ACTS OF CARE

Acts of Care is a pilot Healing Arts Program at Maimonides Health, bringing caregiving stories to the stage! Facilitated Elevate Storytelling workshops will guide clinical and non-clinical staff to reflect, connect, share the real stories of caring for others, give a voice to our challenges and celebrate our resilience.

No Acting or special skills required for caregivers.

An Elevate playwright, observing the workshops, will craft a unique short play inspired by the stories shared - created and performed FOR Maimonides caregivers by professional Elevate creatives.

Meet the Team

Aubrey Mann (She/Her) is a community-driven artist and administrator based in Brooklyn. Her work and life center around fostering love and connection through theatre and community building. She recently completed her master’s degree in Performing Arts Administration at NYU. Her culminating project, “Cultivating Connection: The Art of Audience Care in Non-Profit Theatre Organizations”, explored how theatre companies can foster engagement and connection with communities in a thoughtful, long-term way through a care lens. Her current projects continue that care and connection: Exploring artists’ relationships to third spaces, young school-age children’s ideas and thoughts of the future, People’s connections to NYC, how we can use movement and community to work through anger, and an ongoing larger project about Food and Community in the US. As a queer woman in the US, it is important to her that care is the foundation of not only her theatrical work but also her activism, everyday life, and relationships. (www.aubreymann.com)

Kareem M. Lucas is a writer, performer, director, and educator who treats storytelling as a vital form of communal care. His work, lauded as "visceral, mythic, and rhythmic," deliberately creates space to explore the health and well-being of the Black community. By centering intimate, raw, and complex narratives, he interrogates the societal factors, from institutional racism to personal trauma, that impact our lives.

His powerful solo shows and multi-character plays have been developed at the nation’s leading theatrical institutions, including The Public Theater, The Apollo, New York Theatre Workshop, and American Repertory Theater. As a writer, Kareem’s purpose is to rupture the silences that surround our most difficult conversations, transforming the stage into a site for ritual, resistance, and healing. He is a NY Emmy-nominated filmmaker, an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop. He has held residencies with The Public Theater, NYTW, Pipeline, Page 73, Kickstarter, NACL, SPACE at Ryder Farm, Hi-Arts, and others. As an educator, Kareem has taught and directed across NYC at NYU Grad Acting, Pace University, Barnard College, MCC Theater, The Classical Theatre of Harlem,The 52nd Street Project, LS Acting Studios, among others. MFA: NYU Grad Acting.

Jono Waldman is a composer, musician, performer, theatre maker, and educator living in New York City. Recent works include Jono Songs, a children’s music video project, The World Inside Me, an interactive musical for the very young (national tour, New Victory Theater), and original music for Milk and Gall (Project W Theatre Festival, Corkscrew Festival, Theater 503 on the West End) and A Play About David Mamet Writing A Play About Harvey Weinstein (Playwright Horizons, Berkley Repertory). Jono has toured internationally with his traditional jazz ensemble, 5000 Jazz Assassins, and fronted multiple bands.

As an educator, Jono teaches theatre and music to children and adults across the globe, representing many organizations, including The Juilliard School, The New Victory Theater, Park Avenue Armory, BAM, Wingspan Arts, and Urban Stages. He holds a Masters in Education from The City College of New York and a Bachelors in Science from Northwestern University. He is the proud husband of Melissa, an accomplished doctor and musician, and father to Tula and Tevi, two mischievous, big-eyed adventures.

Ana Cantorán is a NYC based, Mexican Theatre Artist. She is an actress, director, mover, visual poet, singer, collaborator, teaching artist, space holder and passionate theatre creator. She has toured her original works worldwide throughout North and Central America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Her devised works have been selected by Singapore fringe festival, New Victory Theater LabWorks, Barn Arts Collective, The Quarry: Contemporary Arts International, Up close Festival United Solo, Poetic License Festival, Itinerant Performance Festival, Saint Louis fringe festival, Festival of the Death Miquixtli, Teatro en la Alacena, 11th and 12th Festival International du Théâtre Universitaire d’Agadir Maroc, and featured by The Tank, Dixon Place, IRT Theater, and more.

She has participated in national and international theater conferences as a presenter and researcher such as Directors in TYA International exchange in Hamburg Germany, 2025. 21st ASSITEJ World Congress and Performing Arts Festival for Children & Young People in Habana, Cuba, 2023. TYA USA festival and conference in Atlanta Georgia 2023 and TYA USA festival and Conference in Tempe Arizona 2022.

Ana holds a BFA in Dramatic Arts by BUAP, Puebla, Mexico and an MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance by Naropa University, Boulder CO.

Interested in a pilot program at your healthcare facility? Please email us at: info@elevatetheatrecompany.com