About Me
My name is Shawn Rawls
I am a creative and a trauma survivor
Hello, my name is Shawn Rawls and I am the artistic director of Emotions Physical Theatre a company whose mission is to use stories to inspire empathy. I also started the black boy healing project a series of workshops, performances, media, and open discussions that center around bringing awareness to the challenges black boys and men face and creating spaces for black men and boys to pursue the healing process.
I am also an artist who has suffered a tremendous amount of trauma and has spent many years in therapy--my life’s mission is to use the arts as a catalyst for healing for myself and others.
However, I am not a licensed therapist. I am a dancer, teacher, rape survivor, and choreographer who has spent many years in deep therapy. Because of this, I believe I have a unique perspective on how dance can and should be used. I have noticed a link between therapy and dance in my time in treatment. I believe more black men and boys can benefit from the therapeutic benefits of a dance community focused on healing.
Dance and early life
Around the age of 12, I saw the movie “Beat Street”. At that very moment, I knew I loved movement. Much of my childhood was me watching Jackie Chan, Golden Harvest, and the Shaw brother kung fu movies. In 10th grade, I was lucky enough to be accepted at the Cleveland School of the Arts where I eventually found dance. I was around the age of 16. I started in this program called Y.A.R.D. which was originally an all-boys (most black boys) dance group. At the time I didn’t understand how rare and needed a program like that was. Dance came at a difficult time in my life when I was trying to figure out who I was. I think the journey to self-discovery is a never-ending one. We use movement to learn how to communicate, tell stories, and discover new parts of ourselves all in a dance class. We explored and trained in this all as a community. At the time it was the closest thing I found to therapy. In what I now know as mind-body connection and personal narrative building.
But I would soon come to have a complicated relationship with dance. The summer of my 10 grade year I met my second dance teacher Terence Greene. My time with dance began to shift. I got to see more of the beauty of dance but I also began to experience how dance can be toxic and abusive. Greene was verbally, emotionally, mentally, and sexually abusive. In 2023 he was convicted of several sexual crimes involving minors. Greene was sentenced to 402 years in prison.
All of these life experiences led me to create the black boy healing project.
