Topic: GRAND OPENING CEREMONY – OPEN TO EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD! CO-MASTERS OF THE CEREMONY:
Presenters: Cristina Hockl (Germany)
Angeliki Lefa (Greece)
Paul Rose (United States)
Description: SESSION #1A: FREE ADMISSION – WELCOMING OPENING CEREMONY 
JOIN US FOR THIS SPECIAL EVENT, WELCOMING PARTICIPANTS FROM ALL COUNTRIES, CULTURES, AND TIME ZONES.
The Tele’Drama Conference Grand Opening is a celebration of both previous and new connections, bringing participants from around the world together through international sociometry, creativity, imagination, and shared experience. It serves as an experiential warm-up for the four exciting conference days ahead.Over the years, our Grand Opening ceremonies have taken participants to places that once seemed impossible to experience together in a virtual space—from entering magical portals and flying around the world to witnessing art and performances across continents, visiting imaginary places, and even traveling through time.

What surprises will this year’s Masters of Ceremony bring? This year’s Masters of Ceremony will bring the international community fully into action and live interaction, creating opportunities for participants to meet and see one another, connect across countries and cultures, network, celebrate, and warm up together for the four exciting conference days ahead.Join us from anywhere in the world, on your own or together with a group, for another creative international encounter and a glimpse into the innovative, experiential, and borderless possibilities of Tele’Drama.
Admission to the Opening Ceremony is FREE. Registration: CLICK HERE
You are also warmly invited to stay with us, with the same FREE admission, for the following SESSION #1B Keynote Presentation by Daniela Simmons, PhD, TEP:Tired of Not Knowing: Healing Uncertainty Fatigue™ An Innovative Experiential Model for an Unpredictable World through Fusional InterReality™ Hybrid Experience

Topic: Tired of Not Knowing: Healing Uncertainty Fatigue™ An Innovative Experiential Model for an Unpredictable World through Fusional InterReality™ Hybrid Experience
Presenter: Daniela Simmons, PhD, TEP (United States )
Description: We live in an era of prolonged uncertainty—rapid global change, shifting systems, personal transitions, and the emotional burden of not knowing what comes next. While anxiety, stress, and burnout have been widely recognized, many people experience a different and often overlooked form of exhaustion: uncertainty fatigue—the depletion that results from living for extended periods without clarity, resolution, or stability.In this keynote, Dr. Daniela Simmons introduces Healing Uncertainty Fatigue™ (© 2025 Daniela Simmons), an original psychological-emotional and experiential model developed through clinical practice, international group work, and innovation in psychodrama and Tele'Drama. The model offers a new framework for understanding the impact of prolonged uncertainty and demonstrates how experiential action methods can transform emotional paralysis into resilience, creativity, and renewed vitality.The presentation will be facilitated through Fusional InterReality™ (© 2021 Daniela Simmons), an original hybrid experiential methodology that integrates participants attending individually online with groups gathered together in different physical locations, all connected simultaneously in one shared experiential process. Throughout the keynote, the presenter will work concurrently with individual online participants and with physically co-located groups joining digitally from multiple international locations, creating one unified experiential learning community.Grounded in psychodrama, role theory, Tele'Drama, group process, this innovative model provides practical and experiential pathways for helping individuals, groups, organizations, and communities regain inner steadiness without waiting for certainty. Rather than attempting to eliminate uncertainty, participants will discover how to develop new roles, strengthen adaptability, and cultivate presence, meaning, and hope in an unpredictable world.
Healing Uncertainty Fatigue (© 2025 Daniela Simmons)
Fusional InterReality (© 2021 Daniela Simmons)
Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the concept of Uncertainty Fatigue™ and explain how the Healing Uncertainty Fatigue™ model provides an innovative experiential framework for understanding and addressing its psychological and relational impact.
2. Explain the principles of Healing Uncertainty Fatigue™ and its integration of psychodrama, role theory, Tele'Drama, group process, and Fusional InterReality™.
3. Experience how Fusional InterReality®, an original hybrid experiential methodology, creates one integrated learning environment by engaging both individual online participants and physically co-located groups in a shared international experiential process while fostering resilience, creativity, adaptability, and role flexibility in the face of prolonged uncertainty.

Topic: The ARC Process: Using Short Action Methods to Facilitate Collective Intelligence
Presenters: Chantal Nève-Hanquet (Belgium)
Agathe Crespel (Belgium)
Description: This experiential workshop introduces the ARC Process (Action–Representations–Change), a practical framework for using short action-based interventions, particularly in non-therapeutic settings. Participants will experience how brief experiential “detours” can open new representations, stimulate creativity, and support collective intelligence processes.Starting with real situations brought by participants, the facilitators will guide the group through a series of short action methods integrated into the six stages of the ARC Process: Safety Frame, Warm-Up, Question, Action, Sharing, and Action Paths. Throughout the workshop, participants will continuously connect their lived experience to the ARC model.Rather than teaching fixed techniques to reproduce, this workshop aims to develop a creative facilitation mindset by learning how to design and adapt micro-experiential interventions in response to the here-and-now of a group.The ARC Process can be applied in training, supervision, coaching, team facilitation, education, organizational development, leadership support, and collective intelligence processes. Participants will leave with a flexible framework and increased confidence to create their own short experiential interventions in professional contexts.
Learning Objectives:

1. Develop creativity, confidence, and flexibility in using action methods as a way of thinking when facilitating training, supervision, coaching, teaching, team facilitation, meetings, workshops, and group discussions.
2. Apply the ARC Process as a simple, safe, and flexible framework for facilitating collective intelligence and designing short experiential interventions that respond to the here-and-now of a group.

Topic: Forensic Systems in Action (FSA): Humanizing Legal and Correctional Systems Through Action Methods
Presenters: Leigh E. Johnson, JD, TEP (United States)
David Moran, TEP (United States)
Erica Hollander, PhD, JD, TEP (United States)
Svetlana Iloski (North Macedonia )
Description: Lead Presenters

• Leigh E. Johnson, JD, PAT/TEP (United States)
• David F. Moran, LCSW, CADC, TEP (United States)

Supporting Presenters

• Erica Hollander, JD, PhD, TEP (United States)
• Svetlana Iloski (North Macedonia)

This international team has collaboratively developed the Forensic Systems in Action (FSA) programHEREbringing together expertise from law, forensic practice, psychiatry, corrections, psychotherapy, psychodrama, and justice systems. Under the direction of Daniela Simmons, the program integrates action methods with contemporary forensic and legal practice to promote more human-centered, trauma-informed, and relationally aware approaches within justice systems worldwide.

 DescriptionThe first contact between a professional and a client often shapes the entire helping process. Whether referred to as an intake interview, initial assessment, consultation, or first meeting, this early stage involves gathering information, establishing trust, understanding concerns, and identifying the individual, family, and system dynamics that may influence future work.This experiential presentation explores how action methods can enrich these initial encounters in forensic, legal, family court, and correctional settings. Through examples and demonstrations, participants will discover how sociometry, role theory, role reversal, the empty chair technique, and other action methods can help move beyond information gathering to create deeper understanding, empathy, and meaningful engagement.Presenters will share practical applications from forensic and family justice settings while illustrating how action methods can reveal hidden perspectives, strengthen professional-client relationships, and support more informed assessment and intervention across diverse populations and systems. 
Learning Objectives:

1. Identify and describe how action methods—including sociometry, role theory, role reversal, and the empty chair technique—can enhance initial assessments, information gathering, engagement, and understanding in forensic practice.
2. Demonstrate the use of action methods to uncover relational, family, and systemic dynamics while fostering empathy, perspective-taking, and more effective assessment and intervention.

Topic: Symposium S3: (1) Müjdegül Karaca, MD, PhD, CTP-2 (Türkiye) | (2) Tzivia SteinBarrett (USA/Mexico) | (3) Alayna Hester, RDT, LCAT (USA) | (4) Carlos A Raimundo, MD (Australia)
Presenter: Description: 1. Müjdegül Karaca, MD, PhD, CTP-2 (Türkiye)
Towards Birth: A Psychodrama-Based Group Intervention for Pregnant Women
This presentation introduces a 16-session psychodrama-based group intervention designed for pregnant women as they navigate the psychological and emotional transition to motherhood. The program addresses fear of childbirth, identity transformation, emotional resilience, inner resources, and interpersonal support. The presentation will explore the structure and application of the intervention and how psychodramatic group processes can foster self-awareness, emotional expression, personal resources, and a sense of connection and companionship throughout pregnancy.

2. Tzivia SteinBarrett, CP (USA) 
3. Alayna Hester, RDT, LCAT (USA) 
4. Carlos A Raimundo, MD (Australia)
 

Topic: Workshop S3-1: A Nuts and Bolts Guide to Running Magic Shop
Presenters: Regina Sewell, PhD, TEP (United States)
Jennifer R. Salimbene, LCSW-R, TEP (United States)
Description: Magic Shop is a psychodramatic technique which uses spontaneity and creativity to help clients think about life changes they need to make in order to achieve their dreams and goals.   In the Magic Shop, customers get a chance to “shop” for desired qualities.  The shop-keeper barters with the customer about how much of that quality they want and how much of a different quality they are willing to let go of in order to get that quality.  This workshop will teach the nuts and bolts of running Magic Shop in action.  
Learning Objectives:

1. Be able to describe one or two benefits of using the Magic Shop technique with clients.
2. Be able to describe how to facilitate the Magic Shop technique with clients.

Topic: Workshop S3-2: Stepping into the Story: Embodied Exploration through Role and Metaphor
Presenters: Colleen Baratka, MA, TEP (United States)
Samuel Yie (South Korea)
Tanja L. Lee, Ph.D., RDT (United States)
Description: This experiential workshop explores innovative approaches to embodied storytelling through the integration of psychodrama, drama therapy, and bibliodrama in the online space. Participants will engage with creative methods that deepen attention to overlooked roles, relational tensions, and symbolic metaphor. Leaders will demonstrate how background characters, marginalized voices, and nonhuman elements can become portals for insight, spontaneity, and emotional transformation. Participants will explore concretization techniques that externalize interpersonal conflict through symbolic roles, expanding the dramatic field beyond the central storyline. The workshop will also examine the therapeutic and imaginative potential of creating alternative or restorative endings that foster agency, integration, and new meaning. Designed for expressive and action based practitioners, this workshop offers innovative tools for enriching narrative exploration and expanding creative possibilities in virtual & hybrid group work.

 
Learning Objectives:

1. Use concretization and metaphor to embody interpersonal conflict, symbolic roles, and relational dynamics through virtual action methods.
2. Utilize background, marginalized, and nonhuman roles to deepen insight, spontaneity, and emotional exploration in group work.
3. Facilitate alternative and restorative endings to expand perspective, promote integration, and support therapeutic change.

Topic: Workshop S3-3: Distress Tolerance in Action: Body Scans and Psychodramatic Role Play
Presenter: Rebecca Walters, TEP (United States)
Description: One of the most important skills for anyone handling challenging people, difficult situations, and longstanding triggers is the ability to manage their own emotional reactions and discomfort. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) this skill is known as distress tolerance. While these skills are often taught through discussion, handouts, and homework, this approach can remain largely cognitive and didactic. By integrating action-based learning and body-mind exercises  psychodramatic methods create a more vivid, engaging, and memorable learning experience. Participants will discover how experiential practice can deepen understanding, increase skill retention, and support the generalization of distress tolerance strategies to real-life challenges. The workshop will demonstrate how psychodramatic role play can make skills training more dynamic, interactive, and effective for both group and individual treatment settings. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for incorporating psychodramatic techniques into their own clinical work.


 
Learning Objectives:

1. Describe how to use the Body Scan technique.
2. Identify two Distress Tolerance "Games" and explain their purpose.
3. Explain how psychodramatic role training can facilitate skill acquisition.

Topic: Workshop S3-4: TBD
Presenter: Louise Lipman, LCSW-R, TEP (United States)
Description:

Topic: Workshop S3-5: Attunement, Rupture, and Repair: Exploring the Relational Cycle through Psychodrama
Presenter: Catherine D. Nugent, LCPC, TEP ( United States)
Description: We develop, heal, and grow in relationship. Yet no relationship is perfectly attuned: misattunements, disappointments, and ruptures are inevitable. What builds resilience is not the absence of rupture, but the experience of repair. This experiential workshop explores the relational cycle of attunement, rupture, and repair through psychodrama and embodied action methods. Participants explore how attunement, rupture, and repair are experienced in the body and in relationship, and how psychodrama can create opportunities for repair—including, through surplus reality, when repair was not possible.
Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the relational cycle of attunement, rupture, and repair and its relevance to resilience, healing, and the therapeutic relationship.
2. Identify and apply embodied and psychodramatic methods for exploring attunement, rupture, and repair.
3. Explain how surplus reality can facilitate experiences of repair when needed relational encounters were unavailable or incomplete.

Topic: Workshop S3-6: Wisdom of Our Dreams to Cope With Global Crisis
Presenters: Maurizio Gasseau (Italy)
Nilüfer Demirhan (Türkiye / Italy )
Description: We are currently living through an era of profound global uncertainty. Jungian Psychodrama provides a unique, action-based methodology for bringing unconscious symbols out of the shadows and into the waking world.Through the enactment of dream images on the psychodrama stage, participants will encounter archetypal forces, discovering how these symbols can guide us through periods of global instability and help us process overwhelming collective trauma.The workshop journey will begin with a hybrid warm-up, building a container of safety and trust that invites both online and in-person participants to connect deeply with their active imagination. Once this safe space is established, the group will move into dream narration, offering recent dreams that carry the emotional weight and symbolic resonance of current global crises. Selected dreams will then be brought onto the hybrid stage through psychodrama. The workshop will conclude with a narrative observation that synthesizes the emerging archetypes, traces the group's collective movement, and anchors the symbolic journey in a coherent and meaningful context for our waking lives.
Learning Objectives:

1. Experience the application of Jungian Psychodrama techniques within a hybrid environment.
2. Understand how to work with dreams and the collective unconscious through psychodrama.
3. Discover how the symbolic language of dreams can be used to transform anxiety related to global crises into personal resilience and deeper meaning.

Topic: Thursday Evening Process Group
Presenter: Description: Facilitated by Tele’Drama team members, this evening process group offers a welcoming space to reflect on and integrate the experiences of the day, share meaningful moments, connect and network with colleagues, and bring the day to a thoughtful close.

Topic: Friday Morning Process Group
Presenter: Description: Facilitated by Tele’Drama team members, this morning process group offers a gentle space to reflect on and process the previous day, share experiences, reconnect with one another, and warm up together for the day ahead.

Topic: The Last Chapters of Life Exploring Old Age, Grief and Death through the Transgenerational Map™
Presenters: Cristina Hockl (Germany)
Angeliki Lefa (Greece)
Michael Wieser, PhD (Austria)
Description: Every family carries stories of aging, loss and death. Some losses have been openly mourned and remembered; others have remained unspoken, unfinished or absent from the family narrative. Across generations, we may inherit not only stories of those who came before us, but also ways of responding to grief, separation, vulnerability, aging and mortality.The Last Chapters of Life is a one-hour experiential workshop using the Transgenerational Map™ to explore family legacies surrounding death and grief and how they may continue to resonate in our lives today.Through embodied exploration, symbolic objects, movement and reflection, participants will be invited to enter their family landscape and encounter questions such as: How was death experienced and spoken about in my family? Which losses were mourned, and which remained silent? Whose grief may still be present in the family story? What have I learned from previous generations about loss, aging and mortality?The workshop creates a space to explore the distinction between what belongs to our own experience and what may have been carried across generations. Rather than approaching inherited grief as something that simply needs to be “let go,” participants will be invited to consider where grief belongs, what needs acknowledgement and remembrance, and what might be held differently.The exploration gradually turns from the past toward the participant’s own life: Knowing where I come from, how do I want to meet my own aging, losses and mortality? What do I wish to carry forward, and what might I choose to transform?By moving through the Transgenerational Map™, participants are invited to experience the relationship between ancestors, inherited grief, present life and future mortality—making space not only for what has been lost, but also for the resources, resilience, love and wisdom transmitted across generations.
Learning Objectives:

1. Explore family legacies and identify spoken and unspoken patterns surrounding grief, death, aging and mortality across generations.
2. Differentiate between personal grief and grief that may belong to the wider family story, while recognizing resources and resilience inherited alongside loss.
3. Reflect on how awareness of their family history may influence the way they wish to approach their own aging, losses and mortality.

