Raising Ancestors’
Conscious Caregiving
2025 Workshop Series
Presents
Enough, Free
A Somatic Solo Performance by
Robyn DeGuzman
Followed by Courageous Conversation Facilitated by Raising Ancestors
Enough, Free was most recently featured at the 2024 Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) Conference in Atlanta, GA and the 2025 AAPA - Division on Filipinx Americans Conference at UC Davis. This unique piece, performed by a professional Filipinx Broadway actor/singer/dancer, allows a somatic response and alchemization of generational trauma that cannot always be accessed through psychotherapy, and creates a healing space for reflection and dialogue by making Filipinx audience members in the diaspora feel seen and understood. By bringing these stories to the forefront, one realizes that their experiences and healing absolutely matters. In community, the healing birthed from a shared experience of witnessing powerful art is magnified.
Abstract:
Enough, Free unearths generational trauma, beginning with the colonization of the Philippines and perpetuated by two immense waves of migration as a source of English-speaking, skilled labor by the United States. It depicts traumatic, ancestral history, using dance, song, drama, and personal narrative, eliciting somatic responses in a collective container. The artist invites the audience into a space of radical imagination, liberation, and healing. The art forms will pose such questions as:
How might we unconsciously say no to the secret hopes and dreams that live in our hearts?
How might organized religions, such as Catholicism, play roles in oppression and/or liberation? How might we doubt or minimize our personal gifts and talents?
How might our world be more just, beautiful, and inclusive if we fully and joyfully embodied our gifts?
The artist’s solo performance invokes millennial childhood experiences through Catholic hymns that are familiar to many Filipinxs, a precolonial ancestor who expresses concern that he hears Spanish colonizers causing harm to people who dare to question Christianity, a young character being berated by her immigrant mother for her bad grades and love of MTV, and a Philippine delegate to the 2013 United Nations Framework on Climate Change in Geneva who breaks down when describing the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan to the consortium. After the brief performance, a dialogue will be facilitated, offering a brave space to explore somatic and cognitive reactions.
Rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American community, Enough, Free pays homage to nomadic Filipino farmworkers, low-income Chinese and Filipino seniors who were evicted from San Francisco’s International Hotel, and those displaced and affected by the polluted air of Highway 4’s construction during so-called urban redevelopment in the 1960s. The art piece serves those who are seeking healing, to examine deep-rooted feelings of not being enough or not being capable to meet the demands of surviving and thriving in the New World.
Robyn DeGuzman’s Bio:
Robyn (she/her) is a proud community college transfer student to UC Irvine, where she majored in Dance and subsequently began a professional musical theatre career in New York City. Robyn toured the country with the Broadway musicals Beauty and the Beast (Assistant Dance Captain), the First National Tour of Elf!, and Miss Saigon. Her New York credits include the musicals Hello, Dolly! and Oliver! with National Asian Artists Project, Taylor Mac's 24 Decade History of Popular Music at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, holding an adjunct professor position on the Fine and Performing Arts faculty at Marymount Manhattan College, and the development of Baayork Lee's after school musical theatre program at The Yung Wing School, a public elementary school in Manhattan's Chinatown.
After obtaining a Master of Public Health degree from California State University, Northridge, Robyn began a public health career in Stockton, CA, where she collaborated with Little Manila Rising on the implementation of air quality Assembly Bill 617 and offered a free, evidence-based tai chi series online during the pandemic as a constituent of the San Joaquin County public health department.
Today, Robyn continues her devotion to empowering and healing arts as a mother, dance and tai chi teacher, Pinay collaborator extraordinaire, and solo performance artist.
When: Wednesday 9/10 at 5:30-7:00
Who: All Generations
Cost: $10 suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds
Follow: @robyndeguzmanofficial
Space is limited. Please register below.