10/18/2025
“Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and the door of my heart can be left open.”
— Thích Nhất Hạnh, 2004
This performance is an offering — a reminder of our shared humanity in a time of deep division.
In this poem, Thích Nhất Hạnh speaks from the heart of interbeing — the realization that we are not separate from one another. That the child and the arms dealer, the victim and the oppressor, the innocent and the blind, all exist within the same field of consciousness.
To call someone by their true name is to see them fully — beyond the illusions of fear, power, and otherness. It is to awaken compassion, the most radical force we have left.
At Free Humanity Theatre, we draw from works like this to explore how art can resist dehumanization — in systems, businesses, institutions, and relationships alike. We believe that compassion is not passive; it is the most powerful form of resistance to manipulation, gaslighting, and systemic cruelty.
Against this, we hold space for remembering.
We speak, perform, and create to reclaim the human — to remind ourselves that even within cruelty there is blindness, and within blindness there remains a seed of sight. To refuse dehumanization is not only to protect others, but also to protect the part of ourselves that still feels.
Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote these words during a century scarred by war and ideological extremity. Yet his teaching remains urgent today, as societies continue to repeat the same patterns — violence justified as order, silence disguised as reason, and control disguised as care.
When we call one another by our true names, we resist that cycle.
We awaken.
And in awakening, we remember what art, compassion, and truth were always meant to be — not escape, but return.
This piece merges Thích Nhất Hạnh’s timeless wisdom with the haunting emotional landscape of John Williams’ Schindler’s List Theme, creating a space to remember what it means to feel, to witness, and to remain human.
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Credits:
🕊️ Poem: “Please Call Me by My True Names” (October 2004)
✍️ Written by: Thích Nhất Hạnh
🎧 Voice & Sound Design: Agnieszka Sylwia Izdebska
🎶 Music: Schindler’s List Theme — Composed by John Williams
🎭 Presented by: Free Humanity Theatre
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Free Humanity Theatre is an independent artistic initiative challenging manipulation, authoritarianism, institutional narcissism and gaslighting through theatre, poetry, and performance.
Even if we’re not out in the streets, we can resist violence by making our small corner of the world more truthful, more compassionate, more alive.
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“Please call me by my true names,so I can wake up,and the door of my heart can be left open.”— Thích Nhất Hạnh, 2004This recording carries the voice of many ...
