Someone is listening. And that someone might surprise you.
What would it feel like to be truly heard?
Sympathetic Ear is a series of intimate audio pieces, each one placing you on the other side of a conversation you never expected. A granny with a pot of tea and a tin of biscuits. A therapist with a small bell and a window onto the traffic. A tramp in a bandstand as the rain eases. A monk at the top of many steps, where the birdsong carries.
In each scene, someone is listening to you. Just you. Whatever you bring.
Written by Graham Brand and performed by Charles Tyrer, Graham Brand, and Sita Brand, these eleven short pieces move from the warmly domestic to the unexpectedly moving, from the gently comic to the quietly profound. A helpline operator. A hairdresser who genuinely wants to know. A prisoner in a dungeon who has all the time in the world. A dream collector with a blank page, just waiting.
The voice might change, but the listening stays the same.
Together, the pieces ask something simple and rather radical: when did you last feel that someone was really, genuinely, giving you their full attention?
Settle in. Someone is ready to listen.
Sympathetic Ear was presented in the Listening Gallery in 2019 – 2020
