Angelle Cook

Temporary Core Faculty, Drama Therapy

Dr. Angelle Cook (she/her/hers) is a registered drama therapist (RDT) and a board-certified trainer (BCT) through the North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA). Angelle runs her own private practice in Northern Virginia where she works with teens and adults at the intersections of dis/ability, chronic illness, and mental illness.

For ten years, she worked at a nonprofit and used an inclusive therapeutic theater model with teens and young adults with multiple types of dis/abilities to tell their stories. As director of the therapeutic theater productions from 2011-2020, her participants performed in front of more than 80,000 middle and high school students as well as to a sold-out audience at The Kennedy Center with the production, “A Will To Survive,” a show about teen suicide.  

Angelle is a temporary core faculty at Lesley University, having joined Lesley as an adjunct in 2020.

She is also an adjunct at New York University and Antioch University in their drama therapy departments. She previously taught at George Mason University within their mindfulness living LLC and within Mason Life, a college program designed for adults with dis/abilities.

Since 2020, Angelle has served as the Managing Editor for the Drama Therapy Review. She is the current Research Chair of the NADTA.

Angelle holds a masters in theater education from Emerson College and completed her drama therapy course work through the alternative track program. She earned her PhD in Expressive Therapies from Lesley University. She is the author of one historical fiction novel, “The Artist and the Soldier” which won the Ben Franklin Award through the Independent Book Publishers Association in 2019.

She is an avid hiker and reader.

Scholarship

Publications

Cook, A. (2020). Using an inclusive therapeutic theatre production to teach self-advocacy skills in young people with disabilities. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 71. DOI: https://doi-org.ezproxyles.flo.org/10.1016/j.aip.2020.101715

Cook, A (2021). A post-intentional phenomenological investigation of inclusivity in a therapeutic theatre production. Drama Therapy Review, 7 (2), pp 169-191. https://doi-org.ezproxyles.flo.org/10.1386/dtr_00072_1

Musicka-Williams, A., & Cook, A. (2022). Making connections across countries between creative approaches in qualitative interviewing with dis/abled communities. Disability & Society, 1–22. https://doi-org.ezproxyles.flo.org/10.1080/09687599.2022.2090901

Frydman, J., Cook, A., Armstrong, C.A., Rowe, C., & Kern, C. (2022). The drama therapy core processes: A Delphi study establishing a North American perspective. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2022.101939.

Cook, A., Young, K., McFann C., Angier, M., (forthcoming, September 2022). Clinical Commentary: Examining drama therapy practices through the lens of disabled-clinicians-in-training. Drama Therapy Review, 8 (2).

Select Presentations:

Workshop, “The Drama Core Processes: A Delphi Study.” NYU Annual Research Symposium, Feb, 2022 

Workshop, “Research Forum.” NADTA 2021 Annual Conference, October 2021 

Workshop, “A CAT’s guide to using Drama Therapy Techniques in an Online and In-Person Format,” Creative Movement Therapy Association of India, Annual Conference (December 2020).

Workshop, “Research ‘Think Tank:’ Supporting the development of research in drama therapy” NADTA 2020 Annual Conference (November 2020).

Workshop, “A panel discussion on research narratives in drama therapy: Investigating emerging perspectives,” NADTA 2020 Annual Conference (November 2020).

Workshop, “Drama Therapy Review: Structuring Your Writing in the Ocean of Research,” NADTA 2020 Annual Conference (November 2020).

Guest Lecturer,  At the NYU drama therapy program on the outcomes of my research on therapeutic theater (November 2020).

Workshop, “Therapeutic Theater, Self-Advocacy, and Inclusivity: Results from a pilot study,” NADTA 2019 Annual Conference (October 2019).

Key-Note Performance, “Abira and the Mountain,” Mid Atlantic Region Music Therapy Conference (March 2019).

Workshop, “The Same Sky Method: Performance Based Therapy,” NADTA 2018 Annual Conference (October 2018).

Key-Note Performance, “Behind the Label,” AMTA 2015 Annual Conference (November 2015).

Education

BA Prescott College

MA Emerson College

PhD Lesley University

Registered Drama Therapist (RDT) and Board Certified Trainer (BCT) with the North American Drama Therapy Association