Leslea Kroll on Compassion Fatigue and Her Play, 'The Light Fishers'
Leslea Kroll, Playwright in SPRINGBOARDS
Sometimes retracing the early stages of a creative project can be foggy business…not quite knowing what the first sparks were or when they were ignited. For my play The Light Fishers, I recall the moment of initial inspiration vividly.
A few years ago, I was watching the televised BBC news program ‘Dateline’, a meeting of guest journalists discussing notable events of the previous week. On this particular episode, news of the world included the plight of refugees making perilous journeys crossing the Mediterranean. One of the journalists commented on how the situation was becoming increasingly desperate and overwhelming, and at one point referred to the collective response to the crisis as ‘compassion fatigue’. Compassion fatigue? The effect upon hearing this was both jarring and chilling. I had never encountered the term before, and felt alarmed by the prospect. Does compassion fatigue mean that compassion is a resource with limited supply? A commodity too dear to be traded in? That we are all simply too tired to care? Reflection on the term compassion fatigue became the source of inspiration for my play The Light Fishers.
Through the play I aspire to explore what it means to care for the more vulnerable among us. One of the characters is a woman living a precarious life on the street; another is struggling with an addiction to painkillers. The central character is recovering from a traumatic incident of which she has no memory. The play switches in time from the present set in the psychiatric ward of St. Andrew’s Hospital, with flashbacks to episodes in the recent past. I have attempted to craft characters with empathy but also their own complexities and inherent contradictions.
It feels timely to be revisiting The Light Fishers now. As with most of us, the past many days for me have involved watching with terrible sadness, increasing shock and unease at the tragic events unfolding in Ukraine. A situation almost too overwhelming to bear, a catastrophe too calamitous to ignore. It is my hope that my play inspires consideration of how we connect with one another, and ourselves; how we might dig a little deeper into our reserves of compassion, but also practice self-care so that we do not find ourselves emotionally numb and exhausted.
In a recent conversation with a friend, I was reminded of the potential healing power of art in times of crisis and how we might look to it, rather than look away. I am inspired to be diving into The Light Fishers through this year’s Springboards Festival and hope that it resonates with you.
~Leslea Kroll
