Myriam (Mimi) Savage

Our People

Myriam (Mimi) Savage

Associate Professor

Counseling Psychology

Expressive Arts Coaching and Community Building

Expressive Arts Therapy

School of Professional Psychology and Health

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Email: msavage@ciis.edu

Biography

Myriam Savage (Mimi), Ph.D., RDT/BCT is a registered drama therapist and board-certified trainer. Her alma maters include Lesley University, Cal State University LA, Princeton University and The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, NYC. She resides in LA where she was a working stage, television, and film actress. In response to the LA Riots, she delved into teaching artistry through several social activist groups and later developed drama and expressive therapy programs in acute inpatient units for children and adults for several years. Mimi has facilitated neuro-diverse populations, unhoused women in Skid row as well as adolescents in residential rehabilitation, children in educational settings and young adults in private practice.

Dr. Savage, an Associate Professor and core faculty member in the MCP-EXA program teaches Human Development and Family, Group Dynamics, Arts & Therapy, Professional Development, and with CIIS colleagues, is developing an EXA coaching certificate. A founding faculty member of Arts and Healing Initiative Social Emotional Arts (SEA), (formerly UCLArts and Healing/Integrative Medicine UCLA), Mimi was part of a team manualizing two professional development programs centered on integrating expressive arts into counseling, educational settings, and the medical model. She is founder/director of SoCal Drama Therapy Center, mentoring, supervising, and instructing an international student body of professionals and students earning their drama therapy credentials.

She serves on three non-profit boards focused on disenfranchised youth and was former Education Chair for the North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA), devising the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Educational Outreach program through another non-profit, the Drama Therapy Fund (DTF), coordinating Black diaspora inclusion and education within drama/expressive therapies fields.

A recipient of a DTF Professional Research grant and Lesley University Research grant, her research has been recognized for its novel arts-based and participatory action approach. Her published work and some of her numerous conference presentations focus on adoption from foster care and intersections of identity for marginalized young women, using narrative inquiry and novel narrative arts-based digital media interventions. She is interested in the connection between narrative therapy, narrative transportation and inquiry with plant-based medicines for healing invisible illnesses.

Education

Ph.D. Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

M.A. California State University, Los Angeles, California

B.A. Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

RDT Registered Drama Therapist, Drama Institute of Los Angeles, California

Certificate, The Neighborhood Playhouse School (Two yr. acting conservatory graduate) New York City, New York

Board Certified Coach certificate (in process)

Publications

Wood, L., Reynolds, A. & Savage, M. (2025). Designing a model of knowledge competencies within drama therapy: A textbook (Routledge proposal in development)

Savage, M. (2025). Playspace in the Institution: Children in psychiatric units. In S. Simons and D. Drake (Eds.) Together we do, Autonomous Press (forthcoming chapter)

Savage, M. (2024). Bricolage: On being enough--Healing through narrative co-construction In S.P. Banitt (Ed.) Beyond the Curtain: Women therapists get real about healing trauma (A diverse exploration of trauma, dissociation, intersectionality and alternative paths of healing), Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books (November 2023, at publishers)

Savage, M. (2023). The drama therapy decision tree: Connecting drama therapy intervention to treatment: A book review. Theatre Journal, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press (May 2023, at publishers)

Savage, M. & Skrzeszewska, A. (2023). Game Girls: Documentary filmmaking and drama therapy create the potential space for self-expression and healing. In J. L. Cohen (Ed.), Film/Video-based therapy and trauma: Research and practice, London, UK: Routledge

Wood, L., Reynolds, A. & Savage, M. (2022). Designing a model of knowledge competencies within drama therapy. Drama Therapy Review 8 (2), Intellect Books

Mondolfi-Miguel, M., Savage, M., Aguayo, S. (2021). Designing short term drama therapy with people who have Parkinson’s disease in Vigo, Spain. Drama Therapy Review 7 (1) Intellect Books

Savage, M. & Skrzeszewska, A. (2020). Common ground: Tensions between the needs of documentary filmmaking and drama therapy practice in the film, Game Girls. Drama Therapy Review 6 (1), Intellect Books

Savage, M. (2018). Personal public service announcements: Using mask and an i-Pad in narrative, arts-based research with adopted young women from foster care. In I.R. Berson, M.J. Berson & C. Gray (Eds.), Participatory methodologies to elevate children’s voice and agency, vol. 7. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing (IAP)

Savage, M. (2018). Young women adopted from foster care create personal public service announcements: Narrative constructs in arts-based enquiry, Qualitative Research in Psychology, Routledge 17 (2)

Savage, M. (2016). Listening to the voices of young women adopted from foster care through Personal Public Service Announcements. Drama Therapy Review 2 (2) Intellect Books

Savage, M. (2015). Making personal public service announcements with adopted young women from foster care: A narrative inquiry. Proquest Publishing no. 3706869 May, 2015.

Savage, M. (2015). Making poem-houses as a drama therapy method of self-care Dramascope, July, 2015.

Savage, M. (2014). Express your New Year intentions as reality: Narradrama activity for the New Year, Gifts from the Heart: Self-guided Arts Activities UCLA Arts and Healing, January 2014.