I’m Sabrina Richmond, an embodiment educator, dramaturg, writer-performer. A Zambian-South African coming from a long line of migratory people so consider myself a Professional Immigrant experienced in shapeshifting across contexts.
I continue to dare to live life with my African sense of being open to people and continue to celebrate the positive aspects of my culture’s innate practice of building the collective ecosystem. A multidisciplinary artist familiar with failure – I grew up with anti-apartheid verbatim theatre, later trained as an actor in New York, have an undergraduate in journalism and postgrad in Media Theory & Practice. I worked in magazine publishing and for an NGO formed in the wake of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
I have written and directed for stage and am a passionate dramaturg and educator. My own actor training led me down the path of somatic movement which is a big part of my practice across disciplines. I am devoted to the right to all forms of pleasure and its role as activism.

I have spent a lot of my creative journey in the UK with numerous programs supporting my journey; Tamasha Theatre Playwright alumni. BBC London Voices program 2021. Boris Karloff Trainee Assistant Director Programme 2021, supported by the Boris Karloff Foundation. North Wall Directing residencies.

Why healing? As Rumi said ‘what you seek is seeking you.’  My life experiences opened that doorway. When I was 16, South Africa went through a collective process attempting to address the wounds of its violent past in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Not sure how much healing happened and certainly it was not an embodied process. It left a lasting desire in me to understand how to navigate the tightrope between the effects of how racism manifests in the body individually as we continually seek justice and peace especially collectively and what the body requires to heal and stay grounded whilst facing it ongoing. Can there be true collective healing in the absence of justice and peace. The work continues.

Between the ages of 11 and 14, I experienced abuse – sexual, physical, emotional in places that should have been safe including school and in the care of a spiritual guide so I am well acquainted with the darker side of humanity. I realised in my late teens that talk therapy had a gaping hole in its approach because it did not in any way prepare me to understand the responses my body held long after the events. It did not prepare me for how these experiences would impact relationships, friendships and work life. It has taken decades to find body safety, with simple movements (simple but not easy) and I am grateful for the teachers who came along to light the way. 

The kind of abuse I experienced is one marker of what they now call Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) - based on a longitudinal study to understand how such experiences impact health outcomes, the biology of trauma. It is also being used to train healthcare practitioners in trauma-informed care. Many of us are still waiting for that to become practice. But it has at least given a framework to me personally in understanding the chronic pain condition I have worked 15 years to dissolve from my body. That it didn’t just come from nowhere or as countless healthcare practitioners tried to label that it was manufactured in my mind alone.

collective soul is borne of all my life experiences (harmful and helpful) up until very recently including a job as an educator - I simply adored the work but quickly discovered that my embodied practice was perceived as weak, indulgent and a threat to good leadership. But the more important truth cementing from this was what I already knew -  the deep comfort I felt in daring to stand for an embodied world starting with my corner, interactions, communications. It takes leadership to do that. Especially amid the total destruction of narcissistic abuse in the workplace. It was painful and difficult because I felt purpose in educating and well one never messes with livelihood. Though messy, it remains true that a toxic space will always cost a lot more than livelihood. I’ve paid for a lot of people’s disembodied selves and this time I was not a little girl. This time I was old enough to protect the girl inside. The work of loving myself over decades, releasing the past and support of my love made it possible to walk away. And with some distance I can really see how my life experiences made me vulnerable in that space.

My greatest love affair – with my own body - begun to take shape perhaps two decades ago through the very discounted yoga classes a beautiful woman called Janetta gave in my then work building after work. I am also in gratitude to my voice and movement teacher Elissa who encouraged me to write my own voice and body story, introduced me to the somatics in a few short sessions and though she didn’t name it, the experience of the work with her has been the foundation of deepening my healing and hunger for living embodied.

My Mum (who gave me the world through travel, music, literature, photography & food) once told me that I was a kid who liked to laugh. I recognised as a travelled through life so far that it has remained true. I have always been seeking light and wanting to share it because of the great violence I have experienced and witnessed. 

You see ‘I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.’ Because ‘Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.’ — Audre Lorde

My work is to facilitate your embodiment journey with everything I have learned about the body over the years from movement training as an actor (and ongoing yoga anatomy learning plus rebuilding through chronic illness), performing on stage and preparing performers to become embodied in their work and life. May the way be open.

Image credits ©: Kim Hardy, Kjetil Østnor, Sabrina Richmond