Provides a comfortable and private environment for nursing and feeding; ensuring families have a space to keep any nursing materials and find anything else they may need throughout the conference.
Encourages creativity and play through artistic expression, inviting everyone to explore their imagination and collaborate with others. Art materials will be available to you! This space can also be used to process topics and engage with other conference attendees about what you learned in previous presentations! This space will be facilitated on Sat. Nov 2 from 11:30am-1:30pm by Art Therapist Sarah Jefferies to create the centrepieces for our President's Gala!
Offers a serene and tranquil space for relaxation and reflection; allowing individuals to recharge after a long day of workshops with multiple sensory accommodations and objects at your disposal.
Join the NADTA in kicking off the conference with an opening ceremony and prayer guided by Elder Blu Waters.
Why do we do a land acknowledgment? A land acknowledgment is a statement recognizing the Indigenous people who originally inhabited the land where an event is taking place, aiming to honor their history as stewards of the land and acknowledge the ongoing impact of colonization, and a first step towards building respectful relationships with Indigenous communities and promoting awareness of their presence on the land; it's considered a way to recognize the past and present Indigenous peoples in a particular location.
Keynote presentation - Let's all learn more about how to juggle our mental health together. In this session, you will not only hear Kyle's inspiring story but also learn basic juggling skills that can help you gain an edge on your mental health. Experience firsthand how juggling can be a powerful metaphor and practical tool for balancing life's complexities.
Elder on Campus, Indigenous Community Engagement Coordinator, Seneca College
Laureen (Blu) Waters (they/them): Istchii Nikamoon: Earth Song, Wolf clan. They are Cree/Metis with family from George Gordon Reserve. Blu is a member of the Metis Nation of Ontario.Blu grew up with their grandmother and learned about traditional medicines, learning healing methods... Read More →
Kyle Sipkens is a multi-award-winning professional street performer, entrepreneur, actor, and circus artist, celebrating 20years in the industry. As the owner and founder of INCIRQUE, a business specializing in entertainment for festivals andevents, Kyle has made a significant impact... Read More →
During the lecture/discussion participants will learn about the significance of costuming and textile-arts both culturally and historically in therapy. Being easy to source resources cheaply makes this a very accessible form of intervention, baring disparity in mind. Information will also be given about the areas of the brain that are utilized in these types of interventions as well as hormone production and reduction, keeping in mind the needs of clients with brain damage or hormone-related issues. Examples of drama therapy interventions and practices that utilize costuming will be addressed and new interventions that the presenter is currently writing about will be shared. For the experiential portion, participants will work with a shirt, making cuts to represent issues and problems that have come up in their own lives or in sessions they have conducted. Using colored embroidery thread and fabric scraps to mend the shirt, they will be asked to think about what each of the additions represent. They may choose to add color, pattern, or words with paint pens to emphasize struggles, help, self-talk, etc. Participants will be asked to share what comes to mind looking at the whole piece. Participants may also take home the piece they have created.
Amanda Sasser, a graduate student at Kansas State University with a BFA in Theatre Design from Baylor University, has an extensive background in design, costuming, and textile arts. She currently works in south Texas. The presentation, Costuming in Drama Therapy: Design, Build, Mend... Read More →
Despite dis/abled individuals making up 16% of the population, with that number on the rise, discussions about disability justice and drama therapy are sorely lacking. How can dis/abled drama therapists make room for their dis/abled identities and dis/ability justice in their work? And how can dis/abled drama therapists find restoration and healing inside and outside of their own work, in a world that is often hostile towards dis/ability and dis/abled individuals? This workshop will have participants reflect on these questions, using a critical disability theory and dis/ability justice lens, and find community and dialogue with one another as they explore their understanding of how dis/ability and ableism impact their work and lives. In this workshop, members from Lesley University's Dis/ablity Lab and the Disability Justice Group with NYU will join together to host this collaborative conversation.
