Daylon de Alva is a teaching artist & performer with Imagine: Brave Spaces, a 2024 recipient of the Prebys Foundation’s Healing Through the Arts & Nature grant.
This grant supports nonprofit organizations that serve youth, veterans, justice-impacted individuals, and historically underserved communities. Through innovative approaches, these organizations provide meaningful opportunities to enhance well-being and quality of life in a post-pandemic world.
Daylon’s Story
“Theater of the oppressed is a form of theater that is used to give voice to and engage communities that are usually marginalized or underserved.
In this instance, this is Zion’s Story, an arts-based human trafficking prevention program, and it follows a fictionalized story of a girl named Zion, which is based on real survivors of trafficking. This format is called Forum Theater. We perform the story and then we open it up to the forum of the audience members — usually, the demographic for whom the story is about.
The first part is the performance of the story, what happened to Zion, how she became vulnerable and ultimately manipulated and trafficked. And then the latter two-thirds of the show is giving the story back to the audience and asking them questions about it. How was it for you? What did you see? How do you feel about it? And then inviting them up to intervene on behalf of Zion and therefore on behalf of their peers and on behalf of survivors of trafficking and being able to change the story so that Zion doesn’t end up being trafficked.
It’s really, really powerful being able to give the students actual experience and implementing what they’re learning so that they can practice keeping themselves and their peers safe from these real threats. We’re hoping to give them the tools to identify and intervene in these situations, to recognize the signs of human trafficking and to act and seek help and to be there for themselves and for each other.
At the core of what we do here at Imagine is giving social and emotional tools back to our community, because we find that they’re really lacking right now. Students are learning social and emotional ways of well-being, which is, I think it’s the core of keeping everyone safe. If we’re all able to be present with each other, talk to each other, check in with each other in really authentic ways — letting go of some of the pain or the prejudice or the fear that we see in each other — then the things that happened to Zion wouldn’t happen.
We’re giving students the tools to be in community with each other.
Zion didn’t have someone there for them. And so, we’re constantly checking in with the students saying, “what could they have done to be in community? What could their friends and loved ones have done to bring them back into their community, so they’re not feeling so hurt or alone or scared?”
I’ve always been very sensitive and expressive. And I think we all have a calling to be heard, felt, and seen. It’s one of the core messages in Zion’s Story. A lot of what we experience in school is conflict, bumping into each other, bullying, pain, trying to learn how to be social and navigate social dynamics and hierarchies. And it’s messy and painful. And for someone like me, who wanted to be really expressive, it wasn’t a really good space.
But I’ve always known that I was an artist of some sort or another. And so, one of the things that I got into when I was little was theater. I did theater for a number of years and I enjoyed it until I went to a theater camp for a summer program and I embarrassed myself on the first day and I was so full of anxiety that I didn’t return to theater for a very, very long time.
I went back to my visual arts roots, kind of isolated myself in that. So, when I went to school originally, it was for visual arts, studio arts. And then I transferred to City College to do graphic design, and then that just wasn’t fulfilling me in the same way. And so, I dropped out of school for a semester, and I rediscovered my desire to be around expressive and sensitive people. And I knew that theater was definitely a route for me to be in community with those kinds of people. And so, I took a step to get back into it and I spent another two years in community college, getting my associates of theater and liberal arts. And then I transferred to UCSD. And while I was at UCSD, I met a lot of incredible people, including Catherine from Imagine.
Imagine sent out an email looking for apprentices, and I applied, and we had an incredible conversation when we met in person for the first time and the rest is history.
My favorite part is connecting with the students. One of the core messages in Zion’s Story is that she just wanted to be seen. And that’s so true, especially for kids in middle school and high school, as they’re really trying to grapple with who they are as they’re going through all these changes. But I think it’s true for everyone.
And so, when I get to spend time working with students, especially one-on-one, giving them my full attention and listening to them and hearing them and validating their thoughts, they just blossom.
Students of every age group and every demographic, whenever you’re able to give them that attention and see them as they want to be seen, everything else falls away for a moment— all the fronting and pretending, the masks that they try to put on. When they’re seen, there’s an ease comes over them. Every student deserves that attention.
The arts are an extension of ourselves, and it’s a vulnerable process. As you engage creatively, you’re getting to know yourself more and more deeply. So, it’s spiritual in that way. And so, as you’re getting to know your own spirit, your own self, your own ego, your own soul, you’re refining your process of expressing your spirit, your person and sharing it vulnerably to the world. It’s inherently connecting and healing. Spirituality, for me, is the understanding of the deep interconnectedness of our collective humanity and all things that surround us.
As we bring these programs to schools and see these students for who they are and encourage them to bring those beautiful parts of themselves that we see out in these expressive ways, it’s interconnecting. And it’s building that community that keeps us all safe and sacred and healthy and happy and just free.
What we are aiming for at Imagine is to help kids to develop the skills and confidence to express themselves authentically and to build empathy and compassion for others as well.
I just want to express gratitude to Imagine Brave Spaces for taking me on this journey with them. They have shown me a lot of grace as I’ve learned how to express my own soul and how to bare it and present it. It is not perfect. I’m not a perfect person. It’s been a lot of learning moments for myself, and they have been so gracious from my time as an apprentice to a teaching artist, to a performer. They really helped me to learn how to show up in an authentic way, but also in a responsible and grounded way, and how to share that experience with others.”
This profile is a feature for People de San Diego, a storytelling project by the Prebys Foundation highlighting valuable community members of San Diego County.
