Playback Memphis’ collaborative acting promotes healing, compassion

Feature story for The Commercial Appeal

Oct. 4, 2012

Diversity is at the center of Playback Memphis, a professional ensemble made up of a dozen actors and musicians. Their focus: to offer healing through drama, and in the process, tell the story of what it means to be a Memphian through the experiences of its citizens.The mission of Playback Memphis is to “transform this ethos of Memphis that has been one of anguish and brokenness to one of connectedness,” says the company’s founder and director, Virginia Murphy. “Our work is about love and forgiveness.”

A Playback production is a collaboration between performer and audience in which an audience member is invited to tell the story of a moment from his or her life and then watches as the actors improvise that moment, “listening for really what is the essence of what this person is saying — what is the heart of their story,” Murphy said. “Their (the actors’) job is to communicate the feelings and the thoughts of the teller, and those layers of feeling, because so often in life we don’t have just singular feelings. They do that through movement and music; we use a lot of metaphor, and it’s just very symbolic, embodied expression.”The troupe puts on a regular series of shows titled “Memphis Matters” at Theatre South in First Congregational Church in the Cooper-Young area. The series was born of the idea that Memphis “is an intense place to live, no matter who you are,” Murphy said, “and there are aspects of life here that make it uniquely rich and wonderful, and aspects that make it really complex and challenging.”

Performances aren’t all about civic pride, though they do speak to the heart and soul of the citizenry no matter its level of income or social stratum. Robert Neimeyer, a longtime professor of clinical psychotherapy with the University of Memphis, has worked closely with Playback. He and Murphy are collaborating on a chapter of a book on grief and the expressive arts … (read more)