This is a revolution.
This is a revolution.
Abre Tu Boca: The Concept
Find & Flex the Power of your Voice
through the Written & Spoken Word
Abre Tu Boca is a lab-based project using the language arts to help you find and flex the power of your voice. Workshops and events are centered around written and verbal expression, providing a safe space for you to step more into your vulnerability and courageously express that which you long to say.
Programming is centered around many facets of the language arts — writing, reading aloud, storytelling, performance — enabling you to explore different expressions of your voice and to gain greater access to it. Some offerings are more quiet and solitary and others take place in a group setting.
In solitude, we spend time with our own mental concepts — uncovering and getting to know them by writing into them, and with that awareness, consciously choosing how to craft a story with intention. Many parts of the project ask: what did you intend to say, or what wanted to be expressed, and did you actually say it? And then I offer tools from my own experience as a writer, artist, and human to help you capture your inner voice on paper, in form. This interpersonal space is explored in every prompted writing and particularly in Writing Journeys. Every time pen hits paper, this space is created; it is always the starting point.
Bit my bit, the project takes you through many levels of your journey in empowered self expression. Moving outward from this most intimate of spaces — inner voice with self, or you and the page — we then move to the Writing Circle. Here, we share our writing — and voice — in a small group which gathers regularly.
During a circle, you share your prompted writing to receive feedback so you can continue developing your piece and move deeper into the unique expression of your voice. Feedback during circles helps you identify your own particular writing style and to refine your techniques. All circles are led by either myself or a trained Abre Tu Boca faciliator, using my particular method and lexicon, which makes writing accessible to everyone, whether they have previously written or not.
Abre Tu Boca programming makes the inner voice even more accessible through writing experiments and word play in offerings like Writing Safaris, The Hemming Way, Circle Mixto, and during other workshops and happenings.
All offerings help prepare for public performance during an Abre Tu Boca unmiked open stage. The open stage is the final arena in the project for speaking up, speaking out, and speaking loud. Here, you can express in any way you want, by reading personal works of poetry or prose, by reading something that inspires you, through recitation, rap, song, spoken word, diatribe, monologue, stand-up, spontaneous storytelling – either in your own language or in a language you are stretching to learn to speak.
The idea is that we train on bigger and bigger stages so that, ultimately, the real world, itself, becomes the safe space for the inner voice to live freely.
The project is currently at home in Todos Santos, BCS, México but has previously traveled by invitation, to Colombia and the Dominican Republic and will be on the move again. Please contact me if you would like to host Abre Tu Boca in your town.
Community
The project home is in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, México, with in-person programming for 8 months each year.
Online sessions are also offered to support a growing worldwide community.
The project travels by invitation and has previously appeared in Colombia and the Dominican Republic
Languages
Programming is offered in both English and Spanish, with participants writing, reading, and interacting in a mix of the two languages. Therefore, language and cultural exchange are also integral to the project.
Abre Tu Boca Founder, Amanda Aileen Fisher
Writer & Interdisciplinary Social Practice Artist
BA in English & Creative Writing with extensive studies in Studio Art
My Journey into and through the Writing
I think all of my writing is about how to find – and come back to – the true parts of me. It is all a return to self. And every circle back is its own discovery. Every time there is a parsing out, an attempt to understand which parts are me and which are someone else. Which words – voice – is my own. Which identity, desire, direction.
At times in my life, I have lost myself completely and then something has startled me awake. And then there is the very slow, very pained, crawling out. Other times, I have been able to stay perceptive, vigilant, and course-correct, like a bat using sonar to fly straight. However it has gone, writing has always guided me because it is where I always find myself. It is my way of coming home.