Clinical Assistant; Professor of Drama Therapy, NYU
Maria Hodermarska is a clinical assistant professor of drama therapy at New York University. She is coordinator of creative arts therapies for Project Common Bond, an international symposium for young people who have lost a family member to an act of terror, armed or inter-religious... Read More →
Sho Glick (they/them) is a queer, neurodivergent dis/abled, white-bodied, Jewish student pursuing a masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at City University of Seattle. They are currently co-facilitating role playing and social skills building groups with neurodivergent youth... Read More →
Liberation-based peer supervision, a format of peer supervision the facilitators have been developing through heuristic inquiry, invites drama therapists to utilize role and embodiment to reflect on how colonialism, capitalism, and racism operate through us as clinicians. Beginning with a warm-up based on Powell's (2016) Embodied Multicultural Assessment, participants will identify 1-2 personal roles that perpetuate colonialism, capitalism, and racism. Participants will work in small groups to embody, perform, and reflect on the roles they chose. Participants committed to cultural response/ability and interested in creating their own liberation-based peer supervision spaces are especially encouraged to join.
"Poetry in Motion - Balade Poetique" is a workshop centered on imagination and movement.
The workshop offers a poetic journey through carefully selected poetic, textual, and musical works, all centered around a theme related to nature and the seasons, leading to an ephemeral poetic performance.
The workshop is adapted to the pace and motor skills of each individual, welcoming all diversities and accessible to everyone.
The field of psychedelics is expanding rapidly in the United States. The use of ketamine for the treatment of depression has become a common off-label indication, supported by some insurance companies. Currently, there are several trials exploring the therapeutic potential of psilocybin for the treatment of depression, PTSD and addictions. Models for Psychedelic-Assisted-Psychotherapy (PAP) are being developed for the facilitation of these interventions. Drama Therapists are well positioned to not only support the development of this field, but also to lead the way in which the experience can be facilitated and integrated. Drama Therapists, and for that matter Creative Arts Therapists, have developed a robust body of knowledge on how to assist clients in processing trauma and life experiences. The embodied nature of the drama therapy practice can bring into this field a wealth of knowledge. In this presentation, we aim to review what psychedelics are and which ones are currently being used in the USA. Reviewing some of the current research trials and their target therapeutic impacts, we will seek to explore the skill set and knowledge bases that drama therapists can bring into this field. Of importance would also be to understand the opportunities for Drama Therapists to uplift and challenge notions of access and equity as it relates to use of psychedelics as treatment modality.
Cultural Humility Statement I want to quote the amazing work of M. Williams, J. George and S. Reed
"Most of the existing literature on psychedelic therapy is from a Eurocentric, medicalized perspective, often omitting indigenous use or discussing its origins in a detached historical manner. Furthermore, many substances currently used for psychedelic medicine are derived from plants that are considered to have sacred healing properties by indigenous groups, and are still being used by those communities today. Cultural groups around the world make use of psychedelic healing traditions, which include the clinical management of psychedelic medicines in a spiritual context. These traditions are repositories of millennia-old medical experience and knowledge regarding best practices in the use of these substances. Such indigenous traditions constitute their own form of clinical science that provides important guidelines relevant to Western applications of psychedelics in medicine and therapy."
Carlos Rodriguez Perez, MA, RDT/BCT, LCAT, is currently the Executive Director at Kingsboro Psychiatric Center. He is a graduate of the NYU Drama Therapy program and served at the North American Drama Therapy Association (Treasurer, President Elect and President) and National Coalition... Read More →
Dr. Calli Armstrong (all pronouns) is a psychologist and drama therapist at the Student Wellness Hub at McGill University. Calli is a psychotherapy process researcher and has taught at both Concordia and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Calli previously served as Research... Read More →
As Dramatherapists we try to create spaces that offer hope and some respite from the ongoing oppressions of everyday life, inherited trauma, poor living conditions, dysfunctional relationships, the sheer struggle to survive which is experienced by so many people. Whilst we cannot take away those conditions, we need to make sense of them. We need to think about what causes mental and emotional ill health as well as treat its symptoms. Too often, in our ostensibly fractured societies, there is an emphasis on individual pathology and responsibility linked with minoritized identities. In this paper, which will include some participatory elements along with straightforward delivery, I will explore how our thinking and actions may end up colluding with the very conditions we seek to redress. Ideas that may start out with liberatory ambition may, over time, transform into conservatism. Drawing on political thinking developed through more than 40 years of activism; from the early days of second wave feminism to more recent struggles focused on the middle east; and the experiences of theatre making and dramatherapeutic practice; this paper will reflect on the intellectual and ideological landscape that Dramatherapy sits in. Whilst acknowledging the enrichment that engaging in the politics of identity has enabled, nonetheless, it will argue the abiding case for class as foundational to our understanding. There is much in life that we cannot control but what we can be in charge of are the thoughts in our heads and the ways we see the world.
