How better to understand someone than to have the chance to step in their shoes for moment? Plays are built on characters. Each with their own story and set of circumstances; their own goals and obstacles, wants and needs. When we read a play, we have the chance, for a moment, to become each of the characters. Say things we may never say and feel something we may never have quite felt before. We may consider something we would never think to. We have the chance to explore worlds we have never been a part of and connect to ones we are. Gaining new perspective allows us to open up…maybe not judge right away…to just consider; to be empathetic.
“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way that a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” Oscar Wilde