“My vision is to use storytelling, arts, and community engagement to shift how addiction and its roots are viewed and should be treated as issues of equity, public health, and social justice.”
Thanks for joining us, Sharice! Your ground-breaking documentary film Silence on the Streets will have its Rhode Island premiere Nov. 6 at URI. For those who have not seen it, can you please briefly summarize it?
“Silence on the Streets” is a 90-minute documentary that examines the impact of the illicit opioid and fentanyl crisis on inner cities in Connecticut. It weaves together personal lived-experience stories and expert insight, highlighting not only addiction but the history of issues that feed into it, including poverty, trauma, recidivism, and racial inequities in access to prevention, treatment, and recovery.
The film is designed as a tool for community education and engagement, prompting conversation rather than passive watching with the aim of bringing a human face to this issue, humanizing the data and motivating action.
Diving deeper into the documentary, tell us about the personal narratives of the inner-city populations it chronicles.
The documentary highlights the lived experience of individuals in inner-city communities around Connecticut who have faced substance-use disorder, experienced the impact of drug trafficking, incarceration, poverty, and recovery.
Insights from professionals in many fields are also featured. Can you elaborate on their respective expertise?
The documentary integrates people who have several different professional and academic areas of expertise, including:
- Addiction and harm-reduction specialists—professionals involved in peer-led organizations, overdose response strategies, harm reduction outreach.
- Trauma and psychology experts—those who help explain how social determinants of health, trauma, stress, and mental health comorbidities often underlie substance use disorders in these communities.
- Law-enforcement / drug-intelligence personnel—agents from the New England High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (NE-HIDTA) and the Connecticut Overdose Response Strategy (CT‑ORS) team contribute insight about the evolution of the drug supply (fentanyl, etc.) in urban settings.
- Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut Vanessa Roberts Avery
- Physicians from Yale Medical School and professors from Yale University
- Educators from New Haven public schools
Where was the documentary filmed?
The documentary was filmed in Connecticut, focusing on inner-city areas such as New Haven, New London, Meriden, Norwich and Hartford.
It was produced on behalf of the Connecticut ORS Team and supported by NEHIDTA, the CDC Foundation, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and other partners.
Where can our readers watch a trailer?
What inspired you to make this film?
My inspiration for making the film comes from both professional and personal experiences:
Having grown up in Hartford and Wethersfield, Connecticut, in a family contending with poverty and having a father who struggled with addiction and incarceration, I have lived the intersecting realities of social determinants, addiction, stigma and recovery.
As a playwright and community health educator, I had previously written a play “Matthew Rising,” a fictional piece about a New Haven inner-city family dealing with opioid crisis issues. That play led to broader conversations with Rob Lawlor and the CT ORS/NEHIDTA team about how to reach larger audiences beyond theatre to educate and mobilize community awareness.
I recognized that many human service organizations, public health, and law-enforcement resources had plenty of data and charts but lacked the human side of the story. This film gives life to the data. It makes the data breathe. It makes it human.
My vision is to use storytelling, arts, and community engagement to shift how addiction and its roots are viewed and should be treated as issues of equity, public health, and social justice. The goal is to continue to spark community dialogue and systemic change.
OK, now to some of your other passions. Start please with your playwrighting. What are your plays?
My recent plays include:
- “Daisies on Harlem’s Doorstep,” Norwich Arts Center, Donald Oat Theater, Norwich, Connecticut, 2020
- “Matthew Rising,” Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, New Haven CT 2020 Vintage Soul Productions in partnership with Clifford Beers Clinic, New Haven, Connecticut, 2020
- “Elder Play, HOME – New Haven Play Project 2019,” Long Wharf Theater, Main Stage, New Haven, Connecticut, 2019
- “Becoming La Baker,” Norwich Arts Center, Donald Oat Theater, Norwich, Connecticut, 2017
- “Legends of the Forgotten Borough,” Bregamos Community Theater, Charter Oak Cultural Center, Atlanta Black Theatre Festival 2014-2016
- “HOPE HIGH, Class of 84’,” Long Wharf Theatre Stage II (Sponsored by Bregamos Community Theater), New Haven, Connecticut, 2013
Please visit www.VintageSoulProductions.com for a more complete list of accomplishments.
