Workshop: Role reversal – love and kindness

Presenter: Annette Fisher

Session Description: This session will be experiential using the principles of group work, psychodrama role training and sociodrama. The session will conclude with discussion and analysis to explore  observations, thoughts and views regarding the place of role reversal in our work in the world.

Bio: Annette Fisher is a psychodrama TEP. She is a psychodrama private practitioner and a multi-media visual artist. She has experience in mental health and community development. She exhibits her artwork and is at present preparing a short film called Annie and Peter 7 years exploring the nature of a relationship in later years. She is a mother of three daughters, has 5 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren.

Workshop:  Small Intentional moments matter: appreciating the ripple effects of our actions in a challenging world

Presenter: Sue Christie, Cushla Clark

Session Description: In this workshop we will examine what we do or have done in our everyday lives across relevant systems that have created new and potent outcomes for ourselves and others. We will acknowledge, explore and appreciate the ripple effect of these interventions and the forces that are enabling or holding us back from being conscious of the value and impact of our actions.

We will explore how we hold the hope for a better world and stay grounded and creative in our lives so that going forward our actions are achievable and life giving for us and the people with whom we have connection and influence.

Bios: 

Sue Christie is a sociodramatist who after leaving employment in a large organisation is working with individuals and groups to enhance and support development in life giving ways. Sue is living in a small town on the Coromandel Peninsula enjoying strong family and community connections.

Cushla Clark is a psychodramatist who facilitates self development psychodrama workshops . She continues to be inspired by the many surprising and profound healing moments for people when working as a group with the psychodrama method. Cushla lives north of Auckland and loves living in the country attending to a large garden of rambling old roses.

Our aim is our group gets enlivened in ways which lead to ongoing motivation and commitment to action as participants reenter their families, workplace, place of worship etc more conscious how they can build on the health in those systems.

Workshop:  Intergenerational resilience: coping or progressive?

Presenter: Charmaine McVea 

Session Description: ‘I’m worried: my child isn’t resilient’. This is a cry I hear from people who are anxious about their adult children and want guidance about how to help them. Through the lens of the social and cultural atom, we can look beyond this initial provocation, to investigate the social and personal dynamics affecting these people: what might the other person have to say, if they were in the room? 

What does it mean to be resilient? When is ‘resilience’ a coping response born of anxiety and when is it an element of a progressive response? How do family dynamics promote or undermine resilience? Where does genuine relationship show up in this family? In this experiential workshop we will set out vignettes to explore intergenerational resilience, and reflect on implications for therapeutic work.”

Bio: Charmaine is a psychodramatist and counselling psychologist, based in Brisbane. She has been a trainer with Psychodrama Australia and ran psychodrama groups in the community. She now shares her time between her private practice and playing with family and friends.

Workshop: A trek through the labyrinth

Presenter: Sara Crane

Session Description: I will present some of the challenges of my experience being contracted to provide ‘supervision’ and ‘wellness’ in the Justice system in Aotearoa New Zealand. Justice is a deeply complex concept which aims to restore balance and right relationships. Staff often struggle with the work demands that expose them to situations outside their own life experience and they grapple with high expectations of flexibility and accountability in an under-resourced environment.

Participants can expect to share their own work experiences and together we will investigate ways in which we can maintain our spontaneity and develop our abilities as change agents in ever changing circumstances.

Bio: Sara is a psychodramatist juggling her professional responsibilities with being a creative writer, potter and llama farmer.

Workshop:  Sociodrama for learning and healing

Presenter: Walter Logeman

Session Descriptio : Together we will create a sociodramatic family and enact the relationships in this family. The family is not the family of any one person in the group, it is a family created by the group. You may enjoy the drama as a participatory artform, or learn about working with people in systems or find personal healing. Your warmup will be reflected in the sociodrama. The action will be followed by sharing.