Topic: Explore Motivational Phrases from Around the World | Nishikyushu University, Saga
Presenters: Ichiro (Okkady) Okajima ( Japan)
Shota Shirahama (Japan)
Hinako Ohmura (Japan)
Koh Harada (Japan)
Momo Kikuno (Japan)
Ryo Shigetomi (Japan)
Description: In this engaging hybrid experiential presentation, Professor Ichiro Okajima, together with his colleagues and psychology students from Nishikyushu University in Saga, Japan, will connect live from their university classroom with participants attending the Tele'Drama Conference from around the world.Participants will introduce motivational phrases that are traditional in their home countries or that they personally use. Across cultures, people often say a few words to themselves or to one another before an important event—such as beginning the day, taking an exam, or entering a competition—to build confidence, focus, and motivation. In mental coaching, this practice is often referred to as "psyching up."By sharing these phrases and the gestures or rituals that accompany them, participants will engage in an international experiential exchange that promotes intercultural understanding, connection, and inspiration. The session will demonstrate the power of hybrid experiential learning by bringing together a university classroom in Japan and an international conference audience into one shared learning community.
Learning Objectives:

1. Explore motivational phrases and "psyching up" practices from different cultures to broaden intercultural understanding.
2. Experience how motivational words and gestures can enhance personal readiness, confidence, and engagement.
3. Participate in an innovative hybrid experiential process that connects university students and international conference participants in a shared learning experience.

Topic: Innovation Across Generations: A Living History Panel | Moderator: Dena Baumgartner; Award Recipients: Louise Lipman; Peter Pitzele; Carlos Raimundo; John Nolte; Amna Jaffer; Daniela Simmons; Colleen Baratka; Rebecca Walters; Anna Schaum; Ron Wiener
Presenter: Description: Innovation Across Generations: A Living History Panel
Innovator's Award Recipients: (1998) Louise Lipman, LCSW, TEP; (1999) Peter Pitzele, PhD, TEP; (2004) Carlos Raimundo, MD; (2012) John Nolte, PhD, TEP; (2013) Amna Jaffer, MA, TEP; (2022) Daniela Simmons, PhD, TEP; (2025) Colleen Baratka, MA, TEP, CTP-3; (2026) Rebecca Walters, LMHC, TEP; (2026) Anna Schaum, TEP; 
Ron Wiener, PhD (United Kingdom) – Recipient of the 2008 BPA Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding commitment to the development of sociodrama nationally and internationally; nominee for the European Community Psychology Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

This special two-hour panel brings together recipients of prestigious Innovator Awards in the fields of psychodrama, sociometry, group psychotherapy, and related action methods. Each panelist has been formally recognized for developing original methodologies, extending the applications of action methods into new areas, or making significant contributions that have influenced the evolution of the field.
Together, these innovators will share the stories behind their discoveries, the needs and challenges that inspired their work, and the ways their innovations have expanded the possibilities of psychodrama and action methods since the time of J. L. Moreno.

Rather than presenting their work separately, the innovators will engage in an interactive dialogue with one another and with conference participants, exploring how innovation emerges, evolves, and influences future generations of practitioners. Panelists will discuss the creative process, the realities of introducing new ideas into established fields, lessons learned along the way, and their visions for the future.

Participants will have the opportunity to engage directly with the panelists through discussion, questions, reflection, and experiential elements designed to bring innovation into action. The session will explore not only what has already been created, but also what remains possible as psychodrama, sociometry, group psychotherapy, and action methods continue to evolve in response to the needs of contemporary society.

This panel celebrates innovation as a living legacy—honoring those whose contributions have shaped the field while inspiring new generations of creators to carry the work forward.
 
Learning Objectives:

1. Describe how innovative methodologies and applications have expanded the theory and practice of psychodrama, sociometry, group psychotherapy, and related action methods beyond their original foundations.
2. Identify key factors that support creativity, innovation, and the successful development of new approaches within professional practice, education, community work, and organizational settings.

Topic: Workshop S6-1: Forensic Systems in Action (FSA): Humanizing Legal and Correctional Systems Through Action Methods
Presenters: Daniela Simmons, PhD, TEP (United States )
Leigh E. Johnson, JD, TEP (United States)
David Moran, TEP (United States)
Erica Hollander, PhD, JD, TEP (United States)
Description: Presenters

• Daniela Simmons, PhD, TEP (United States)
• David F. Moran, LCSW, CADC, TEP (United States)
• Erica Hollander, JD, PhD, TEP (United States)
• Leigh E. Johnson, JD, PAT/TEP (United States)
• Svetlana Iloski (North Macedonia)

FORENSIC SYSTEMS IN ACTION (FSA): Humanizing Legal and Correctional Systems Through Action Methods
An International Panel and Experiential DemonstrationFormat: Two-Hour Conference Session

Hour One – International Panel Discussion
An interdisciplinary panel exploring how action methods can contribute to more humane, relational, and effective legal and correctional systems. Presenters will share perspectives from law, forensic mental health, corrections, psychodrama, and sociometry.

Hour Two – Experiential Demonstration
A live demonstration illustrating the application of action methods in forensic settings, with particular attention to first contact, assessment, engagement, and understanding individuals within the systems in which they function.
 
Learning Objectives:

1. Identify key applications of psychodrama, sociometry, and other action methods within legal, correctional, and forensic settings to promote understanding, engagement, and more human-centered practice.
2. Demonstrate how action methods can be used to explore roles, relationships, and system dynamics in forensic contexts through experiential and panel-based learning.

Topic: Workshop S6-2: Both/And: Psycho-Sociodrama of Embodied Polarity
Presenters: Leticia Nieto, PsyD, TEP (United States)
Miriam Zachariah, MA, TEP (Canada )
Description: This experiential two-hour workshop explores how psycho-sociodrama can help us recognize, manage, and integrate the polarities shaping our inner lives, relationships, and communities. Rooted in Jacob L. Moreno’s role theory and philosophy of relational interconnectedness, psycho-sociodrama uses one person’s lived experience as a doorway into the collective dynamics affecting the whole group. Through action methods, sociometry, and reflective dialogue, participants will examine how competing forces—individual and collective, freedom and responsibility, inclusion and transcendence, conservative and progressive impulses—become polarized within ourselves and society.

Together, we will explore how roles develop within the interconnected matrices of identity, culture, and relationship, and how seemingly opposing forces can move from “either/or” conflict toward a more flexible “both/and” understanding. Participants will deepen self-awareness, uncover hidden assumptions, cultivate spontaneity and creativity, and practice transforming tension into greater empathy, connection, and collective insight.
Learning Objectives: 1.        Identify and map the underlying polarities and relational dynamics present within personal, interpersonal, and collective conflicts through the lens of psycho-sociodrama and sociometric exploration. 
2.        Apply Jacob L. Moreno’s role theory and concepts of spontaneity, co-creativity, and relational development to examine how identity, behavior, and social roles emerge and evolve within interconnected social matrices. 
3.        Practice integrating polarized perspectives through experiential psycho-sociodramatic methods, cultivating greater empathy, flexibility, and “both/and” thinking that supports more skillful responses to conflict, tension, and collective challenges.

Topic: Workshop S6-3: Transpersonal Psychodrama: Expanding Online Psychodrama Through Integrative Roles and Energetic Action Methods
Presenter: Bojana Glusac Draslar (Serbia)
Description: Transpersonal Psychodrama is an integrative approach developed through a training school that brings together classical psychodrama, transpersonal psychology, contemplative practices, and embodied awareness in online settings. This presentation introduces innovative roles and action methods that have emerged through several years of online practice, including the Meta Role, the Energy Double, the Energetic Safe Place, and other transpersonal interventions. Through theoretical reflection, experiential demonstrations, and practical examples, participants will explore how integrating transpersonal perspectives with Moreno's philosophy can enrich online psychodrama and expand possibilities for therapeutic, educational, and group work.
Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the core principles of the Transpersonal Psychodrama approach and its integration with classical psychodrama in online settings.
2. Experience innovative transpersonal roles and action methods that promote safety, spontaneity, and group cohesion in virtual psychodramatic practice.

Topic: Workshop S6-4: Using the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to Feel Calmer, More Relaxed and to Heal From Past Hurts | Jeff Schneider, LCSW (USA)
Presenter: Description: This experiential workshop introduces participants to the basic principles and tapping points of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). Through guided individual and group tapping experiences tailored to participants' needs, attendees will learn how EFT can support emotional regulation, reduce stress, and promote relaxation. The workshop provides practical experience with EFT as a simple, accessible approach for healing from past emotional hurts and enhancing personal well-being.
Learning Objectives:

1. Learn and practice the basic EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) tapping sequence through guided individual and group experiences.
2. Experience how EFT can promote emotional regulation, relaxation, and healing from past emotional experiences.
3. Increase confidence and proficiency in using EFT as a practical tool for personal and professional well-being.

