KIRSTEN FRANTZICH
Embodied Language: ETE's Stage, Miró’s Canvas, and Breton’s Flea Markets
Back in 2007, I asked myself, “What brings me alive?" For me, three answers emerged: the arts, nature, and the body. Not even knowing what that meant, I ventured into this new landscape longing to find an original language to express what I felt but for which I had no words. What eventually arrived was a fresh, integrative approach to psychology and performance I call Embodied Theater Ecology (ETE), a radical way to guide individuals in discovering and performing their stories.
Along the road, I stumbled across several inspiring communities, one of which blew my mind: the Surrealists! In this Spotlight, I share how much of my own work intersected with many of the practices, exercises, and beliefs of Surrealists who also valued depth psychology, the unconscious, trauma, and the longing for something out of the ordinary, playful, and disruptive. So, what brings you alive? What blows your mind?
Join me as we discuss ETE, Surrealism, and the creative impulses that shape our common vision.
About The Speaker:
I am a Juilliard-trained actor with a PhD in depth psychology. My Grandfather was a painter and photographer and his artistic bent poured into the rest of the family who became musicians, circus performers, athletes, and medical doctors. I started acting in my basement when I was three years old and have never lost my love for creative collaboration, theatrical performance, and embodied expression. In my early teens, I imagined being a therapist for artists. It took me nearly forty years to come full-circle from a rewarding acting career to one in psychology, continuing that longstanding interest, the life of the human soul. Today, I especially love working at the intersection of the arts, nature, and the body through an approach I have developed called Embodied Theater Ecology.
To me, the most important aspect of this work is the living relationship between myself and the other, the quality of our moment to moment connection. Through that connection, whether for seconds or hours, it’s my hope that we leave different than when we met, moving beyond suffering to possibility, beyond uncertainty to clarity and strength, beyond stuckness to creativity, and beyond the ordinary to the awe-inspiring.
