Sympathy with the Devil or Playing with Empathy

Within the theatre, villainy has always held much appeal for both authors and audiences. Villainy plays an important role in my theatrical work in which I use my writings not so much to judge the 'Bad' but to try and understand it, explain its motivations and the contextual base. Hoping to establish a wrong empathy that leads to moral reflections by the audiences, I created plays based on Gilles de Rais (who murdered hundreds of children and therefore served as the basis for the Bluebeard fairy tale) and on Pope Rodrigo Borgia (who changed the face of Renaissance through rape and murder). These plays are based on thorough historical research, based on texts such as the Secret Archives of the Vatican. Since emotions, virtues and actions are embedded in a context and held together through the eye of the beholder, authors are challenged to create narratives that close the gap between monstrosities and morality. Empathy acts as a tool whereby audiences not only reflect upon villainy, but may also identify in such a way that gruesome actions are considered essential and therefore inevitable. The theatre is – in my opinion – a well-suited medium for the unique rapport between empathic audiences, narratives and ethics. I came to the conclusion that playwrights must develop empathy with the villain to enable the writing of their dialogue. In this sense, they act as doublure of the character and as the devil's advocate. This process of becoming and sharing the villainy is one of constant balance between the moral goal of the character and that of the author. This is in order to achieve empathic performances that in their own turn, lead to reflections on empathy and morality by the audiences. Empathy becomes an active stream between narrative, audience and reflection. The characters lure audiences into narratives through the use of empathy. Theatre is unique in its concrete encounter between artists and audience. As Brook wrote: 'A man walks across [this empty space] whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.' 1 This close proximity is one of the appeals of theatre, but at the same time it forms a major challenge because the empathic effects and affects are instantly tangible. Empathy and theatre seem inseparable because audience and performer, narrative and staging all engage reciprocally in an empathic whirl.

ISBN:978-1-84888-428-1

Publication year:2016