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The Anti-Racism Commission's series Telling Our Stories: Healing Wounds of Racism, Building Beloved Community wrapped up in February, and I'm still thinking about what I experienced there.
How many ways can you tell a story about how racism has touched your life? How does one get in touch with its impact, its narratives and its deepest feelings, without the whole thing pulling you under?
For me, this is the greatest gift that the theatre group Playback For Change brought to the experience: making the hidden paths of racial pain visible and helping individual stories resonate across difference.
Interpreting racial stories in this way requires active listening, deep empathy and inspired response. An audience member's recounting of a racial incident might be expressed in the interplay of emotions in the story, or a reimagining of the encounter, or be punctuated with spontaneous song or rhythm. The experience is led by a "conductor" who draws out the audience member's sharing with careful listening and questions that gently shape the narrative.
That's the beauty of the Playback Theatre format, in which an ensemble improvisationally reinterprets a story upon hearing it. For me, it addresses racism from the inside out, and allows me to move beyond my intellectual knowledge of the problem to a visceral experience.
This was the second time ARC has offered the Telling Our Stories series, made possible through a Becoming Beloved Community Grant from the national offices of The Episcopal Church. This year, we brought the experience to parishes in the western part of the diocese in sessions hosted by Trinity Episcopal Church in Swarthmore; the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia; Incarnation Holy Sacrament in Drexel Hill, and St. Alban's, Newtown Square. The series opened and closed with sessions that were open to all, and also featured sessions designed specifically for an audience of color and a White audience.
More than 158 people attended the four sessions. Creating Common Cause, the final session in the series, drew a mixed audience of more than 53 people, inviting members to share their stories and experiences of resisting and healing from racism. Attendees came from St. Alban's, Newtown Square, Calvary St. Augustine, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, St. Peter's, Glenside, and St. Mark's Philadelphia, as well as Pottstown Unitarian Fellowship and Schuylkill Friends Meeting.
"We're all deserving of second chances to accept others," one audience member wrote in their evaluation. Another noted that "embodied experiences are more powerful than 'talking about it.'"
The "courage of people's vulnerability transforming to hope and how one person can make a difference," impressed another.
Playback For Change is available to offer similar programs for parishes, deaneries and organizations, tailored to the needs of specific audiences. For more information, contact Sarah Halley at sarahhalley@gmail.com.
The Rev. Barbara Ballenger completed her six-year term as co-chair of the Anti-Racism Commission in January of 2026 and now works on special projects for the commission.
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