by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Amy Thomas

Age: 28

Occupation: Drama therapist

Bio: This lusty goddess from Little Burgundy came here from the U.S. five years ago to study drama therapy at Concordia University. Now in the process of becoming a permanent resident (“I sometimes say I’m a Bush-dodger”), she is the co-founder of Creative Alternatives (www.creative-alternatives.ca), a drama therapy centre for women, currently based in the Plateau. A gifted thespian, she chose to stop actively seeking acting gigs because she “didn’t really have the ego to make it. I was a bit too vulnerable to the constant rejection that comes with the occupation. But I know the power of theatre and now I use it in a social form.”

The basic idea behind drama therapy: “It’s the intentional use of drama and theatre to explore yourself and your relationships with your community and the world.”

One workshop they are currently running: Body Image: Reclaim Your Beauty.

The primary purpose of the Body Image workshop: “To help women, through drama and art, to address the infamous love/hate relationship most women have with their bodies—not only for ourselves, but for our daughters and sisters as well. You know, unfortunately, a lot of women still do suffer from body image and food issues.”

What goes down there: “Role playing, mask-making, improv based on the theme, all kinds of stuff.”

How drama therapy can help you to stop hating your big fat ass and banana tits: “One of the things we do is that we’re able to enroll different aspects of the self. We can assign a character, the overweight self, the self-hating self, and embody that character and really make it larger than life, a caricature, and then dialogue with it. Find out where it came from. Do an interview with it, or perhaps even a scene. You take your problems outside of the self, look at them, and then assess the situation.”

Do they ever all get together, slap a penis on a dummy, and beat the hell out of it with clubs, cursing the insensitive males that run this cruel world and conspire to teach women to hate themselves? Not really.

What is costs to sign up for a workshop at Creative Alternatives: It depends. “A lot of it is based on your ability to pay.”

One group of people she also does a lot of work with: Children that have been marginalized, coming from broken homes, in foster care, abused etc.

Has she ever asked a kid to draw a picture of themselves and had them turn around and draw a big turd swimming around in a toilet bowl? Not yet. “But sometimes they do draw very violent images—like of themselves hanging or of self-abuse.”

Where you might find her hanging out: Quai des Brumes.

Musical preferences: Britpop, Eminem, Coldplay.

Favourite alcoholic beverage: Red wine.

Perfume: Body Shop Vanilla.

Television preferences: Law & Order.

A film she saw recently and really dug: Hearts of Darkness.

Favourite film of all time: Run Lola Run.

Last book read: Between the Stillness and the Groove, by Erika de Vasconcelos.

Words of wisdom: “Stay with the chaos and allow the meaning to emerge.” :