What Breaks Your Heart? & What Brings You Joy?

This offering is designed as both a workshop and a communal gathering, one that invites participants into reflection, storytelling, and connection through creativity, led by Season 13 Resident Najee Brown.

Beginning with a guided prompt, we ask participants to write, speak, or reflect on what currently breaks their heart. This may be personal, societal, or deeply internal. From there, we transition into the question of joy, not as an escape, but as a necessary counterpart. What sustains us? What keeps us here? What reminds us of possibility?

Following this reflection, Brown will facilitate a creative writing and expression workshop, where participants can transform their thoughts into something tangible—whether that be short monologues, poetic fragments, movement, or visual ideas. The emphasis is not on perfection, but on honesty and presence.

In a time marked by disconnection, isolation, and what many are calling a loneliness epidemic, this residency offering seeks to use creativity as a tool for connection, healing, and dialogue. By creating space for vulnerability and shared experience, participants are invited to see themselves in others, and to remember that they are not alone.

Ultimately, this is not just a workshop. It is a space to feel, to be witnessed, and to reconnect, with self, with others, and with the possibility of joy.
is a Brooklyn-born playwright, director, producer, and multidisciplinary artist whose work centers on social justice, cultural identity, and community-building through storytelling. He serves as Artistic Director of the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the founder of Theater For The People, a New England initiative dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices and creating accessible performance opportunities. His plays—including Stokely & Martin, The Bus Stop, and Nevaeh’s Brother—blend lyrical dialogue, music, and history to explore themes of equity and human connection. A versatile creative, Brown has also worked as a dancer, director, and curator, presenting work nationally and internationally while fostering spaces that inspire dialogue, healing, and social change through the arts.

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