Taylor & Francis is featuring one of my articles among their “Most Read in February 2018” in the Teaching Artist Journal. Click on this link to see their special collection and gain free access to my work.
Ambassadors of Aesthetic Experience: The Healing Legacy of Maxine Greene
Teaching Artist Journal, 14(1), 24-29.
As a Diversity Trainer, I dismantle patriarchy, misogyny, and homophobia through designing immersive weekend retreats. Using psychodramatic play and ritual, the Threshold Men’s Retreat facilitates powerful awakenings for men to improve emotional intelligence, develop identity, and forge bonds inside and outside our communities. I transfer the awareness wrought from this work in service of modeling healthy masculinity in all facets of my life.
I have traveled internationally to deliver conference presentations about my work with the Mankind Project (MKP) since 2008. In August 2012, I attended the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) in Canterbury to present “How to Act, Like a Real Man: Adapting Rasaboxes for Men’s Drama Therapy.” I demonstrated my adaptation of Richard Schechner‘s (2001) Rasaboxes actor training technique based on the work of Moore & Gillette (1990) within the Mythopoetic Men‘s Movement. My dramatic approach allows men to better understand, explore, and integrate idealized archetypes of sacred masculinity–alongside the shadow aspects–on all levels of experience: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Men learn to draw from their strengths and identify their unconscious behaviors and biases in order to bring those patterns into conscious awareness and control. Similar to Rasaboxes, participants are challenged to increase their capacity to modulate their expressions from neutral to full embodiment as they attempt to fluidly move from one archetype to another. My presentations have also provided additional examples of adapted Rasaboxes and Archetypal models, as well as future directions to address work with women and other populations.
I recreated a mini version of Kindergarten Truck at the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama conference in Phoenix, AZ March 30-April 2, 2016. In this session, participants co-investigated my interactive performance art installation. We looked at how playing in civic playspaces guided by principles of aesthetic distance could liberate and reveal audiences’ vulnerable selves while cross-examining consumerism, democracy, and the power of applied drama praxis itself.
This winter, I traveled to Spain to direct a production of The Disputation, a unique play portraying a public debate between Christians and Jews in medieval Barcelona. 700 college students from around the world saw the play simultaneously interpreted in four languages. In addition to working with the talented cast, crew, and producers, I had a blast designing the projections and soundscape at the gorgeous Fibes Convention Center!
This workshop was delivered at the meeting of the North American Drama Therapy Association in Boston, MA. Combining Campbell’s Hero’s Journey with Landy’s Role Method and Lowenfeld’s World Technique, this original framework makes the healing process accessible for a wide variety of populations. Seated with small objects, Tabletop Journey affords greater control and containment, yet the stories it reveals can release profound spontaneity and connection among participants.
Each year, the Performance Award is given to an NADTA member in recognition of the exemplary use of live or recorded performance to facilitate individual or collective awareness and transformation. I was honored to be recipient last year!
I wish to thank the NADTA Board members, everyone who nominated me, and the many people who supported me along the way: colleagues contributed to the kickstarter, Adam Reynolds and Navah Steiner invited me give a plenary address at the Institute for Developmental Transformations, and two students (at the time) were part of my faculty in KT’s maiden voyage: Lisa Gail and Rebecca Russell.
Although Kindergarten Truck was my brainchild, it has never been a one man show: Performers Jim Ford, Coco Conroy, and Michelle Gaines (Kagan) have been central to the project’s success.
It has been an honor to be public ambassador for the field of drama therapy and between allied fields. I am so excited to see how drama therapy will continue to widen its reach!
Two of my recent articles about theatre and education were featured in Taylor & Francis’s collection.
I was honored by the journal “Contemporary Educator” to deliver a plenary speech to 1,000 elementary educators at their conference in Shanghai.
Kindergarten Truck: Participatory Play in Public was reprinted in Routledge’s new Major Themes in Mental Health Series entitled Expressive Therapies, edited by Nicholas Mazza. This series is aimed at the library market, which will hopefully open up a large new set of readers to learn about the power of drama for advocacy, community building, and social healing.
I was proud to serve as the Manager of this event at New York University: