“The difficulties, hardships and trials of life, the obstacles … are positive blessings. They knit the muscles more firmly, and teach self-reliance.”
–William Matthews

Our youth today are faced with so many pressures, worry, anxiety, and doubt, and we wonder why they be “Stress-N”; teen sex, cultural assimilation, gender role definitions, financial and academic pressures from family members, overcoming childhood abuse, and the dead beat baby daddy syndrome are just some of the stresses youth experience on the regular, and, which are openly and honestly explored through the personal accounts and testimonies of the Elevated Grounds youth.

Stress-N reflects the full spectrum of the roots of stress for young people and the multitude of ways these stresses impact their lives on a day to day basis. Audiences will be pulled into the adolescent cipher of individual voices reflecting a collective experience; through song, dance, dub-poetry, spoken-word and rap; the audience will witness the rage, the release, and the reclamation of self and spirit, which Stress-N brings.

The rhythm of this theatrical work is one with a goal to move the characters most affected by stress from destruction to construction; from what hurts to what can heal; from conflict to resolution.

We all struggle with stresses, and in fact many will argue that stress has become an acceptable part of living life in this society. For young people though, it is killing them softly, because while we may acknowledge stress exists; we seem to ignore the signs when it begins affecting our youth. Stress-N does not profess to have the cures for all that ails you, but the revelations channelled through the plays characters, will undoubtedly reflect some of your own stresses both past and present, and provide you with a life line for making wiser choices, and maintaining a balance of mind, body, and spirit in everything you pursue in life.