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NYU Steinhardt Drama Therapy

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Founded in 1983, Drama Therapy at NYU Steinhardt offers world-class training with leading drama therapists in New York City.

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Since 2023, NYU Steinhardt’s Drama Therapy program has partnered with Breaking Ground to create spaces where residents of permanent supportive housing can explore creativity, share stories, build relationships, and experience a sense of belonging.

As one resident of Redwood Senior Living in Brooklyn reflected: “This experience gave me a sense of family.”💜

Our thanks to NYU Steinhardt News for celebrating the students, faculty, and alumni who help bring this collaborative work to life, demonstrating the power of drama therapy to foster meaningful social connection.

✨ Read the full story via the link in our bio!
📸 Credit: Breaking Ground

#NYUSteinhardt #DramaTherapy #BreakingGround #ArtsAndHealth #SocialConnection by @nyudramatherapy

Prof. Nisha Sajnani joined Dr. Akeyo Onoe at @ritsumeikan_university in Osaka for a special workshop integrating role theory with photography and neuroscience. Also present was NYU drama therapy alum @naomi_dramatherapist 💜

On the second day, Dr Onoe led a powerful workshop in which a traditional Japanese story was used to explore restorative justice.

#DTWeek2026 by @nyudramatherapy

We close out International Drama Therapy Week with this article from Steinhardt News covering THE WIZZIE: A Journey of Grief, Growth & Glitter, CRTC’s sixth-season production, brought together NYC high school students and NYU graduate interns in Drama Therapy, Educational Theatre, and Art Therapy.

Through an Afrofuturist reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, this sold-out production created space for young people to share their stories, honor their ancestors, challenge expectations, and celebrate joy and belonging.

CRTC Artistic Director Adam D–F Stevens shared: “Together, our young artists, graduate interns, and I built a world where grief could have rhythm, Blackness could be fantastical, queerness could be expansive, and joy could be unapologetically loud.
And baby, that joy had RANGE.”🌈👠👑✨

Congratulations to the entire CRTC community for reminding us what becomes possible when young people have the freedom to create, connect, and be heard.

🎭 Read the NYU Steinhardt feature: “Afrofuturist Production Brings Youth Voices, Grief, and Imagination to the Stage.”

🌪️Link in bio.

#DTWeek2026 #DramaTherapy #THEWIZZIE #YouthVoices #TherapeuticTheatre by @nyudramatherapy

The NYU Steinhardt Drama Therapy Program celebrated the launch of The Jameel Arts & Health Lab – Lancet Global Collection on the Arts & Health at NYU Skirball during UNGA Healing Arts Week, held alongside the UN General Assembly.

Led by Dr. Nisha Sajnani, Professor and Director of the Program in Drama Therapy and Founding Co-Director of Jameel Arts & Health Lab, in collaboration with the World Health Organization, the Collection brings together decades of global evidence demonstrating how the arts and creative arts therapies can support health and wellbeing — from prevention and wellness to treatment, care, and recovery.

Link to Collection in bio.

The event brought together artists, creative arts therapists, researchers, health leaders, policymakers, and practitioners, including a powerful performance and conversation with @jonbatiste and music therapist Dr. Joanne Loewy exploring Jon’s vision of “Social Music” - the capacity of music to connect, heal, and bring people together.

We were especially proud to see NYU Drama Therapy students, together with students across public health, nursing, and dance education, actively engage in the conversation and have the opportunity to share questions and ideas with esteemed panelists from around the world.

The symposium offered an important space for students to connect their learning and practice with a broader conversation and growing global movement to integrate the arts and health.

Image credit (photos 1-5): Oresti Tsonopoulos/NYU
Image credit (photos 6-8): Tracey Friedman/NYU

Brava! 🎭🎶 by @nyudramatherapy

We are thrilled to welcome Noelle Franco-Howell to the NYU Drama Therapy Program team as our Graduate Program Assistant! 💜

Noelle is a first-year student in the NYU Drama Therapy program. She is excited to be a part of the NYU Drama Therapy community and looks forward to supporting its aims inside and outside the school.

Please feel free to reach out to Noelle at nyudramatherapy@nyu.edu. 🎉 by @nyudramatherapy

What can the movement to integrate arts and health teach us about making research matter?

