Performance and the Pace of Empathy

Spring 2012 173

John H. Muse is assistant professor of English and a member of the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. His research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary theater, modernist literature, and performance. John’s book project, Microdramas, argues that short modernist plays warrant as much critical attention as short poems, short stories, and ¿OP�VKRUWV��+LV�HVVD\V�KDYH�DSSHDUHG�LQ�Modern Drama, in Theater, and in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre.

Performance and the Pace of Empathy

John H. Muse

Discussions of empathy by psychologists, philosophers, and performance theorists largely ignore the issue of time. Just how quickly can a performance get under the skin? Imagine an audience watching Suzan-Lori Parks’s play, Paper Tomatoes, which stages a brief attack on a carnival strongman. This is the script in its entirety:

A Strongman strides in. Sits on a crate. Immediately People come in and throw wads of paper at him. This goes on for quite some time. Then they leave.He sits there.

StrongmanStrongman

(Rest)

He uses all his strength to hold back his tears.1

Paper Tomatoes revisits one of Parks’s cardinal themes, the cruelty of spectatorship, through a theatrical lens at its most microscopic. Many traditional dramatic HOHPHQWV� DUH� KHUH� LQ�PLQLDWXUH�� LQFLWLQJ� LQFLGHQW�� ULVLQJ� DFWLRQ�� FRQÀLFW�� DQG� D�¿QDO�UHYHUVDO��%XW�KRZ�OLNHO\�LV�FDWKDUVLV"�,V�WKH�PHUH�VLJKW�RI�D�SXEOLF�V\PERO�of strength revealing weakness enough to move an audience in anything like the way the Strongman is moved? Placing a mute, nonviolent victim center stage and dramatizing his breakdown, the play asks an audience to feel for the Strongman, but in the absence of context it struggles to elicit empathy for him, despite going on for “quite some time.” Does he deserve this punishment? What provoked it? Paper Tomatoes works best on paper or if the narration is read aloud. Without the stage direction, “He uses all his strength to hold back his tears,” spectators likely miss the play’s central turn, its play on “strength” that revises our understanding

174 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism

of the label, “Strongman.” Resisting tears, in this case, is the true feat of strength. Paper Tomatoes reminds us that the strong can also be vulnerable, but it does so whether we empathize with the Strongman or not.

Horace famously advised performers in The Art of Poetry, “Smiles are contagious; so are tears; to see / Another sobbing, brings a sob from me.”2 The Strongman teeters on the verge of tears; what about the viewer? Could a spectator develop intensities of feeling for the Strongman that approach what one might feel several hours into a tragedy watching Lear cradle the corpse of the daughter he helped undo? While shock or recognition or fear might occur in no time at all, does brevity militate against a familiar set of feelings characterized by deep absorption and shared understanding?

Focusing on a selection of microdramas from Suzan-Lori Parks’s marathon of the miniature, 365 Days/365 Plays, this essay suggests that genuine empathy—as opposed to automatic or sympathetic reactions—requires time to develop in audiences, and that the temporal demands of empathy pose a particular challenge for short performances that appeal to the emotions. The experience that interests PH� LQYROYHV� QRW� RQO\� FXUVRU\� LGHQWL¿FDWLRQ�RU� IHOORZ� IHHOLQJ�EXW� D� VXEVWDQWLDO�understanding of another’s position, story, or experience. I use the term empathy WR�UHIHU�WR�H[SHULHQFHV�RI�WKLV�VRUW��ZKLOH�DFNQRZOHGJLQJ�WKH�FRQÀLFWLQJ�VHPDQWLF�baggage the term has accumulated. I focus here on the reception of a performance by an audience as opposed to the development of feeling among performers, a performer’s empathy for his or her character, or the accretion of feeling in staff or crew during rehearsal. The recurring rhythm of rehearsal often encourages deep and abiding emotional engagement with the material and with one’s collaborators, UHJDUGOHVV�RI�WKH�OHQJWK�RI�WKH�SLHFH��%XW�WKLV�HVVD\�H[SORUHV�VLWXDWLRQV�WKDW�UHSUHVHQW�more challenging tests of the emotional machinery of the theater: cases in which VSHFWDWRUV�REVHUYH�D�SHUIRUPDQFH�IRU�WKH�¿UVW�WLPH�DERXW�FKDUDFWHUV�RU�VLWXDWLRQV�with which they are at least partially unfamiliar.

Suzan-Lori Parks’s 365 Days/365 Plays provides a compelling, if idiosyncratic, contemporary case study. The result of a year-long compositional odyssey, 365 challenges audiences to invest in a varied series of mostly unrelated plays ranging in length from a few sentences to a few pages. Starting in November 2002, just after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Topdog/Underdog, Parks decided to compose a play a day for a year. She originally undertook the project as a private playwriting FKDOOHQJH��EXW�VHYHUDO�\HDUV� ODWHU�VKH�DQG�SURGXFHU�%RQQLH�0HW]JDU�GHYLVHG�DQ�ambitious plan to turn the private ritual outward: the 365 Festival. The festival divided the country into sixteen regional networks and a university network, each RI�ZKLFK�RUJDQL]HG�D�FRPSOHWH�UXQ�RI�WKH�F\FOH�E\�¿QGLQJ�¿IW\�WZR�WKHDWHUV�RU�RWKHU�JURXSV�HDFK�ZLOOLQJ�WR�SHUIRUP�D�ZHHN�RI�WKH�F\FOH��LQ�ZKDWHYHU�ZD\�WKH\�VDZ�¿W��On 13 November 2006, the Festival kicked off a 365-day marathon of simultaneous performance that has been dubbed “the largest theatrical collaboration in U.S.

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History.”3 Parks published the series as a book on the same day. While readers of the four-hundred-page book accumulate feelings about Parks’s project and some of its recurring characters and themes as they read, viewers of the local performances saw no more than seven of the brief plays in an evening. As a result, the average viewer of 365 experienced a small selection of the plays in a relative vacuum.

