Gestalt therapist, EMDR therapist, psychodramatist, acting teacher, director, and playwright. I live in Ottawa and work online with clients around the world — in Ukrainian, Russian, and English.
I was born in Kyiv and spent over 25 years working as a director and teacher: the "Black Square" theatre studio, film studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, documentary and narrative films honored with a Platinum Remi, a Cannes Silver Dolphin, and Ukraine's national film award, the "Zolota Dziga."
All those years, pausing only to shoot films, I taught acting — not only for the stage and screen, but for life: teaching people to master their mind and body, to reach their goals, inner and outer. Thousands of students passed through my groups and studios over the decades. At some point it became clear that the stage can heal just as well as a therapist's office, so I got a therapeutic education: certified in EMDR and Ericksonian hypnotherapy, trained in psychodrama, and completed Gestalt therapy training with a focus on trauma and grief work at the Kyiv Gestalt University.
At the University of Ottawa I earned a Master of Arts in Theatre to pursue academic research at the intersection of theatre and psychology. My research topic was post-traumatic dramaturgy: how the structure of drama parallels the psychological stages of recovery after trauma. This isn't abstract theory — the outcome of that work is a play about a soldier learning to live after severe injury.
Today I see clients daily, lead groups, write for the theatre, undergo supervision, and continue my research.
I believe that art and psychology both know how to bring people together, to heal, and to give a person back their own story.
In 1995 I was accepted into the "Black Square" theatre studio with the note "for sincerity of performance." That phrase became the foundation of everything I do: for thirty years I've watched people — on stage and in life — become either alive or merely convenient. And I teach the first.
The method grew out of practice: the pattern of attention, the screen of the body, event and judgment, the coiled spring of intention — tools that help you notice the exact moment you start lying to yourself, and stop. First on stage — and then it spreads through your whole life, like ripples on water. This is the subject of a book currently in progress, "The Art of Being Alive: Acting as a Way to Live."
More about the bookAudience Choice Award — "The Infernal Banner, or A Cossack Christmas," director
Silver Dolphin — "Jules Verne: A Journey of a Lifetime," director
Platinum Remi ×2 — "Jules Verne," "Tesla Free Energy"
"Best Director" nomination — "Made in Ukraine"
Mobile and social film festivals — "Inscriptions"
Grand Prix — "The Lunatic," Toronto
