Derek Goldman: What Happens When the Stranger Walks In Your Shoes?

About this episode

Derek Goldman discusses how performance can serve as a civic practice to foster empathy and connection among individuals.

In this episode of ART IS CHANGE , theater artist and educator Derek Goldman shares how performance can become a civic practice — not simply entertainment, but a way for people to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the deeper responsibilities of citizenship. This episode is part of a special Art in Action series we're producing in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation’s Democracy and the Arts program. In these episodes we'll be speaking with artists, cultural organizers, and arts leaders who are navigating and challenging current efforts to limit free creative expression and free speech. Together, we'll explore what freedom of expression means in practice, not as an abstract right, but as a lived responsibility at the heart of democratic life. Drawing on his In Your Shoes™ methodology, Goldman explores how storytelling and embodied listening can open surprising pathways for mitigating polarization, isolation, and fear. At the center of the conversation is a deceptively simple process: Two people talk deeply with one another, transcribe the conversation, and then publicly perform each other’s words. The result is not debate, but encounter. From…

People in this episode

Host: Bill Cleveland

Guest: Derek Goldman

Topics covered

• civic practice
• theater
• storytelling
• freedom of expression
• empathy
• polarization

Keywords

• theater
• civic engagement
• storytelling
• freedom of expression
• empathy
• polarization
• In Your Shoes

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Charles F. Kettering Foundation

Books & works: In Your Shoes™

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