About Tangles In Time
Building Empathy Through the Arts.
Tangles in Time is the culmination of Building Empathy Through the Arts, a two-year collaborative project between Jefferson, ARTZ Philadelphia and Theater of Witness of CultureTrust Greater Philadelphia.
Support for Building Empathy Through the Arts has been provided to Thomas Jefferson University by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
About Tangles In Time
Tangles in Time is an original Theater of Witness performance created and performed by people living with dementia, care partners and health professionals. Based on the performers’ own true stories of love, loss, illness and caring, the production weaves together live performance with original music, film
Since 1986, Sepinuck has directed more than thirty five original productions with people living through traumatic circumstances in Philadelphia, Poland
About HeART Stories
Before joining the cast of Tangles in Time, some participants took part in a program called HeART Stories.
Through HeART Stories, members of the Philadelphia community living with dementia and their care partners became mentors to Jefferson health professions students during a ten-session program. Over two academic years, fifty-six Jefferson students and twenty-nine community mentors participated in the program, which was co-facilitated by ARTZ Philadelphia and Theater of Witness with support from Thomas Jefferson University.
Sessions included art museum visits, one-on-one mentor-student conversations and group debriefing led by ARTZ Philadelphia founder and executive director Susan Shifrin and Flo Gelo, associate professor of Family, Community & Preventative Medicine at Drexel University. Subsequent sessions, led by Teya Sepinuck of Theater of Witness, guided students through reflection on the program experience and its connections to their own life stories.