$OWKRXJK�WDNHQ�DV�D�ZKROH�3DUNV¶V�SURMHFW�LOOXVWUDWHV�WKH�FDSDFLRXV�ÀH[LELOLW\�RI�WKHDWULFDO�IRUP��KHU�WLQ\�WKHDWULFDO�H[SHULPHQWV�GHPRQVWUDWH�WKH�GLI¿FXOW\�RI�UHO\LQJ�on empathy to drive home a message quickly.4 The multifarious collection runs in many directions at once, and the plays’ agendas are often aesthetic, theatrical, or personal rather than social. Nevertheless, the daily rhythm of the cycle’s composition yoked it to the social and political events of 2002 and 2003—most notably the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003—and Parks uses a number of the plays as miniature platforms to advance political perspectives. War is a dominant leitmotif in the cycle, and many of its plays present images of contemporary culture marked by injustice and inequity.

Those plays in 365 that solicit an emotional response to current events KLJKOLJKW� D� WHQVLRQ� EHWZHHQ� HVWUDQJHPHQW� DQG� LGHQWL¿FDWLRQ� UXQQLQJ� WKURXJK�Parks’s dramaturgy. On the one hand, Parks, a self-professed formalist and a fan RI�PHWDWKHDWHU�DQG�%UHFKW��IUHTXHQWO\�FDOOV�DWWHQWLRQ�WR�WKH�WKHDWULFDO�IUDPH��$W�WKH�same time, she envisions her plays as emotional conduits. She explained in a 2011 interview, “I don’t get to my plays through ideas. I think writing them would be HDVLHU�LI�,�GLG��%HFDXVH�LGHDV�DQG�WKRXJKW��WKH\¶UH�YHUEDO��DQG�,�WKLQN�P\�SOD\V�DUH�preverbal. From my guts.”5 Her primary goal in crafting the language of a play LV�WR�¿QG�WKH�IRUP�WKDW�ZLOO�WHOO�DQ�DFWRU�³KRZ�WR�VKRRW�WKDW�HQHUJ\�WKURXJK�WR�WKH�audience night after night, so they can ride that wave of language . . . . Read the words, and feel. My plays beg for feeling. They beg for the gut response. Let the stomach-brain, let the heart-brain, inform your head-brain, and not always the other way around.”6 Parks imagines her formal and theatrical estrangements as innovations that enhance the machinery of feeling.

If Parks imagines herself as a technician of emotional transfer, the miniature plays of 365 posed severe challenges to the mechanisms to which she had become accustomed. More than her other work, the plays in 365 tend to appeal to the head-brain more than the heart-brain. They may ask us to recognize or appreciate a SUREOHP��EXW�WKH\�UDUHO\�GHSHQG�RQ�RXU�HPRWLRQDO�LGHQWL¿FDWLRQ�ZLWK�WKH�FKDUDFWHUV�and their struggles. Indeed, the fact that so few of the plays in the cycle seem to “beg for feeling” may represent the best evidence that, while very short drama can do many things, it struggles to generate deep emotional connections. That does not, however, stop Parks from trying. Those plays in the collection which do seem to beg for feeling, like Paper Tomatoes, become useful test cases exposing the emotional constraints of short form.


A better understanding of the pace of empathy might help to qualify a growing tendency among scholars to build theories of empathy on the basis of automatic and mimetic reactions like the activation of mirror neurons. Literary critic Suzanne Keen, for example, cites neurological studies and theories of emotional contagion to VXSSRUW�KHU�GH¿QLWLRQ�RI�HPSDWK\�DV�³D�YLFDULRXV��VSRQWDQHRXV�VKDULQJ�RI�DIIHFW�´7 Some intense affective reactions blindside us with their swiftness—the gasp of VXUSULVH��WKH�XQIRUHVHHQ�ZHOOLQJ�LQ�WKH�H\HV��WKH�JRRVHÀHVK�RI�YLFDULRXV�IHDU��%XW�to envision empathy as an instantaneous event risks oversimplifying the emotional experience of spectatorship and downplaying one of the cardinal attractions of watching many performances: the complex and gradual experience of engagement ZLWK�D�YLUWXDO�ZRUOG�DQG�WKH�HPRWLRQDO�OLYHV�RI�LWV�¿JXUHV��

More widely, an examination of the pace of empathy helps lay the groundwork for an emotional poetics of theatrical brevity. Performance can encourage LGHQWL¿FDWLRQ�PRUH�TXLFNO\�WKDQ�ZULWWHQ�DUJXPHQW�RU�DEVWUDFW�FRQYHUVDWLRQ�EHFDXVH�it puts individual human faces on abstract issues and places those faces in the same VSDFH�DQG�WLPH�DV�WKH�DXGLHQFH��%XW�GRHV�WKH�YHU\�DEULGJPHQW�DQG�H[DJJHUDWLRQ�that can make performances powerful and memorable tend to reduce an audience’s FDSDFLW\� WR� HPSDWKL]H�ZLWK� WKHLU�¿JXUHV� RU� LVVXHV"�:DWFKLQJ�Paper Tomatoes, one wonders why short plays so often convert pathos into bathos. Is it simply a coincidence or an accident of convention that there are countless short comic VNHWFKHV�DQG�VR�IHZ�¿YH�PLQXWH�WUDJHGLHV"�2U�LV�WKH�KRUL]RQ�RI�HPRWLRQDO�SRVVLELOLW\�WLHG��KRZHYHU�ORRVHO\��WR�GXUDWLRQ"�8QGHUVWDQGLQJ�ZK\�VKRUWV�FDQ�IHHO�LQVXI¿FLHQW�PLJKW�KHOS�H[SODLQ�ZKDW�LW�LV�WKDW�¿OOV�IXOO�OHQJWK��%XW�EHIRUH�,�DVN�ZKHWKHU�SDUWLFXODU�plays by Parks might produce empathy, let me clarify how I approach the term.

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The question of how long it takes to care does not lend itself to a precise answer because the subjective operations of feeling resist being reckoned in advance or in general. Technologies like fMRI imaging that promise to surmount the problem of other minds remain crude, revealing at best a shadowy trace of the rich tapestry RI� SHUFHSWLRQ� DQG� UHÀHFWLRQ� WKDW� FRQVWLWXWH� D� SHUVRQ¶V�PHQWDO� OLIH��(YHQ� LI�ZH�were able to measure the mental experiences of others with precision, an exact picture of a person’s responses would not preclude the possibility that some other performance, or the same performance for another person, might induce feelings at a radically different rate or not at all. My suspicion is that no amount of data will reveal a time limit for empathy because empathy properly understood is less a discrete state than an inconsistent and gradual process that, like the dusk, one registers only after it has begun. As a result, the study of empathy in audiences must remain in the realm of probability. The question then becomes: if we assume that any performance makes possible a diversity of reactions from unmoved to

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RYHUZKHOPHG��KRZ�PLJKW�WKH�OHQJWK�RI�DQ�DHVWKHWLF�HQFRXQWHU�LQÀHFW�WKH�UDQJH�RI�likely empathic responses for a given viewer?

