The Greeks got it right. They understood the link between art and healing.

And in fact, if Sophocles (or any of his buddies) were around today, they would be greatly cheered by The Art of Care, the extraordinary theater presentation that’s now in the final weeks of its world premiere at Mosaic Theater.

This multifaceted presentation, which incorporates music and movement, celebrates the role of drama as a catalyst for cure.

Depicting the “intimate relation of art to caring and of theater to healing”— in the words of DCTA’s review by editor John Stoltenberg — the production was conceived and directed by Derek Goldman, an internationally renowned playwright, producer, and director.

Goldman is best known for the recent and highly acclaimed production of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, which debuted at Shakespeare Theatre Company and was subsequently transformed into a PBS television drama.

I wanted to know how the The Art of Care came together, and I managed to corner Goldman one day recently for this lively digital interview. His responses have  been edited for brevity and clarity.

Derek Goldman: The play is made up of the actors’ own stories, and their relationships to care in their own lives. Care is one of those topics that we struggle with and keep private. So the idea is that we use the power of theater to build community and bear witness.

A lot of the content for this piece has been built from conversations the actors have had with me and with each other. We used a method I’ve developed over the years called “In Your Shoes”: Two people in a pair will have a conversation about their relationship to care, and they’ll be recording it. They’ll go away and choose a portion to transcribe precisely, then bring it back to the group and perform each other’s words.

This captures something much more textured and intimate than if people are writing their own stories. It catches us in the immediacy and intimacy of how we actually choose to share this material in the moment with someone who has earned our trust.

Ravelle Brickman: When you were choosing the cast, did you choose them for their stories or their acting ability?

That’s a great question. I think both. All of them are deeply committed to the ancient idea of the artist as storyteller and witness.

Some of them are people I’ve known and worked with extensively over many years and others I’ve just gotten to know. But I felt all of them would bring deep generosity and empathy and life experience to the process of going into what would be very vulnerable and intimate places, and they would hold these stories of their selves and each other in a beautiful light. Acting talent in and of itself wasn’t the primary consideration.

I was also interested in the kind of grace and beauty of their humanity as performers because they’re handling material that is so moving and so personal. They needed to be the kind of artists who take care of themselves and one another.

Had you heard the stories before?

For the most part, no. The process has been about inviting people to share stories, but because of the history of my relationship with them, there are things that I knew about each of them when we began.

Like, this person is a refugee from Syria who is navigating staying together in a spousal relationship with someone far away. And this person I know is a cancer survivor who’s been caring for her terminally ill mother. And this person I know went through a very scary illness themselves.

I knew this much, but it took gathering people to actually get the full story. Even among the actors, some of whom have known each other for 20 years said, “I had no idea, I didn’t know that about you at all.” Even though we’re close, we don’t necessarily share the full story of the things that are at the real core of who we are.

Had you worked with all of them before?

No. Four of them — Billie Krishawn, Tom Story, Susan Rome, and Tuyết Thị Phạm — I’d worked with on other meaningful projects, and that had led to trust and rapport. The other three — Jabari Exum, Raghad Makhlouf, and William T. Newman — are people I’ve gotten to know through the project. So it’s a spectrum.

The goal of this piece is not to expose people in any way. It’s the opposite: to empower them and their sense that their story is worth telling. It was very important that people could feel that they might trust sharing a story in a room with just us — maybe not even a whole story but just a thought. A reminder I get all the time from “In Your Shoes” work is that anytime we’re in a room with other people, we barely scratch the surface of all of the connections and deep things that might be there between us. So it was a process where people really could go in and talk about grief, illness, childbirth, the humanitarian role of care — very beautiful personal stories that are very close to the bone

Wouldn’t you say that a lot of what they’re talking about is normally hidden?

