Episode
Derek Goldman: What Happens When the Stranger Walks In Your Shoes?
- Published
- May 20, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2836
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Summary
In this episode of ART IS CHANGE , theater artist and educator Derek Goldman shares how performance can become a civic practice — not simply entertainment, but a way for people to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the deeper responsibilities of citizenship. This episode is part of a special Art in Action series we're producing in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation’s Democracy and the Arts program. In these episodes we'll be speaking with artists, cultural organizers, and arts leaders who are navigating and challenging current efforts to limit free creative expression and free speech. Together, we'll explore what freedom of expression means in practice, not as an abstract right, but as a lived responsibility at the heart of democratic life. Drawing on his In Your Shoes™ methodology, Goldman explores how storytelling and embodied listening can open surprising pathways for mitigating polarization, isolation, and fear. At the center of the conversation is a deceptively simple process: Two people talk deeply with one another, transcribe the conversation, and then publicly perform each other’s words. The result is not debate, but encounter. From collaborations between conservative Christian and progressive theater students to work in prisons, hospitals, public health spaces, and global conflict zones, Goldman describes how theater can function as “relational fitness” — strengthening the neglected civic muscles of empathy, attention, and human recognition. This episode explores three interconnected ideas: How the In Your Shoes™ process transforms strangers into collaborators through radical listening and embodied storytelling, Why Goldman believes democracy depends not only on freedom of speech, but on the freedom to speak vulnerably and be heard wi…