Shawn Rawls

For many years, I didn’t think of my choreography as being about mental health. I thought I was simply making work about human experiences—relationships, identity, conflict, vulnerability. But over time, I started noticing a pattern.

Every company has an official starting point. For Emotions Physical Theatre, that moment came in 2013 when we created and presented our first full production. But the deeper origin of the company came from something much more personal. At the time, my wife was going through one of the most difficult periods of her life. She had already survived cancer once, and then it returned. She was facing surgeries, chemotherapy, and the uncertainty of what her body would be capable of afterward. There...

Emotions Physical Theatre didn’t begin as a brand or a business plan. It began as a need. As a teenager, I knew I wanted to choreograph. I wanted to make work. I wanted a company. But what I didn’t yet understand was why . Now, more than a decade later—thirteen seasons in—I can see that the work was never really about ambition. It was about finding stability, understanding, and a way to stay connected to myself and to other people. I’m forty-one now, living a version of the life my younger...