Introduction

In a world of compassion fatigue, how do we deal with our own pain and, moreover, that of others?  To explore this question, "Other People's Pain" draws on the company's video interviews with war correspondents, marriage counselors, and trauma specialists; prize-winning writer Rachel Ingalls' short story "Correspondent" and Susan Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others"; and the war photography of James Nachtwey.  Pre-cinematic flipbooks and close-up magic are used as metaphors for personal memory and for the absent spaces in intimacy's generous and sometimes fragile illusions.    "Other People's Pain" will be a solo performance piece, which playfully skims along the membrane between fact and fiction, between what we can look at and what we can't bear to see.