Emeritus Professor of Dramatherapy, UNIVERSITY OF ROEHAMPTON
Anna Seymour PhD PFHEA is Professor of Dramatherapy at the University of Roehampton, London. She researches the relationship between politics, theatrical aesthetics and the therapeutic process. Anna is an international trainer and consultant to several Dramatherapy programmes across... Read More →
A Grieving Hero's Journey Through an Intersectional Identity Lens for Children + Adolescents. Delve into the intricate tapestry of grief as it performs across diverse cultural intersections. Participants will explore embodied grief through metaphorical lenses, drawing parallels with the transformative narratives found in the framework of a graphic novel, drawing from comic book narratives such as the X-MEN, Batman, and many others.
This workshop introduces Drama Therapy and Role Theory + Methods, offering an expressive arts approach to grief work that considers cultural humility and social justice. Uncover grief roles specific to various communities, acknowledging the nuances of embodied grief. Through didactic and experiential learning processes, participants will engage in population and person centered grief planning. Pulling from the work of Landy's, "Hero's Journey", participants will take away a tangible directive to support youth in relationship with their grief and bereavement narratives through the creation of their own Super Hero or Shero Graphic Novel. This workshop promises a unique journey, weaving research and data into a rich fabric of exploration, fostering a connected and empathetic approach to grief across diverse cultural landscapes.
Adam D-F. Stevens (he|they), MA, RDT. They are a Registered Drama Therapist (RDT) who works primarily with adolescents in the Tri-state area. Their role includes supporting queer, POC, and nuerodiverse youth in transforming their loss, grief, and trauma into unapologetic, abundant... Read More →
M.A. Drama Therapy NYU, intern to therapist transitional period, Harris and Long Psychotherapy
(He/Him) Jakob von Eichel recently received his Master's Degree in Drama Therapy from the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. With almost twenty years of experience in acting, Jakob believes wholeheartedly in the psychological benefits of imaginative... Read More →
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only highlighted but also exacerbated health system discrimination, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations, including those at the intersections of age, race, Indigeneity, socioeconomic status, ability, migration status, gender, and sexual orientation. With the United Nations Research Roadmap proposing the elimination of discrimination in health service delivery as a key goal, many studies have tried to develop effective strategies. Existing interventions have primarily focused on educating about the existence and effects of bias, as well as providing skills training for bias management. While effective in raising awareness, these interventions were often not done in clinical settings and have not led to sustained changes. This presentation will focus on a New Frontiers in Research funded collaboration to innovate the use of participatory theatre strategies to illuminate and reduce discriminatory attitudes and behaviors among healthcare workers. The goal is to develop theatre-based interventions that will be piloted and evaluated for potential future implementation with health system leaders. The project is co-led by researchers representing the US, Canada, and Indigenous communities (primarily the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Métis territories). The project team consists of researchers and collaborators from universities, health systems, arts organizations, and local communities. Reciprocity, respectful relationships, and community engagement are core to this project's approach.
Assistant Professor, Department of Health Sciences, Brock University | Faculty of Applied Health Sciences. In Val’s research, she focuses on the health and well-being of children and adolescents, and the social determinants that shape their health trajectories. Her current projects... Read More →
Camryn Hafner, MA, is a Massachusetts-based clinician currently working at Bournewood Health Systems Partial Hospitalization Program. In her work, Camryn supports people across the lifespan as they develop creative and effective ways to engage with both their internal and external... Read More →
The presenter will share theories about the lies we tell children about death, her methods using drama therapy when working with children is the nexus of the workshop. As drama therapists our call to action is entering the scene during the most climatic phases of our clients lives. Playing with death forces us to confront ourselves and open to our clients‚ which includes the infinite variable of religious, cultural, and generational differences. No one individual will cope with the painful truth of death the same way. As clinicians we work with clients across the lifespan, and must include children in the drama, included stories about death. When a child's life interfaces with death how can drama therapy enter the scene to transcend the margins into spaces of care, power and therefor possibility? This workshop explores how drama therapy is used to tell the truth to children about death and do so in more tolerable ways. Extending our ability to confront the immutable truth that life is living towards death is our call to action. Death is all too frequent as wars are waged and the spread of viruses create death that affects us all. No one is immune to death no matter the manor with which is occurs, past present and future. We are all impacted by death and must explore our own broken attachments to the ones we love.