The answer to this question largely turns on whether one imagines empathy primarily as a mechanical or imaginative process. While empathy was coined to describe responses to art and architecture that were perceived as nearly immediate, and while neuroscientists and performance theorists have in recent years used HPSDWK\�WR�UHIHU�WR�UHÀH[LYH�UHVSRQVHV��,�IROORZ�'DYLG�.UDVQHU�LQ�GH¿QLQJ�HPSDWK\�as an active, imaginative, and cognitive process informed but not determined by UHÀH[�

The idea that an object or body can transmit emotional content to the viewer instantaneously is very old, although it has enjoyed a resurgence on the heels of QHXURSK\VLRORJLF�VWXGLHV�RI�SHUFHSWLRQ��5REHUW�9LVFKHU�¿UVW�SURSRVHG�DQ�DHVWKHWLF�theory of empathy (Einfülung, or “feeling into”) in his 1873 essay On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics. For Vischer, Einfülung describes a form of engagement with a work of art or an object in nature in which we are “mysteriously transplanted and magically transformed into this other.”8 He distinguishes between immediate sensory input and the subsequent kinesthetic reactions registered in the body, but speaks of both as if they were automatic and nearly instantaneous. In the 1930s, modern dance critic John Martin made the “inherent contagion of bodily movement”—the way in which another’s yawn begets our own, for instance—the basis for a theory of dance spectatorship based on “inner mimicry.”9 Watching a dancer’s body, the viewer’s motor responses automatically “awaken appropriate emotional associations akin to those which have animated WKH�GDQFHU�LQ�WKH�¿UVW�SODFH�´10 Our muscles tense when a weightlifter heaves, we jump when someone is surprised, and the vocal cords of professional opera singers tire just from watching operas they know well. Performance theorist Susan Leigh Foster places movement’s contagion at the center of her genealogy of “kinesthetic empathy,” an experience in which one body comes to understand another by registering its position, bearing, or movement.11 Foster is careful to note that the “conditions under which viewers connect to what they see” change over historical time, but in each of the cases she discusses—an eighteenth-century tightrope walker; D�WZHQWLHWK�FHQWXU\�PRGHUQ�GDQFHU��DQG�D�FROOHFWLRQ�RI�WZHQW\�¿UVW�FHQWXU\��victims, cell phone interlocutors, and break dancers—an instant of reception lights the spark for a momentary phenomenon that she dubs “the empathetic moment.”12

Just as nineteenth-century physiological research inspired Vischer’s aesthetics of empathy, recent neurological research—and in particular the discovery of so-called mirror neuron systems—has encouraged humanists to embrace models and tropes of emotional reception that portray it as contagious, mimetic, or LQVWDQWDQHRXV��%ULHÀ\��UHFHQW�UHVHDUFK�KDV�VKRZQ�WKDW�DUHDV�LQ�WKH�EUDLQ�DUH�DFWLYDWHG�not only when people (and monkeys) perform an action but also when they watch the same action performed.13 On the basis of such studies, scientists have suggested


that our brains process other people’s emotions in part by mirroring or simulating their emotions.14� %HFDXVH� WKH� QHXURQDO� ¿ULQJV� DUH� HIIHFWLYHO\� LQVWDQWDQHRXV��UHVHDUFKHUV�RIWHQ�FRQFOXGH��DV�%UXQR�:LFNHU�GLG�LQ�D��VWXG\��WKDW�VXFK�PLUURULQJ�is “the result of an automatic sharing, by the observer, of the displayed emotion.”15 Humanists often use this research to support models of emotional receptivity that are nearly as automatic as the neurons. Suzanne Keen, as I mentioned above, GH¿QHV�HPSDWK\�DV�D�³VSRQWDQHRXV�VKDULQJ�RI�DIIHFW´�RQ�WKH�EDVLV�RI�PLUURU�QHXURQ�research.16 I appreciate Erin Hurley’s eloquent condensation of the implications of mirror neurons in Theatre and Feeling—“To the human brain, observation and experience—or, put differently, simulation and reality—are, effectively, the same thing”17—but I hope to draw attention to cases in which a series of observations over time inform a synthetic experience that is not identical to any single observation. Evidence of neural mirroring, however promising it may be as a window into shared feeling, cannot prove that the experience of viewing matches the experience of doing; it shows only that the brain registers the two activities in similar ways. Even as researchers speculate about spontaneous mirroring, they admit that automatic reactions are only the most primitive component among a set of “sophisticated cognitive skills” informing emotional experience.18

Although kinesthetic reactions may inform empathic responses, I reserve the term empathy for a more gradual and complex set of emotional reactions. In his article “Empathy and Theater,” David Krasner suggests that the range of audience experiences that contemporary viewers describe using the term empathy—LGHQWL¿FDWLRQ�ZLWK�D�FKDUDFWHU��PRUDO�FRPSDVVLRQ��V\PSDWK\��KHUH�GH¿QHG�DV�DQ�urge to help a character after feeling their pain), and understanding (which may not involve agreement or sympathy)—all share fundamental similarities. In each, the audience member, having established “some substantial understanding” of the situation or character, and “a grasp of the narrative (even if the narrative is disjointed, fragmented, or illogical),” relies on intuition, imagination, or memory to enter into the action of the play imaginatively.19 The spectator does not confuse herself and the object of empathy, but nevertheless associates feelings and observations with her personal experience.20�'LVDJUHHLQJ�ZLWK�%UHFKW��.UDVQHU�DUJXHV�WKDW�HPSDWK\�does not preclude intellectual involvement, but is a distinct kind of intellectual involvement, and a precondition for altruistic feelings and actions.

