I joined Covenant House’s 2023 Sleep Out: Stage & Screen, and it was an incredibly meaningful experience. In fact, I’m getting ready to do it all again on Aug. 18.
As a born and raised New Yorker, I’d been aware of Covenant House’s mission since I was a child. I remember riding in the car with my mom along 10th Avenue, past their building in Hell’s Kitchen, on the edge of the Theater District. Looking up, I noticed the iconic image of the dove taking flight from an open palm, painted on the side of the building and asked my mom, “What is that?”
Eventually, I learned that building was Covenant House, an organization that serves young people experiencing homelessness and trafficking. They offer youth a safe place to sleep, good food, medical and mental health care, plus a way forward, with education, job readiness and career support to help them realize their dreams.
So I recognized the name when some of my theater friends began participating in the organization’s Sleep Out: Stage & Screen. A sleep out is an event where comfortably housed people agree to sleep one night on the sidewalk in solidarity with young people facing homelessness and to raise funds for Covenant House’s programs and services; the stage and screen edition (first known as the Broadway edition) was created just for our industry as a way to rally around our Midtown neighbors. For years, I saw my friends’ social media posts and donated, but that was as far as I went.
Until… Actor Rachel Brosnahan and I were in a play together, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.” Rachel, who is a Covenant House board member, invited the cast and crew to join her to sleep on the cement last August. (She has done this 11 times!) I immediately volunteered and joined her “team.” Because I’d known of Covenant House all my life, I was eager to throw some energy into what was clearly such a good cause.
We amassed an incredible crew of folks last year — some came as individuals, others with their own teams. It was wonderful to see so many people from different pockets of our community participating. There were stage and screen actors, crew and all the people who make our industry thrive, including casting directors, producers, agents and managers. This year, I hear there’ll be a new team of Broadway photographers, and one from the new “Once Upon a Mattress” revival.
Sleep Out gives us another way to be in community for a cause and physically engage in being present, holding witness. A small yet significant gesture of solidarity. The evening’s program began with an opportunity to get to know and hear from some of the young people receiving the many services Covenant House provides. It was a privilege to get to hear their stories and learn from them.
Leading up to the event I was excited, but could not escape the inevitable flurry of questions. Would I sleep at all? Would I be awake and on alert all night? It was a mix of both. I remember feeling overwhelmed by sounds, which was wild given the fact that I’ve spent my entire life in New York City. I’ve been out (more times than I would like to admit) into the wee hours, but the sensory experience was still a shock. It’s not just the traffic noises, garbage trucks or people shouting in the distance but also the unexpected elements, like a flock of seagulls confoundingly screeching overhead.
That restless collage of sounds really drove home how uncomfortable, exposed and vulnerable people are when they’re unhoused.
Sleep Out gave me a tiny glimpse of the impossibility of what someone experiences when they have no place to call home. How daunting it would be just trying to survive day to day. What a mountain it would be to climb for a young person to find a job when they’ve been forced to sleep on the street. And then to hold down a job with little to no sleep night after night?
So, yes, I’ll do it again, with gratitude. When you have a safe place to sleep, giving up your bed for one night is a small sacrifice. It’s a symbolic gesture, but when coupled with the very practical matter of raising money to support young people through a difficult moment in their lives, and doing that in the company of your beloved stage and screen community, it can be a very powerful one.
Miriam Silverman is a Tony Award-winning actor and an adjunct teacher at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
