Grantees
and Partners

viBe Theater Experience

Overview:

viBe Theater Experience (viBe) produces original theater, music, and media written/performed by girls, young women, and nonbinary youth of color. Through free, high-quality programs, participants (ages 13-26) devise original theater reflective of their personal experiences navigating real-life issues. Since 2002, more than 75 viBe productions have brough free theater, live musical performances, music videos, and radio plays to thousands of diverse audience members, changing their perceptions about the kind of art that girls, young women, and nonbinary youth of color can create.

According to the 2019 Georgetown Law case study “Mental Health and Girls of Color” by Kimberlyn Leary, Ph.D., “women and girls of color face unique stressors that are compounded by the intersection of race and gender identities. Negative socio-cultural experiences rooted in racism, discrimination, and sexism contribute to emotional pain, but often remain unacknowledged as sources of distress.” According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, “young women of color living in poverty receive mental health treatment at less than one-third the rate of young white women living in poverty.” As the Georgetown Law case study suggests, “the cause of this gap can be complex, as providers may not recognize need, and girls of color may also not seek services because they report distrust of mental health services, confidentiality concerns, and fear that seeking mental health care will be stigmatizing.”

Grant:

Purpose: To support viBe Theater’s Wellness curriculum and staff training in mental health strategies for programs serving girls, young women and non-binary youth of color.

viBe identified a mission-critical need to develop new strategies to address mental health and wellness among its participants and staff. Grant funding was allocated to engage licensed clinical social workers to implement group and individual therapy services, develop a wellness curriculum, and institute a formal training program for existing and incoming teaching artists that is trauma-informed.

Impact:

The activities undertaken during the duration of the grant period had the intended impact of expanding access to resources and providing support for more youth of color.

Licensed clinical social workers facilitated group therapy sessions via Zoom, including individual sessions with each participant for assessment and follow-up. Then the social worker facilitated training sessions with viBe’s young adult ensemble members (ages 19-26) in viBe Company and viBe Leadership Institute program participants. These sessions introduced viBe’s teaching artists-in-training to a healing-informed practice. Over the course of the training sessions, the teaching artists-in-training were able to recognize how healing centered engagement is the ability to acknowledge the harm and injury, but not be defined by it; how theater arts can be healing; and what particular skills can help to heal and build resiliency.