Roots
My journey as a social artist began with being raised in the northern Prairies as the daughter of a Cree Metis storyteller and artist. My father would invite everyone he met during the day to come to our house and would regale them with jokes and stories. The house would ring with the laughter of so many people! I learned the art of including everyone from him.
Through the Cree people I discovered the social art of being alive to the other.
Growing up in the 1950s my mixed family navigated the racial tensions of Canada at the time and the impact of residential schools.
My father’s people applied stories along with plant medicine as a remedy for illness. The imaginative world can embrace the full diverse, multi-leveled, complex issues that ensue in the inner life of the human being. In one story the diverse aspects can be represented by a host of characters and living beings.
No one is ordinary. We all have unique and wondrous stories and sharing stories brings us to sense the deeper meaning in our lives.
Path
I have performed puppetry on an ongoing basis for many years, refining my puppetry skills at Suzanne Down’s Juniper Tree Puppetry Training in Boulder, Colorado. I also completed my B.F.A. in Applied Theatre training at the University of Victoria. After this I went on to Thailand and China to perform and teach widely at a variety of schools and centres. I have created a healing storytelling course for the people in China called Storyfires which has helped participants to find meaning, direction and a greater self-acceptance in their lives.
For 40 years I have been dedicated to working artistically with social human development. I am a long-time student of Rudolf Steiner and have taught myth workshops in Canada, Thailand
and China. I have also worked with the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Jubilee Hospital and performed puppet shows and written and produced marionette shows for the BC
Government in Canada, the University of Victoria and the Indigenous Child Welfare Research Network.
I am passionate about using storytelling, puppetry, and theatre to support social development, mental health, and creative expression. I draw on expertise in Waldorf education, applied theatre, child and youth care, and intercultural collaboration. I am known for building inclusive spaces that nurture
imagination, self-confidence, and community connection.
My diving into the depth of human experience spans working in a diverse array of organizations to hear the voices and meet the individuals who deepen my understanding of the human being.
I have worked as an applied theater facilitator, storyteller, puppeteer, educator in the theater arts and theater arts, embracing a wide range of theater practices that share an intentionality to provoke or shape social change, including: theater in education, theater for social development, youth theater, reminiscence theater, hospital theater, trauma centers and mental health centers with schizophrenics.
- How did myth become medicine?
When I was ill in 1999 I wrote a myth to express the suffering and challenges in my life and the myth served as medicine through which I healed my illness. In 2000, after hearing about my healing through the use of making my own myth, I was invited to run myth workshops at the Canadian Mental Health Association for people experiencing mental illness and grief.
I called my workshops Myth as Medicine and shared how I wrote my myth to heal myself. I used puppets, storytelling, movement and drama to support people to express themselves. They discovered that they were the lovable hero or heroine in their own life. I discovered that applied metaphors are a powerful means of healing and that story making is an alchemical process.
In the mystery centers long ago, tales were imparted which fired the imagination and awakened soul forces.
The imagination is crucial for our ability to continue to experience inward change and to see with fresh eyes ourselves and others, the “mystery of the other” so important in our time. The imaginative is intrinsic to our soul and must be put to active use or it will become depleted.
I have discovered that stories have the capacity to transform and heal the human psyche and the soul of the world Inwardly fairy tales lead us from pictures or images to our understanding by way of the act of thinking.
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales, if you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” -Albert Einstein (1953)
Story Medicine for Modern Times 