Hopkinton Center For The Arts Presents Project Empathy This Weekend

HOPKINTON, MA - For the past two years, people have been feeling more isolated during the pandemic. Simultaneously, groups of people from diverse backgrounds have expressed a deeper desire to be seen, understood and feel connected.

The Hopkinton Center for the Arts is allowing area residents to step into one another's shoes as it presents performances of "Project Empathy: A Study in Human Connection" on Friday and Saturday night at 8 p.m. at the performance center located at 98 Hayden Rowe St.

Sponsored by the Hopkinton Cultural Council, the event features eight people from various backgrounds who have been learning about each other's stories over the past two months, according to co-director Allison Iantosca in an interview with Patch on Tuesday.

"I did some work with the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee to support a process of writing an anti-racism and inclusivity statement last year," said Iantosca, who was born and raised in Hopkinton and later returned to raise her family with her husband. "I've been trying to bring into awareness all the things that we didn't know about implicit bias and inclusion."

She noted that an HCA alumna, Catherine Cote, created Project Empathy in 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. Cote reached out to co-director Kelly Grill to see if the HCA would perform it.

"It's been an amazing experience," Grill said. "And it all came from this amazing young student of ours who is really wise beyond her years. It's hard to describe it - you just have to feel it."

"I had no idea what it what it was at first," Iantosca explained. "But I immediately said yes because of the name and because of Kelly and how much energy she has. She seeks dialogues and stories as part of what the HCA is all about."

Eight area residents who are not actors but who were considered to have compelling stories by Iantosca and Grill to join the highly personal performance.

"Eight people have come together who didn't know each other before this project," Iantosca said. "Each comes with a story about a time in their lives that was pivotal or changing for them, where they had something big happen."

People came in to audition simply by telling their stories to Iantosca and Grill.

"We had no idea what was going to come out of their mouths," Iantosca said. "We all go through life making assumptions about people, and sometimes we miss the point. But when you hear the stories, that's the power of it."

After completing exercises in empathy and storytelling, they wrote their stories. Then, they were paired with a counterpart. Each one would learn the other's story in order to perform it from the originator's perspective.

"For example, if somebody was telling their story about a really terrible time in their lives, but that person instead experienced it as a learning opportunity rather than something crushing," she said, "I would have to be careful to tell the story from the way they experienced it and not for the drama of it."

The team has spent the past two months getting to know each other and learn these stories.

"It's going to be super powerful," Iantosca said. "The audience won't know whose story is whose. We have men telling women's stories, straight people telling gay people's stories, people of color telling white people's stories."

She said that partners were chosen to allow members to tell stories "that would be particularly powerful for them."

"But we do have to remember that this is a performance, so there has to be some grit to it," Iantosca added.

One of the performers is Chris Ocampo, the assistant principal of Hopkinton Middle School and a Framingham resident who completed the recent Boston Marathon despite experiencing a knee injury.

The pandemic may have led some cast members to share their stories, according to Iantosca.

"I think a couple of people may have decided that the COVID experience gave them a time of reflection that inspired them to tell their stories in their own way," Iantosca said.

The George Floyd murder also could have influenced some people to step forward as well.

"There's a lot of courage in doing this," she said. "This is a positive bounce back to some of the negative things that have been going on. There's a lot more awareness of different experiences than we have ever had, and Project Empathy helps to bring that forward.

"As an audience member or a participant, you're going to feel this from the inside out," Iantosca continued. "And these are the kinds of things that are going to shift the paradigm. That's where the real impact happens. Then you have to figure out how to deal with how to deal with your experience."

Tickets are available at this link for whatever people can afford to make the performance accessible to a broader audience.