Topic: Workshop S6-5: From Disconnection to Belonging: Sociometry and Sociodrama with Disengaged Children in Hybrid Settings
Presenter: Daniela Tahirova (Bulgaria)
Description: What if disengagement is not the problem, but the solution?This experiential workshop explores how withdrawal, resistance, and rule-breaking in children can be understood as protective responses rather than behaviors to be corrected. Through sociometry and sociodrama in hybrid settings, participants will experience how group cohesion and a sense of belonging can reopen pathways for connection, participation, and self-regulation. The workshop focuses on engaging hard-to-reach children by first strengthening relational safety and inclusion rather than enforcing compliance. Grounded in a broader systemic perspective, challenges with boundaries are understood within the wider relational context surrounding the child, including school and social environments. Participants will gain practical, experience-based tools that can be applied in therapeutic, educational, and community settings.
Learning Objectives:

1. Understand disengagement and rule-breaking in children as protective, adaptive responses within a broader relational context.
2. Apply sociometric tools to strengthen group cohesion, inclusion, and a sense of belonging.
3. Facilitate experiential sociodramatic processes in hybrid settings that support connection, participation, and self-regulation.

Topic: Workshop S6-6: Invisible Letters: An Innovative Action Modality for Exploring What Cannot Be Said
Presenters: Amna Jaffer, Ed.D, TEP (United States)
Nadia Naeem, PhD (Pakistan)
Description: Invisible Letters is an innovative experiential modality designed to help participants approach thoughts, feelings, relationships, and experiences that may be difficult to express directly. It can be integrated into psychodrama, sociodrama, and axiodrama, using the writing of a letter as a bridge between inner experience and action. The letter is “invisible” because it does not need to be shared, sent, or read aloud unless the participant chooses to do so, creating space for expression while respecting resistance, privacy, and readiness.The workshop begins with sociometric connection and a focused warm-up in which participants write an invisible letter related to the theme of the session—for example, grief and loss, an unresolved relationship, the older or future self, a life transition, or a social or ethical concern. The themes, roles, images, and relationships emerging from the letter can then become material for psychodramatic, sociodramatic, or axiodramatic action. In axiodrama, the invisible letter itself may become a role, opening possibilities for exploring values, ethics, meaning, and internal or collective conflicts.Through enactment, role work, sharing, and group reflection, participants will experience how Invisible Letters can facilitate individual expression while also revealing shared and collective themes. The workshop will demonstrate how this modality can be adapted to different populations, settings, and areas of practice while supporting connection, reflection, and collective healing.
Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the principles and structure of the Invisible Letters modality and its integration into psychodrama, sociodrama, and axiodrama.
2. Demonstrate how an invisible letter can serve as a warm-up and bridge into action while respecting participants’ choices regarding disclosure of their written material.
3. Identify at least two applications of Invisible Letters for exploring individual, relational, social, or value-based themes and facilitating connection and collective healing.

Topic: Sociodrama in a Changing World: Innovation, Connection, and Collective Action
Presenter: Cissy Rock (New Zealand)
Description: Sociodrama offers an innovative way to explore the rapidly changing realities of contemporary society. Through action, role reversal, and collective exploration, participants can engage with emerging social challenges, experience different perspectives, and discover creative possibilities for connection and social change.
Learning Objectives:  

1. Explore contemporary applications of sociodrama in addressing emerging social realities and challenges.
2. Identify innovative ways sociodrama can foster dialogue, connection, and collective action.

Topic: Unmasking Covert Emotional Incest: An Experiential Psychodrama Demonstration of Hidden Relational Trauma
Presenter: Adena Hope Bank, LCSW, CP (United States)
Description: This experiential psychodrama demonstration will bring to life the hidden dynamics of covert emotional incest, a form of emotional sexual abuse in which a child is unconsciously placed in the role of meeting a parent's emotional needs. Through action methods, role exploration, and group processing, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how emotional enmeshment affects attachment, identity, relationships, and recovery. Attendees will leave with practical psychodramatic tools for recognizing and treating this often misunderstood form of relational trauma.
Learning Objectives: 1. Define covert emotional incest and distinguish it from healthy parent-child attachment and overt forms of abuse.
2. Observe and analyze psychodramatic techniques used to assess and address emotional enmeshment and role reversal dynamics.
3. Experience action methods that help clients externalize internalized family roles, unmet developmental needs, and attachment injuries.

Topic: Friday Evening Process Group
Presenter: Description: Facilitated by Tele’Drama team members, this evening process group offers a welcoming space to reflect on and integrate the experiences of the day, share meaningful moments, connect and network with colleagues, and bring the day to a thoughtful close.

Topic: Saturday Morning Process Group
Presenter: Description: Facilitated by Tele’Drama team members, this morning process group offers a gentle space to reflect on and process the previous day, share experiences, reconnect with one another, and warm up together for the day ahead.

Topic: Symposium S8: Moderator: TBD; Panelists: Lucia Moretto (Italy) | Mark Wentworth (UK) | Mira Pandey (Nepal) | Mala Bali (India)
Presenter: Description: Moderator: TBD
Presentations:

1. Oneiric Drawing and Psychodrama: An Intermodal Method for Clinical and Educational Practice – Lucia Moretto (Italy)This presentation introduces oneiric drawing as a graphic-expressive method inspired by surrealist art and explores its intermodal integration with psychodrama. Through theoretical framing and examples from the first book dedicated to the method of oneiric drawing, authored by Lucia Moretto together with Professor Marco Ius, participants will discover how symbolic images created through oneiric drawing can evoke unconscious symbols, personal meanings, internal conflicts, resources, and creative possibilities. Particular attention will be given to the use of the method in online settings and to how these symbolic images can become a bridge to psychodramatic enactment, supporting insight, self-awareness, and psychological well-being in clinical, educational, and group contexts.Learning Objectives:
   
   • Understand the theoretical foundations of oneiric drawing as a graphic-expressive method inspired by surrealist art and integrated with psychodrama.
   • Understand how oneiric drawing can be used experientially, including in online settings, to facilitate symbolic exploration and its integration with psychodrama in therapeutic and educational work.
2. Mark Wentworth (UK)
3. Mira Pandey, CTP-1 (Nepal)
4. Mala Bali, CTP-3 (India) 

Topic: Workshop S8-1: Surrealistic Psychodrama: Exploring Surplus Reality Through Imagination
Presenter: Inara Erdmanis (Latvia/Sweden)
Description: Surrealistic Psychodrama is an experiential approach developed by Leif Dag Blomkvist and Marc Treadwell that integrates J. L. Moreno's psychodramatic philosophy with the imaginative principles of Surrealism. Through dream imagery, symbolic action, archetypal figures, and surplus reality, participants will explore metaphors, invented characters, and symbolic landscapes to expand creativity, deepen emotional expression, and discover new perspectives. The workshop includes guided warm-ups, dramatic enactment, and group sharing, demonstrating how imagination and symbolic action can foster insight, transformation, and healing.
Learning Objectives:

1. Experience Surrealistic Psychodrama techniques that use symbolism, imagination, and surplus reality to enhance creativity and emotional expression.
2. Apply surrealistic psychodramatic methods to promote insight, transformation, and new perspectives in personal and group work.

Topic: Workshop S8-2: Three Systems in Action: Transforming Anxiety Through Tele'Drama and Compassion-Focused Therapy
Presenter: Pembegül İlter (Türkiye)
Description: This 2-hour parallel experiential workshop demonstrates how to integrate the Three Emotion Regulation Systems model from Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) with Tele'Drama and experiential action methods. Anxiety often results from an overactive Threat System and an underdeveloped Soothing System. While understanding these concepts is helpful, insight alone is often not enough for adults to experience a greater sense of safety.Through Tele'Drama, participants will bring the Threat, Drive, and Soothing Systems to the virtual stage as separate roles in action. Using experiential techniques, they will observe their internal conflicts from a safe distance, explore new responses, and strengthen internal balance under the guidance of the Compassionate Self in an online setting.
Learning Objectives:

1. Experience how to translate and structure the Three Emotion Regulation Systems model from Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) using Tele'Drama tools in online and hybrid settings.
2. Explore the dynamics between the Threat and Soothing Systems during anxiety through experiential Tele'Drama techniques.
3. Practice building a safe space and strengthening the Compassionate Self to help participants regulate internal and shared anxious voices in online settings.

