Hand2Mouth Theatre Youth Devising Residency Program Presents
What Brings You Here? 

What Brings You Here? is an original production created in residence by youth throughout the greater Portland area

Living with one foot in madness, the distortions of reality, the fog that descends at certain moments.  Unsettling amnesia.  Absurd fears.

No matter how much you sleep, you’re exhausted. The number of times you bump into something, or drop something, or trip over your own feet. The system within the system. A question within a question.

An unstoppable march of time and the harrowing descent into madness that chronicles who a person with a splintered reality becomes.

Fourteen youth ages 14-18 explore the reality of their own fears within a never ending system of splintered realities. What’s it like to be at the end of a firehose of the world’s problems when you’re still trying to navigate your own childhood.

March 7th, 8th, 9th 7:00 pm
The Boiler Room at Portland State University 1620 SW Park Avenue, Portland OR. 97201

Tickets available at: hand2mouththeatre.org

General admission – $20 Students/Seniors – $10 Arts for All – $5

Hand2Mouth (H2M) Youth Devising Residency Program
The H2M Youth Devising Residency (YDR) offers young adults (ages 14-18) in the greater Portland Area education and mentorship via a yearlong residency. Students are selected from an open call to area public schools and in partnership with community partners. These students are employed as young professionals to work alongside professional artists, directors, designers, technicians, and arts managers to explore collective themes and ideas. Then, using H2M’s devising theatre techniques, these youth artists collaborate to produce and perform an original performance event born from their own unique ideas and experiences of the world in which they live.

“I think the program definitely engages young people by offering professional devising theatre training and technical theatre skill development but on a deeper level it’s empowering and inspiring youth to see themselves and their voices as viable and valuable contributors to the arts – and within their community.  Theatre education provides enormous value to youth development; leadership, problem solving, self-confidence, empathy, etc but Devising Theatre is exploring and experimenting with ideas In collaboration with other artists – there’s discovery in that process, both as an individual and in the intersection of ideas and problems within your community and the world.”  -Jenni GreenMiller; Director of Education, Hand2Mouth Theatre

Founded in 2016, Student Voices offers free theatre workshops to underserved public middle and high school students in the Portland Metro area. The program is shaped around H2M’s unique Dialogue and Differences model of collaborative theatre-making. This curriculum of healing-centered, culturally-responsive practices is rooted in the tenets of social/emotional learning, to help youth identify their own strengths, needs, and values in the communities where they live. The collaborative process helps uplift diverse perspectives in the group setting as students work as an ensemble to generate an original theatrical work of their own devising, in their own voices. Under the guidance of professional teaching artists, participants move through a series of exercises, from physical exploration and improvisation, to research and development, to writing, and finally to the construction of a unique performance piece. We encourage youth to utilize their thinking and inquiry skills in the world, ask deep questions, explore multiple perspectives and ideas, engage in thoughtful decision-making, and make connections between their own lives and the world around them.