SHARECE SELLEM-HANNAH

Theatre was a form of recovery for me.

 

​I wrote and illustrated my first book in Kindergarten in the late 80s . My teachers were so impressed that they had me read it aloud to the entire school at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Hartford, Connecticut. That was my first experience sharing something I created in front of an audience.

After that, life became much more restrictive. Poverty shaped what felt possible. Being raised in a high-control religious environment limited freedom, imagination, and self-expression. For a long time, creativity didn’t have a place in my life.

I didn’t find theatre until I was 25.

When I did, it gave me something I didn’t realize I needed: release.

In New Haven, Connecticut, Bregamos Community Theater became home. The men and women in that space became a kind of found family. They gave me room to explore, to create, and to rebuild.

Theatre was not just something I enjoyed.
It was medicine.

Creating, performing, and even watching theatre and film became a form of catharsis. It helped me process, understand, and move through experiences that I didn’t yet have language for. It supported my mental health. It supported my physical health. It helped me become more whole.

Through it, I began to change.

I played characters. I created characters. I wrote stories. And in the process, I began writing myself back into my own life.

Today, I create work for stage and screen that reflects that journey. My work often explores public health, addiction and recovery, urban life, American history, found family, trauma, and resilience.

I’m interested in stories that sit in real life — the kind that show how people survive, how they adapt, and how they find their way forward.

That perspective also shapes how I teach and how I engage with others through creative work.

Today, I feel more grounded, healthier, and more whole than I once believed was possible. I credit theatre — and storytelling — for that.

And that is why I continue to create.