Acting, Incarceration, and Moral Darkness
In October 1984, I was working as an actor in London when I was cast in the lead role of a production of Miguel Piñero’s award-winning prison drama Short Eyes at the Man in the Moon Theatre on the King’s Road. The play, set in the holding cell of an American prison, centers on men awaiting trial. My character, Clark Davis, had been accused of sexually molesting a young girl.
I played the accused predator.
It was the most demanding role I had ever undertaken—physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Piñero’s writing is brutal, poetic, and unrelenting. At the time, I believed I was giving everything to the role. What I did not yet understand was that something essential was missing from my performance.
There was no soul.
Leaving the Stage, Entering Mediation
I stopped acting in 2002. Today, I work as a professional mediator through my company, Magnum Mediation, and I also volunteer with various agencies. Recently, in my role as a volunteer mediator, I was asked to mediate a case involving a convicted sexual predator.
Their children had been removed by the courts and placed in the adoption system. The other parent had disappeared. Before the mediation, I reviewed the court documents detailing the crimes. Despite years of experience mediating high-conflict cases—including those involving malignant narcissism—I felt a rare and genuine apprehension before the online session.
When Reality Mirrors Theatre
When the individual appeared on screen, they looked utterly unthreatening. Pale, ordinary, almost invisible. Their appearance closely mirrored how I must have looked decades earlier as Clark Davis on stage. The disconnect between their demeanor and their actions was deeply unsettling.
As expected, they immediately began blaming everyone else—the courts, social services, circumstance—while maintaining an oddly polite and subdued tone. Despite being clearly informed that we did not represent the court, they behaved as though we did. Their responses felt rehearsed, performative, and hollow.
What struck me most was the sense that something fundamental was missing.
Evil as Emptiness
This individual seemed formed around a void. There was no moral center, no guiding ethical light. They were unbound by ordinary human responsibility and remained firmly rooted in darkness.
As a mediator, neutrality is essential. I was able to set aside judgment and bias, and together with my co-mediator, we listened carefully and guided the discussion away from rage, resentment, and grievance. Over the course of five exhausting hours, we brought the conversation to the narrow reality: a handful of monitored visitation dates, tightly controlled and limited.
The Absence of Love
Throughout the entire mediation, I did not hear the word love once.
Not parental love. Not remorse. Not care. What I observed instead was a performance—an attempt to project what they believed a parent should sound like, while continuously deflecting responsibility for their actions. It was mimicry without substance. Image without feeling.
To me, evil is not rage or cruelty alone. It is the absence of a core. A hollowness from which destructive behavior emerges naturally and without restraint.
“Nothing Will Come of Nothing”
We completed our work. Despite weak protestations, the outcome reflected reality: they came away with virtually nothing.
In King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1, Shakespeare gives us the line:
“Nothing will come of nothing.”
That line echoed loudly for me. This individual emerged from nothing—an emotional and moral emptiness—and it was nothing they ultimately received.
What I failed to understand as a young actor playing Clark Davis, I understand now as a mediator:
some characters are not driven by passion, pain, or even desire—but by the terrifying silence where a soul should be.