Evidence is essential, but it rarely travels by itself. Research moves when evidence is connected to stories, lived experience, trusted messengers, policy and practice.

This is central to the Jameel Arts & Health Lab model: build the evidence, make it visible and accessible, and bring together the people who can put it into action.

In a new feature article for Times Higher Education, Founding Co-Director and NYU Steinhardt Professor Dr. Nisha Sajnani reflects on this approach and what the arts and health movement can teach us about moving research beyond publication and into practice, public conversation and policy.

Published on the occasion of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab–Lancet Global Collection on Arts and Health, in collaboration with the WHO.

Read the full article at the link in bio. by @nyudramatherapy

Our Drama Therapy & Aging course had a sensational weekend with Dr. Shoshi Keisari, exploring age and aging through playback theater techniques. 💫

We’re also thrilled to congratulate Dr. Keisari on her participation as a panelist in Creative Aging: From Inspiration to Implementation at Lincoln Center for #UNGAHealingArtsWeek!

Dr. Keisari is a certified drama therapist, gerontologist, and lecturer at the School of Creative Arts Therapies at the University of Haifa, Israel.

Her work explores drama therapy, the vale of arts participation in aging, playback theater, grief, and palliative care.

Dr. Keisari, thank you for reminding us that creativity is ageless. ✨ by @nyudramatherapy

🎭 You’re Invited! 🎭

Please join us for a virtual presentation of The Chelsea Scott’s new play, “I Wasn’t Always Depressed,” on Sunday, October 4th from 12:00 to 1:30 PM.

The play explores one woman’s experience with treatment-resistant depression and chronic suicidal ideation through monologues, movement, scene work, and a short tap dance.

💻 Virtual presentation
📅 Sunday, October 4, 2026
⏰ 12:00–1:30 PM

🔗 Register through link in bio.

We hope you’ll join us! 💜

#NYUDramaTherapy @nyusteinhardt @nyusteinhardtmpap #disabilityjustice by @nyudramatherapy

First year Drama Therapy Students at NYU dig into a little Yalom in action. by @nyudramatherapy

🎭 NEW COHORT JUST DROPPED.

New faces. New stories. New energy.
Same belief in the power of drama to move us, connect us, challenge us - and change what’s possible.

To the newest members of the NYU Drama Therapy community: bring your curiosity, your courage, your weirdness, your questions, your wisdom, and your whole creative selves.

The room is ready.
The ensemble is growing.
Let’s play. 💜✨ by @nyudramatherapy

It was a joy to welcome Dr. Soohyun Ma back to NYU Drama Therapy for a recent visit.

An alumna of NYU Steinhardt’s Drama Therapy MA Educational Theatre PhD community, Soohyun is a researcher, educator, and practitioner who teaches at Dongduk Women’s University in South Korea and has contributed to the development of drama therapy in Korea. Her work explores the culturally responsive application of drama therapy, including the use of ethnodrama to address social stigma and theatre-based approaches with adolescents in special education.

Visits like these remind us that our community extends far beyond Washington Square — through alumni who continue to adapt, teach, research, and advance drama therapy in different cultural contexts around the world.

Welcome back, Soohyun! 💜

#NYUDramaTherapy #NYUSteinhardt #DramaTherapy #CreativeArtsTherapies #SouthKorea by @nyudramatherapy

The Children’s Hospital Association interviewed Registered Drama Therapist and Licensed Creative Arts Therapist Hanna Rosenberg from the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone in the United States.

Hanna spoke about how drama therapy gives children choices, encourages self-expression, and helps them to explore who they are beyond the role of “the sick kid.” As one young patient put it: “When I’m here doing this with you, instead of a patient, I feel like a person.”Drama therapy builds resilience, reduces stress, and supports participation in medical care.

🔗 Read the interview at the link in bio under News.

Photos courtesy of the Children’s Hospital Association

Join talks and workshops with Hanna and other creative arts therapists from NYU Langone during the UN General Assembly Healing Arts Week presented in collaboration with the NYU Creative Arts Therapies Consortium (CEs available): healingartsnewyork.org

#dramatherapy #pediatriccare #pediatricmentalhealth #creativeartstherapies by @nyudramatherapy