Empathy Project Vol. I

Concept: Magdalena Chowaniec (PL/A)
Research/Creation/Performance: Gabri Einsiedl (A), Magdalena Chowaniec (PL/A), Radek Hewelt (PL/A)
Technical help/Sound: Vladi Tchapanov (BLG/A)


‘I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.’
Kathy Bates

‘Bodies of drug addicts on Karlsplatz became to me highly inspirational in all their ambivalent existence. The way they inspired me, and the admiration I started to share for their incredible bodily capabilities, occurred very paradoxal - in all its misery becoming almost poetic to my eyes.’
Magdalena Chowaniec

Empathy Project puts the phenomena of empathy in the center of interest and questions the importance of empathy our days, it looks for the possibilities of bridging the social and artistic, abstract on a ‘new’ empathic level. In ‘Vol. I’ reflections upon the outsiders lead to the questions about what's allowed, acceptable and what inappropriate in the society of theatre trying to turn excluded into exclusive. ‘Vol. I’ examines the methods, possibilities and effects of empathizing with the excluded ones through the process based at first on a search for a common empathy in a group. Three human beings turn into a ‘human tabula rasa’. Crossing the border between life and theatre, they rush through the world and melt with different surroundings becoming a part of various landscapes. They look for a ‘homeless esthetics’ in art, taking another point of view onto life – practicing homelessness, performing junkies, researching physicality of the rejected ones.

Premiere March 2010 Imagetanz Festival brut Vienna