Through Autobiographical Therapeutic Performance (ATP), participants will explore formative moments in their lives and identify self-limiting beliefs transmitted by family, society, as well as personal and collective traumas. The workshop will include an active engagement with memories, images and emotions. Participants will explore turning points in their lives, re-decision points that may inform new life affirming narratives, such as stories of strength, creativity and resilience. These may be utilized as resources for living a richer inner life and creating a vision for a meaningful and fulfilling future. The facilitators will guide participants in a process where they can experience the power of creating a new narrative or marking a turning point in their lives. During the workshop participants will be provided with a variety of drama therapeutic interventions, leading to a five minute performance in front of the group. Facilitators will illustrate their approach to self-revelatory performance, while guiding the participants through a process of setting their therapeutic goals and following through with the creation of a five minutes theatre piece as a therapeutic act. This full day workshop will explore themes using improvisation, embodied imagery, psychodramatic tools, and Playback Theatre and integrating Role Theory, Transactional Analysis, and Archetypal Psychology.
In this experiential session, participants will explore theater arts in healing from conflict and harm. We will specifically utilize a framework of restorative justice in acknowledging the expansive possibilities for repair, reconciliation, and closure beyond punishment or the criminalization of wrongdoing. Employing tools from Drama Therapy, Playback Theater, and Theater of the Oppressed, participants will consider how conflict moves and feels, examine communication styles, center impact and needs, and define justice on our own terms. All bodies enthusiastically welcome. Conflict mediation and RJ circles are language-heavy, highly verbal spaces - here, we will try to get out of our heads and into our bodies to ‚ "unstick the stuckness" of our lives, especially the habits, activators, personalities, cultures, and internalized messages of how we deal with harm. Our reaction to conflict or victimization can emerge from self-protection and survival, and we will bring gentle awareness to where our minds take us, what we think, how we feel and process difficult things. We will enter a creative process around the issues that cause us to freeze, flare, or hide - experimenting with new choices and developing collective insights. We will dive into the art of apology, embodied storytelling, role-play/reversal, and the sculpting of personal and social narratives. Much of the content will pull from Tatiana Chaterji's curriculum on healing arts with community members impacted by the criminal-legal system, using performance, witnessing, and victim-offender dialogue to arrive at self-actualization.
The development of consent-based practices within theatrical performance is a new concept that gained traction during the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements (Black & Newhauser, 2023). With the help of an intimacy choreographer, actors, stage managers, and other crew members are empowered to voice personal boundaries and assert autonomy, creating a culture of consent for all during intimate scenes (Black & Newhauser, 2023; Pace, 2020). In spring of 2023, the workshop facilitators took an intimacy-consent course at Kansas State University. As therapeutic theatre incorporates the same process as theatrical performance, the workshop facilitators implemented their learnings within their internship at Barrier Free Theatre, an inclusive therapeutic theatre company for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. They found incorporating these consent-based experientials empowered clients to advocate boundaries, respect other boundaries, gain self-awareness, and collaborate in creating choreography that they were comfortable rehearsing and performing with their scene partners. The workshop facilitators believe that consent-based practices add a layer of respect towards our clients and can provide an explicit foundation for conscientiousness when using therapeutic touch. It is our hope that utilizing consent-based practices will transform the way we manage therapeutic touch as drama therapists and discuss the ways that we can improve our skills for our clients.