Bio: Walter is a psychodramatist who works part time as a couple therapist, group worker and supervisor.  Walter has been conducting sociodrama for learning for many years, see his Journal:  https://aanzpa.org/wp-content/uploads/AANZPA2021WEB-0721Logeman.pdf. In 2025 he conducted events that were for both learning and healing.

Workshop:  Humanising systems through creative connection

Presenter: Bernadette Rutyna

Session Description: This experiential workshop invites you to explore how we can humanise systems using sociometric tools and applying our collective wisdom.  As a participant you’ll uncover challenges that require attention within the groups, organisations, and communities that you interact with and work in. 

The session involves action and reflection, allowing insights to emerge organically through shared experience. You’ll work together to map systems you inhabit, discovering how spontaneity and connection can breathe life into rigid patterns. 

You can expect a learning environment where vulnerability meets courage, creating the conditions for addressing real life issues applying sociometry as a potent tool for transformation. You’ll leave with fresh perspectives on humanising the systems you work within and lead.

Bio: Bernadette is an advanced trainee from Queensland who applies her psychodramatic practice within an organisational consulting world, offering learning and development programs in the public and not for profit sectors, and in remote Aboriginal communities. In her consulting business coaching and developing leaders, building effective teams, mediating and resolving team conflict, she designs and facilitates experiential programmes and workshops in a broad range of settings, supporting leaders and groups to strengthen relationships and create environments where people can flourish.

Workshop:  Sink or swim when everything lies broken

Presenter: Katerina Seligman

Session Description: When everything lies broken, whether we are facing personal loss, or distress about the wider catastrophes, can we find it in ourselves to allow joy to rise up? How can we access joy without being in denial? Without feeling guilt? This will be an experiential psychodrama workshop in which, together, we will dive into the depths of our beings to feel the sadness, anger, fear, and joy that is ever-present in each of us, and experience the liberation that can arise when we un-mix entangled feelings, allowing each to be expressed in its purity.

Bio: Katerina Seligman is a psychodramatist and retired TEP. Entering her 80th year of life, she is determined to keep doing the things that enliven her being, and make a contribution to a more beautiful world. Her love of the psychodrama method remains central to her life and work.

Workshop:  Role training to address a recurring and limiting role in your functioning

Presenter: Phillip Corbett

Session Description: Morenian role theory has given us a liberating understanding of the self as consisting of a number of psychodramatic roles. This concept can potentially free us from a sense of having a fixed and unchanging personality.

However certain persistent roles we enact can have a persistent and recurring hold on us!

In this session I aim to provide an opportunity initially in small groups to identify and share just what that restricting role may be for you and briefly consider its history. We will then offer a role training session with one protagonist to work towards developing and practicing a more progressive counter role.

Bio: Phillip is an advanced trainee in psychodrama from Melbourne. He has presented many workshops at previous AANZPA conferences and facilitated a support group for over ten years using psychodrama for people who experience anxiety and depression. He is a father of four and a grandfather of eight.

Workshop:  The sacred thread

Presenter: Sheryl Gardyne

Session Description: Sitting in a weaving wananga, I am reminded of a kōrero, a conversation of a weaving concept of ‘the sacred thread’ which refers to the first line of the weave in the weaving. The first line sets the pattern in place and there was a reference to the sacred thread connecting to source. A question was raised – what happens when there is a disruption or a disturbance in the first line of the weave? A resounding response came, “it anchors in” and it affects the integrity of the weave. 

Working with the relationship to the sacred thread, I accompany whānau in action to the first line of the weave of them, that connects to source, to their life source. If you are coming to this workshop, it would be good to warm up to being interested in the metaphor of your sacred thread: where am I connected? What am I coming to? What is active in my own landscape that I can experience my weave that weaves into connections with others.