Topic: Workshop S8-3: Unlock the Secrets of Your Sorrows: Finding Your Own Pathway on the Map of Grief
Presenters: Cristina Hockl (Germany)
Angeliki Lefa (Greece)
Description: Grief is a profoundly human experience that extends far beyond bereavement. It encompasses losses, transitions, unmet expectations, and life experiences that shape who we are, often leaving traces that remain unseen or unspoken.This experiential workshop introduces the Map of Grief, an original visual and symbolic framework created by Cristina Hockl to support a deeper exploration of the many landscapes of grief. Rather than following a linear model, the Map invites participants to experience grief as a dynamic, multidimensional process that reveals both vulnerability and resilience.Through symbolic mapping, guided reflection, and experiential group processes, participants will explore personal and collective landscapes of loss, identify patterns that shape their relationship with grief, and discover resources that support meaning-making, integration, and growth. Cristina Hockl and Angeliki Lefa have extensive experience working with grief, loss, and bereavement in individual, group, and educational settings. Together, they offer an innovative experiential approach for understanding grief in its many expressions.
Learning Objectives:

1. Deepen their understanding of grief as a multidimensional human experience using the Map of Grief framework.
2. Explore personal and collective landscapes of loss through symbolic mapping and experiential group processes.
3. Recognize patterns, resources, and possibilities for meaning-making, integration, and resilience in personal and professional practice.

Topic: Workshop S8-4: Relationships and Gender Norms, Roles and Expectations: A Sociodramatic Exploration
Presenters: Peter C. Benedict, PhD, LMHC (United States)
Desirée N. Robinson, PhD, LCSW-C (United States)
Description: Challenges in relationships can often be isolating for couples - they usually keep it to themselves, sometimes seeking therapy or talking to family or friends or to clergy for support, but there's little community support. There aren't a lot of societal or group structures of dialogue and support. This is where sociodrama can fit in.

This experiential sociodrama workshop will use action methods to warm up and then select an issue or issues on the theme, enroll participants in roles, invite messages and dialog from those roles, and doubling and other psychodramatic and sociodramatic moves or processes, followed by discussion. It will be an open space in which attendees can bring topics, under the general title of the workshop, that are most alive for them in this cultural moment.
Learning Objectives: 1.        Identify how gender norms, roles, and expectations can shape relational dynamics, and show how sociodrama can create a missing layer of community-based dialogue and support.
2.        Demonstrate the use of core sociodramatic and psychodramatic techniques-including warm-up, role playing, doubling, and role reversal-as tools for surfacing and externalizing collective tensions around gender and relationships.
3.        Apply an open-space sociodramatic structure to facilitate group exploration of a live, audience-generated relational theme, so that participants can experience how the warmup-action-then-discussion format can support integration and meaning-making for participants.

Topic: Workshop S8-5: Polyvagal-Informed Psychodrama: Building Safety, Connection, and Cohesion
Presenters: Amitabh Ghosh, MD, PAT (India)
Weslin (Lin) Panakal (India/Germany )
Lavanya Singh (India)
Description: The presenters will offer an integrative model for working with individuals suffering from trauma and trauma-related disorders. The workshop explores Psychodrama techniques designed to train professionals in both one-on-one and group settings. By integrating Polyvagal Theory (PVT)—the science of how the autonomic nervous system shapes safety and social engagement—the session focuses on the principles of co-regulation, neuroception, and autonomic hierarchy. Participants will learn how to foster connection and strengthen group cohesion through polyvagal-informed exercises that encourage authentic engagement.
Learning Objectives: 1.  Apply Polyvagal Theory principles to select the appropriate action method for a client’s specific nervous system state (fight, flight, or freeze).
2.  Demonstrate and facilitate at least three specific polyvagal-informed action methods accurately during peer-to-peer practice sessions.

Topic: Workshop S8-6: Psychodrama Outdoors: Expanding the Stage Beyond the Therapy Room
Presenter: Kirsty Weedon (United Kingdom)
Description: In this experiential workshop, Kirsty Weedon (United Kingdom) will share her work integrating psychodrama with outdoor practice. Participants will explore how the outdoors / nature / more-than-human can become an extension of the psychodramatic stage while reflecting on the ethical considerations, practical applications, and theoretical influences that inform this approach. The workshop will include opportunities for discussion, reflection, and experiential exploration, as well as resources for those interested in developing their own outdoor practice.
Learning Objectives:

1. Explore the principles and practice of psychodrama in outdoor settings.
2. Reflect on the ethical considerations involved in facilitating psychodrama outdoors.
3. Identify resources and approaches that support the development of outdoor psychodrama practice.

Topic: From Business Tools to Action Methods: An Integrated Approach to Organizational Team Coaching
Presenter: Roberto Bonanomi, PsyD (Italy / Switzerland)
Description: Organizational Team Coaching requires coaches to combine an understanding of business and organizational processes with methods that help teams explore their experience, relationships and perspectives.

 This experiential presentation introduces an integrated approach to organizational team coaching in which established coaching models and tools from business and organizational sciences are combined with sociometry, sociodrama, role reversal and other action methods.
 Focusing on the Reality phase of the coaching process, participants will experience an example drawn from the HURACT & TELE'DRAMA Master Team Coaching methodology. A familiar organizational tool — SWOT analysis — will be combined with role reversal and experiential techniques to help a team explore its current reality from multiple perspectives and develop a richer understanding of the factors that may support or hinder the achievement of its goals.
 Through a brief case in action, the session will provide participants with a practical taste of how business methodologies, coaching psychology and action methods can be integrated into a coherent approach to organizational team coaching.
Learning Objectives:

• Describe how tools from business and organizational sciences can be integrated with coaching and action methods in organizational team coaching.
• Identify how role reversal and experiential techniques can enrich the exploration of a team’s current reality beyond a conventional SWOT analysis.
• Recognize how an integrated coaching process can help teams explore different perspectives, identify factors affecting their goals, and move from analysis toward action.

Topic: When Dreams Meet Miracles: An Innovative Integration of Gottman's Dreams Within Conflict and Solution-Focused Therapy
Presenters: Violeta Kadieva, Ph.D., LMFT-S (United States)
Candice Jones Ronemus, PhD (United States)
Description: This presentation explores how John Gottman’s Dreams Within Conflict intervention can be integrated with the Miracle Question from Solution-Focused Family Therapy to help couples and families move beyond gridlocked conflicts. The presentation highlights how uncovering the deeper values, fears, and personal dreams beneath recurring disagreements can foster empathy and emotional connection, while the Miracle Question encourages clients to envision preferred futures and identify practical steps toward change. Together, these approaches create a strengths-based framework that promotes understanding, collaboration, and meaningful relational growth.
Learning Objectives:

1. Explain the core principles of John Gottman's Dreams Within Conflict intervention and the Miracle Question from Solution-Focused Family Therapy, including how underlying values, meanings, and unmet needs contribute to relational conflict in couples and families.
2. Demonstrate how to integrate Dreams Within Conflict and the Miracle Question to foster empathy, goal-setting, collaborative problem-solving, and meaningful relational change in therapeutic practice.

Topic: Symposium S10: Innovative Projects for Communities in Need | Moderator: Dr. Stan Inman, PhD (USA); Mae Pei, PhD, Xiaoli Li, PhD (China); Mercedes Martinez, PhD (Mexico); Andrea Wilches, BS, SP (Colombia/Argentina); Kendall Brune, PhD (USA)
Presenter: Description: Presentations:
Innovative Projects for Older Adults in China - (China)    
Community-Based Work with the General Population in Mexico - Mercedes Martinez (Mexico) 
Innovative Work with Children in Mexico - Andrea Wilches (Colombia/Argentina)   
Supporting Veterans in Long-Term Care in the United States - Kendall Brune, PhD (United States) 

Topic: Workshop S10-1: Theater Improvisation Within a Group Framework: A Rehearsal for Life
Presenter: Ofra Faiman (Israel )
Description: In this workshop, I will introduce theater improvisation not merely as a warm-up activity, but as a powerful therapeutic method. I will highlight how improvisation enhances spontaneity, creativity, playfulness, social connection, and even cognitive functioning.Theater is an art form that requires creativity, flexibility, and the ability to respond in the moment. It can support problem-solving, particularly during times of stress or crisis. Theater improvisation is effective with both older adults and younger people, fostering spontaneity, humor, enjoyment, and meaningful connection. As J. L. Moreno emphasized, spontaneity enables individuals to experience reality in creative and inventive ways.Participants will engage in improvisations based on their own life experiences and other shared themes. The workshop will conclude with group sharing and a discussion of how drama-based exercises can enrich participants' work with groups.
Learning Objectives:

1. Demonstrate the use of theater improvisation techniques in group work.
2. Encourage spontaneity in both the group leader and participants while transforming personal narratives into creative dramatic expression.

