Devised Theatre for The Youth and Facilitator, Sarah Tan

Holding space for people to heal through art is nature's medicine as much as any homeopathic remedy.Theatre is such an immersive experience; one that in witnessing allows us to process our understanding of what we want to see in our world.How we can step into our power and empower others on a grander scale than we could possibly imagine. When witnessing, we can feel the empathy and patience for the characters that we should really be mindful of feeling more when witnessing each other. Devised Theatre aka Collective Creation is a collaborative experience that embarks the artists on a journey that encourages inclusively allowing for the playful, delightful, enlightening, and insightful creative process to emerge from its soil and blossom into the finished product. Devised theatre and youth fuse for an artist worthy of the spotlight, Sarah Tan.

Sarah Tan was born and raised in Singapore and spent most of her adolescent years there. She ventured to the United States and studied theatre in places such as Minneapolis, Minnesota and Phoenix, Arizona. Productions and theatre shows captivated Tan, a regular show goer because her mother would enjoy the thrill of the theatre and that was how Sarah's journey with the art of theatre began.She began to venture into the realm of possibility and the art she was creating began to make an impact.

She had a mentor that encouraged her to do this devised work inclusively and for Tan being an Asian Woman she felt that her chance of being typecast interfered with her true opportunity of getting casted in major productions where female roles were predominantly played by Caucasian Women.Devised work is transformation to witness and experiencing the creative process as an ensemble. This led to her own exploration in divised work with children.Witnessing Sarah work with children is honestly such a beautiful process because she is facilitating an experience that allows them to express themselves and use their voice. Tan said in an interview, " Teaching artist opportunities opened my eyes to a more flexible curriculum. It allows me to be guided by love and passion. The curriculum I would like to build ideally would encourage children to build their skill-sets, create and explore by facilitating experiences in a safe space for all and every one feels included. This flexible curriculum allowed her to have the opportunity to create more freely. Think about it, when there are limitations on creativity you have to think outside the box but when you get to think outside the box it is a paradigm shift that gives the curriculum more value because there is more investment.

The encouragement of participation helps the youth have an example of how they participate in their life, be a part of a community, get the opportunity to connect with others. The theatre industry encourages play and imagination and children who get to have these experiences benefit from them by creating a sense of ownership for the work they produced as an ensemble.Though with devised work for the youth, these children are creating the core work and have the opportunity to create an ensemble that can heal those children who have experienced trauma. Facilitators like Sarah Tan are informed of this trauma and have experience working with children who have been troubled by their circumstances that give them access to step into authentic creativity. This type of work allows children to also face their fears of being on stage, fear of creating something new, and it helps extinguish their limiting beliefs because of facilitators and teachers like Sarah Tan. The work that she is doing is impacting so many children to learn to trust their process and honor their ideas and encourage their creativity to the fullest.