 Bio: 

E tu ka tēra e o tāku maunga Manaia e

Ka titīro au ki ngā tai hihi ki ngā tai haha o Ngunguru e

Ka huri tāku kanohi ki te Tupuna Whare e tu nei ara ko Paratene te manu

Ko Ngāpuhi tōku Iwi

I stand at the brow of my ancestral mountain Manaia

That looks on to the lashing tides of Ngunguru

I turn my head towards my ancestral house Paratene te Manu

Ngāpuhi are my people.

Sheryl is currently working in a kaupapa Māori NGO that specialises in sexual violence and whānau harm, in Ōtautahi/ Christchurch as a counsellor.  In the work, she has worked in Intimate Partner Death Review panels and court and police processes. She has been involved in the Royal Commission of Enquiry, supporting survivors that have been in State Care and Faith based Abuse. Currently, she is working with the Survivor Experience Service.

Outside of this work Sheryl has run a psychodrama group in a Māori Alcohol and Drug residential rehabilitation programme and she is currently running a group in a therapeutic residential programme for wahine transitioning from prison to community.

Workshop: Relating to the guide within 

Presenter: Carol Parkinson-Jones

Session Description: The group will begin with a familiarisation of the concept of spiritual birth as the developmental task of maturity/ eldership in Western, Eastern, and Indigenous communities. There will be an opportunity for group members to share and explore what this means for them using the psychodrama method. This will be actioned in groups of two or three, depending on the number of participants. It will take the form of an interaction between themselves and their spiritual guide, ancestor, energy body, higher self, or the symbol/ description of spirit that suits them best.  This will be followed by a group sharing focus on what is coming up in response to the vignettes. During this, we will choose a protagonist for the group, and I will direct a psychodrama or two.

Bio: Carol graduated as a psychodramatist at the 2024 Dunedin Conference. She has devoted her life to healing through community, both as an agent and a receiver of healing. She has been involved with psychodrama since the early 1980s.

Workshop:  Repairing the world one stitch at a time

Presenter: Bronwen Pelvin

Session Description: This session will focus on our capacity to ‘mend’ in a way that sustains the participants and the planet. Through enactments and group work, we will learn how to get alongside one another, find out what needs mending and explore ways to maintain the mana of those that might need reparative work while challenging ways of being and doing.

Bio: Bronwen worked as a midwife with a home birth practice, a community midwifery practice, a manager of a maternity unit followed by 20 years as a professional advisor ending in the Ministry of Health in Wellington as the principal advisor maternity services.

A psychodrama trainee for over thirty years, Bronwen is now retired from formal work but remains active in AANZPA and her local Nelson community.

Workshop:  The occasional psychodramatist

Presenter: Anja van Holten and Diana Jones

Session Description: Diana will interview Anja as she warms up to applying psychodrama methods in her work. They will set out 2 – 3 vignettes of some of Anja’s psychodramatic interventions and the resulting shifts in both staff behaviour and systems. Audience questions and responses are welcome.  

Bio: Anja Van Holten is an advanced trainee and the service manager in a residential DBT service. 

Diana Jones is a TEP, author, leadership advisor and coach. Both are longtime AANZPA members and colleagues.

Workshop: How a plant became a dad – action, concretising and using a timeline in 1-1 work

Presenter: Roy Vickerman

Session Description: Keeping a client’s world present and visible is a big help to me in 1-1 work. It also builds rapport with the client.

I’ll let you know some ways I go about this in my practice. Then, in small groups, you can experiment with how you might do this. We will have time for reflections and questions. The words “playful”and “enlivening” are likely to be relevant.

Bio: Roy was an advanced trainee for a long time and he is now a Community Network member. He is a counsellor and sees long-term and short-term clients in his practice in Richmond. The psychodrama method and scoring a clean hoop at croquet light hin up.

Workshop:  Domestic violence and women’s stories

Presenter: Josephine Dewar

Session Description: I have worked mainly with women in the area of domestic violence for many years however I do not see myself as the expert in another person’s life. Rather I am a naive enquirer, a guide and sometimes just a quiet listener to a woman’s grief, anger, and sadness. Mainly I listen to the injustice she is/may be feeling, and sometimes it is listening to the joy of her relief at escaping and starting the process of healing.

