EMPATHY: LIVING TRUTHFULLY UNDER IMAGINARY CIRCUMSTANCES BY LEAH BALL
Many actors and theatre-makers credit their theatre training with increasing their skills in empathy. But how exactly does theatre teach empathy?
Sanford Meisner, creator of the Meisner technique approach to acting (a predominantly taught method in many acting schools), infamously said: “Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” In other words, while theatre is usually the depiction of a fictional story, actors use empathy to understand and depict the real emotions of the fictional character they portray.
The essence of acting is understanding and adopting every aspect of a character. This process is lengthy, and many actors have said that they continue to “get to know” their character more throughout every single rehearsal and performance. This growth and learning process is what allows incredible actors to portray characters so honestly. This is how actors live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
I believe that living truthfully under imaginary circumstances is also a definition for empathy. Similar to portraying a character, empathy is making someone else’s feelings your own and not just feeling “for” them, but feeling “with” them.
Actors read scripts to get to know their characters. They notice specific quotes and actions that give them clues to their characters’ desires, challenges and motivations. These skills transfer to being able to use empathy to gain excellent consumer insights in business.
In entrepreneurship, we ask questions of our customers to identify their emotions, then we use empathy to feel along with them. In this way, I believe that entrepreneurs use empathy to imagine and adopt the circumstances of their customers. Then, entrepreneurs take those insights to build empathetic solutions by living out those circumstances truthfully.
Empathy is an integral part of collaboration, creativity, and effective entrepreneurship. Learning the Meisner technique revolutionized both the way I act and the way I empathize.