Topic: Workshop S10-2: From Control to Contact: Relationship as a Regulator of Screen Use
Presenters: Anna Kononenko (Serbia)
Elena Petrova (Bulgaria)
Description: Screens are no longer just a tool—they have become an emotional regulator in many children's lives. When screen use becomes a source of conflict, tension, and parental helplessness, the common response is increased control. Yet control often intensifies the struggle rather than resolving it.This experiential workshop introduces a Tele'Drama-based approach in which relationship becomes the primary regulator. Through images, role exploration, and group processes, participants will experience the shift from control to contact, from reaction to regulation, and from power struggles to relational presence. They will explore how connection, emotional presence, and clear boundaries can transform screen-related conflicts into opportunities for co-regulation and the development of self-regulation.
Learning Objectives:

• Understand the concept of the "screen as a symptom" rather than the core problem, and explore the role of the adult as an external regulator.
• Practice Tele'Drama-based strategies that use connection, emotional presence, and clear boundaries to support co-regulation and self-regulation during challenging screen-related interactions.

Topic: Workshop S10-3: A Bridge Between Ancestral Wisdom and the Digital World: Finding Stability in a Rapidly Changing World
Presenters: Gülşen Büyükşahin, MA, PAT (United States)
Cristina Hockl (Germany)
Description: We are living in a time of rapid technological change that many experience as overwhelming and unsettling. The speed of the digital world can create fear, disconnection, and a sense of losing our ground. While we may not be able to slow this change, we can explore how to adapt to it in more grounded and human ways.This experiential workshop invites participants to reconnect with ancestral wisdom as an inner resource for navigating the challenges of modern life. Through psychodramatic exploration, participants will create a bridge between past and future—between what has been inherited and what is emerging. Together, they will explore ways to move from fear toward stability, strengthening their capacity to remain connected, embodied, and resilient in a rapidly changing world.
Learning Objectives:

• Explore their emotional and psychological responses to rapid technological change, including experiences of fear, overwhelm, and disconnection.
• Identify and engage with ancestral wisdom as an internal resource for coping, grounding, and resilience.
• Experience an emerging psychodramatic methodology that bridges ancestral wisdom with present and future technological challenges, and practice its core techniques to strengthen adaptive capacity in an evolving digital world.

Topic: Workshop S10-4: Dialogue With Ancestors: A Sociodramatic Journey Through Generations
Presenters: Lyudmila Zlatova, PhD (Czech Republic )
Alexandr Usov, LMSW (United States)
Description: This 2-hour online experiential workshop will be co-facilitated by Lyudmila and Alexandr using the Tele'Drama format, integrating sociometry, sociodrama, guided imagery, role reversal, embodiment, and collective enactment.The workshop invites participants into a creative and embodied exploration of intergenerational stories, inherited emotional patterns, resilience, migration, cultural identity, trauma, and ancestral wisdom within a safe and spontaneous online space. Through experiential action methods, participants will deepen awareness of transgenerational influences, experience Tele'Drama methods in an embodied way, and strengthen spontaneity, creativity, and connection through collective online exploration.
Learning Objectives:

1. Deepen awareness of transgenerational influences through experiential Tele'Drama methods.
2. Experience sociometry, sociodrama, guided imagery, role reversal, and embodiment in an online setting.
3. Strengthen spontaneity, creativity, and connection through collective online action methods.

Topic: Workshop S10-5: Saturn-Neptune in Aries: The Birth of Love - An Astro-Mythic Exploration
Presenters: Angeliki Lefa (Greece)
Meghna Bhagat (United States)
Description: Saturn and Neptune have begun a new cycle in Aries, marking the start of a chapter that will unfold for years to come. Across astrological traditions, this conjunction marks the meeting of vision and action, imagination and embodiment, dream and responsibility. It invites a timely question: What is trying to emerge now?
In this workshop, we will explore that question through the myth of the birth of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Born from the aftermath of rupture and loss, Aphrodite's story invites us to imagine how love, creativity and beauty may emerge not despite chaos, but from within it.
Blending astrology, mythology, and action methods, we will engage the myth as a living landscape. Through story, role, and reflection, participants will discover what may be seeking expression in their own lives, and how they might nurture and give form to what is now being born.
Learning Objectives:

1. Describe how astrological timing can illuminate periods of transition, growth, and emergence.
2. Use mythic reflection as a bridge to role, action, and experiential engagement.
3. Explore how myth can be personalized as a framework for understanding one's own experience.

Topic: Workshop S10-6: Experiential Pet Loss Therapy: Action Methods for Companion Animal Grief
Presenter: Samuel Yie (South Korea)
Description: Unlike the loss of a person, companion animal loss (pet loss) is often minimized, hidden, or socially unrecognized despite its profound emotional impact. This interactive experiential workshop brings attention and deeper exploration to the grieving process surrounding the loss of companion animals. Together, we will explore how action methods, psychodrama/sociodrama, and experiential group processes can support healing, emotional expression, ongoing emotional connection, and finding meaning after loss. Through experiential exercises, group process, creative expression, and techniques adaptable to both virtual and in-person group work, participants will experience practical approaches for working with grief, emotional attachment, life changes, and rebuilding roles following the death of a beloved animal companion. Our time will be experiential and educational in nature. While this time can be therapeutic, it is not therapy, and we will not be focusing on personal grief issues directly.
Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will briefly explore contemporary grief theories related to companion animal loss and anticipatory grief, including Continuing Bonds, the Dual Process Model, and Growing Around Grief, through experiential exercises and group process.
2. Participants will experience psychodramatic action methods that support emotional expression, maintaining continuing bonds, adjusting to changing roles, and finding meaning following companion animal loss.
3. Participants will explore the unique experiences of companion animal grief—including anticipatory grief, disenfranchised grief, and grief that is often misunderstood by others—within both virtual and in-person group settings.

Topic: Workshop S10-7: The Living Mirror Rediscovering Moreno’s Canon of Creativity through bibliodrama Based on an Ancient Tale
Presenter: Tamar Pelleg, MA, CP (Israel )
Description: Using bibliodrama combined with reflective writing, participants will enact an ancient tale that deeply resonates with the philosophy of Jacob Levy Moreno and his Canon of Creativity. The story introduces two central archetypes that continue to live within the human psyche and shape our relationships, choices, and creative processes. Through dramatic enactment, role exploration, and writing, participants will encounter these archetypes experientially while rediscovering Moreno’s philosophy in a vivid and embodied way.
Learning Objectives: 1.        Identify and describe the two central archetypes portrayed in the tale and reflect on their presence in their own lives.
2.        Explain how the story resonates with Moreno’s Canon of Creativity and its relevance to personal and professional practice

 

Topic: Workshop S10-8: Tri-City Ecosociodrama: Co-Creating One Shared Reality for Ecological and Social Resilience
Presenters: Hande Karakılıç Üçer, MD (Türkiye)
Feyruz Usluoğlu, PhD (Türkiye)
Nigar Etizer Karacık (Türkiye)
Description:

Topic: Riding the Eight Worldly Winds: Cultivating Equanimity Through Buddhist Psychology, Mindfulness, and Psychodrama
Presenter: Jaye Moyer, LCSW, TEP (United States)
Description: The Eight Worldly Winds—pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute—are universal human experiences described in Buddhist psychology that influence our emotions, relationships, and ways of responding to life. This experiential workshop integrates Buddhist psychology, mindfulness, psychodrama, sociodrama, and somatic awareness to explore how attachment and aversion contribute to suffering and how equanimity can be cultivated through spontaneity, embodied awareness, and creative action. Through guided mindfulness, experiential exercises, reflective writing, and psychodramatic enactment, participants will deepen self-awareness, strengthen resilience, and develop more flexible and compassionate responses to life's inevitable challenges.
Learning Objectives:

1. Explore the Eight Worldly Winds through mindfulness, psychodrama, and somatic awareness to increase self-awareness, emotional regulation, and resilience.
2. Apply psychodramatic and sociodramatic methods to cultivate equanimity, strengthen spontaneity, and respond more creatively to personal and collective challenges.