If empathy is an emotional and cognitive process that arises only as the details of a narrative or situation unfold, what becomes of “the empathetic moment”?21 For me, as for Krasner, empathy builds a bridge between the viewer and another, and such a bridge can rarely be built in an instant. An image of a starving child’s GLVWHQGHG�EHOO\�LQ�D�¿IWHHQ�VHFRQG�WHOHYLVLRQ�VSRW�PD\�SURYRNH�D�SDQJ�RI�VKRFN�or sympathy, but one cannot empathize with the child until his context and narrative have been elaborated, if only by the imagination. Susan Sontag, writing of photographs, agrees: “Strictly speaking, one never understands anything from

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a photograph . . . understanding is based on how [something] functions. And functioning takes place in time, and must be explained in time. Only that which narrates can make us understand.”22 Short performance is not photography, but it shares some of photography’s limitations: both depend for their effect on some narration or elaboration, if only in the mind of the viewer.

We cannot fully empathize with Parks’s Strongman until we know why he is WKH�REMHFW�RI�GHULVLRQ��7KLV�SURFHVV�EHFRPHV�PRUH�GLI¿FXOW�LQ�VKRUW�SHUIRUPDQFHV��in part because shortcuts take the place of gradual characterization. As plays shrink, their characters tend to become less individual and more like terms in a parable or allegory. Viewing the Strongman in Paper Tomatoes, we understand his mental OLIH�QR�PRUH�RU�OHVV�WKDQ�ZH�ZRXOG�WKDW�RI�DQ\�¿JXUH�ZLWK�K\SHUWURSKLF�PXVFOHV�and a leopard-print singlet. Our minds register the terms of a parable quickly, but KRZ�GHHSO\�FDQ�ZH�IHHO�IRU�LWV�¿JXUHV"�

The answer often depends on how familiar we are with the story before it begins. Prior beliefs and exposure to similar people or situations—factors that Susan Feagin calls “conditioners”23—can lay the foundation for empathic bridges and speed their construction. For instance, when Parks’s play 9-11 opens with two mothers sipping tea, recalling the attacks on the World Trade Center, and watching their boys play war games, a few broad strokes can quickly evoke a rich store of emotional memory because the play assumes an audience who share similar experiences:

1st Mother: I sat there watching it on the tv and, you know, when those poor people were hanging out the windows waiting for the ¿UHPHQ�WR�FRPH��$QG�,�ZDV�WDONLQJ�WR�WKH�WY��WHOOLQJ�WKH�SHRSOH��³'RQW�ZRUU\��WKH�¿UHPHQ�ZLOO�FRPH�IRU�\RX�DQG�\RXOO�EH�VDIH�´2nd Mother: Me too. 1st Mother: Like they could hear me.2nd Mother: I was doing the same thing. 1st Mother: And then they started jumping. And then when they fell—2nd Mother: Yeah. Mothers ChildrenMothers24

7KH�¿UVW�PRWKHU�QHHG�QRW�¿QLVK�KHU�GHVFULSWLRQ��EHFDXVH�FROOHFWLYH�PHPRU\�RI�UHPRWH� WUDXPD�¿OOV� LQ� WKH�EODQNV� LQ� WKH�PRWKHU¶V�QDUUDWLYH��DQG�DGGV�ZHLJKW� WR�WKH�VLOHQFH� WKDW� OLQJHUV�DIWHU� WKH�VHFRQG�PRWKHU�FRPPLVHUDWHV��7KH�¿UVW�PRWKHU�WHOOV�D�VWRU\�RI�DXWRPDWLF�V\PSDWK\�IRU�WHOHYLVHG�ERGLHV�WUDSSHG�EHWZHHQ�¿UH�DQG�falling. Our empathy with the mother may not be as automatic as hers was for the


victims, but it will be more likely to develop in those who, like the second mother, UHPHPEHU�VHHLQJ�IRRWDJH�RI�WKH�VDPH�WUDSSHG�¿JXUHV�DQG�FDQ�WKHUHIRUH�VD\�DORQJ�with her “I was doing the same thing.” In cases like this, empathy may feel nearly instantaneous, but it represents the culmination of a process that has been at work over some time.

,�UHDOL]H�WKDW�P\�GH¿QLWLRQ�RI�HPSDWK\�PD\�VHHP�DOO�WRR�FRQYHQLHQW�D�FKRLFH��GH¿QLQJ�HPSDWK\�DV�VRPHWKLQJ�WKDW�GHYHORSV�RYHU�WLPH�VR�DV�WR�VXJJHVW�WKDW�LW�UDUHO\�GHYHORSV�LQ�D�VKRUW�WLPH��%XW�,�VHH�WKH�DUJXPHQW�ZRUNLQJ�IURP�WKH�RSSRVLWH�GLUHFWLRQ��Noticing that short pieces like Parks’s Paper Tomatoes struggle to foster a certain kind of deep emotional engagement, I sought to name that engagement and found WKDW�UHFHQW�GH¿QLWLRQV�RI�HPSDWK\�PRVW�FORVHO\�¿W�WKH�ELOO��,�PLJKW�DFFHSW�PRUH�FDSDFLRXV�GH¿QLWLRQV�RI�HPSDWK\��EXW�ZRXOG�LQVLVW�WKDW�EUHYLW\�RIWHQ�FRPSOLFDWHV�or forestalls a common form of emotional engagement in which exposure to the details of another’s situation and history leads to a shared sense of the texture of a character’s emotional life.

Parks and the Limits of MicrodramaturgyRadical inclusion—a phrase Parks frequently used to describe the 365

festival—announces the theatrical and social agenda animating both the festival’s nonhierarchical production scheme and the plays themselves. Radical inclusion meant removing the gatekeepers from the American commercial theater by inviting any troupe to produce a week of the cycle in any fashion they like, charging only a dollar a day in licensing fees, and mandating that the performances be free to the SXEOLF��%XW�UDGLFDO�LQFOXVLRQ�LV�DOVR�D�SROLWLFDO�LGHDO�IRU�3DUNV��DQG�RQH�WKDW�VKH�VRXJKW�to replicate in the content of the cycle. Her project was not only to write a play a day for a year, but to represent her country and her planet in all its diversity. On the scale of the cycle as a whole and its democratic performance marathon, Parks’s FDSDFLRXV�HPEUDFH�ZDV�ERWK�DGPLUDEOH�DQG�HIIHFWLYH��%XW�ZKHQ�VKH�FU\VWDOOL]HV�WKH�ethic of radical inclusion into single moments, her efforts to include everyone can lead to an obliteration of difference that solicits feeling but falls short of empathy.

