As an educator in the arts, I teach techniques incorporating design, voice, and experimental physicality. I focus on techniques that steer away from a universal body, preferring to focus on individual creativity and individual honesty. My education work has spanned from universities to community centers to district 75 schools, from private coaching for professional actors, to professional development training for fellow educators, to intergenerational collaborations with elders, to work with immigrant communities, to underserved youth facilities, to the Little People of America National Conventions.
I have worked as a teaching artist, program leader, and educational head for institutions such as Lincoln Center Theater, Princeton University, UNC Chapel Hill, West Chester University, Rowan University, Villanova University, Whitworth University, Brooklyn College, Little People of America, and have developed curriculums for educational arts programming for Art House Productions in Jersey City funded by The Ford Foundation as well as Delaware Theatre Company and Queens Theater.
I am a very active advocate of artists with disabilities, where I aim to empower those with disabilities to disrupt or ease the sharing of their unique expression with all audiences. I sit on many committees addressing issues with accessibility, sensory, and sensitivity throughout the five boroughs of NY as well as New Jersey and Michigan. I have been a co-curator and guest artist with The Dwarf Artist Coalition for the last seven years and is the founder and artistic head of the Dodson-Levine Fellowhship, that provides a year long artistic mentorship to little people across America. I have been invited as a guest artist to work with disabled populations from Jackson Heights to Uruguay.
I began my career in performance as an acrobat, where I performed and competed internationally for 14 years, notably performing with Ringling Brother’s & Barnum and Baily’s Circus’ Midwest Touring Company. After an acute back injury I turned my focus toward the theatrical. I gained extensive training in many forms of physical & experimental theatre such as Lecoq, Viewpoints and Composition, Suzuki, Commedia del Arte, Bouffon, Contact Improv and multiple forms of Mask. I have studied with the legendary Anne Bogart, Felix Ivanov, Per Brahe, David Bridel, Richard Crawford, and Theatre de la Jeune Lune. I am regularly commissioned to devise physical theatre pieces with multiple institutions.
My initial training, like most Americans, comes in the form of the more modern Stanislavsky inspired methods such as Meisner, Strasberg, and Hagen, among others. And while I often use these methods to help bridge the gap of introducing new vocabulary, it is my focus to get students toward a more universal base of expression, methods that are physically experienced before analyzed. Encouraging students to feel and think in impulses with the result being behavior is the first hurtle to my pedagogy. It is my passion to assist students of all backgrounds, shapes, colors, and sizes to find the link between physical and vocal expression using both newer and older methods & design both familiar and foreign to the American acting training institution. Helping students get out of their heads and into their bodies, learn how to empathize with others and recognize they’re part of a larger struggle.
I offer students critical thinking skills, and knowledge outside of the ways knowledge is traditionally valued. My kind of Theatre can help students engage with and recognize broken systems and structures that are designed to reproduce inequality, learning to advocate for themselves and others. These techniques give priority to a person-centered approach that is respectful of each individual's path towards discovering their own storyteller, in whatever medium they chose to explore it. Giving students insights into how they typically absorb and react to the world around them and creating new modes of possibilities in life and in art.
By focusing on the individual's experience, I prioritize authenticity in the learning process while also developing professional vocabularies and developing self generated work as well as approaches to established texts. Focusing on training the mind and attitude of the artist to transform their work from the conventional and safe, into something genuinely profound and repeatable. My work aims to improve body control and concentration, enhance stage presence adding beauty and depth to movement and voice, encouraging artists as creators, embodying script, character, and design in a fully transformative way, and developing a passionate sense of self and unstoppable sense of humor in order to be a great collaborator.
- M.F.A. in Directing Brooklyn College
- B.F.A. in Acting The Conservatory of Theatre Arts & Film at SUNY Purchase
-DEI Basic certification through CUNY
-ADA Building Blocks certified
- Sensitivity/Sensory training from City College
- Team Based Learning Certified
- USAG member & safety certified (since 2007)
- Valid passport & NY drivers license
For CV please email kristy.dodson@gmail.com