We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Laura Anthony a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Laura, so great to have you sharing your thoughts and wisdom with our readers and so let’s jump right into one of our favorite topics – empathy. We think a lack of empathy is at the heart of so many issues the world is struggling with and so our hope is to contribute to an environment that fosters the development of empathy. Along those lines, we’d love to hear your thoughts around where your empathy comes from?
I love this question, because I think that empathy is the most important part of creativity — or maybe the most important part of life. I think without other people, we are totally lost. If you asked me the meaning of life, I think I would simply say ‘other people.’
When I was a teenager, I was really angry. I have always been fat, I have always been unable to dress like other folks, and when I was younger, I didn’t have the words to describe myself as non-binary, because when I was in high school, such things were in the common parlance. And all teens are angry, right, that’s the thing about them, being forced to live as adults without having any power, but I was especially angry, because I felt like the outsider I was, and if I’m honest, I thought being angry made you clever, that cynicism or darkness was the cool response to being alive.
And then I got older, and I heard the ‘This is Water’ speech by David Foster Wallace, a Commencement Address he gave at Kenyon College. It’s practically cliche now, but at the time, I became an evangelical about it. Reading it again to tell you about it, I am tempted to quote an obnoxiously large chunk of it here. But the essence if it is this — that every day, in the tedium of modern life, there are so many reasons to be angry, based on what we experience. Being cut off in traffic, or a woman yelling at her child in a grocery store, or the unbearable weight of capitalism, or systemic oppressions, and those ideas aren’t without merit — especially not the last two. However, every day we have the choice to consider other options. We can consider that the person who cut us off in traffic has a child who urgently needs medical care, or a wife in that car going into labor, or maybe just desperately needs to pee. Maybe the woman yelling at her kid in the grocery line has been up all night suffering nightmares from some trauma, or her wife has just died, and she doesn’t know how to cope — usually she’s incredibly sweet. These things aren’t necessarily true: they don’t even have to be. True doesn’t matter. But if you choose to think about the possibilities of what other people are going through, Wallace says, “It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.“
That idea radically changed me. And I over-corrected, for a while, honestly — I stopped allowing my friends to complain about petty aggravations in front of me, because I was sure that the correct orientation towards the world should be the ‘This is Water” approach. However — I realized that was my empathy failing me, too. That I had to allow people to feel what they felt, be with them, and let it pass, as my empathetic practice.
All of this is work, and hard work, but nonetheless, empathy as a doctrine has made me a way happier person, and the pain and rage I felt as a teenager has left me. Not every day is perfect, and there are of course strains on my empathy practice — but I know when I feel them, the work that I have to do is internal. And it seeped right through me, and while I would not say that I am a religious person, I would say that when I have oriented myself toward the good one can see in other people, I started to realize that the closest thing that I would ever see to the divine is in other people. That when people talk about God, sometimes they’re just talking about love. And I believe in love, for sure.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
With my long-time collaborator L.A. Mars, we founded Wolfsmouth Players Company, which is a theater company that is deeply interested in putting on new works, and using theater as a tool for political speech, social change, and greater empathy. We have developed plays in New York and Philadelphia that consider racism, queer histories, and what we as people owe to one another. In addition to mounting shows that matter, we’re trying to create more accessible methods of creating theater than has been typical of the New York scene. Definitely check out our website at www.wolfsmouthpc.com to find out more about us, see what’s on, maybe submit a script, maybe check out an audition! !
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. It ain’t about you! This is my principle concept for art creation. Good art can’t be created in a vacuum, and while “write what you know” is tried and true advice, we have to be able to create work where the voices of the people are heard. I’m reminded of the first line of the Ghent Manifesto, a revolutionary document in the theater world — it’s not about portraying the real world, it’s about changing it. Which sometimes means, if you are, like me, white — decentering yourself and letting other voices move. I would definitely advise fellow white folks to look into anti-racist works, and find resources about white fragility, and how to get comfortable with your voice not being the loudest one in the room.
2. Communication. Every difficulty that I have ever had in the making of theater has happened because the communication was not transparent. Well, maybe not every, but most of them. I am now a zealous believer in making sure people know what the ask is, and get all the context, and feel safe and capable of asking questions. I think the way to do this is just through repetition — communicate about your process. All the time. To everyone on the team. Maybe they’ll get sick of seeing your name on the phone screen — it’s fine, they’ll be stoked when the project works.
3. Celebrate where you are right now. I think hustle culture has made it so we forget to celebrate milestone wins. But if everything is a step on the path to where you go next, without deliberately stopping to celebrate what you’ve accomplished, it is a quick way to burn yourself out, along with anyone who works with you. Give praise easily, and default towards joy and celebration when you can. You deserve it, and your people deserve it.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
Right now, as I am sure so many of the readers are, I am balancing continuing to be an artist with making enough money to live and have a secure future with my family. I bring it up as a way to tell folks that you’re not alone, and that there’s no shame in taking on a “survival job” or a “bread and butter job,” and learning how to prioritize that alongside your creative life. We live under a capitalist police state that doesn’t make space for artists to thrive, whatever you do to manage your survival is good and radical. And you’re still a creative, even if you have to put down your passion for a month or two to get everything in balance again. Taking time off, or taking time at other work so you can pay your rent doesn’t make you not a painter, or an actor, or a writer. Life is for the living, after all.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.wolfsmouthpc.com
- Instagram: @quicksoliloquy
- Facebook: Laura Anthony (or facebook.com/quicksoliloquy
- Linkedin: N/A
- Twitter: @quicksoliloquy
Image Credits
Erin Sabat