For example, in Pilgrims’ Progress (for Thanksgiving) a throng of pilgrims cross the stage deliberately and painstakingly. The stage directions call for SLOJULPV�RI�HYHU\�LPDJLQDEOH�VWULSH²IURP�0D\ÀRZHU�WR�0HFFD��&DQWHUEXU\�WR�Varanasi, Western Wall to Mount Kailash—and demand, “All kinds of pilgrims. Accommodate as many as you can. Dont intentionally exclude anybody.”25 The SOD\¶V�¿QDO�H[FKDQJH�VKULQNV�D�GLYHUVLW\�RI�SLOJULPV�LQWR�D�SDW�FDSVXOH��

Someone: All Pilgrims.Someone Else: So different!Someone: %XW�DOO�JRLQJ�WR�WKH�VDPH�SODFH�26

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Pilgrims’ Progress asks for radical religious and cultural pluralism: this Thanksgiving, we should give thanks for seekers of all backgrounds. The play YLVXDOO\�H[SORGHV�DVVXPSWLRQV�DERXW�WKH�ZRUG�³SLOJULP�´�%XW�WR�ZKDW�H[WHQW�GRHV�it rely on empathy to make its point? The question may turn on decisions made by a director rather than Parks. How deliberately do the pilgrims move? Just how painstaking is their progress? While the text is brief, a production could extend the pilgrimage for hours, allowing viewers to share long stretches of silent time with one or more pilgrims. So Parks’s text leaves room for interpretations that might IRVWHU�GHHSHU�HPRWLRQDO�HQJDJHPHQW��%XW�VXFK�D�SRVVLELOLW\�GRHV�QRW�PHDQ�WKDW�D�short play might create empathy; it shows only that a long play might have a short script. That the reader feels tempted to imagine a long performance underscores the sense that a quick parade of pilgrims would resonate less powerfully with viewers. In a quick reading or a quick performance, the play asks that the audience register the varieties of religious experience without necessarily understanding or sharing the experiences of any of the pilgrims. If such a reader or viewer experiences UHFRJQLWLRQ��LW�LV�LQWHOOHFWXDO�EXW�QRW�HPRWLRQDO��7KH�¿QDO�OLQH�PD\�PDNH�D�ELG�IRU�D�NLQG�RI�XQLYHUVDO�HPSDWK\��EXW�LWV�FRQÀDWLRQ�RI�GLIIHUHQFH�UHGXFHV�HYHU\RQH¶V�MRXUQH\�LQWR�HYHU\�RWKHU��DQG�UHPRYHV�WKH�VSHFL¿FLW\�WKDW�OHQGV�ZHLJKW�WR�HPSDWKLF�engagement.

6HYHUDO� RI� 3DUNV¶V�PLFURGUDPDV� UHJLVWHU� WKH� GLI¿FXOW\� RI� DFFRPPRGDWLQJ�both political expression and emotional depth in short stretches of time. When the invasion of Iraq began halfway through her year-long project, she wrote a series of plays that self-consciously examines the tension between activism and playmaking. This is No War! (Mar 19):

Crowd: No war! No war! No war!One Person: Thats not a play.

CrowdCrowdCrowd

(Rest)

Crowd: No war! No war! No war!

%RPEV�LQ�WKH�GLVWDQFH�27

Within its few short moments, the play reverses course several times. What begins as a straightforward representation of antiwar protest becomes with the second line a debate about the dramatic potential of hidebound activism. The monotonous


insistence of traditional protest is arguably “not a play” because it’s too static and one-dimensional to qualify as dramatic. The riposte “Thats not a play,” not only SRNHV�IXQ�DW�3DUNV¶V�SOD\��LW�DOVR�XQGHUOLQHV�WKH�LQVXI¿FLHQF\�DQG�ÀDWQHVV�RI�NQHH�MHUN�protest. The complaint provokes a pause, denoted in the script by what Parks calls D�³VSHOO�´�D�PRPHQW�ZLWK�FKDUDFWHU�QDPHV�EXW�ZLWKRXW�GLDORJXH��3DUNV¶V�GH¿QLWLRQ�of spells in her essay “The Elements of Style” depicts them as ideal vehicles for emotionally affecting microdramaturgy. Where “(rest)” denotes “a little time, a pause, a breather,” or “a transition,” spells are rests that have been “elongated and heightened.”28�6SHOOV�DUH�3DUNV¶V�IHUPDWDV��H[WHQVLRQV�RI�XQVSHFL¿HG�OHQJWK�whose dilation in time promises to increase their intensity: “This is a place where WKH�¿JXUHV� H[SHULHQFH� WKHLU� SXUH� WUXH� VLPSOH� VWDWH��:KLOH� QR� µDFWLRQ¶� RU� µVWDJH�EXVLQHVV¶�LV�QHFHVVDU\��GLUHFWRUV�VKRXOG�¿OO�WKLV�PRPHQW�DV�EHVW�WKH\�VHH�¿W��A spell is a place of great (unspoken) emotion. It’s also a place for an emotional transition.”29 In theory, spells bewitch viewers, distill great emotion, and open a passageway to a character’s “true simple state.” In plays like Paper Tomatoes and No War!, that have less time to build the familiarity with characters that helps make silences legible, spells leave room for potentially affecting performances, but give production teams a greater challenge. In No War!, the spell registers the Crowd’s shock at the interruption, measures their stunned silence, and allows them (along with the viewer) to mull the question at hand: is this a play? Their resumed chanting seems to answer that protest is too important to silence in the name of dramatic convention, or perhaps that rote insistence can constitute dramatic development, as *HUWUXGH�6WHLQ�DUJXHG��7KH�GLVWDQW�ERPEV�LQ�WKH�¿QDO�VRXQG�FXH�FRXOG�EH�VHHQ�DV�DQ�DI¿UPDWLRQ�RI�WKH�LQHI¿FDF\�RI�WKHDWULFDO�SURWHVW�LQ�D�WLPH�RI�ZDU��RU��FRQYHUVHO\��DV�DQ�HYRFDWLRQ�RI�SURWHVW¶V�FDSDFLW\�WR�FRQMXUH�ORFDO�HFKRHV�RI�DOO�WRR�GLVWDQW�FRQÀLFW��%XW�GHVSLWH�WKH�VSHOO�DW�LWV�KHDUW��WKH�RQO\�XQVSRNHQ�HPRWLRQ�WKDW�No War! asks the audience to empathize with is the frustration of a playwright struggling to write through her rage and incomprehension.

