Life as a Stage: Rewrite Your Own Script | Jinhan He | TEDxSWFLA Youth

What if we stopped letting society write our roles for us?

In this talk, Jinhan He explores how theater can become a tool for understanding ourselves, challenging expectations, and creating new possibilities in life. Drawing from her own journey in theater education and her experiences working with young people, she reflects on self-awareness, personal agency, and the courage to take action when the path ahead is uncertain.

Through stories from her work, Jinhan shows how theater can help people break free from fixed labels, express emotions, challenge gender expectations, and discover different dimensions of themselves. Ultimately, she invites us to see life as a stage—not one with a predetermined script, but one where we can choose our roles, create new possibilities, and write our own stories. Jinhan He is the Founder of Uni and Shanghai Uni You Ni You Qi Culture Media, the East China Regional Director of Beijing Guanglu Culture Communication, and Co-Founder of Shenghuo Shiguang. She is a youth theater playwright and director, theater education instructor, brand strategist, and curator.

Jinhan is a Global Shapers Shanghai I Hub Curator with the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community, a member of One Earth Shapers in Hong Kong and Beijing, and a Facilitator for the SDGs Movers program under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). She is also a certified senior psychological counselor.

She holds a Master’s degree in International Education from the University of Manchester and a Bachelor’s degree in Drama Education from the Central Academy of Drama.

Her theater education programs have been introduced to more than 20 international, private, and public schools across Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang. She has also provided theater education training for teachers at numerous schools and institutions. Since 2018, she has co-organized Mujian Mofang, bringing public-interest theater courses and activities to Lijiang, Yunnan. The initiative has since expanded through both online and offline formats to reach communities in more remote and underserved areas, while also developing youth theater programs centered around the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

As a theater director and performer, Jinhan’s works include the mainland production of The Little Prince Meets Earthlings (solo performance), The Pursuit, and Birds, as well as the short film Towards the Sun. Her original youth theater works include Community, Shadow, Glasses for the Animal World, Mental Health, and Variables. She has also adapted works such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Our Town into school-based English-language productions. Her English short play The Royal Surveyor was invited to perform at the Beijing Television Children’s Spring Festival Gala and received an award for Best Theater Production.

Her theater production credits include the original Shanghai musical A Gallery’s Lost Dream and the German black-box theater production The Ugly One.

Beyond theater, Jinhan has initiated and participated in a range of public-interest arts projects, including the intergenerational arts project Once Young, Forever Young and the youth mutual-support podcast Tea After Twenty-Five.

Through Uni, Jinhan is committed to using art and theater as platforms for connection across generations. By bringing together theater, the arts, the SDGs, and other interdisciplinary fields, she creates opportunities for people of different ages to engage with art through appreciation, co-creation, healing, and sustainable development, exploring new possibilities for art and theater across disciplines and generations. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx