Somalia Seaton sees theater everywhere: the guy backing out of a parking spot on the busy street outside her business, the way neighbors gather and in the stories that bubble up in the streets of New York.
“Community is saturated with that magic,” she said. “And it feels so important that at a time where there’s such fear, when we are most fearful as a collective, that we find our way back to the most natural way of existing, which is to be in connection with other human beings.”
Theater, she said, has a unique way of facilitating that. RISE Creative Arts and Wellness Hub, the intergenerational center she founded in her neighborhood, uses the arts to build communication, confidence, play, connection and community.
Its programming spans generations. RISE offers theater clubs for students from pre-K through 12th grade on Saturdays, holidays and after school. Adults can take improvisation classes, known as “the Playground,” and monologue clinics alongside sessions in writing for wellbeing. One program, Cortelyou Speaks, teaches English by improvising everyday scenarios. Together, the creative practices support healing and thriving among immigrant communities and others underrepresented in traditional theater — and those who do not often get many chances to play.
“How do we take care of [women] as they take care of everyone and everything else?” Seaton said. “How do we sustain ourselves? I think a lot about our elders. I think a lot about immigrant elders, where they’re in survival mode and [how] our generations [can] thrive more.”
Forging more community in Brooklyn
The seeds of Seaton’s work in theater and community gathering in the Ditmas Park and Flatbush neighborhoods in Brooklyn were planted years ago in Lewisham in Southeast London. Her mother, a Nigerian immigrant, ran clothing stalls in indoor markets, shuttling between her kids’ schools and wholesale retailers in the Indian and Pakistani community. Today, Seaton and her business are based on a stretch of Coney Island Avenue often called New York City’s Little Pakistan.
Seaton’s early experiences with London’s South Asian community are far from the only parallel with the Brooklyn community hub she founded in June. RISE recently wrapped up its summer theater camp for young children, including her own 4-year-old son. After a whirlwind three weeks, Seaton is reflecting on the intergenerational power of having kids around a business, especially one serving the diasporic community, something both her mother’s and her Jamaican father’s enterprises taught her.
“I’ve grown up around community business and also community organizing, and it’s been kind of the foundation of some of the ways I like to create art and how I like to collaborate,” Seaton said.
She had long been someone who gathered people. In London, Seaton hosted women’s sharing circles at home, bringing together people from different walks of life, while using another space for sharing stories and exchanging ideas in theater. Seaton spent more than 20 years working as an actor, educator and playwright. She continued her theater and film work in the U.K. when she and her husband moved to Brooklyn for his job in late 2019, traveling back and forth while developing work at the National Theatre Studio in London.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and what was to have been a two-year stint turned into a longtime relationship with New York. It wasn’t easy, especially during the lockdown and the period that followed, when Seaton and her husband had to reckon with their lack of established local community. To make it feel like home, she tapped into her skills in gathering groups and making theater. She also began running a writing workshop at the Brooklyn Artery, a gift store and community space, which she saw as a place suited for supporting fellow artists. Later, she began teaching theater in middle school.
Building a multi-use business
Seaton also merged her passions with the needs she saw in the neighborhood. There were lots of young families and a lack of activities designed specifically for toddlers, especially in August, after the traditional summer camp season. So from late summer 2024 and through February 2025, she piloted a Saturday theater program for children, using a former occupational/physical therapy space in Ditmas Park. It was a precursor for the launch of this summer’s RISE camp, a proof of the idea that families would be drawn to programming in which children could be creators instead of passive participants in musical productions.
In May, Seaton was meeting a friend when she saw the “For Rent” sign on the door of what would become RISE.
Despite having no savings set aside as seed money for the business, Seaton reached out to the landlord. Soon she and her husband were acting as co-signers while she launched a GoFundMe with a $10,000 goal. Her strategy: make the summer camp generate enough revenue to cover at least some of the rent while she pursued other funding opportunities. She knew there was a demand: nearby camps were shutting down during the final weeks of August.
Once they signed the lease, the process moved quickly. Seaton saw the vision for a space to not just hold theater programming but to bring wellness activities, gather community and serve as an incubator for artists. Throughout summer camp, the space was also used for a parent association retreat for a local school and activities like a wellness event featuring Qigong, the traditional Chinese exercise regime related to tai chi.
This summer, Seaton juggled multiple roles as founder, CEO and artistic director while also guiding staff through the chaos of working with young children. The kids, who worked on a project themed “A Love Letter to New York,” were also a source of inspiration. An 8-year-old girl who was initially nervous about working with younger children lit up while helping with set design and stage management. The 4-year-olds eventually became her assistants.
“It’s just so beautiful to see how joyous and how proud the kids are of what they create and that they feel ownership of it,” Seaton said.
Seaton’s challenge, now that summer camp is over, is turning this vision, other upcoming partnerships and the fall programming into sources of revenue to keep the organization running.
Growing up in spaces that served multi-generational communities in churches and schools, Seaton has faith in this kind of sustainable model.
“I’ve inadvertently created a version of that here,” Seaton said, describing a sign on the door that reads “We may be little but we’re ‘talawah.’” “That’s the term that is used for Jamaica, which is being small physically, but mighty. And so this space is small, the vision is mighty, is big. The space transforms into different spaces — and for me there’s no space like it.”
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