I walked out of the theatre feeling rattled, in the best possible way and I rolled around in bed continuing to contemplate what I had watched, listened to and learnt. And to be honest, that doesn’t happen often anymore. After 15 years in the community sector, working across frontline service delivery, organisational leadership, policy advisory, and now systems design, I’ve seen the playbook. I know how to respond to crisis, how to write the right thing, how to manage reputational risk. But I didn’t walk away from Stages of Empathy by Rebus Theatre with a checklist.
I walked away with a mirror.
The show opens on a scene that will feel painfully familiar to anyone who has ever worked in the social sector. An organisation is preparing for its community open day, a joyful, inclusive, values-driven celebration of everything they stand for. And then comes the twist: the CEO makes a snap “executive” decision to exclude a participant with a history of behavioural challenges. The team’s communications assistant, desperate to please, bends over backwards to keep everyone smiling… until she collapses under the weight of the emotional labour. Sound familiar?
At first, I sat passively in the audience, squirming at the awkwardness of the decisions unfolding. Then came the pivot. In act two, the show began again, but this time, the audience was no longer allowed to remain uncomfortable. You’re invited to jump up, call pause, and literally walk on stage to suggest or role-play a different decision. You get to interrupt the “script.” You become part of the story.
And that’s when the real questions emerged.
1. Who Do We Serve?
On the surface, this is easy. We serve our clients, our participants, our members, our communities.
But scratch just beneath, and it becomes murkier.
- Are we serving those who show up neatly to programs and tick the “success story” box?
- Or are we willing to sit in the messiness of those whose trauma presents as aggression, mistrust, or chaos?
- Are we centering the people who challenge us to grow?
- Or are we quietly shaping our “inclusive” programs to suit those who won’t ruffle feathers?
In the show, the excluded participant was a young man with a disability who had previously displayed confronting behaviour. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t simple. But isn’t that the point? If we only “serve” when it’s convenient, we’re not serving. We’re selecting.
2. Inclusion Until It’s Inconvenient
There is a painful honesty to the phrase “the too-hard basket.” I’ve heard it whispered in back rooms and board meetings. I’ve sat in team debriefs where staff say, “We just don’t have the resources to support them safely.” And I’ve felt the weight of that very real dilemma: wanting to protect the wellbeing of all participants, including staff, while knowing someone is about to be left behind.
This is where Stages of Empathy shines. It doesn’t offer easy answers. It holds space for complexity.
How do you support one person’s right to attend a public event while ensuring another person’s sense of psychological safety?
What happens when inclusion for one becomes exclusion for another?
And yet, isn’t this the very puzzle our organisations exist to solve?
We weren’t formed to provide comfort. We were formed to create change. And change rarely arrives without discomfort.
3. Who Holds the Power to Decide?
Watching the show, I found myself reflecting on every moment I’d held power in an organisation, whether that was as a CEO, a board member, or even an “older sister” figure to a junior staff members. It’s so easy to forget the ripple effects of those decisions.
- When you send that email about a change in participation policy, who wasn’t consulted?
- When you say “this is too risky,” whose voice are you silencing?
- When a staff member dissolves into burnout, who saw the warning signs? Better yet, who didn’t see them?
In one scene, a junior staff member quietly and repeatedly tried to raise her concerns but was shut down in the name of efficiency. “We just don’t have the time or the resources,” the CEO insisted. That line struck me. I’ve heard it. I’ve justified it. I’ve sat down with a participant and said “I do not believe we can provide you with the safe environment you need at this time.” Did I make the right call at that time?
In our rush to deliver, do we bulldoze the very values we claim to uphold?
4. The Real Role of Empathy
Let’s be clear, empathy isn’t a warm, fuzzy buzzword. It’s a disruptive force.
True empathy doesn’t let us look away. It calls us into discomfort, into the contradiction of our good intentions and poor outcomes. It forces us to see the policies we write and the culture we uphold through the eyes of the people most affected by them.
What this show asked us to do, literally stepping into the scene, offering a new response, is something we should all be doing more often. Not just in theatre. In boardrooms. In service design. In staff meetings. In funding applications. In government tender evaluations. Should we implement the right for anyone in an organisation to call “stop” when they are uncomfortable and the group identifies a way to solve a problem together?
When was the last time you paused mid-action and asked, “Is this truly centering the person we say we exist for?”
If you can’t answer that, then empathy isn’t embedded in your practice. It’s optional. And optional empathy isn’t good enough.
5. What Happens If We Get It Wrong?
Spoiler alert: we will get it wrong. That’s not the point.
The point is whether we’re willing to revisit the moment we did. Whether we build cultures that can be interrupted. That’s what Rebus’ approach models so beautifully, interruption as growth. Participation as accountability.
And if I’m honest, I think more organisations should test themselves like this. Even the ones who believe they are great at this stuff!
Ask your team:
- Who would we be uncomfortable having at our next event, and why?
- What behavioural support would we need to genuinely say “yes” to the people we currently say “not yet” to?
- How would we respond if the team member burning out in silence was actually the one holding the whole thing together?
And most importantly: What kind of organisation do we want to be when no one is watching?