The play for the following day, More of the Same, makes a more sustained attempt to generate empathy for the victims of the war. The play opens with a continuation of the argument between the antiwar crowd and the naysayer insisting it’s not a play:

Crowd: No war! No war! No war! No war!!!One Person: This is not a play.Crowd: No war! No war! No war! No war!!!One Person: And besides, its the same play you wrote yesterday.$QRWKHU�3HUVRQ��Arent you repeating yrself?Crowd: No war! No war! No war! No war!!!� � � %RPEV�LQ�WKH�QHDUHU�GLVWDQFH�30

Spring 2012 183

As the bombs approach, the stakes grow higher but the stalemate continues. Within a cycle dominated by the rhythms of the everyday, the play asks how we can imagine and respond to a war that is so remote from everyday experience, and suggests that the available vocabularies of outrage have worn thin. Struggling to come up with D�ORFDO�WKHDWULFDO�UHVSRQVH�WR�WKH�ZDU��3DUNV�¿QGV�RQH�SURYLVLRQDO�DQG�LQFRPSOHWH�VROXWLRQ�WR�WKH�GLI¿FXOW\�RI�LQVWDQW�HPSDWK\��UHSODFH�WKH�VFHQH�RI�HPSDWK\�ZLWK�D�FRQIHVVLRQ�DERXW�WKH�GLI¿FXOW\�RI�HPSDWK\��$�FKDUDFWHU�FDOOHG�:ULWHU�LQWHUUXSWV�WKH�stalemate to relate an anecdote directly to the audience as a simple prose poem:

Writer:��$�WD[L�GULYHU�ZDV�WKH�¿UVW�FDVXDOW\�RI�WKH�ZDU��A taxi driver told me that. :H�ZHUH�VWXFN�LQ�WUDI¿F�JRLQJ�XS��th Avenue. :H�ZHUH�ULGLQJ�LQ�VLOHQFH�DW�¿UVW�DQG�SDVVLQJ�WKH�OLEUDU\��,�WROG�KLP�WKDW�WKH�WUDI¿F�ZDV�QRW�KLV�IDXOWand he said, perhaps it wasand I laughed along with himand then he told me about the cab driverEHLQJ�WKH�¿UVW�RQH�WR�GLH�LQ�WKH�ZDUand I wonderednot out loudbut in the head space of my own head:What would it be like to just be riding alongworkingor on yr way to work on the way to a meetingor on the phoneand then—the war comesand nothing else comes after that.31

7KH�VKLIW�KDOIZD\� WKURXJK� WKH�SOD\� LV�XQH[SHFWHG�DQG�H[WUHPH��6WDJHG�FRQÀLFW�JLYHV�ZD\�WR�¿UVW�SHUVRQ�O\ULFDO�SRHWU\��FRPSOHWH�ZLWK�OLQH�EUHDNV�DQG�DQDSKRUD��An understated confession silences the histrionic ranting of a crowd, and moves the play from an abstract and metatheatrical register to a personal and anecdotal one, as if we too have moved into the “head space” of the writer. Instead of dramatizing WKH�GHDWK�RI�DQ�,UDTL�FDE�GULYHU��3DUNV�UHODWHV�WKH�ZD\�KLV�IDWH�LQ¿OWUDWHG�KHU�URXWLQH�day in New York, and describes her own struggle to imagine his life and death. She chooses not to describe his experience, but the abruptness of the play’s ending recreates the abruptness of a life interrupted. If we feel for the distant cab driver, our empathy likely only begins after the play, in the silence following the writer’s


¿QDO�OLQH��7KH�UHODWLYH�SRWHQF\�RI�WKLV�GLUHFW�DGGUHVV�E\�WKH�ZULWHU�WR�WKH�DXGLHQFH�highlights a frequent shortcut to empathy on stage: truth, or at least the impression RI�WUXWK��&RQIHVVLRQDO��GRFXPHQWDU\��RU�QRQ¿FWLRQDO�PRGHV�RI�WKHDWHU�RIWHQ�EXLOG�WUXVW�DQG�HPSDWK\�PRUH�TXLFNO\�WKDQ�¿FWLRQDO�VFHQHV�EHFDXVH�WKHLU�UHDOLW\�HIIHFWV�DUH�DQFKRUHG�PRUH�¿UPO\�WKDQ�PRVW�WKHDWHU�LQ�YHUL¿DEOH�H[SHULHQFHV��

Direct address and poetic lineation continue in the play that follows, How Do You Like the War?, a single verse paragraph in which several speakers address the audience:

How do you like the war? Is it everything you thought it would be? ,V�LW�DV�KRUUL¿F�DV�\RX�KRSHG"�Is it as beautiful as you feared? Does it satisfy the outrage of yr imagination? Does it satisfythe way only a war can satisfy? Or does yr warfallshortsomehowand leaveyou wantingmore?32

More than the previous plays, this one literally asks the audience to examine their emotional reactions to current events. The play’s caustic questions imply that war, especially war fought at a televised remove, makes a deeply unsatisfying aesthetic experience. Parks’s strategy for evoking that dissatisfaction, however, is formal impoverishment. On the page, the play enacts the fall from hope to disappointment with the word “fall,” which has fallen from its line onto the next. After this fall, WKH�WH[W�¿]]OHV�LQWR�D�GLPLQLVKHG�FROXPQ��,QVWHDG�RI�WU\LQJ�WR�KRUULI\�RU�VDWLVI\�DQ�audience in thirty seconds, the play—which both in print and in performance cannot KHOS�EXW�IDOO�VKRUW�DQG�OHDYH�DQ�DXGLHQFH�ZDQWLQJ�PRUH²RIIHUV�LWV�RZQ�GH¿FLHQF\�DV�WKH�DQVZHU�WR�LWV�TXHVWLRQV��7KH�SUHVXPHG�LQVXI¿FLHQF\�RI�VXFK�D�VSDUH�WKHDWULFDO�experience stands in for the disappointment of the spectacle of war.

