✨Two Worlds, One Practice✨ How Counseling and Storytelling Inform Each Other
I have been fortunate to engage in two careers & professions.
At first glance, my work as a Counselor and my work as a Dramaturge, Director, and Actor may appear to live in different worlds. One is rooted in mental health and healing; the other in storytelling and performance. Yet, at their core, these practices are deeply connected. Both are about listening, witnessing, meaning-making, and supporting transformation.
Over time, I’ve come to understand that I don’t move between these roles — I integrate them.
The Shared Ground: Where Counseling and the Arts Meet
1. Deep Listening and Presence
In counseling, presence is everything. I listen not only to what is said, but to what is felt, avoided, or emerging beneath the surface. The same is true in dramaturgy and directing. Whether I’m working with a script or an actor, my role begins with listening — to the story, the body, the subtext, and the emotional truth underneath the words.
In both practices, being truly present creates safety — and safety creates possibility.
2. Story as Meaning-Making
Counseling is often the process of helping someone understand and reshape the story they tell about themselves. Dramaturgy and performance do the same on a collective level. Characters, narratives, and scenes explore identity, conflict, desire, shame, hope, and resilience — the same themes that show up daily in the therapy room.
Both disciplines ask:
What is the story here?
Who is telling it?
What happens when it’s witnessed with care?
3. Holding Complexity Without Rushing Resolution
In counseling, I don’t rush clients toward answers. I help them stay with uncertainty long enough for insight to emerge. Similarly, as a dramaturge or director, I resist oversimplifying a story. Complexity is where truth lives — in contradiction, tension, and nuance.
Both practices honor the process, not just the outcome.
4. Ethical Responsibility and Care
Whether supporting a client or a creative team, ethics matter. In counseling, this is formalized through professional standards. In the arts, it appears through consent-based practices, trauma-informed storytelling, and attention to impact — on performers, audiences, and communities.
In both spaces, I hold the question: How do we tell or hold this story responsibly?
Looking to book an individual session? Or to have a Mental Health Coordinator for your production?
👉 Reach out to book a Consultation with me
RECENT DRAMATURGE/ BEHIND THE SCENE SUCCESSES:
Sharing good news, two writers that I supported as Dramaturge/Script Consultant are being celebrated for their work:
🏆 Dramaturge for the winner of the 2025 Tom Hendry Award for New Musical, O Olivia, written by playwright/co-lyricist Diane Currie Sam
🎬 Supporting screenwriter Jacki Gunn, whose short film The Thing Inside Her was selected as a finalist for 2026 Crazy 8’s Film Festival
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