See Me! Hear Me!

Playing Time: 82 minutes | Playing Space: 4×4 meters, 12×12 feet | Genre: Multi-media drama

See Me! Hear Me! supports a global campaign against and human trafficking and slavery. There are more than 27 million victims world-wide without a voice – without representation. They are the invisible, silent cries waiting for The Truth, A Defense and Rescue. Robbed of their dignity, their suffering should not be hidden from us.

Gertrude Simmons, an Ivy League economics professor, has a life goal; write her magnus opus and secure tenure. However, when she embarks on a sabbatical journey to research entrepreneurship in global markets, she realizes that one of the most lucrative entrepreneurial markets is human slavery. Her number-crunching intellect is forced to confront the human faces that loom behind the statistics. This is a jarring, surreal play about how a woman struggles to orient herself as the shrieking voice of human suffering drowns out all others.

Kathleen Ann Thompson, as a solo performer, presents this original multi-media movement piece using projections and the movement skills of physical theatre to create a filigreed journey through the souls of victims, rescuers and defenders involved in human trafficking. Her journey takes her to Poland, Berlin, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Dubai, Uganda, Haiti and Ithaca, New York in an effort to impact the viewer with an understanding of the enormity of this heinous crime: its global economic profile, its devastating consequences on communities and cultures, as well as its defining inhumane brutality. A change must occur at the end of the journey …first in us, then for the victims. The truth of Fredrick Buechner’s words will then be realized:Compassion is the knowledge that there can never be any real peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.
 

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