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Lillian Ribeiro
MA in Applied Theatre
Class of 2013
As a student in the MA in Applied Theatre (MAAT) program at CUNY SPS, Lillian Ribeiro knew she wanted to bring the healing power of drama to people who didn’t consider themselves actors — or artists. Thanks to her experiences directing and staging plays at the community level, she had seen firsthand how performing could help participants process emotions — and even trauma. She sought a credential that would allow her to take her love and knowledge of applied theatre and bring that restorative energy into a therapeutic setting. But what could that credential be?
Enter Chris Vine, academic program director and professor in the School’s MAAT program. During a class, Vine shared information from the North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA) which outlined an alternative track program for becoming a Registered Drama Therapist (RDT). Immediately, the lights went on for Ribeiro. Here was a clear path forward to using the creative force of theatre (and her CUNY SPS degree) by integrating her educational background and artistic strengths to provide trauma-informed emotional support and healing for others.
How did the process work? Ribeiro could take all her required drama therapy course requirements including psychology coursework in person and online. In addition, she had to find a mentor/teacher who was an NADTA Board Certified Trainer (BCT) and complete two drama therapy internships that total 800 clinical hours, followed by 1,000 professional hours. Although the credentialing process wouldn’t be easy or fast, Ribeiro could now envision the way to achieving her dream.
Ribeiro was particularly inspired to begin this journey thanks to experiences she had while producing The V-DAY Worldwide Campaign, where she directed the play The Vagina Monologues for several years in Hoboken, Jersey City, Union City, and New York City in English and Spanish. As she staged and rehearsed the show, many of the performers used that time and space to share their personal stories. She quickly came to see that the play provided her actors with an important opportunity to “speak out about what happened” to them in a way that was “so healing and therapeutic.”
Driven by the power of this experience and others like it, Ribeiro immediately got to work completing her degree — and eventually her drama therapy credential. She wrote her thesis on the use of drama to support victims of domestic violence and their children in a shelter and was eventually hired at the YWCA Union County PALS (Peace: A Learned Solution) Program. There, she spent more than eight years supporting adult and child survivors of domestic violence.
Ribeiro has continued this work at other organizations, where she provided therapy to individual children and to groups of children, ranging in age from preschool to high school. According to Ribeiro, her programming was and continues to be “very need specific,” and can range from “naming and identifying feelings, acting out feelings, or just doing emotional regulation work” with younger kids, to focusing on healthy behaviors and healthy relationships with older kids.
Ribeiro has also expanded her focus to other populations. In collaboration with a music therapist, she co-created an intergenerational arts program called “Back 2 the Future,” where middle-school youth “meet with elders in the first stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia.” Funded by a Newark Art Start grant, the program enables youth to learn how Alzheimer’s and dementia affect the brain, and to meet with affected elders in focused theater, music and art sessions.
This program is just one example of how Ribeiro sees herself as a “grassroots organizer, bringing theatre to people who do not identify as theatre artists,” all with the goal of “working on social emotional learning,” especially the expansion of “empathy and compassion.”
Today, Ribeiro has garnered more than twenty years of experience in the field — and she has recently begun sharing the promise of drama therapy with others, in yet another form of grassroots activism: professional outreach and education. Following her stint as a board member as the Eastern Region Representative for the NADTA, she launched a regional symposium to bring drama therapists, applied theatre practitioners, social workers, psychologists and other clinical professionals together for professional development. Held at CUNY SPS, the symposium brought together more than 100 professionals for twenty-plus workshops and two performances.
The reaction was gratifying. Ribeiro reports that she “got so many emails” from attendees, all of whom “were so excited that an event like this took place” — and who expressed a desire for more. Time had brought Ribeiro full circle, back to the place where her career as a drama therapist began — and to a new avenue for her grassroots activism: educating other professionals about the RDT credential, particularly CUNY SPS students like her former self.