Topic: “Dangerous Ideas” – Moreno’s Innovations about Society and the Enlightenment of Humanity
Presenters: Bojana Glusac Draslar (Serbia)
Edward Schreiber, TEP (United States)
Description: Many psychodramatists acknowledge that some of J. L. Moreno's most profound philosophical and mystical concepts remain difficult to comprehend and to teach as living experiences.Moreno and Zerka hid "dangerous ideas" in their writings so we would eventually find them. These "Dangerous Ideas" include: (1) we are never alone; we are always in an encounter with the Godhead, even without our awareness; (2) we are always in relationship with a third presence, the Primordial Intelligence, that is between us, around us, and within us; (3) something is taking place underneath sociometry that impacts all humankind; and (4) the method, at its essence, is about planting seeds and offering homeopathic doses for awakening to this realm of experience.We have developed a sequence of experiential exercises, symbolic encounters, and guided reflections that enable participants to understand these concepts and experience them directly. Participants will also explore how these principles can be adapted across different cultures and online settings.
Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the principles behind the "Dangerous Ideas" as an innovative methodology for Moreno's philosophy.
2. Experience exercises that transform abstract theory into lived experience.
3. Explore ways of facilitating awareness of an encounter with the "Third Presence."

Topic: Saturday Evening Process Group
Presenter: Description: Facilitated by Tele’Drama team members, this evening process group offers a welcoming space to reflect on and integrate the experiences of the day, share meaningful moments, connect and network with colleagues, and bring the day to a thoughtful close.

Topic: Sunday Morning Process Group
Presenter: Description: Facilitated by Tele’Drama team members, this morning process group offers a gentle space to reflect on and process the previous day, share experiences, reconnect with one another, and warm up together for the day ahead.

Topic: Bridging Generations Through Drama Therapy: Two Generations, One Shared Journey of Discovery | Meytal Fogel-Simhony, PhD (Israel / Thailand), with graduates of the MA Expressive Arts Therapy Programme, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Chulalongkorn Unive
Presenter: Meytal Fogel-Simhony, PhD (Israel / Thailand)
Description: In this experiential presentation, graduates of the MA Expressive Arts Therapy Programme at Chulalongkorn University will share insights and reflections from facilitating drama therapy workshops with older adults in Thailand. What began with hesitation and uncertainty on both sides gradually developed into shared creativity, connection, enjoyment, and discovery. Through drama therapy, storytelling, role work, movement, memory, and other expressive methods, participants across generations encountered one another in new ways. The presentation will explore what the younger facilitators discovered about aging and older adults, what emerged through the shared creative process, and how a one-time intergenerational encounter can open possibilities for connection, mutual learning, and changing perceptions across generations.
Learning Objectives:

1. Explore how drama therapy and expressive arts can create meaningful encounters and dialogue between younger and older generations.
2. Identify ways that shared creative experiences can challenge assumptions about aging and foster new perceptions across generations.
3. Reflect on how storytelling, role, movement, memory, and other expressive methods can support connection, participation, and mutual discovery in intergenerational work.

Topic: The AAA® Creative Energy Cycle: An Awareness, Acceptance, and Adaptation Framework Through the Lens of Moreno's Canon of Creativity
Presenters: Colleen Baratka, MA, TEP (United States)
Pembegül İlter (Türkiye)
Description: This experiential session explores the parallels between the AAA Model—Aware, Accept, Adapt—and Canon of Creativity as a framework for understanding resilience, healing, and transformation. Integrating Spoon Theory, participants will examine how awareness involves recognizing physical, emotional, cognitive, and energetic limits while identifying where and how one’s “spoons” are being used. Acceptance becomes the stage where spontaneity emerges, allowing individuals to move beyond resistance and respond more authentically to changing realities, limitations, and needs. Adaptation then becomes the creative process through which individuals develop new roles, accommodations, rhythms, and meanings that evolve into fresh “cultural conserves” or new normals. Rather than viewing adaptation as an endpoint, the workshop conceptualizes healing as an ongoing cyclical process in which each new awareness creates opportunities for further acceptance, creative adaptation, and intentional energy use. Experiential exercises and action methods will help participants explore resilience, role flexibility, embodiment, and post-traumatic growth.
Learning Objectives: 1. Identify the three components of the AAA Model—Aware, Accept, and Adapt—and describe their relationship to the Canon of Creativity and Spoon Theory.
2. Describe at least two ways awareness of energy use and personal limits can increase spontaneity and role flexibility.
3. Apply one experiential action method using the AAA Model to explore a creative adaptation that supports resilience and intentional energy use.

Topic: Symposium S13: Marjut Partanen-Hertell (Finland) | Nadia Naeem, PhD (Pakistan) | Alexandr Usov (USA/Moldova), Lyudmila Zlatova (Czech Republic / Ukraine), Nelly Klyovan & Tetiana Kopiievska (Ukraine) | Samuel Egber (USA) Maurizio Borri (Italy)
Presenter: Description: Presentation #1: Marjut Partanen-Hertell (Finland)
Presentation #2: Nadia Naeem, PhD (Pakistan)
Presentation #3: Alexandr Usov (USA/Moldova), Lyudmila Zlatova (Czech Republic/Ukraine), Nelly Klyovan & Tetiana Kopiievska (Ukraine)
Presentation #4: Samuel Egber, CTP-1 (USA)
Presentation #5: Maurizio Borri (Italy)
 

Topic: Workshop S13-1: Who Holds the Mother? A Tele'Drama Framework for Emotionally Supporting Overwhelmed Parents
Presenters: Elena Petrova (Bulgaria)
Maya Maria Naydenova (Bulgaria)
Description: Parents—especially mothers—often become the invisible emotional regulators of the family system. While continuously holding the emotions, needs, and dysregulation of others, many caregivers remain emotionally unsupported themselves.This experiential presentation explores the hidden psychological and emotional burden carried by overwhelmed parents through the lens of Tele'Drama, co-regulation, and attachment-informed practice. Using image activation, symbolic role exploration, and collective witnessing, participants will experience how the online group can become a regulating and emotionally containing environment. The presentation focuses on the movement from isolation to connection, from emotional overload to containment, and from constantly holding others to allowing oneself to be held. A central aspect of the methodology is the use of the group itself as an active emotional container and witnessing presence, supporting emotional safety, reflection, and relational healing.
Learning Objectives:

1. Explore the invisible emotional load carried by parents and caregivers and understand the impact of chronic co-regulation and emotional labor.
2. Experience group witnessing as a regulating and emotionally containing process in online settings.
3. Discover how Tele'Drama can create emotional holding and reflect on the importance of supporting the caregiver alongside the child.

Topic: Workshop S13-2: Baggage Claim: An Innovative Experiential Modality for Working with Emotional Baggage
Presenter: Phil Armour, LPC, LMFT (United States)
Description: This experiential workshop introduces an innovative modality using the metaphor of “emotional baggage” to explore what we carry from our families and significant relationships. Participants will identify one piece of emotional baggage and be invited to symbolically “mail” this unwanted item back to its rightful owner(s). They will then be invited to request an emotional resource from someone significant that they would like to carry with them on the journey of life.Through imagery, metaphor, symbolic objects, and psychodrama techniques, participants will experience this creative modality and explore how it can be adapted for use with clients and groups. The workshop offers a playful and powerful way to make emotional experiences visible, tangible, and available for action and transformation.
Learning Objectives:

1. Experience an innovative experiential modality using imagery, metaphor, symbolic action, and psychodrama techniques to explore emotional baggage and family legacies.
2. Identify ways to adapt and apply the Baggage Claim modality in work with individuals and groups.

Topic: Workshop S13-3: Dynamic Theatre - Inspiring the World to Play Again
Presenters: Mark Wentworth (United Kingdom)
Filipe De Moura (Portugal)
Description: In today’s fast and stressful world, it’s vital to learn self-care. Children have an innate ability to turn ordinary into excitement, magic and adventure. Adults tend to forget about this, and days start to lose their colour and become day-to-day routine. However, none of that magic has gone away—it’s all there, waiting for you. Through creative play, Dynamic Theatre invites us to remember and reconnect with that adventurous and curious self. This self urges us to set out on a journey into a world of fulfilment, happiness and joy. Through spontaneous drama, we bring your stories to life—personal or business—to enable you to see the next step and the actions to take to create a life of wellbeing. We invite you to join us for a fun and playful workshop as we go soul journeying into the realms of imagination, hope and possibilities.
Learning Objectives:

1. Experience the multiple hidden patterns within a role.
2. Deepen and expand personal spontaneity and freedom in action.

