Find Your Voice, a new arts organization on Grounds, is aiming to encapsulate the student experience in performance — putting on monthly showcases which highlight students' real-life stories to promote awareness about a prevalent issue around Grounds.
The group will tackle a new awareness campaign or organization each month — and its kicking off with #HoosGotYourBack, a sexual assault prevention and bystander intervention effort launched by the University this fall.
FYV’s, cosponsoring with Virginia Players, the Office of the Dean of Students, and various advocacy organizations around Grounds, will put on its productions free of charge, but performers will accept donations, which go directly to the organization featured each month.
A secondary goal of the organization is to bridge the University community — working to merge drama students with the greater University population.
FYV founder and third-year College student Andrew Burrill said most students are largely disconnected from the drama department's efforts — a fact that hit home when he conducted an informal survey of his peers.
“Seventy-five percent of them have never been to a production willingly within the department of drama here at U.Va.," he said. "I feel that is unacceptable for many reasons."
Find Your Voice members aim to introduce people with limited theatrical experience to the department's talent and facilities by touching on subjects which are particularly salient and important to the University community — be it sexual misconduct to bullying.
The group aims to attract those with less experience to partake in its produtions — a goal it hopes to achieve in part with a limited time commitment, only asking members for an hour or two of weekly rehearsals.
“The power of theater is something, … existential in its own right and has the ability to move people past experiences which they’ve latched onto and they can’t move forward from," Burrill said. "[It can] really give [people] ... a sense of identity."
Burrill said he hopes Find Your Voice can serve as part of the healing process for people who may have experienced trauma on an emotional or physical level from any of the issues the organization raises..
“There are official routes to go to seek solutions for these issues — CAPS, the Women’s Center ... but there’s no creative outlet for the heart ... there’s no medicine for the heart," Burrill said. "If you continue to ... just put wallpaper over a rotting wall then eventually the rot is going to seep through and no amount of wallpaper can make it look what it isn’t. ... The series is there for you whenever you need some aspirin for your heart.”
Find Your Voice’s upcoming show will be held Oct. 26 at 2 p.m. in the Helms Theatre.
Read More
‘who told you to think??!!?!?!’ reimagines rap as pure art
By Adam Beddawi | August 20, 2017“who told you to think??!!?!?!?!” is in many respects a continuation of milo’s previous artistic form on previous LP, “So The Flies Don’t Come."
Indie pop star for the ages
By Dan Goff | August 1, 2017Tennis vocalist Alaina Moore talks musical matrimony, creative roots
‘Witness’ exemplifies a disastrous summer for female musicians
By Caroline Hockenbury | July 30, 2017Why does it seem that many of music’s leading ladies cannot adapt to today’s electronic craze?
