Lydon says he will engage public figures, refugees and audience members in an emotional and “eye-opening” discussion.

“My role is to help them communicate and select their stories, whether it’s the moment they left Somalia or where their family may be…I will help connect the dots,” he says. “We have all heard the clichés. These stories are anything but.”

‘No One Has Said No’

Multimillionaire philanthropist Gregory C. Carr, who also serves on the ART’s board, is funding the pre-performance speaker schedule. A team from the Carr Foundation has helped the ART interview refugees to participate in Herakles.

According to the Carr Foundation’s Rebecca Sheahan, Sellars’ vision is inspiring and optimistic.

“Once I explain Herakles to refugees, they are curious, but Peter does all the magic,” she says. “No one has said no. He’s infected them with belief in the project.”

Sellars says he urges refugee participants to think of “five things they want to say during their speeches, five things they’d want fellow Americans on their subway to know.”

“People are compelled to talk about different things from night to night,” he says.

Sellars leans forward when he talks about how much the refugees’ stories affect those who hear them.

“No two families are the same,” he says. “You realize how inadequate the generalizations are.”

Sellars sighs and looks off into space quietly, quoting an Afghan woman who told him, “We don’t want your money, we want your freedom.”

When Herakles was performed in Paris, Sellars says, a refugee participant afraid to speak on stage had her voice projected to the audience while she stayed in a room in the basement.

Sellars says he hopes audiences will leave his show informed and hopeful, with “tears not of pity but of cleansing.”

At one point in the production a character tells Herakles’ children to thank their “real friends—remember them as friends who saved your lives.” The refugee children leave the stage and shake hands with everyone in the audience.

Look to the Children