Topic: Workshop S13-4: Who, Like Mary Poppins, Can Enter a Picture?
Presenter: Mirjana Stankovic (Serbia)
Description: AI-generated imagery can be a powerful tool for creating an effective stage for teledramatic work and immersing the protagonist into virtual scenes of a dream and surplus reality which brings repair and relief. In this process, the protagonist brings forth the inner imagery, the AI contributes as an expressive artist and the Tele’drama director “holds the protagonist’s hand” and helps them safely immerse in the dream’s virtual space, gradually leading them to surplus reality. The AI could be asked to create as many images as the protagonist wishes and describes, moving them from one scene into another, until they are wrapped up and taken care of inside of a surplus reality image. The session will demonstrate how vivid, co-created visual scenes can enrich online and hybrid settings, offering participants new tools for activating imagination, deepening dream work, and expanding the use of expressive arts in a therapeutic setting. 
Learning Objectives:

1. To explore innovative ways of using AI generated imagery for dream enactment and surplus reality in the teledramatic virtual space
2. To demonstrate the power of expressive art generated by AI for online work with dreams, where vivid scene setting is essential,
3. To engage participants in experiential exploration and reflective dialogue on the role of AI as a creative auxiliary in therapeutic practice.

Topic: Workshop S13-5: Seeing and Being Seen: Symbolic Exploration Through Virtual Sand Tray and Role Reversal
Presenters: Tanja L. Lee, Ph.D., RDT (United States)
Katrina Plato (United States)
Description: This experiential workshop explores the integration of virtual sand tray and drama therapy role reversal techniques within telehealth and group psychotherapy settings. Grounded in symbolic exploration and experiential engagement, participants will examine themes of visibility, authenticity, identity, and relational perception through metaphor, projection, and reflective inquiry.
Participants will engage in symbolic figure selection, virtual sand tray creation, dialogue writing, and role reversal techniques to explore the relationship between how individuals see themselves and how they believe they are perceived by others. Through symbolic placement, projection, and dramatic perspective-taking, participants will experience how virtual sand tray and role reversal can deepen emotional insight, relational awareness, and reflective observation within telehealth and group environments. The workshop demonstrates how symbolic and action-oriented methods can support creativity, engagement, and participant-generated meaning-making within experiential psychotherapy, counseling, and group work practice.
Learning Objectives: 1. Examine the therapeutic value of symbolism, projection, and metaphor within experiential group processes.
2. Identify ways symbolic and action-oriented interventions can foster engagement, reflection, and meaning-making within telehealth environments.
3. Explore how drama therapy role reversal techniques may support perspective-taking, emotional insight, and relational awareness.

Topic: Workshop S13-6: Past–Present Ancestors Integration Model™ (PPAIM): An Innovative Experiential Framework for Transgenerational Psychodrama
Presenter: Cristina Schmidt ( Austria / Romania )
Description: The Past–Present Ancestors Integration Model™ (PPAIM) is an original experiential framework for transgenerational psychodrama developed by Cristina Schmidt and experimentally applied in workshops since 2018. The model has been used to explore transgenerational themes such as family secrets, unfinished mourning, and intergenerational accounting.Grounded in Morenian psychodrama, PPAIM uses two physically distinct stages as a form of scenic mapping of transgenerational memory. One stage represents the protagonist's present-life reality, including current relationships, conflicts, roles, and emotional experiences. The second stage represents the ancestral field, including inherited narratives, unspoken stories, unresolved grief, and transmitted emotional patterns.Through movement between the two stages, participants explore the relationship between present experience and ancestral influences. By first differentiating and then integrating these scenic realities, the model supports increased awareness, symbolic reorganization, and the development of new roles and responses beyond inherited scripts.
Learning Objectives: 1. Describe the conceptual foundations of the Past–Present Ancestors Integration Model™ (PPAIM) and understand how dual-stage enactment expands psychodramatic exploration in transgenerational work.
2. Recognize how scenic mapping of transgenerational memory and movement between present and ancestral stages may increase awareness of inherited roles, invisible loyalties, and unresolved intergenerational dynamics.
3. Explore the use of role enactment and stage integration processes to facilitate symbolic reorganization and the emergence of new relational positions beyond inherited scripts.

Topic: Healing Growing Up with Addiction Through Relational Trauma Repair (RTR®): An Experiential Psychodrama Approach
Presenter: Tian Dayton, PhD, TEP (United States)
Description: Growing Up with Addiction, Dr. Tian Dayton's most recent book, explores how growing up in a family affected by addiction shapes the developing nervous system, attachment patterns, sense of self, and capacity for relationship. It reframes the legacy of addiction not simply as a family problem but as a form of relational trauma that often leaves adult children living with the symptoms of attachment wounds and complex PTSD.Relational Trauma Repair (RTR®) builds on the understanding presented in Growing Up with Addiction by offering a trauma-informed, embodied, experiential pathway for healing. Drawing on psychodrama, sociometry, attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and contemporary trauma science, RTR® helps transform insight into lived emotional experience. Through carefully structured experiential processes, RTR® provides clinicians with practical tools for repairing the relational wounds that growing up with addiction so often leaves behind.
Learning Objectives:

1. Understand how growing up in a family affected by addiction shapes attachment, nervous system development, sense of self, and relational functioning.
2. Experience the principles of Relational Trauma Repair (RTR®) and explore experiential psychodramatic interventions that support healing from relational trauma.

Topic: TuneUP!™: Finding Balance and Harmony Through the Instrument of the Body
Presenter: Anna Schaum, LPC, TEP (United States)
Description: "There is harmony in the tension of opposites as in the case of the bow and lyre." — HeraclitusDay and night. Yin and yang. Left and right. Our very cosmos is ordered in complementary opposites. Yet how can we use this awareness in practical ways to support ourselves and our clients in an increasingly polarized world?TuneUP!™ is designed to do just that. Through a gentle yet dynamic somatic process, participants will restore vitality and equilibrium by "tuning" into the natural complementary opposites within themselves. Using body awareness, spontaneous gesture, movement, and cognitive inquiry into core values, participants will experience renewed balance, greater ease, and deeper integration.The workshop includes a musical introduction, a reflective pen-and-paper warm-up, a physical warm-up, an experiential demonstration, and time for sharing and discussion.
Learning Objectives:

1. Utilize spontaneous gesture and somatic movement to promote greater balance and integration in personal and professional settings.
2. Explain how core human values can be depolarized to support more peaceful and constructive personal and professional relationships.

Topic: Closing & Gala: Co-Masters of the Ceremony
Presenters: Gülşen Büyükşahin, MA, PAT (United States)
Peter C. Benedict, PhD, LMHC (United States)
Amitabh Ghosh, MD, PAT (India)
Meghna Bhagat (United States)
Description: Every year, the annual Tele’Drama International Conference concludes with a festive Closing Ceremony and Gala—our signature celebration of the remarkable coming together of people from around the world to connect, learn, create, and innovate together. In the spirit of this year’s theme, CREATORS IN ACTION, our Masters of Ceremony will guide participants through an exciting, fully experiential celebration filled with action, sociometry, creativity, intercultural and intergenerational encounters, reflection, and a look toward the future.

In the Moreno tradition, the closing will not only celebrate what we have experienced and created together, but will also become a warm-up for what comes next. This year, that warm-up will take us toward a very special milestone: the 8th Tele’Drama International Conference, held together with the 1st IAGP North American Regional Conference, hosted by Tele’Drama International in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, October 27–30, 2027, under the theme:
INCLUSION, IDENTITY, AND THE TRANSFORMATIVE ROLE OF GROUPS IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
Connecting people. Honoring diversity. Transforming communities.

The 2027 conference will be fully hybrid, with a physical gathering in Las Vegas connected in real time with participants and groups around the world. Those who are unable to travel will have the opportunity to participate, connect, and engage internationally from the comfort of their homes. Join us as we celebrate what we have created in 2026 while warming up, in true Moreno tradition, for the next international adventure in 2027! 

!!! We would also like to extend a special invitation to all IAGP members. Even if you are not attending the Tele’Drama Conference this year, you are warmly invited to join us as our guests, with FREE admission, for this special Closing Ceremony and Gala celebration. We would love to welcome you as we celebrate together and begin warming up for the 1st IAGP North American Regional Conference & 8th Tele’Drama International Conference in Las Vegas in 2027. We simply ask that you complete a short, free registration HERE so that we can send you the Zoom link and event information. 

Topic: Sunday Evening Process Group
Presenter: Description: Facilitated by Tele’Drama team members, this final gathering offers a space to reflect on and integrate the experiences of the entire conference, share meaningful moments and connections, and bring our four-day international journey to a thoughtful and meaningful close.