feature: come be awakened – my sanctuary for female artists in los angeles

Ever since I was young I always wanted to create. I wanted to make a difference in the world, even at the age of thirteen when I built my school dance team from the ground up. I always felt a calling and I was making a difference for all the young girls that wanted to belong to something, wanted to be part of a home. I never would have thought or knew that vision would manifest into something else years later.

By Abby Wake, AFROPUNK Contributor

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Being an artist was also sacred to me. I wanted to dance alongside Beyonce, or act alongside Meryl Streep and moving to Los Angeles, at the age of seventeen all my dreams were going to come true. Ten years have flown by living in Los Angeles and within the last year I decided to stop pursuing acting because I had discovered my life purpose.

To start from the beginning and share everything I have been through may bore you so that is why I am speeding the time up a little bit. To make a long story short, I booked jobs, I went on hundreds of auditions, but still wasn’t satisfied, I was completely and utterly unhappy. I was unhappy because I realized I wanted more, not that being a actor/dancer is less than amazing because it is truly a dream and gift that not everyone can do and succeed, but happiness, true happiness is what I was lacking.

I went back to my thirteen year old self with the need to create. I sat down and started to search skin deep in my fears and insecurities of being a woman in the industry and why I was unhappy. Being raised by a single mom in Kansas I discovered I was unhappy because I was lacking a sense of home, a sense of safety which was making it difficult for me to believe in myself and why I was pursuing the “acting world.” I started to communicate with my close female friends and they felt the same way. I then said to myself “Most of us that live in Los Angeles are transplants from other places that lack a sense of home, community, safety, and that is what I felt I  longed for in Los Angeles, I should build a home.” The home I built is AWAKE.

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AWAKE is a sanctuary for female artists to come express themselves honestly through their art. The mission is for women to have a place to come and share, support, inspire, and empower bringing light and consciousness to the need of female expression. This voice is projected through poetry, comedy, dance, spoken word, and more. 

I had discovered my purpose, the need, and happiness I had been longing for. I started AWAKE because I always wished I had a home to feel safe in my art in Los Angeles. The vision is to open my own space embodied with workshops, classes, events, and performances for women to come together through their creativity, insecurities, fear, and know they have a home to share their true selves. When artists, audience members leave AWAKE, I want them to feel warm, inspired, and awakened by the experience they have shared with these extraordinary women.

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AWAKE is unique because it cherishes the female artist giving them hope in such a crazy city, and knowing that a sisterhood is true and available even though we tell ourselves it doesn’t exist. AWAKE is the home that is needed for women to feel alive and worthy in Los Angeles. AWAKE is honest and a true passion of mine that I am honored to be the leader/mother hen of. My greatest joy is booking artists and seeing them grace the stage everyThursday at The Raven Playhouse. I always end my emails with my friends with “I hope all of your dreams are coming true.” Mine truly did. Come be Awakened.

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Abby Wake
#beawake
awakemovement.wordpress.com
@awakemovement

All Photos Credited to Grant Palmer Photography