In this workshop I will present stories of 1 or 2 women’s DV experiences. We will then work to sensitively connect with each other and develop new responses to our own perceptions around domestic abuse, and the ways in which we can stand beside someone who is experiencing this abuse.

Bio: Jo is a phone counsellor practitioner working with women who have experienced violence and abuse in their relationships. This has been a lifelong commitment starting in 1975. Since 2001 she has  been working in a call centre listening to stories of sadness, loss, anger, resilience, and strength. Over the years in this area of work she has run groups in women’s prisons and has presented DV workshops around NSW in rural areas. The focus of these groups was educational and developing conversations around how domestic abuse impacts a person’s life. Through her work the psychodrama method has supported her enormously to use her voice and her ability to listen deeply to a person moment by moment.

Workshop:  From spark to story: writing with structure, heart, and soul

Presenter: Diana Jones

Session Description: Writing begins with a spark; the possibility of a thesis, the social atom assignment or a systems paper – waiting to be shaped into a vibrant informative revelation of applications in your work, with your insights, research and reflections. Through vignettes and group sharing we will discover personal practices and the simple structures to capture your writing. We will uncover the joy of giving your experience and ideas their voice while maintaining your authenticity.

Bio: Diana Jones is a TEP, AANZPA’s Journal Editor and staff member of PANZ Te Whanganui-a-Tara Campus. In her work as leadership advisor and coach she assists leaders bring greater vitality to their formal and informal relationships.  She has authored two books on leadership, is a portrait artist, and not having children of her own, lives the miracle of being the third grandmother to four.

Workshop: Women and power: psychodrama and the witch wound

 Presenter: Katherine Howard

Session Description: “You are not a wicked witch my friend, you are simply, or complicatedly, a woman. And your magic is not something you can choose or lose. It always is, and always has lived within you.” Donna Ashworth

“A witch ought never be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.” Terry Pratchett

There are records of women being killed in Roman 331 BC for magically causing illness. Through the times of the burnings and the drownings from the 15th to the 18th Century (and beyond- places in the world even today, including DV in Australia) women have been persecuted. You might recall stories of Victorian times and women’s “hysteria”, or even as recently as the 1960s when women could not have credit cards or mortgages. In this workshop, there will be a warm up to some of the “Witch Wound” stories which are fearfully imprinted in the feminine DNA. There will be a warm up to ideas of power and empowerment put forward by Starhawk in her book “Truth or Dare”.

And then there will be enactments coming from the group, in whatever way action comes alive after the warmup.

Bio: Katherine is a grandmother, mother, daughter, sister and partner. She works as a psychotherapist and psychodramatist in private practice. In addition to her occupational therapy and psychodrama training, Katherine has trained with some of the Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality movement both in Australia and overseas. She has presented and participated in psychodrama in Australia, Aotearoa, UK, Spain, France, Ireland and USA. She presented her “Women and Power” workshop in 2025 at the Wise Women’s Gathering in Sydney and as a Webinar. She has been selected to present at the Seven Sisters Festival in Victoria in 2026 which is attended by over 2000 women.

Workshop:  Listening across differences

Presenter: Bev Hosking and Jenny Hutt

Session Description: How well do we discuss our differences? As we bring different experiences, affiliations and viewpoints to our everyday conversations, can we resist the pull to polarise, reject, withdraw, or talk over each other? 

This session focuses on clearing the way for listening, extending our capacities to listen across differences and allowing ourselves to be affected by others. There will be opportunities to experiment using role play and role training, to reflect together, and to consider approaches used in the fields of public dialogue, conflict resolution and anti-racism practice.

Bio: Bev Hosking is a counsellor, supervisor and trainer. She is a role trainer and TEP and Director of Training with PANZ Wellington Campus. For many years Bev has explored creative approaches that promote social dialogue and the formation of cohesive communities. She has taken an active role in the Tauiwi Tautoko project to address online racism.

