Episode Details

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 collaborations between conservative Christian and progressive theater students to work in prisons, hospitals, public health spaces, and global conflict zones, Goldman describes how theater can function as “relational fitness” — strengthening the neglected civic muscles of empathy, attention, and human recognition.

This episode explores three interconnected ideas:

• How the In Your Shoes™ process transforms strangers into collaborators through radical listening and embodied storytelling,
• Why Goldman believes democracy depends not only on freedom of speech, but on the freedom to speak vulnerably and be heard without fear, and
• How artists can work across sectors — from diplomacy to public health to incarceration settings — to rebuild trust, connection, and civic imagination in communities.

Notable Mentions

People

• Derek Goldman – Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics
• Theater director, educator, and co-founding director of Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics. Goldman is the creator of the In Your Shoes™ methodology and the co-leader of the Art of Care initiative discussed in this episode.
• James Thompson – University of Manchester / Care Aesthetics Research
• Applied theater scholar and author whose work on care aesthetics explores the artistic dimensions of caregiving, humanitarian performance, and social practice.
• Thornton Wilder – Author of Our Town
• Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose classic meditation on everyday life and human presence became an unexpected touchstone in Goldman’s work with incarcerated students.
• Studs Terkel – Oral Historian and Broadcaster
• Legendary oral historian and radio producer whose conversational storytelling approach echoes through Goldman’s ensemble-based methods of testimony and listening.
• Tony Kushner
• Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright referenced in relation to actor Tom Story’s reflections on drawing strength from performing the