Innovative Approaches Redefining Recovery
YOUTH
Using Creative Expression for Social and Emotional Growth
I create and facilitate customized workshops for youth and young adults using theater, storytelling, and recovery coaching principles and exercises. Utilizing creative expression as an outlet and a way to explore oneself, participants experience increased self-esteem, resilience and connection to their community in the process.
Theatre and Storytelling Practice Program Integration for 13-26 year olds
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bureau of Substance Addiction Services, has eleven residential substance use disorder treatment programs for people 13-26 years old under its Office for Youth and Young Adult Services. Along with Drama Therapist, Susie Schutt, we’ve designed a curriculum that integrates Theatre and Storytelling practices, known as Embodied Story Practice, into the day-to-day group work at these residences to help clients increase self-awareness and self-disclosure, and gain resilience and understanding of themselves and others. I’m currently implementing it through a staff training program across the state.
Teaching Artist, Facilitator and Advisor for Creative Outlets at Cape Cod Museum of Art
Creative Outlets is a program for 12-16 year-olds based in the belief that the arts can be a conduit to increased self-awareness, emotional expression, and resiliency. Youth can engage in four-hour workshops on Sunday afternoons at the museum, April through October, with teaching artists, peer mentors, and professional clinical facilitators. Workshops range from theater and storytelling, to wicked messy art, to cooking and gardening. It uses a proven substance abuse prevention curriculum to inform the process. Since its inception in 2017, I've been a teaching artist, facilitator and advisor to this phenomenal program.
Actor, Teaching Artist and Playwright for Improbable Players
Improbable Players uses theater performances and workshops to address substance use disorder, reducing stigma, opening conversations, and portraying the addiction and recovery process honestly. All of the actors are in long term recovery. I've been an actor and teaching artist working in middle and high schools since 2017, and I co-wrote and directed our 35th anniversary fundraising gala performance in 2019. I'm currently co-writing a play focused on the Stages of Change, designed for recovery audiences, with the amazing Elizabeth Addison.
Theater and Storytelling Teaching Artist in Recovery High Schools
Recovery High Schools are public schools where students can earn a high school diploma and are supported in their recovery from alcohol and drug use. We have five of these amazing schools here in Massachusetts, and their students are some of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. I’ve been fortunate to work with the teens at two of them - storytelling at Independence Academy in Brockton, and a five-month residency at Ostiguy teaching improv and theater skills.