In 2019, I won the Dr. Floyd Gaffney Playwriting Award for the Black Experience from University of San Diego, California
You also have championed mental health and wellness in many venues. An overview, please.
For more than 15 years I’ve worked in human services, including case management, outreach, admissions counseling, workforce development, and education. I have used my lived experience and professional roles to shape training, workshops and capacity-building.
I co-founded the company Feel the Future LLC, which does community health coaching and consulting, along with David Hannah. We deliver workshops, speaking engagements, and creative programming on topics such as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), social determinants of health, mental wellness, and healing organizational culture.
My speaking topics include mental health and substance use awareness, stress management, self-care, adulting skills, understanding poverty, arts and advocacy, humanizing data, and more.
My goal is to shift human services culture away from purely reactionary models toward prevention, empowerment, social policy awareness, boundary-setting, and self-awareness—all of which reflect the realities of those I work with.
In trainings, I emphasize that wellness is holistic—mental, physical, social—and shaped by systems, policies, access, culture. This is especially important in marginalized communities that bear disproportionate burdens.
Your childhood deeply influences your work. Please elaborate.
I was raised in Hartford and Wethersfield, Connecticut, in a family experiencing poverty. My father struggled with addiction and incarceration, so I witnessed firsthand how social determinants, including poverty, housing instability, stigma, and systemic barriers shape life trajectories.
Being a first-generation college graduate, navigating challenging systems for people like me, I developed an acute awareness of what is missing in human services, in education, and in access.
My experience taught me that the “helping system” often treats symptoms, but not root causes, so I committed to bringing voice, story, and systemic understanding into advocacy and creative work.
In short, the personal is professional. My story is part of the story, and it helps me connect authentically with people from survival paths, with lived experience, and design programming and art that reflect their realities rather than unrealistic expectations.
The screening of Silence on the Streets is free and open to the public. Doors at Edwards Hall on the Kingston campus open at 4:30 p.m., Nov. 6. Advance registration is recommended. A panel discussion begins the evening. Who besides you will be speaking?
Joining me on the panel will be:
- Robert Lawlor Jr., drug intelligence officer for NEHIDTA / CT ORS
- Donald Rose Sr. (my father), a licensed community health worker in Connecticut who appears in the film and brings lived experience to the discussion
- Dennis Bailer, director of Providence programs for Project Weber/RENEW, a peer-led organization supporting people who use drugs, engage in sex work or are unhoused
- Dan Graney, Dean of Students at URI
- Steven Williamson, planning and programming specialist at the Rhode Island Department of Health and URI adjunct faculty
What’s next for Sharece Sellem-Hannah?
The documentary “Silence on the Streets” is continuing to screen around the United States and is available for free community-screening bookings by organizations.
Another major health crisis that I plan to shed light on is high blood pressure and stroke awareness in Black and Brown communities. Black people are twice as likely to experience a stroke and we are seeing this happen in younger adults (30+). My husband, David Hannah, experienced two strokes at the young age of 41, even though he is physically fit and healthy. He experienced hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke. We created a short 15-minute documentary to educate the community.
My ongoing work with Feel the Future LLC will continue to expand—more capacity-building, creative outreach, speaking engagements, workshops, especially focused on direct support professionals, community health organizations and human service agencies.
On the theatrical side, I will continue writing and producing plays that examine systemic dysfunctions in human services, organizational culture, advocacy and healing. I’m also working on further film and storytelling projects (screenwriting/playwriting) as part of my progress toward earning a master’s degree of fine arts (MFA), exploring the intersection of art, advocacy, wellness, and justice. I’m enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts, Screenwriting & Playwriting program at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
My dream is to work for Hulu and Netflix as a script consultant. I want to ensure that the images we see on a mass scale through entertainment are realistic and less stigmatized such as depictions of poverty etc.
I also love teaching in the Department of Human Services at a community college as an adjunct professor and I’m working toward a career where I can teach arts and advocacy as a tenured track professor.
As for consulting, I plan to build more professional development programming and continue to integrate lived experience, arts-based programming, and social policy content.
Ultimately my mission is to keep elevating voices of vulnerable populations while dismantling stigma, shifting systems, and supporting sustainable change in wellness and recovery.
