Amy Erickson
Amy Erickson grew up near Detroit in the ’60s in a family of singers. This, along with the music of Motown and Burt Bacharach blaring on her kitchen radio, helped her learn to sing by ear. She also loved to dance and started working at age 13 to take jazz dance lessons. These, combined with her introduction to musical theatre as a child, nurtured Amy’s love of performing onstage. But in her 20s, the singing and dancing stopped due to her unprocessed, early childhood trauma. Her physical and emotional pain kept her shut down. Then, in her 40s, she found the courage to perform in a musical theatre production and rediscovered the vitality she felt in her youth. This proved to be the first step of healing from PTSD. Today, as the documentary film director of Visceral: transforming trauma through theatre, Amy is realizing her life’s purpose and flow. In 2017 she received a WA state Artist Trust Grant for Artists’ Projects for Visceral. Through her film’s outreach, she will encourage others to pursue transformative expressive–arts experiences and continue her work as a trauma-informed, social-change artist.
Artist Support Program 2018: Audio production for Visceral, a documentary film telling the stories of four people who are living with the impact of post-traumatic stress and begin to transform their physical and mental health with the tools of acting.
