Training & Lineage

My work is shaped by two decades of study, practice, and facilitation across applied performing arts, somatics, developmental theory, and relational inquiry. Deep Puppetry™ and School of the Small & Imperfect grow out of these foundations but are not reducible to any one of them.

Rather than lineage as inheritance, I understand lineage as relationship, an evolving conversation with the teachers, methods, communities, and fields that have shaped my orientation toward justice, shared agency, and non-dominating ways of working.

Below is an overview of the influences that most inform the practice.

Relational & Developmental Frameworks

Social Therapeutics (East Side Institute)
Ongoing study in performance-based development, ensemble process, and collective world-making

Relational praxis & collective inquiry
Facilitation across artistic, somatic, and community contexts, with attention to horizontal process, distributed agency, and ethical contact

Applied Performing Arts & Aesthetic Practices

Theatre of the Oppressed (Jiwon Chung)
Social Presencing Theater (Arawana Hayashi)
Mask, clown, fool, bouffon (Eric Davis, David Bridel, Misha Usov, Robyn Hambrook, Deborah Antoinette Ward)
Improvisation & ensemble process
Natural voicework (Frankie Armstrong)

These practices shape how I work with attention, presence, materiality, timing, and collective creation.

Somatic & Movement-Based Study

Neurodevelopmental movement therapy (RMTi)
Neurosensorimotor reflex integration (MNRI®)
Autism Movement Therapy® (Joanne Lara)
WiseMotion (Hanna Poikonen — neuroscience of embodied collaboration)
Feldenkrais & Linklater, trauma-informed somatic coursework
Safe and Sound Protocol practitioner

These studies inform my orientation toward developmental pacing, embodied attention, and relational regulation, especially the relationship between sensation, safety, and ethics.

Ecological & Place-Based Study

Applied ecopsychology and eco-art therapy (Project NatureConnect/Michael J. Cohen)
Psychogeography and place-based practices

This work shapes how material engagement, environment, and other-than-human beings participate in development and how ecological interdependence becomes a lived experience rather than an idea.

Object Work & Puppet Therapy

Diploma in Puppet Therapy (Muñecoterapia Chile)
Therapeutic puppetry training (Children’s Therapy Centre)
Object theatre & puppetry (Gary Friedman)

These approaches inform but do not define Deep Puppetry™, which has moved into its own relational, developmental, and justice-oriented terrain.

Earlier Professional Work

Before developing this modality, I worked in:

expressive arts
somatic education
applied theatre
community-based learning
voicework
sacred ceremony
intuitive and energetic disciplines
trauma-informed movement
hospice and health-related theatre
programs serving at-risk populations

These contexts shaped my commitment to practices that build capacity, widen relational imagination, and make room for more forms of life and experience to participate in the conversation.

Why I Share This

This list is not a claim to authority, nor a credentialing argument. It is a map of the relationships and disciplines that have influenced the clarity, ethics, and rigor of this work.

Deep Puppetry™ and School of the Small & Imperfect are living practices, shaped continually by the people in the room, the materials we meet, and the relational conditions we co-create together.