7KH� VHTXHQFH� RI� SRVWLQYDVLRQ� SOD\V� UHÀHFWV� 3DUNV¶V� IUXVWUDWLRQ�ZLWK� YHU\�short plays as responses to grave political issues. If a single tiny play struggles to generate passionate empathy for the victims of a faraway crisis, repeating the theme from one play to the next begins to allow Parks to build an emotional case as the tensions animating No War! spill over into the following two plays, More of the Same and How Do You Like the War? As Deborah Geis has noted, the plays

Spring 2012 185

in 365 frequently have “permeable borders”; by complementing each other they build structures larger than their individual dimensions might suggest.33 Since the beginning of Parks’s career, repetition and revision, or Rep & Rev as she prefers to call them, have been keywords for her dramaturgy. In her 1994 essay “The Elements of Style,” she describes her attempts to accommodate a traditional dramatic structure in which “all elements lead the audience toward some single explosive moment” with a pattern of repetition and revision to create “a drama of accumulation.”34 Confronted ten years later with the task of writing 365 plays in quick succession, Parks again employs repetition and revision—across plays rather than within them—to create a year-long drama of accumulation that, among other WKLQJV��EHJLQV�WR�FRPSHQVDWH�IRU�WKH�GLI¿FXOW\�RI�JHQHUDWLQJ�LQWHQVH�FRQQHFWLRQV�within single moments. Parks’s Iraq plays gain traction for the viewer or reader as they accumulate. Nevertheless, even as a sequence, the Iraq plays approach empathy obliquely: they replace the representation of an action with self-criticism, with confession, or with direct address; and How Do You Like the War? succeeds only to the extent it generates disappointment.

Toward an Emotional Poetics of Brevity or, Why We Should Care about Not Caring

Taken as a whole, Parks’s menagerie of miniatures demonstrates the extreme ÀH[LELOLW\� RI� WKHDWULFDO� VKRUWV�� EXW� QHYHUWKHOHVV� VXJJHVWV� WKDW� FHUWDLQ� HPRWLRQDO�reactions are less likely in a few minutes than they are in a few hours. An appreciation for the gradual pace of emotional involvement in the theatre has VLJQL¿FDQW�UDPL¿FDWLRQV�IRU�WKHDWUH�DQG�SHUIRUPDQFH�VWXGLHV��

For one, it suggests we should be careful to include in our models of aesthetic UHVSRQVH� QRW� RQO\� ÀDVKHV� RI� LQVLJKW� EXW� DOVR� OHVV� GUDPDWLF� DFFXPXODWLRQV� RI�XQGHUVWDQGLQJ��7KH�UKHWRULF�RI�UHÀH[LYH�UHVSRQVH�LV�QRW�OLPLWHG�WR�ORYHUV�RI�PLUURU�QHXURQV��%XWWUHVVHG�E\�WKH�HSLSKDQLF�WURSHV�WKDW�XQGHUJLUG�VR�PXFK�:HVWHUQ�OLIH�narrative from St. Augustine to Britain’s Got Talent, accounts of intense aesthetic involvement tend to foreground the instant of surprise, rapture, or recognition. A lovely account by theater historian Marvin Carlson reinforces the perceived connection between immediate sensation and the spiritual:

I also have now and then experienced moments of such intensity that they might be called epiphanies. It seems to me that theatre is perhaps particularly well suited as an art to generate such PRPHQWV�EHFDXVH� LW�FRQVWDQWO\�RVFLOODWHV�EHWZHHQ�WKH�ÀHHWLQJ�SUHVHQW� DQG� WKH� VWLOOQHVV� RI� LQ¿QLW\� �� 6XFK�PRPHQWV� RI�apotheosis are not everyday occurrences, of course. . . . Such moments will be different for every theatergoer, but I feel certain that we all have them, and treasure them. In an art that lives


by, and survives largely in, the memory, such experiences have served me as touchstones, as permanent reminders of what I have been seeking in a lifetime of theatergoing.35

Carlson’s spiritual rhetoric makes him a serial pilgrim seeking experiences of near P\VWLFDO�LQWHQVLW\²WKH�UHYHODWLRQ�RI�HSLSKDQ\��WKH�GHL¿FDWLRQ�RI�DSRWKHRVLV²LQ�the temple of the theater, and implies that the mystery of such moments can only fully be explained through something like faith. Narratives of aesthetic epiphany ULQJ�WUXH�IRU�PDQ\��,�KDYH�FHUWDLQO\�KDG�H[SHULHQFHV�RI�WKLV�VRUW��%XW�LI�ZH�VHHN�moments of epiphany in the theater, are those moments only possible because they stand on the backs of less remarkable ones? Does Carlson’s rhetoric give undue weight to memorable impressions of intense feeling and in the process downplay the less perceptible but no less essential accretion of sentiment and understanding that make such intensities possible? I would encourage scholars to ask what approaches and what vocabularies, might do justice to receptive processes that accumulate, gather, or seep instead of catching us by surprise. Carlson is well attuned to the uncanny staying power of ephemeral moments. Once registered, these epiphanies serve as touchstones precisely because they have crystallized and hardened into GXUDEOH�PHPRULHV��%XW�E\�SULYLOHJLQJ�WKH�PRPHQW�RI�VKRFN��QDUUDWLYHV�RI�WKLV�NLQG�arguably contribute to the assumption that brief performances are just as likely as others to produce intense reactions.

A clearer understanding of the temporality of feeling may also help explain generic divisions or assumptions about length that might otherwise seem arbitrary. Parks’s shorts teach us the most about empathy when they fail to evoke it, suggesting that, for those interested in dramatic form and emotional investment, brief performances might be most useful precisely when they feel most disappointing or incomplete. The frequent failure of shorts to move us as other performances do exposes the emotional underpinnings of common dramaturgical assumptions. For one, it suggests that the time required for audiences to identify with characters has helped to shape the normative duration of so-called full-length drama. When $ULVWRWOH�GH¿QHG�WUDJHG\�DV�DQ�LPLWDWLRQ�WKDW�DFKLHYHV�FDWKDUVLV�WKURXJK�SLW\�DQG�fear, he built the capacity to induce a satisfying emotional experience into his XQGHUVWDQGLQJ�RI�DQ�DGPLUDEOH�SOD\��DQG�PDQ\�KDYH�IROORZHG�KLV�OHDG��%\�WKLV�ORJLF��the term short connotes not only a temporal lack but some emotional shortcoming, VXJJHVWLQJ�WKDW�VKRUW�SHUIRUPDQFHV�VRPHWLPHV�IHHO�LQVXI¿FLHQW�SUHFLVHO\�EHFDXVH�WKH\�JLYH�XV�LQVXI¿FLHQW�WLPH�WR�IHHO��

Notes

1. Suzan-Lori Parks, 365 Days/365 Plays (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006) 234.

Spring 2012 187

2. Horace, The Art of Poetry, trans. John Conington, Theatre/Theory/Theatre, ed. Daniel Gerould (New York: Applause, 2000) 73.

