity. However a growing sense of shame rose within me and when I stepped off that stage I was deeply inconsolable in the sensations of it.
In the lobby, after the event, I wanted to hide but couldn’t and was approached by individuals who, with tears in their eyes, held my hand and thanked me.
And then I realized that, of course, I had been wrong. Deeply wrong. I was a part of their healing. My role was to voice their pain publicly, to honor their history and to participate in a narrative of common memory.
This is what theatre can do.
And, as I sat last night in a presentation of Acting Together on the World Stage, a documentary of how theatre is used to bridge humanity from our violence to a place of commonality and peace, I remembered that moment from 20 years ago and think of it in context of my artistic life today.
As an ‘average American’ artist I come, as so many of us do, from a group history of inflicted violence in the history of ‘my people.’ However, I am also a privileged and deeply fortunate human being who is generationaly distanced enough from that history to choose my relationship to it. So what can I bring to a work that is intended to participate in a healthy global dialogue and connection from this position of having never, personally, known the deep suffering of inflicted violence and pain? How can I legitimately develop a process of working to engage US artists and students into approaching collective work with a cultural sensitivity? What can I offer the communities we interact with without having an intimate experience with such a huge aspect of our common human history?
These are questions I ask myself as an artist and Artistic Director. I reflect on this, as I reflect on the position of the United States at this moment of human history and our place within it. We have so much to learn. And yet, in my heart I feel it is so simple.
We breathe the same air and are formed of the same physical material. We are humanity.
I acknowledge that it is from my safe position as an American, that I have the luxury to put my focus and work toward this perspective. But I am beginning to wonder if it is also my obligation. For those of us in the arts fields who don’t create our work from desperate need to be heard or seen, to have our time on this planet not forgotten, or our suffering purged for our children and children’s children’s sake, we do have an obligation to consciously engage in the formation of the global story. In whatever way we choose, whether it is directly or indirectly, we must use our talent, our ability to see the world and its potential within and around us, our verbal, physical, visual, musical story-telling-gifts to move humanity forward. To progress.
That progression will only occur when we do, truly ‘Act Together.’ When we take action to see and hear and feel one another in the telling of our stories. In the purging of our pain and in the development of our future. For my part, my small contribution to that is The Global Theatre Project. The roots of which, possibly, were born that night in Rochester, NY at the GeVa Theatre when I was too ashamed to use my talent in honor of those who hungered to be remembered and to, collectively, mourn in order to move forward.
Thank you to Theatre Without Borders and Brandeis University bringing this important international and national work to light. If you are interested in information on either the text or the DVD or in presenting the DVD to your school or organization you can become further informed at the Acting Together On The World Stage website.