Alivia is starting her third year in the drama therapy program at Kansas State University. After graduating in May 2025, Alivia will continue her work in advocacy and consent within healthcare at the Center for Advancing Professional Excellence, a simulation education center, at Anschutz... Read More →
Sabrina is a recent graduate from K-State and is looking forward to serving her hometown community in the Rio Grande Valley, TX. She's a mother to a toddler, enjoys painting, constructing, writing poetry, dancing, making new friends, and getting involved in the Latinx, LGBTQIA+, and... Read More →
Cited as a critical need in drama therapy, increasing research productivity, quality, and reach is a contemporary priority for the field (Armstrong et al., 2019; Frydman et al., 2022). Strides have been made in establishing systems for research inquiry and investigation within the NADTA, including the inception of Drama Therapy Review and the Research Chair position on the board of directors. While these spaces have held a commitment toward, and dialogue about, research within the NADTA as an organization, what remains unclear is the understanding of attitudes toward research among the larger North American community. In response, we surveyed drama therapists (N = 166) on a number of factors related to research practices, including attitudes toward research via the Attitudes Toward Research-Revised scale (Papanastasiou, 2014; Flight, 2023). This presentation overviews the findings from this survey, including attitude trends, the importance of assessing attitudes as predictors of engagement, and how the discourse around research can be informed by understanding community-wide feelings about the topic. Findings suggest that research is experienced as necessary to professional livelihood and viability, it is negatively valanced within the community, particularly for those drama therapists who are training or early in their careers, and that greater levels of engagement yield more positive assessments of research. Suggestions for ways to increase research activity are considered in context of the findings and recommendations made for transformative programming to address attitudes toward research of all drama therapists.
Crossing borders can be confronting and generate toxic stress related to immigration, poverty, discrimination, lack of services, past trauma and language difficulties. Sometimes borders become barriers inside of the relationships of family when there's no time to create a safe space for acceptance. In the context of the Covid, this factor could generate family violence. The World Health Organization (WHO) proposes to prevent violence by fostering safe, stable and nurturing relationships between children and their parents and caregivers. Parc-Extension Youth Organization (PEYO) has offered for more than thirty years a program of intervention based on utilizing Art and Storytelling in schools located in the culturally diverse neighborhood. This program had positive impacts on the reduction of anxiety (Beauregard et al., 2017; Rousseau et al., 2003.) Responding to the risk of violence, PEYO has adapted an Art and Storytelling program at home with the aim of reducing family anxiety. While respecting family values and dynamics, a series of eight workshops based on interactive stories and creative expression activities encouraged the exploration of dreams, challenges, life knowledge and the multiple living spheres that immigrants experienced in their daily life. In a space focused on acceptance and play, family members reinforced their relationships, developed resilience and built hope. The presentation of Art and Storytelling intervention will be an experiential adventure of playing a tale. A short video of a workshop with an immigrant family will also be presented and the significant learnings of the three years of this research will be discussed.
Anabelle Segovia Reyes born in Mexico where fiction and reality dance together. She immigrated to Canada discovered snow and became a drama therapist. Along her journey, she encountered wonderful opportunities to walk with people from diverse cultures, ages, dreams, challenges and... Read More →
Members of the Living Arts Playback Theatre Ensemble, Merry Ross and Vicki Dello Joio have come together once again after their successful run of 2 Women, 2 Stories performed from 2012 to 2019. This time they are exploring the transformational nature of mother-daughter relationships in their two self-revelatory pieces. Using autobiographical therapeutic performance techniques including improvisation, developmental transformations and story-telling, they take a deep dive into the trial, tribulations and triumphs of this primal and complex relationship. Merry's solo performance, "This is Why I Pay for My Children's Therapy", is a comic and poignant exploration of her relationships with both her two daughters and her mother and grandmother. It looks at how inter-generational trauma can be addressed and healed, when one is committed to doing it differently. Vicki's solo performance, "It's About Time", navigates the challenging end-of-life journey she travels with her mother, while celebrating and exploring the complex dynamics of their relationship. As Vicki transitions from daughter to mothering her own mother, she finds the humor and sorrow in letting go.
Merry Ross has a psychotherapy, Drama Therapy private practice in Oakland Ca. She has been a member of the Living Arts Playback Ensemble for over 30 years. She created a one woman show "Whats my age Again" that she performed all over the country and in London. Merry is a teacher... Read More →
"Always Have Been" is an ethnodrama co-created by Michelle Yadon and Stephen Lewis. Lewis conducted interviews with five transgender men to capture their lived experiences. Using this secondary data, Yadon and Lewis crafted an ethnodrama to convey these narratives. This staged reading marks the play's premiere, performed by members of the NADTA. We invite you to join us and immerse yourself in these compelling stories. Following the performance, there will be a talk-back session allowing audience members to reflect on the play. Yadon and Lewis will also discuss the research process and future directions of the project.
