Page 37 - Demo

Telly Leung
Broadway Actor, Producer, Teacher & Empathy Concert Co-Host
: You have co-hosted all of our Empathy Concerts. What do those evoke for you?
: Every time I participate in our EMPATHY events, I am left energized and inspired by our time together. We all lead such busy lives, especially during COVID when we are jumping from one virtual meeting to the next, leaving little time in between to “turn off”. We take less vacations. We don’t have that commute to decompress and
“turn off” after a long day of work at the office. To take an hour to dissect the nature of empathy and the power it has to change all aspects of our lives for the better is a reminder of our common humanity, and puts our crazy, ever-changing lives into perspective. When we take the time to truly understand what someone else may be going through (especially during times of uncertainty), we gain a clearer picture of our own lives and come to a conclusion that we reach over and over again during these sessions: we may face daunting challenges during these uncertain times, but we do not face those challenges alone. Empathy reminds us we are never alone, no matter how alone we may feel.
: In one sentence or phrase, what does empathy mean to you? And please expand on that.
: Empathy is an attempt to understand someone else’s feelings outside of your own.
As an actor, it is a necessary part of my profession. Empathy is something I
do eight times a week on a Broadway stage. I stop thinking of my own perspectives and needs. For the course of the play, I attempt to see the
world through the eyes of the character I’m playing. Actors make it their life-long craft to get closer and closer to our characters’ truth, and the first step we take is to look at the actions of our characters without preconceived judgements. Acting 101 teaches us that the actor must never judge or label our characters as “good” or “evil”. Every villain thinks they are the hero of the story, and that all their actions are morally justified. In order to get into the heart and mind of the characters I play, I must employ empathy and tap into each character’s humanity.
36