Jenny Hutt is a group facilitator, supervisor and trainer. She is a sociodramatist, TEP and Director of Training at Psychodrama Australia’s Melbourne Campus. Jenny is an experienced diversity educator. She co-facilitates reconciliation projects as an associate of Burbangana, an Aboriginal-owned and led consulting company.

Jenny and Bev have conducted a range of workshops about belonging, social cohesion, racism and intercultural work. They work to create a space where participants can consider their experiences, have room to find out what they feel and think and strengthen their resourcefulness.

Workshop:  J L Moreno has three Gods in his evolution of The Creator: He-God, You-God, I-God: This can mean three different minds, or One

Presenter: Kevin Franklin

Session Description: A sense of purpose focuses the mind. However, at the centre of culture, individual and collective, is a conundrum: the relation of parts-and-wholes, and instead, the relation of wholes-and-parts. The human mind is a complex concept; its definition varies depending on the discipline. From a Morenian perspective, what is mind and how does ‘it’ become One instead of many. Kevin draws on Morenian practice-and-theory, and his own lifetimes work, to identify this elusive ‘thing’, butterfly or spirit. In this session, explore ‘mind’ in theory-and-practice.

Bio: Kevin advocates for a wholistic, whole-and-parts, philosophy of life, like J L Moreno. He knows dysfunction and coping with that dysfunction: he wants to be progressive on purpose, mindful of individual-social-collective aliveness, collaboration and individuation: creative and co-creative.

Workshop: Listening for the action cue in the clinical hour

Presenter: Maria Snegirev

Session Description: This workshop involves an exploration of what it means to apply psychodrama in the psychotherapy setting of a private practice. Many psychodrama concepts are based in group processes and our training happens within the context of a training group with peers. What happens when we enter into private practice as practitioners? How do we warm up clients to action when they have expectations of a “talk therapy”. How can we use auxiliaries with only two people in the room?

We will use role training, small figures, or other enactments to maximise opportunities for using action in the role of psychotherapist. The psychodramatist must stay present and alive alongside the therapeutic aims.

Bio: Maria is a psychodramatist, registered psychotherapist and TEPiT. She is currently in private practice having spent many years running stopping violence groups for men. She is involved in the Ōtepoti (Dunedin) and Ōtautahi (Christchurch) training campus.

Workshop: Time to reflect…

Presenter: Judith McDonald

Session Description: As you’ve been travelling through the conference experiencing other people’s application of psychodrama in the world, you may have begun reflecting on your own work and its place in your life. 

Are you satisfied with the work you are doing?  Does it need adjusting in some way, more of some things and less of others perhaps? Are you satisfied with your current work and life balance?  

What vision are you forming of your future as you approach the end of the conference and start warming up to returning to your life?

Come to this workshop to explore in small groups what’s important to you going forward in your work and life, using vignettes, and with companions alongside as they do the same.

Bio: Judith is a psychotherapist in private practice in Ōtepoti Dunedin, and a TEPit. She loves visiting her daughter, container gardening and this year has taken up salsa dancing and tennis.

Workshop: Developing the capacity of noticing and valuing progressive roles – small moments of change   

Presenter: Nikki McCoy

Session Description: I work with First Nations men, many of whom have been incarcerated since they were 10 or 12 years old and have on and off experienced 10 to 20 years of their life in prison. When I am with the men in the group, it is my role to be a mirror to their joy, to their spontaneity, to their playfulness, to see in them what already exists but remains undervalued and unrecognised by those around them. This often has a profound impact on how the men begin to relate to each other, how they begin to notice the care and support in the room that they begin to give each other.  I notice it and bring it to their attention. This is my work in the world and this is what we will explore in this session. 

In this session we will focus on the act of noticing the progressive role in ourselves and others. We will bring to light the forces that pull us away from valuing our own strengths and functioning and highlight the forces that enhance, lift up and move us towards connecting with ourselves and each other.  

