Players
Kenyon Curtiss performs music regularly around the Puget Sound region in a variety of settings. He has been studying the classical guitar for thirty-eight years, attending master classes with David Russell in San Francisco. His musical interests extend from Classical, Jazz, and World styles, to Blues, Folk & Rock and he performs as a soloist, and in ensemble settings such as with the improvisational Ethno-fusion trio Spherix, who have performed original music for dance & movement therapy sessions. Ken is a also a member of the Latin jazz trio Todo Es, the World music group Ancient Sounds, and is currently completing training in the Music for Healing & Transition Program, a pioneering modality bringing therapeutic music into clinical and hospice settings. Ken finds performing Playback Theater to be the greatest creative challenge he has ever found, and the most Soul-satisfying, and has been a member of the Seattle-based company since 1995.
Cat Gilliam has been actively involved with Playback Theater for 20+ years; a co-founder of Asheville Playback in 1993 and an active member of Threshold Ensemble since 1999. Cat has an extensive dance, body-based healing arts and improvisation background. Her Masters in Transformational Psychology included studying language as it pertains to communication, conscious & unconscious. She is trained in NVC (nonviolent communication, Marshall Rosenberg) and has worked with Freedom Project taking NVC and Mindfulness Training into the prisons. Cat has three grown children who are three of her best and dearest friends on the planet. She has lived in Seattle since 1999. Her intense love affair with life is evident in the enthusiastic energy she brings to whatever she does.
Kimber Godsey is the founder and sole proprietor of “Musical Care Giving and Care Tunes by Kimber”. She has a BA degree in Human Services from Western Washington University and is a registered counselor.Kimber is a singer songwriter. She contracts her therapeutic music services to a variety of health care facilities. Kimber is part of the Music for Healing Project and volunteers her therapeutic music services at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, University of Washington Hospital and Group Health community memorial services. Her passion for singing began at an early age, driven by her love and desire to communicate with her grandmother who had Alzheimer’s disease. Kimber learned to create melody and sing in the moment as way to connect heart to heart through music. Kimber is honored to be part of Threshold Ensemble doing PlaybackTheater and passionately believes in the healing power of this collaborative art form.
James Lucal Ph.d convened Threshold Ensemble in 1994 and has long been devoted to the artful emergence of personal and universal story. For 20 years a group therapist, professor of counseling psychology, and consultant to organizations in applied drama, James is currently working as general contractor specializing in sustainable residential development. He taught for 15 years in the Antioch University Masters program in counseling psychology, and has been a guest presenter at the Jonathan Fox School of Playback Theater. He served on the International Playback Theater Network board from 1993 to 1999 and has presented at conferences nationally and internationally on the subject of emergent drama and human renewal. He plays the violin professionally and lives it up on Phinney Ridge with his partner, Rebecca, and 14-year-old daughter, Natasha.
Angela Pershnokov loves the challenge of co-creating the stories that emerge from Playback Theater. She has been with Threshold Ensemble since 1997. She studied theater extensively at Freehold Theater Lab and with John Jacobsen of The Filmschool. She has a degree in fine art from the University of Oregon, where she also studied non-traditional costuming, dance, and mythology. She is a co-founder and past director of The Radar Angels, an art and performance co-operative and has also performed with such groups as The Left Hand Dancers, Theater In the Wild, Flying Dreams, Artspots and The Fremont Arts Council. She is a ritual performer, co-producing and directing That We May Live, a totemic enactment of our connection to nature, as well as several performance rituals for the Fremont Arts Council’s Winter Feast. Other artistic pursuits include ambient theater, puppetry, pageantry, songwriting, vocal improv and all celebrant arts. She has performed in one or more of these capacities for such events as San Francisco Carnival, Eugene Celebration, Oregon Country Fair, Fremont Solstice Parade and Pageant, Bookfest, The Hsinkang Arts Festival in Taiwan, as well as countless Radar Angel extravaganzas. As a life long student of improvisation, she finds the immediacy and authenticity of Playback Theater incredibly rewarding.
Performing artist, Christian Swenson, was born and raised in NH. He has an extensive background in dance, mime, voice and improvisation, and is known for his pioneering work in a form he calls “Human Jazz”, a global fusion of dance/drama/music for body and voice. In 1977 he received a B.A. in Theater from the University of New Hampshire and moved to Seattle to work with with the Bill Evans Dance Company. His work as a solo performer and teacher has taken him to many schools and communities throughout North America, Asia and Europe. Christian has received Fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, Washington State Arts Commission and Artist Trust of Washington. He teaches Improvisation at Seattle University. He and his wife, Abigail have two grown children. His website is www.humanjazz.com.
Dora Lanier is a Seattle based actor and director with over 19 years of experience in the field of theatre. She began performing with Threshold Ensemble in 2009 and became a troupe member in 2011. An active improviser, Dora has played along with Playback Theater Northwest, Unexpected Productions (Cannibal-The Musical, Scar Stories), Jet City Improv (Adventure Playhouse), It’s a Mystery (Argosy Cruises), Capital City Mystery Players in Austin, Texas and the Gender Bender Project in Madison, Wisconsin. Her improvising work extends to work with DSHS – Supervisory Training Academy, Harborview Forensic Interview Training, VA Hospital and MEDEX. Favorite acting roles include Rita in Educating Rita and Shirley in Shirley Valentine for The Merc Playhouse in Twisp, WA. Each spring she journeys to Snohomish County to perform Wanda Flipplefairy, the Water Fairy, for kindergarteners served by the PUD. Her directing projects include work with Shoreline High School, Meadowdale Middle School and Seattle Public Theater and each summer she joins the University of Washington Extension faculty to teach Drama and Storymaking in the Summer Day Program. After receiving her MFA in Acting/Movement at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; she taught a mixture of acting, movement, improvisation and theater history for UW Madison, The University of Texas at Austin, Western Washington University, Highline Community College, Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH and The University of Montana, Missoula. Dora was raised on a farm in rural Wisconsin where she learned how to make pie crust, listen to stories and the power of YES!