workshop offerings

Emergent Play on Divergent Stages!
Taking Drama Therapy to the Streets with Unhoused Communities

In contemporary society, mental health services for unhoused populations are largely confined to institutions such as hospitals, prisons, and rehabilitation centers. This institutional focus fails to meet people where they are—on the streets and within their communities—resulting in a critical gap between clinicians working within “the system” and activists working “on the ground” to provide crucial support. This workshop reimagines drama therapy as a tool for collective liberation—uniting therapists, activists, and the folx we serve in co-creating systems that center the radical autonomy of unhoused communities.

Emergency! EmergentSea! Emerge-n-See!
Emergent Play for Global Emergency: Drama Therapy as a Community Organizing Tool

This immersive workshop invites participants to join a drama therapist task force addressing the pressing issue of climate change. Through experiential play and collaboration, we will explore our own places within the fractal nature of this global calamity, transforming feelings of powerlessness into collective agency. We will draw upon examples from nature—mycelia, crystals, stars, and more—to explore themes of adaptation, interdependence, decentralization, resilience, creativity, and transformation. As we encounter, mirror, play with, and respond to the environment around us, we will explore how we can integrate lessons of the natural world into our work as drama therapists.

Emergent Play for Divergent Beings!

“Emergent Play for Divergent Beings” explores how we can reclaim play as a liberatory and justice-oriented practice by integrating Drama Therapy with the organizing principles of Emergent Strategy. By centering adaptive, interdependent, and nonlinear approaches to play, we can co-create spaces that honor the complexity of neuroqueer and disabled bodies while fostering collective healing and transformation.

Stages of Solidarity!
Meeting Suicidality with Play & Presence

This workshop introduces a transformative mental health approach to suicidality. Using humor, creativity, and play, this approach dismantles stigma and centers the wisdom and agency of suicidal individuals. Participants will learn creative, attachment-based, and trauma-focused approaches to supporting chronically suicidal folx—including clients, loved ones, and even ourselves. We draw upon the legacy of mad liberation to challenge the assumption that suicidality is something to be “fixed”—and instead explore suicidality as a portal to individual and collective transformation.