We will become curious of how paying attention to our inner experience provides a sacred moment in time, allowing for freedom of expression, where our inner world and outer world can coalesce. We will explore moments in our life where we have become able to receive and value our strength and what indeed it takes to stay with our humble greatness. We will investigate the forces at play when the conserve is heavily focused on “what’s wrong with you”, with diagnosis and finding quick fixes. We will explore what it might take to come to valuing our expanding limitless beingness and the necessary wading through the darkness to find this light.

Bio: Nikki McCoy is a counsellor /psychodramatist with specialist skills in trauma and addiction. Nikki has worked for 30 years in Aboriginal communities supporting the growth and development of First Nations languages, cultures and music. Nikki provides psychodrama groups and counselling for men and women who are incarcerated and post release in Alice Springs. Nikki’s work is grounded in co-creation and cross cultural collaborations, focusing on building relationships to enable creativity to thrive.

Preferred Workshop Duration: 3-hour workshop

Workshop:  Being the change we want to see

Presenter: Eric Park

Session Description: These are intense and uncertain times. We can find ourselves asking: Is there more I could do in the face of all this strife in the world?

“Think global, act local” still resonates, but it can feel like our individual efforts barely register. And yet, we know change starts close to home: with how we show up, how we relate, how we act. At the heart of it all is one essential question: What does it take to be the change I want to see?

Bio: Born in Antigua to Kiwi parents, Eric has journeyed through civil engineering, sustainability leadership, and founding development charities in Aotearoa and beyond. Now based in Tāmaki Makaurau, he’s on the path to certification as a sociodramatist. Eric comes alive co-creating new ways of being and doing together.

Workshop:  Psychodrama – an applied method

Presenter: Elizabeth Synnot

Session Description: Psychodrama is a systemic method where we learn from our experience coupled with deep reflection. Many trainees say that they want to learn to use the method and think that learning by being a director is the only way to get there. This is not true. For instance, the timing executed by a director can be learned from being a protagonist, and being an auxiliary is a wonderful opportunity to be a role analyst, and so on. 

This workshop is largely an experiential psychodrama workshop for those of us who are warmed up to being a protagonist and do not have a group where we are able to take this work. We will come together to form a group and have an opportunity to progress in our lives by enacting vignettes and perhaps one drama using the trained auxiliaries that are in the room. 

There may be time towards the end of the session to reflect on and discuss our work and the use of our method.

Bio: Diz works primarily with families and doing individual psychodramas. She lives in a small ‘secondary house’ next to her granddaughter and great grandchildren. She spends a lot of her time with her great grandchildren and works permanent part-time. 

Workshop:  Embodied and engaged: warming up to a creative revolution

Presenter: Simon Gurnsey

Session Description: This three-hour workshop will explore the role of embodied warm-up processes in bringing the psychodrama method into the world. Moving beyond cognitive understanding, we will engage in physical improvisations and spontaneous interactions; in pairs, in small groups and as a whole group. These embodied experiences are not simply preparatory for the ‘real’ work of the group; they are the essence of our work, a direct physical path to connecting with others and discovering our joint capacity for creative, improvised action.

You will be invited to rediscover your full expression and spontaneity in the context of an intentional human group. We will explore how physically stepping into the world of others can lead to a deep sense of telic connection. The improvisational processes are designed to ignite sparks of creativity, challenge conserved roles and role relationships and enable group participants to rehearse new ways of being and relating.

Bio: I’ve been noticing recently that I haven’t been doing embodied warm-ups in the groups I’ve been leading. Physical theatre, playback, and improvised dance were so entwined with my entry into and early involvement with psychodrama that I couldn’t tell you which enabled my development more. Actually, I can – it was both. This workshop is my way of getting back to my roots. I am an AANZPA TEPiT in the PANZ Ōtautahi Campus.