Students and Alumni of the Drama Therapy Program

Current Students

Roni Alperin graduated from Tel Aviv University in theater and joined that city’s Playback Theater Company, working intensively with hospital staff, military officers, high-tech companies, and social workers.

He joined the Living Arts Playback Theater Company after he began the Drama Therapy Program. Roni plans to return to Israel as a drama therapist in private practice and as a staff member at a mental health hospital that has family-centered therapy and a health care unit.

Toni-Joan (TJ) Alton left her beloved hometown in South Africa to study Drama Therapy at CIIS. She completed a degree in Psychology and Drama, and a postgraduate degree in Education and Drama, and is excited to combine her studies into one modality.

Her interest lies in working with adolescents who have substance abuse issues and eating disorders. TJ hopes to return to South Africa to practice and teach.

Claudia Cuentas is originally from Lima, Peru, and has been living in the U.S. for 13 years. She has been teaching both cultural awareness and self-awareness through theater and music to children for the past 10 years. Claudia obtained certification at the Tamalpa Institute in Movement and Expressive Arts Therapy.

She is interested in working with Latino women around issues of trauma—using theater, movement, music, and ritual as primary resources in her drama therapy practice.

Paula Pulizzi, born and bred in New York City, completed the Creative Arts Therapies Certificate program at the New School in New York. She has used drama therapy modalities with schizophrenic and bipolar populations, and works in her current practicum with elders suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

In 2007 Paula directed and produced The Vagina Monologues at CIIS, which raised more than $1,800 for San Francisco Women Against Rape (SFWAR).

Alumni Profiles
Jamie Ben-Azay, MA (2007), works in a residential treatment facility for adolescent boys, doing individual, family, and group therapy, and making original movies with the young men by adapting and modernizing Greek myths to resonate with core themes in their rite of passage to adulthood.

Liisa Britt, MA (2008), studied theater at Bucknell University and auditioned for MFA programs before connecting with her passion for drama therapy while teaching an improvisational theater course at a state correctional facility for women.

Liisa’s supervised internship while in the Drama Therapy program was with hospital patients facing end-of-life issues. Just after graduation, she obtained a position as a rehabilitation therapist at Villa Fairmont Hospital in San Leandro, CA.

Nicole Brucato, MA (2007), works with teens in a high school in Brooklyn, NY, as part of an attendance-improvement and dropout-prevention program. She uses drama therapy to foster emotional well-being and address issues related to attendance, temporary housing, abuse/neglect, and pregnant and parenting youth.

Christopher Doyle, MA (1995), MFT, RDT, conducts a full private psychotherapy practice in Santa Rosa, CA, specializing in drama therapy with adolescents and families.

Susana Pendzik, MA (1997), PhD, RDT, is a drama therapist and supervisor in private practice. She is a faculty member and coordinator of an MA research program at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and she lectures internationally.

Susana has developed a drama therapy–based integrative assessment model and has published many articles on drama therapy. Additionally, she is a theater director, focusing on therapeutic theater research, and the author of two books of poems.

Robert Sarison, MA (1998), RDT, MFT, is manager of the Alzheimer’s Residential Care program at California Pacific Medical Center (San Francisco), where he supervises drama therapists and expressive arts therapists.

Rob is on the faculty of the Institute for Developmental Transformations West. He also has a private practice with families, couples, and individuals.

Nazbah Tom, MA (2007),  uses drama therapy with substance-abuse populations in outpatient treatment.  She is also exploring the integration of drama therapy, Western traditional psychotherapy, indigenous knowledge and cultural practices, and somatics in working with urban Native American/First Nations individuals, families, and groups.

Saun-Toy Trotter, MA (2000), MFT, is a therapist at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. She is also a director and solo performance artist, specializing in self-revelatory pieces. Saun-Toy was awarded “best of AIRspace 2003” for solo performance.

Shefali Tsabary, MA (1996), PhD, is a clinician at a comprehensive health care agency for the developmentally disabled in New York. She conducted trainings and workshops in India from 2005 to 2007, using expressive arts in leadership development and therapeutic responses to the tsunami disaster.

After receiving her MA at CIIS, Shefali earned a PhD in Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University.