ACResolution Magazine

Examples of using art to deepen empathy:

>>The Borderland Foundation

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.4750978.0016.207

>>The American Slavery Project

http://www.americanslaveryproject.org/#!page2/cjg9

>>Ping Chong & Company

www.pingchong.org/undesirable-elements

>>Exit12 Dance Company

www.exit12danceco.com/about.html

>>Los Angeles Poverty Department

www.lapovertydept.org/about-lapd/index.php

References:

Barthes, Roland, “Leaving the Movie Theater”, Roland Barthes, in Philip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay. Doubleday 1994.

3. Engage Further Discussion:
What is left Unsaid?

True Story Theater in Boston in 2013, photo by Jason Jedrusiak.

In closing, we return to a question rather than to answers. How might our field expand if we employed tools from arts-based practices rich in perceptual, sensorial and cognitive strategies, which can guide mediators to be “twice fascinated?” Drawing from our case studies, and the mentors and peers who have inspired our use of empathy, we offer the following guiding principles to cultivate perceptual and bias awareness and deepen an experience of empathy in conflict transformation:

• Listen for connecting threads (active listening and “narrative listening”)

• Recognize that mind and body are inherently connected

• Allow sensorial experience to inform cognitive reflection

• Recognize that internalized experience forms patterns of belief and bias

• Recognize that experiencing empathy for another person requires first experiencing empathy for the hidden part of oneself.

• Balance attention between form and content

• Have patience and understand that
recognition takes time
Finally, we offer one question: What is one risk
you could take in your practice to creatively cultivate
awareness and deepen empathy?

VOCESCHOCESSOLUTONS

3Playback Theatre ( www.playbacknet.org), foundedin1975by Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas, is empathy embodied. In Playback participants/ tellers share an important story from their life, which an ensemble of actors then spontaneously and sensually brings to life through words, movement, color, gesture and music. The story is mirrored back to the teller evoking an empathic emotional response from the teller towards herself often deeper than previously experienced, as well as evoking empathy towards the teller from the audience. Playback takes place in school classrooms, church basements, hospital hallways, conference rooms, and police stations to elicit the stories behind loss and hurt, stories that are often the underbelly of conflict.

Playback builds a bridge between people, accessing the richness of their emotional and sensorial experiences and giving dignity to their internal struggles. Playback builds empathy for the shared grief, longing, fear and hope between people, an essential tool in humanizing people in conflict. Many mediators use techniques to draw out the telling of personal stories, as in Narrative Mediation, which looks for patterns of repetition in a party’s spoken story and guides a shift of the story to one of non-victimhood and possibility. Building on Narrative Mediation, Playback models sensorial evocation of a conflict narrative that places conflict within a context of humanizing relationships. Playback adds a rich understanding of a conflict story that goes beyond the spoken word to touch us sensually – “as a living, fomenting ingredient within the conflict rather than a simple account of the conflict,” (Linda M. Park-Fuller, PhD, Beyond Role Play: Playback Theatre and Conflict Transformation,” Centre for Playback Theatre. 2005). Witnessing a story “played back” with all the artistic components of metaphor, sound and movement deepens the teller’s understanding of his/her story and reveals to other participants their own perceptions in visceral “ah-ha” moments.

Mediators looking to catalyze or deepen empathy within a mediation context can invite a Playback ensemble to playback/reflect stories of the parties involved, and guide parties to recognize their own responses. Examples of the use of Playback include narratives between descendants of Nazi soldiers and Holocaust survivors, between Boston citizens who have been incarcerated, within families dealing with the tensions of inheritance and legacy, and among university stakeholders creating a healthy environment for diversity.