Empathy - "Algonquin Highway" (Toronto Fringe) and "Les Parisiens" (Festival d&#
Empathy is the foundation of theatre. I believe that theatre is an inherently social act: we are people going to watch people be people, and show us what they think about being people. Despite Frank Wilderson’s claim that many theorists have “all but abandoned empathy theory” (Wilderson 183), I believe that there is no theatre without empathy, and I agree far more with Wilderson’s earlier statement about the argument that “rhetoric itself cannot proceed without empathy, and when it does, it fails” (Wilderson 181).
Rhetoric proceeding without empathy--and failing--can be observed at both the Toronto Fringe and Avignon festivals, notably in plays that have some socio-political goal of enlightenment which they try to achieve through on-stage discussion. These plays may not have intended to lack empathy--in fact, their goal may have been to elicit empathy from the audience but they failed to do so. This is likely the case for most of these plays, and the failure usually lies in the delivery of whichever message they have chosen to convey.
Algonquin Highway, for instance, failed to elicit an empathetic response from the audience because the writer used a unity of time and space, and none of the hardship that his characters experienced--none of the lessons or moral understandings that he may have wanted to communicate to his audience--actually took place in that time or place. All of the action took place in the past and was discussed rhetorically by the characters in front of the audience, as opposed to being experienced on stage by the characters and then empathised with by the audience. Similarly, Les Parisiens included more rhetorical talk of issues than actual experience of issues. In both of these plays I might understand other theorists’ distaste for empathy theory in that they each dumb their moral goal down to a simple interpersonal level where only rhetoric and inactive empathy--that is to say, empathy which arouses an emotional response but no action--can exist. It is, I believe, this inactive empathy which does not appeal to other theorists. Both Algonquin Highway and Les Parisiens binge upon rhetorical discussions of socio-political issues, but neither of them brings their rhetoric to empathy or action by questioning the systems and institutions which cause those issues--the same systems and institutions in which their audience lives and exists and might take action. In this sense, any empathy they might have achieved is inactive and therefore irrelevant. It is this inactivity which ruins the playgoing experience for most people, and deprives them of empathy in theatre.
Works Cited
Algonquin Highway. By Wyatt Lamoureux, directed by Wyatt Lamoureux, 5 July 2017, Al Green Theatre, Toronto, ON. Performance.
Les Parisiens. By Olivier Py, directed by Olivier Py, 14 July 2017, La Fabrica, Avignon, Provence. Performance.
Wilderson, Frank B. “‘Raw Life’ and The Ruse of Empathy”. Performance, Politics, and Activism. Ed. Peter Lichtenfels and John Rouse. The International Federation of Theatre Research. 2013.