��0LNH�%RHKP��³6X]DQ�/RUL�3DUNV�2IIHUV�D�3OD\�D�'D\�´�Los Angeles Times 30 June 2006, E-2. 4. For more on 365’s innovations, see Jennifer Larson, “365 Days/365 Plays: A (W)hole New

Approach to Theatre,” Suzan-Lori Parks: Essays on the Plays and Other Works, ed. Philip C. Kolin (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2011) 124-39; 3KLOLS�&��.ROLQ��³5HGH¿QLQJ�WKH�:D\�7KHDWUH�Is Created and Performed: The Radical Inclusion of Suzan-Lori Parks’s 365 Days/365 Plays,” Jour-nal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 22.1 (Fall 2007): 65-83; John Muse, “Eons in an Instant: The Paradoxes of Suzan-Lori Parks’s 365 Days/365 Plays,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 22.1 �:LQWHU��5HEHFFD�5XJJ��³5DGLFDO�,QFOXVLRQ�µ7LO�,W�+XUWV��6X]DQ�/RUL�3DUNV¶V�365 Days/365 Plays,” Theater 38.1 (2008): 52-75; and Kathryn Walat, “These Are the Days: Suzan-Lori Parks’s Year of Writing Dangerously Yields 365 Plays,” American Theatre 23.9 (2006): 26-27, 81-83.

5. Shawn Marie Garrett, “An Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks,” Suzan-Lori Parks: Essays on the Plays and Other Works, ed. Philip C. Kolin (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2011) 189.

6. 189-90, emphasis in original. 7. Suzanne Keen, “A Theory of Narrative Empathy,” Narrative 14 (2006): 208. 8. Qtd. and trans. Juliet Koss, “On the Limits of Empathy,” The Art Bulletin 88.1 (2006): 139.

Orig. Robert Vischer, Uber das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik [On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics] (Leipzig: Credner, 1873) 20. For a summary of Vischer on empathy, see Koss 139-141.

9. John Martin, Introduction to the Dance (New York: Norton, 1939) 105. 10. 53. 11. Susan Leigh Foster, “Kinesthetic Empathies and the Politics of Compassion,” Critical Theory

and Performance, ed. Joseph Roach and Janelle Reinelt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007) 246. See also two other works by Foster, “Movement’s Contagion: The Aesthetic Impact of Performance,” Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, ed. Tracy C. Davis (Cambridge University Press, 2008) 46-59; and Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance (London: Routledge, 2011).

12. Foster, “Kinesthetic Empathies” 255. 13. In 1996, experiments by a team in Italy showed that certain individual neurons in the brains

of macaque monkeys lit up both when the monkeys executed an action such as grasping an object, and when they watched another grasp an object. (Vittorio Gallese et al., “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex,” Brain: A Journal of Neurology 119.2 (1996): 593). In the years to follow, subse-quent experiments have lent weight to the idea that comparable systems exist in humans, and react QRW�RQO\�WR�WKH�SHUFHSWLRQ�RI�DFWLRQ��EXW�DOVR�RI�HPRWLRQ��)RU�D�VXPPDU\��VHH�-��$��&��-��%DVWLDDQVHQ�et al., “Evidence for Mirror Systems in Emotions,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society ��,Q�D�VWXG\�SXEOLVKHG�LQ��%UXQR�:LFNHU�DQG�KLV�WHDP�IRXQG�WKDW�WKH�VDPH�neuronal areas were activated in subjects when they were disgusted (after inhaling a noxious odor) and ZKHQ�WKH\�ZDWFKHG�D�YLGHR�RI�VRPHRQH�VPHOOLQJ�VRPHWKLQJ�GLVJXVWLQJ��%UXQR�:LFNHU�HW�DO��³%RWK�RI�Us Disgusted by My ,QVXOD��7KH�&RPPRQ�1HXUDO�%DVLV�RI�6HHLQJ�DQG�)HHOLQJ�'LVJXVW�´�Neuron 40.3 (2003): 655-664.) A 2006 experiment attempting to make a more direct link between mirror neurons and empathy found that mirror neurons were more active in people who scored higher on a questionnaire measuring the proclivity to imagine oneself in another’s position. (Valeria Gazzola, Lisa Asiz-Zadeh, and Christian Keysers, “Empathy and the Somatotopic Auditory Mirror System in Humans,” Current Biology 16 (2006): 1827.)

14. The names for theories of simulation often reveal a bias toward an unselfconscious and automatic merging with the other: the shared-manifold hypothesis, the unmediated resonance model, shared circuits. See, respectively: Gallese; Alvin Goldman and Chandra Sekhar Sripada, “Simulationist Models of Face-based Emotion Recognition,” Cognition 94.3 (2005): 193-213; Gazzola et al.

��%UXQR�:LFNHU�HW�DO��16. Keen 208.17. Erin Hurley, Theater and Feeling (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 31.��%UXQR�:LFNHU�HW�DO��19. David Krasner, “Empathy and Theatre,” Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater,

Performance, and Philosophy, eds. David Krasner and David Z. Saltz (Ann Arbor, Mich: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2006) 257.

20. 25821. Foster, “Kinesthetic Empathies” 246. 22. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1977) 23. 23. Susan L. Feagin, “Time and Timing,” Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, eds.

&DUO�3ODQWLQJD�DQG�*UHJ�0��6PLWK��%DOWLPRUH��-RKQV�+RSNLQV��


24. Parks, 365 Days/365 Plays 374-75. 25. 33. 26. 33.27. 155.28. Suzan-Lori Parks, “The Elements of Style,” The America Play and Other Works (New York:

Theatre Communications Group, 1995) 16.29. 16-17, emphasis added. 30. Parks, 365 Days/365 Plays 155. 31. 156.32. 156. 33. Deborah Geis, Suzan-Lori Parks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008) 158. 34. Suzan-Lori Parks, “The Elements of Style” 9. 35. Marvin Carlson, “The Theatre Journal Auto/Archive,” Theatre Journal 55.1 (2003): 211.

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Performance and the Pace of Empathy