Yes. Our society tends to cordon off a whole set of things, and that produces stigma and shame and a sense that the things that we are going through in our mortal bodies and in our lives and struggles are to be borne alone. There are so many things that contribute to this — our cult of individualism in America, our need to be winners, to beat the thing, to be victorious over the thing.

These are the kinds of stories that people might share with the people closest to them but wouldn’t think to share more broadly. To me, they’re exactly what we need in the theater because they are at the core of what’s going to bring us together as human beings. The oldest thing theater does is have us be able to see ourselves in another and go, “Oh, that person looks different from me, their life experience is different, but we’re connected in this way.” These stories offer a way into that.

People have asked me, “Will it be depressing?” And I think it’s the opposite because it’s profoundly uplifting to see that the things that you hold dearest, you’re not alone with.

There’s going to be people who are like, “Oh, I’ve seen Tom Story or I’ve seen Susan Rome in like 20 plays, and I think I know them through those roles, but I’ve never actually known anything about them, I’ve never heard anything about their stories.”

One of my hopes for the piece is that it may allow audiences to widen their lens on how they think about the lives behind the work. They see what is actually going on in the lives of artists. That is very much what’s in all of our lives — we all have stuff that we’re dealing with every day — why should actors only pretend and play a role that’s fictional?

Why shouldn’t there be a form for them to share their own beautiful, hard-won experience as storytellers? That’s what this piece invites them to do.

It’s about storytelling.

It’s very much about storytelling, very deeply. I’m just discovering the degree to which it’s about the power of story.

What do you want audiences to take away?

We have a crisis of care in our world that I think most audience members have some personal connection to. What this piece provides first and foremost is a sense that those experiences are seen, are communal, are connected, and that people can be moved by saying, “I’m less alone in this than I thought.”

The resilient stories of the ensemble will provide insight, strength, inspiration, and emotion, and that is what theater does well, which is connection. I see the piece as kind of a celebration, not in a let’s-have-a-party kind of way, but as a celebration of our human capacity to care.

It wasn’t my choice to open it the week of the election. But the timing has turned out to be serendipitous, as the piece is offering something deeply resonant with this moment that is also not about electoral politics or opinions or who is right but is offering a balm of human connection at a time when people are starved for it.

It’s been so gratifying to see how audiences of vastly different ages, cultural backgrounds, and experiences are all finding something deep and profound to connect with. Often long after the performance, the lobby is still filled with people responding to the piece, sharing their own stories about care, making deep connections, opening up to one another. That outcome feels like such an unexpected gift right now.

What should audiences expect when they walk in? What are they going to see?

They should expect to be deeply welcomed and to be made to feel at home and to find people and stories that they relate to.

This isn’t like some high-on-a-pedestal artistic idea about care. People are going to be wowed by the honest beauty of these artists, by just their whole personhood — not pretending to play a character or channeling themselves into someone they’re not, but offering who they actually are in a very richly performative, honest way.

The Art of Care plays through November 24, 2024, presented by Mosaic Theatre Company in partnership with The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University, performing in the Sprenger Theatre at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street NE, Washington, DC. Tickets ($53, Thursday and Friday; $70, Saturday and Sunday) are available online.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.

Ticket Discounts
Rush Tickets: Limited amount available via walk-up cash purchase one hour before start of performance.
Senior Discount (65+): Save 10% with discount code: SENIOR
Student Rate: $20 tickets with discount code: STUDENT
Educator Rate: $20 tickets with discount code: EDUCATOR
Military and First Responder Rate: Save 10% with discount code: HERO
Patrons 30 and younger can access $25 tickets to Mosaic mainstage performances: code UNDER30

The program for The Art of Care is online here.

COVID Safety: Masking is recommended, however it is no longer mandatory — masks in theaters and public spaces at the Atlas Performing Arts Center are now optional. For the latest information, visit mosaictheater.org/health-and-safety.

SEE ALSO:
Theater as healer in ‘The Art of Care’ at Mosaic (review by John Stoltenberg, November 5, 2024)