This weekend, don’t miss this documentary portrait of HB Studio as a living refuge for actors, created by current HB student Sara Velasco.
Screening: While We Are Here: When Theatre Becomes Refuge
Sunday, January 18 at 7:30pm
HB Playwrights Theatre | 124 Bank Street, NY
Free
While We Are Here: When Theatre Becomes Refuge is a love letter to the HB Studio community and to the path of the actor—fragile, uncertain, and deeply collective. The film brings together voices from across the HB community—artists, teachers, and staff from many parts of the world—each carrying their own story, their own path, and their own reasons for being here, while sharing a common commitment to the work.
Created by Sara Velasco, an actress and filmmaker currently studying at HB Studio as a Fulbright grantee, the documentary emerges from her experience living in New York City and discovering HB Studio as an oasis—a place of calm and silence in contrast to the constant noise outside. Inside its walls, time slows down. There is space for listening, shared work, and human connection.
Rather than competition, the film observes a community built around training, questioning, and continuing forward together. Through interviews, classroom moments, and carefully shaped scenes, While We Are Here offers a collective portrait of HB Studio as it exists today—honoring its legacy while reflecting on why this space continues to matter.
This first public screening invites the HB community and friends of the studio to gather, reflect, and experience this portrait of theatre as refuge.