Training & Lineage
The practices on this site did not emerge from a single discipline.
They have grown over more than two decades through artistic practice, sociology, facilitation, theatre, somatic study, community work, puppetry, ecology, and participatory experimentation.
Rather than understanding lineage as inheritance, I understand it as relationship: an ongoing conversation with the people, practices, communities, and disciplines that continue to shape how I think about participation, encounter, responsibility, and collective life.
The inquiry did not emerge by combining these traditions into a method. It emerged through discovering the possibilities, and the limits, of each of them.
None of these traditions explains the work on this site. Each has contributed something to its development.
Relational & Developmental Inquiry
My understanding of participation as something that happens between people rather than inside isolated individuals has been deeply influenced by performance-based development and social therapeutics.
This includes the East Side Institute's International Class in performance activism and social therapeutics, together with subsequent training in the Institute's Social Therapy program.
These traditions continue to shape how I think about development as something created socially rather than individually, and how new forms of participation can be rehearsed rather than merely understood.
Theatre, Performance & Aesthetic Practice
Theatre has been one of the deepest streams feeding this work.
My training includes Theatre of the Oppressed, Social Presencing Theater, Theatre for Living, puppetry, mask, clown, fool, bouffon, improvisation, natural voicework, and performance activism with teachers including Jiwon Chung, Arawana Hayashi, David Diamond, Gary Friedman, Eric Davis, Misha Usov, Jonathan Kay, Robyn Hambrook, Deborah Antoinette Ward, Frankie Armstrong, and others.
These practices continue to shape how I think about presence, timing, interruption, role, collective attention, rehearsal, and the creation of new possibilities through performance rather than explanation.
Somatic & Embodied Practice
My work has also been shaped by extensive study in movement, embodiment, and nervous system organization.
This includes neurodevelopmental movement therapy, MNRI®, Autism Movement Therapy®, expressive movement and dance, WiseMotion Method, Feldenkrais, Linklater voicework, violence prevention through movement, trauma-informed coursework, and the Safe and Sound Protocol.
These studies continue to inform how I think about pacing, attention, rhythm, regulation, and the ways participation is organized before conscious choice.
Ecology, Place & Materiality
Applied ecopsychology, eco art therapy, psychogeography, walking practice, and place-based inquiry expanded my understanding of participation beyond the human social field.
These inquiries continue to shape my interest in materiality, animacy, environment, and how places participate in perception and collective life.
Object Practice
My study of puppetry and puppet therapy, including a diploma from Muñecoterapia Chile, together with training in object theatre and therapeutic puppetry formed an important foundation for what eventually became Deep Puppetry™.
Over time, the work gradually moved beyond therapeutic and symbolic approaches toward an inquiry into participation, unfinished recognition, and relational encounter.
Community Practice
Long before developing the current inquiry, I worked across community arts, public health, education, hospice care, youth outreach, parenting education, homelessness prevention, and expressive arts facilitation.
These experiences continue to shape the ethical orientation of the work: an interest in care without domination, participation without extraction, and collective life as something continually composed rather than merely managed.
Education
Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, University of Georgia
Postgraduate Diploma in Workplace Wellness and Health Promotion, Centennial College
Diploma in Puppet Therapy, Muñecoterapia Chile
Applied Ecopsychology, Project NatureConnect
International Class, East Side Institute
A background in sociology continues to shape how I think about institutions, participation, and the social reproduction of everyday life.
This lineage continues to evolve
The practices on this site are original inquiries.
They have been shaped by many teachers, disciplines, collaborators, and communities, but they are not applications or combinations of existing methods. Each has emerged through years of artistic practice, facilitation, experimentation, and ongoing research into participation.