A Promise We Keep Showing Up For: Health, Healing, and the Power of Youth-Led Community at the People’s Theatre Academy

By Leticia Cortes Ortiz

When I first began working with young people at the People’s Theatre Academy, I thought I was entering a space rooted primarily in artistic expression. What I found instead was a laboratory for health equity, one where young people wrestle with what it means to be whole, to be seen, and to be responsible for one another. The Academy serves middle and high school students, primarily youth of color from immigrant and working-class families. We meet weekly on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5–7 p.m., but my day starts much earlier. As the Youth & Family Advocate, I arrive by 3:30 p.m. to open the studios, greet students as they trickle in after school, and hold space for whatever they’re carrying with them that day - exhaustion, excitement, grief, etc.
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It is easy to forget that health is not simply a matter of hospitals and diagnoses. Health is social. Health is political. Health is relational. Health is about the conditions that either deny or affirm human dignity. Health is about whether our systems allow young people to flourish - not as statistics or outcomes, but as full persons in community with others.

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